“Hale,” he gasps, tasting the blood from his own lip. “Hale Braynor.”
“Good, Hale Braynor,” I say, circling the cell. “Now, tell me why you and your little friends decided to attack a fortified coven with nothing but youthful arrogance and a death wish.”
He glares, but the fire is gone, replaced by a sullen fear. “We were on reconnaissance. The first wave. We were supposed to get close, test the wards, and report back.”
“And you failed,” I state.
He looks away, shame coloring his cheeks. “The others… they got away. They saw everything. The shield’s weakness. The number of fighters. You.” His eyes flick to me. “They’re on their way back to Draethys now. They’ll tell Anees everything.”
A cold stillness settles over the dungeon. Corvin’s hands clench. Director Reinhardt steps out of the shadows.
“When?” Reinhardt asks, his voice dangerously quiet.
Hale hesitates. I take a step toward the bars, and the words spill from him in a panicked rush. “Soon. Days. He’s not waiting. The exit is being prepared. They’re all coming. All of them.”
The ground is opening. And Anees, that fool, sent fledglings on a mission that required subtlety. Maybe he thought their youth would make them daring enough to get close, spry enough to escape. He was almost right. Had I not been here, things might have turned out differently. But that’s only because Darkbirch isn’t yet at full capacity.
“We must prepare the coven for a full-scale assault,” Corvin says, his voice tight, grim.
“It is not these whelps you need to fear,” I mutter, my gaze fixed on the terrified boy in the cell. “It’s the old ones. The ones who remember the world before the cage. The ones who fought beside me. Anees is saving his true strength for last.”
And yet, these magicals still bicker among themselves, these humans with their fleeting lives, their egos and stubbornness blinding them to the true storm gathering on the horizon. Even now, with death looming overhead, they cling to ancient grudges like treasured heirlooms.
But perhaps it is the curse of all sentient beings—this maddening instinct to choose extinction over compromise.
“A cornered beast strikes not from courage, but from the certainty of its own demise.”I recall the words of the great draconic philosopher Xylos, who wrote of this very thing during the height of the Blood Wars. He believed that true strength was the ability to offer an open hand when your enemy expects a claw. A noble sentiment, but one that requires both sides to possess a wisdom that has been absent from this world for a thousand years.
“Your brother likely defected.” Director Reinhardt looks from me to Corvin, his expression hardening. “Which is just another reason why the second Ide trial proceeds. At once.”
My scales ripple beneath my skin, an involuntary reaction. The accusation against Byzu burns like acid in my throat. I neverallowed myself to trust him completely, but I was beginning to believe his loyalty might have been real. And yet… his sudden disappearance gnaws at me. Something is wrong. Something I haven’t yet put my finger on.
And Esme… My thoughts return to the archives, to the ridiculous, transparently orchestrated crisis that preceded the real one. Brynn Salem, for all her bookish intelligence, possesses the subtlety of a rockslide. A failing ward, a convenient damsel-in-distress scenario, a stage perfectly set for a heroic rescue and a moment of forced closeness between Esme and myself. It was an appallingly human and clumsy piece of matchmaking.
The plan was a tactical disaster from its inception. She failed to account for the variables: Esme’s ingrained distrust, my own refusal to be manipulated, and the spectacular irony of a far deadlier threat arriving mid-performance. The scholar tried to light a candle to bring us together, and instead the whole forest went up.
And yet, the objective was sound.
It’s just not going to happen her way. I knew that, but didn’t see the harm in humoring her.
“Director Reinhardt,” Corvin says, turning to the older man. “Your orders?”
Days. The dragons will resurge in days.
I turn, leaving the boy to the coven’s interrogators and ascend from the dungeon’s chill. I already know what Reinhardt’s orders will be, what his plans are. And they are diametrically opposed to mine.
But there’s something I once told Esme, that night within Heathborne's stone walls, when fate conspired to bring us together in the territory of her enemies:Sometimes the most effective way to control someone is to let them believe they’re incontrol.
I can’t make her want to bind her soul to mine. Can’t force her to choose my side, my name, my end.
And the clock doesn’t care about either of our wants. We’ve run out of time for games.
So let her do it her way.
I’ll do it mine.
26
ESME
