The City Guard’s frantic shouts barely registered over the ringing in Serenya’s ears as she knelt beside the fallen attacker’s armor on the bridge. The basalt remained warm beneath her knees from Vaelrik’s shadowfire as her pulse hammered an unsteady rhythm against her throat.
Her hands hovered above the strange sigils carved into the shadow-man’s helm and chest plate, close enough to feel the oily residue of corruption magic without actually touching the cursed metal. The sight confirmed what her lumen magic already whispered. This attack clearly wasn’t random. These weren’t desperate cultists or plague-maddened civilians. Someone had crafted these sigils with deliberate precision.
The ward-shackle throbbed at her wrist—sharp and insistent—and she felt Vaelrik’s curse answering like an echo, a flicker of shadowfire that mirrored her rising fear.
“This wasn’t the shadow-plague.” The words came out as a whisper, but they carried the weight of certainty. Not a theory. Not speculation. Truth carved in corrupted metal and oily sigils that made her stomach turn.
Vaelrik stepped closer, now dressed in his tattered clothes, his movements hesitant in a way that struck her asuncharacteristic. The Shadow Scourge didn’t hesitate. But there was something almost wounded in his posture, as if her earlier anger had cut deeper than any blade.
His voice emerged low and steady, but she caught the guarded note beneath the calm. “No. This was orchestrated by someone who knows exactly who we are… and what we are to each other now.”
The implication sent ice through her veins despite the volcanic heat still radiating from the bridge. Whoever had sent this attack wasn’t aiming to delay them or send a warning. They were aiming to erase them entirely. But why risk everything to strike so publicly, in the heart of Cinderhollow?
Her studies of the plague reports from last night crystallized into terrifying clarity. The shadow-plague had been targeting Vaelrik all along, drawn to his curse for some hidden agenda. And now that she was bound to him, connected through sigil and shackle, she’d become a target too.
As they walked back toward the Citadel, Serenya became hyperaware of every stare that followed and every whispered conversation that died when Vaelrik’s presence passed by. Guards stiffened, civilians pressed themselves against walls, and nobles watched from doorways with expressions that mixed fear and fascination in equal measure.
Walking beside him felt like walking in the eye of a storm—silent, charged, and undeniable. And everyone who looked at them could see exactly where she stood in relation to that tempest.
The shackle bond pulsed with shared tension, their emotions bleeding together in ways that should have felt invasive but instead felt strangely intimate. She tried to ignore how his senses brushed against hers with every step: her exhaustion mixing with his simmering anger, her unease answered byhis instinctive need to shield her from every threat, real or imagined.
For someone who had sworn she needed no one, having a dragon’s complete focus aimed entirely at her protection felt like stepping toward danger and safety simultaneously.
Stop it.
She forced herself to focus on the shadow-plague and on whoever was hunting them both with increasing boldness. Not on the way Vaelrik made her feel seen and alive for the first time in her adult life. Not on how his rage had erupted specifically to defend her. Not on the memory of almost kissing him or the way her body still pulsed with want.
Their lives were on the line. Everything else was a dangerous distraction.
“I didn’t mean to lash out at you.” The words escaped before she could stop them.
Vaelrik’s step faltered almost imperceptibly. “It’s fine.”
But she could feel through their bond that it wasn’t fine. Her anger at him had stung him in ways he’d never admit aloud.
“I was just concerned that your rage might hurt innocent people around us.” She kept her voice carefully neutral, though the shackle probably betrayed every nuance of her feelings anyway.
“I would never hurt innocents. Or you.” His words came out harsh, edged with something that sounded almost like pain.
She wanted to trust him. Part of her—the part that remembered how his shadowfire had curved around her protectively, never toward her—already did trust him. But she’d only seen his power unleashed twice now, and while it seemed to instinctively avoid harming her, would that protection always hold?
What happened when the curse grew stronger, or when something pushed him beyond what he could willingly control?
“Will it always avoid me?” The question slipped out. “Your shadowfire, I mean. When you’re in dragon form, when the curse is strongest—will I always be safe?”
Vaelrik stopped walking entirely, turning to face her. His gray eyes held depths she couldn’t read, secrets and certainties warring behind his carefully controlled features.
“I don’t know,” he said softly. “But I will always try to protect you, even from myself, Serenya. That I can promise you.”
The way he said her name—like a vow, like something precious—sent heat spiraling through her that she tried desperately to ignore.
Before long, the Citadel’s outer gates groaned shut behind them with finality, the sound echoing through Serenya’s bones like a tomb sealing. The volcanic heat that had felt oppressive on the bridge now seemed almost comforting compared to the chill that crept up her spine as they walked deeper into the fortress.
“We should examine what we recovered from the bridge,” Vaelrik said. “The research lab will have better tools for analyzing corruption magic.”
Serenya nodded, though her stomach twisted at the thought of studying those twisted sigils up close. The memory of oily darkness pulsing beneath carved metal made her skin crawl, but she needed answers more than comfort.
The research lab occupied the Citadel’s eastern wing, carved into black stone that gleamed with veins of obsidian. Gas lamps flickered along the walls, casting restless shadows that danced across glass cases filled with preserved specimens—fragments of corrupted bone, crystallized shadow-plague residue, and other horrors the Council had cataloged over the decades.
