Thefoodarrivedona simple wooden tray. Bread—actual bread, not the ritual wafers we'd subsisted on during fasting periods. Cheese cut into neat cubes. Sliced fruit that still carried orchard smell. And tea, weak and pale in a ceramic cup that radiated warmth into my hands when I accepted it. I stared at the tray like it was a puzzle I couldn't solve.
"Eat slowly," Zephyron said, settling into the chair across from me. "Your stomach isn't accustomed to regular meals. If you eat too fast, you'll just vomit it back up."
I picked up a cube of cheese. It felt soft between my fingers. Room temperature. The cult had served cheese twice a year during feast days, hard and aged and doled out in portions measured to the gram. This was fresh. Mild. It tasted like milk and salt and something I couldn't name.
My stomach cramped immediately. Not from nausea—from want. From my body recognizing nutrition and demanding more.
I forced myself to chew slowly. To swallow. To wait before taking another piece.
Zephyron watched me with those storm-gray eyes, patient and assessing. Through the bond, I felt his controlled curiosity. His need to understand what he was dealing with.
“I . . . can’t believe I’ve found you,” he said quietly. “You don’t know how long it’s been. How . . . lonely.”
But I did know. Through the bond, I felt it acutely. The centuries—no, millennia—of waiting. His expectation. His excitement when his dragon brothers met their bond-mates. His disappointment when his failed to materialize.
There was all this new knowledge buzzing around my skull, all these new feelings. When I gave in to the power of the bond, it was like I was becoming a new person, merging with something ancient and terrible. So I pulled myself back.
"Tell me about the cult," he said, clearly sensing my worry. "Everything. Start with your rank."
I took a sip of tea. Let the warmth settle in my chest. It was grounding. I was still myself. Still Thalia. When I spoke, my voice came out clinical. Detached. High Priestess mode—the tone I'd used when reporting ritual results to Solmar.
"I held the rank of High Priestess. Second only to Lord Solmar himself in the hierarchy of the Unnamed's servants." The words tasted like ash. "I was fourteen when they recruited me. My family's merchant business had collapsed. They sold me to settle debts. The cult called it a divine selection."
Zephyron's expression didn't change. He leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled under his chin. "Go on."
"They trained me for four years. Memorization of rituals. Study of ancient texts. Meditation techniques designed to suppress emotion and heighten focus. Blood magic theory. Harvest protocols." I took another piece of cheese, forced it down. "When I turned eighteen, they elevated me to High Priestess. I performed my first harvest ritual three days after my initiation."
"The harvest rituals." He said it without inflection. Pure information gathering. "Explain the process."
I could do this. Could deliver intelligence like I was reading from a manual. Could separate what I'd done from what I felt about having done it.
"The cult targets young women with latent bonding potential. Virgin females between sixteen and twenty-five who carry the genetic markers that make them compatible with dragon-bonds. We abduct them, imprison them in the Sunken Palace, and prepare them for harvest. Ironic that I, myself seem to have the markers." My hands shook slightly. I set down the cheese. "The ritual itself requires three components. The subject, restrained on the altar. The blessed obsidian blade—forged in the Unnamed's corrupted magic. And the speaking of binding words that tear the bonding potential from their life essence and capture it in obsidian jars."
"Jars?" His voice remained steady.
"Twenty-seven of them. One for each girl I harvested. Solmar has been collecting for longer—he has over a hundred in the Archive." I picked up the tea, needing something to do with my hands. "The magic is stored in crystallized form. Luminescent liquid that pulses with the subject's final heartbeat."
Zephyron leaned forward. "You documented amounts. Appearance. You observed these rituals like scientific experiments."
"Yes." The word came out flat. "That's exactly what I did."
"Good." His approval hit me through the bond. "Continue. What's the timeline?"
I forced down a piece of bread, chewing mechanically. "Five weeks until the autumn equinox. That's when the ritual alignment occurs—the barrier between realms thins enough to channel the harvested magic into transformation. Solmar plans to use all hundred and twenty-seven jars to break the seals containing the Unnamed and infuse him with enough bonding power to achieve dragon form."
"Giving him a dragon's strength while retaining whatever corruption made him The Unnamed in the first place." Zephyron's eyes flashed silver briefly. "Clever. Horrifying, but clever."
"I helped them." My voice broke. "For six years, I helped plan those operations. Identified targets. Calculated optimal strike times. I'm the reason they know your patterns, your weaknesses, your—"
"Thalia." His voice cut through my spiral. "What made you run?"
I stared at the fruit on the tray. Sliced apples, their flesh already browning slightly at the edges. I'd given my last three copper coins to buy apples for a starving child. Everything I owned, pressed into her hands because I couldn't watch another girl suffer when I had the power to prevent it.
"The Unnamed spoke." The words came out whisper-quiet. "During the final harvest ritual. The twenty-seventh girl—she couldn't have been more than seventeen. Terrified. Crying. I held the blade. Spoke the binding words. And as her light faded, something else looked out through her eyes."
Zephyron had gone completely still. I felt his focus through the bond, sharp as broken glass.
"He used her final breath to speak directly to me. Not as a god. Not as some distant divine entity we were meant to serve." Tears pricked at my eyes. "He showed me what he really was. A rejected mate. A dragon who'd bonded with a human woman three thousand years ago, but she chose another. He corrupted himself with forbidden magic, trying to break bonds, trying to prove the system was flawed. When that failed, he tried to destroy all Dragon Lords out of pure spite. The other dragons had to seal him away."
