But how?
His mind raced through possibilities, each more troubling than the last. He’d eliminated the three assassins on the bridge with precise, lethal efficiency. What else had managed to penetrate Cinderhollow’s defenses? Or had the attack been nothing more than an elaborate distraction while the real threat slipped through their gates like poison through an open wound?
Serenya’s head snapped toward the sound, her entire body going taut with alertness. Her fear hit him through the bond like a hot blade sliding between his ribs, and the shadowfire in his veins roared in response—not with hunger, but with the absolute need to eliminate whatever threatened her.
Vaelrik didn’t waste a heartbeat. Every instinct he possessed—dragon, warrior, mate—screamed at him to shield her from whatever darkness had invaded his territory.
“Stay behind me,” he growled, the command rough with barely contained power.
The words left his mouth before rational thought could intervene, and he immediately regretted them. Not because they weren’t true—every fiber of his being demanded he stand between her and danger—but because he recognized the flash of fire that ignited in her green eyes.
She met his gaze with incandescent fury that made the air crackle between them. “I’m not staying behind anyone.”
Something inside him—dragon, curse, man—tightened with something dangerously close to awe. This magnificent, stubborn woman who refused to be diminished or protected or caged, even when darkness pressed at them from all sides.
Perfect. She’s perfect.
Fog churned under the doorframes ahead, thick and wrong and reeking of corruption. Gloamrot. Inside the Citadel—the heart of dragon power in the Ashen Realms.
Vaelrik’s thoughts sliced clean, reducing to absolute priorities:Protect her. Contain the breach. Find whoever dared to touch his territory.
The alarms shrieked overhead, their metallic wail reverberating through the basalt corridors as Vaelrik barreled through the Citadel. Smoke and Gloamrot coiled together in obscene spirals, burning his throat with a scent he’d never encountered within these sacred walls—corruption magic, active and living, defiling the heart of dragon power.
This wasn’t alchemically-forged puppetry like the assassins on the bridge. This was true shadow-plague—feral, hungry, and directed.
This breach was calculated.
The thought cut through his rising fury with crystalline clarity. Someone had used the bridge assault as nothing more than a distraction. His shadowfire clawed at the edges of his control, begging to be unleashed in a torrent of violet-black flame, but he forced it down with brutal discipline. Stone corridors this narrow would collapse under the weight of his full dragon form, crushing innocents beneath tons of rubble.
Behind him, Serenya’s footsteps matched his pace—quick, controlled, and purposeful rather than panicked. The mate bond thrummed with her fierce resolve, and he found himself drawing strength from her courage instead of his own fury.
They headed toward the servants’ wing—the weakest point in the Citadel’s defenses, where families huddled in cramped quarters and children played in corridors too narrow for proper wards. Vaelrik already knew what they would find there: shadows feeding on fear, corruption magic seeping through cracks in stone like poison through an open wound.
The corridor erupted into chaos before they reached it. Doors rattled on their hinges, children’s cries echoed off basalt walls, and fog rolled low along the ground like a living carpet of malevolence. Shadow-creatures slipped under doorframes like spilled ink—smaller than the monstrosities at Weeping March, but faster, hungrier, and more precise in their movements.
Infiltrators, not destroyers.
Vaelrik didn’t hesitate. His shoulder slammed into the nearest door, shattering it off its hinges with enough force to send splinters flying. Inside, a wave of writhing tendrils lunged for a cluster of children cowering beneath an overturned table, their faces pale with terror.
He half-shifted without conscious thought—just enough to release a controlled burst of shadowfire, enough to incinerate the reaching limbs but not enough to bring down the ceiling on innocent heads. The familiar burn of transformation searedthrough his bones, scales rippling beneath skin, claws extending like obsidian daggers.
Serenya’s magic washed past him in a cascade of gold-white light, her sigils answering his fire with uncanny precision. They moved together with the fluid coordination of predators who had hunted as a pack for centuries, not days.
“Get them back!” she shouted, dropping to her knees as her palm pressed against the scorching stone. Her voice carried absolute authority despite the chaos surrounding them.
She inscribed a circular ward with astonishing speed, her fingers tracing geometric patterns that blazed to life beneath her touch. Light detonated outward—clean, bright, and overwhelming in its purity. The shadows recoiled instantly, writhing away from her brilliance like serpents fleeing flame.
Vaelrik watched her work with something tightening painfully in his chest. She wasn’t just some fragile scholar conscripted against her will. She was a weapon of light—fearless, brilliant, and infuriatingly reckless in her determination to shield others. His dragon reacted to her magic like it was the only anchor in an endless storm, the shadowfire in his veins settling into controlled hunger rather than mindless rage.
The shackle hummed between them, syncing their breath, their instincts, and their fury into something greater than either could achieve alone.
Suddenly, a larger shadow began to rise from the fog—taller and more defined than the writhing tendrils. It pulled in heat and corruption until a feminine shape emerged, twisted and half-devoured by Gloamrot but still recognizably human.
Serenya froze. Vaelrik felt her breath stutter. Her magic faltered for the very first time since he’d known her.
The mimic’s voice sang a broken lullaby, notes drifting through the air with haunting sweetness.
The shadow-plague had clearly rifled through Serenya’s memories like a thief searching for treasures. It had stolen the image of someone she feared losing, someone whose death still carved hollow spaces in her heart.
