Just a breath of sound, barely audible even to myself. A single note that rose from somewhere deep in my chest and spilled into the library’s hushed air.
The hum, whatever it was, wherever it came from—responded. What had been a distant melody suddenly bloomed into something vast and complex and alive. Harmonies spiralled around my tentative note, weaving through it, lifting it, transforming it into something beautiful and strange and utterly impossible.
It was like the world itself had been waiting for me to sing back.
The music flowed through the walls, through the very air, until everything around me thrummed with it. The books on the shelves seemed to pulse in rhythm. The firelight danced in time with the melody. Even the dust motes floating in the afternoon light moved like they were choreographed to this impossible symphony.
And beneath it all, woven through every note and harmony, was something that felt likewelcome. Like recognition. Like the world sayingfinally, you’re listening.
My panic over Varyth’s book began to ebb.
The music didn’t lie to me. Didn’t promise that everything would be fine or that Varyth’s research was harmless. But it wrapped around my fear like a blanket, holding it steady until I could breathe around it.
I hummed another note, longer this time. More confident.
The harmonies swelled in response, and I could swear I felt the castle’s pleasure at my participation. Like it had been lonely,singing to itself for centuries, and finally had someone to sing with.
What are you?I thought, not really expecting an answer.
But the music shifted, became more complex. And threaded through the melody, almost too quiet to catch, was something that might have been words. Or maybe just the suggestion of words, the shape of meaning without the burden of language.
Home, it seemed to whisper.Safe. Yours, if you want it.
Whatever Varyth was looking for, whatever he thought he’d found? I would deal with it. I would ask my questions and demand my answers and make him tell me the truth.
But not today. Today, I would let the music hold me. Let it remind me that I was no longer running, no longer hiding in caves and fighting for scraps.
I was here. In this impossible place that sang to me like I belonged.
10
The courtyard echoed with screeches. Not the terrifying kind. The delighted, high-pitched, unholy kind that only children and baby dragons could produce together.
Mireth was covered in soot. Eryx had lost a shoe.
And somehow, this was the most normal I’d felt in months.
“Higher, higher!” Mireth shrieked as a bronze hatchling the size of a large dog flapped its wings, lifting her maybe three inches off the ground before depositing her back in the dirt with all the grace of a sack of grain.
She rolled, came up laughing, and immediately lunged for another one.
Eryx, meanwhile, had discovered that dragon babies made for excellent furniture. He was currently draped over a silver one’s back like a particularly determined barnacle, giggling as the poor creature tried to figure out what this small, sticky human was and why it wouldn’t let go.
“Should I be concerned?” I called out, though I was fighting laughter myself.
“Probably,” Darian replied from beside me, practically vibrating with pride as he watched a golden-haired boy climbonto one of the hatchlings with considerably more grace than my own chaotic pair. “But where’s the fun in that?”
“He’s the spitting image of you.” I said, nodding toward the miniature warrior currently directing his mount in what appeared to be an aerial assault on a pile of training dummies.
Darian laughed, rich and warm. “Yeah, well, he got his mother’s mind, at least. Thank the gods. If Fionn had inherited my sense of self-preservation, he’d have burned the castle down by now.”
Around us, half a dozen dragon young bounded, flapped, tumbled, and shrieked in varying tones of chaos. It was mayhem. Glorious mayhem that smelled of sulphur and adventure and a childhood I’d never imagined my children could have.
And I couldn’t stop smiling.
Not the careful, controlled expression I’d perfected over months of survival. This was raw and helpless and real—the kind of smile that hurt your cheeks and made your chest feel too small to contain what was trying to burst out of it.
Mireth had found her calling, apparently. She was directing a coordinated attack on Eryx’s position, three hatchlings flanking her like she’d been born to command aerial squadrons. Her coffee-brown hair caught the afternoon light, wild and free, soot-streaked cheeks flushed with pure joy.
