Dragons.
I didn’t say the word out loud. I barely let it finish forming in my mind before I felt the instinctive pull in my chest, the reflex that had grown there ever since the Academy trusted me with something so old and so fragile that even thinking about it felt like touching a live ember.
They were my responsibility.
Mine.
They never were, not up here anyway.
They lived in the spaces between things, between myths and silence, between what people assumed had gone extinct and what had merely gone into hiding. The Academy guarded them fiercely, not with Wards that screamed their presence, but with absence.
At least, that was how it was supposed to work.
My gaze drifted to Celeste, who was kneeling by the table, her attention split between her dad and a sprite that had taken a liking to her sleeve. She didn’t know about the dragons, but she knew the Academy held secrets. And keeping those secrets away from my daughter protected her.
The Priestess knew about lineage, about inheritance, and what should pass quietly from one generation to the next.
What if she knew about the dragons, too?
The thought made my stomach twist.
I’d told myself the secret was safe. That only Elira had known, and even among the old magic families, the dragons had faded into storybook exaggerations and scholarly footnotes. The Academy had done its job well enough that the truth was obscured beneath centuries of distraction.
But then again, I’d also believed for most of my life that my magic didn’t exist.
I leaned back in my chair slowly, careful not to startle Celeste or draw attention to the way my thoughts had turned inward and sharp.
If the Priestess was assembling an army, it wasn’t because she wanted to smash Stonewick to rubble. That would be the simple option. Orcs and boars were blunt instruments. Sure.They created pressure and distraction…maybe instilled a bit of fear, but they cleared paths.
The question was paths toward what?
Dragons didn’t fight wars.
They ended them, but at what cost?
My fingers curled against the edge of the table.
If even a whisper of their existence reached the wrong ears, if the Priestess suspected, truly suspected, that the Academy still sheltered them, then everything made sense. The urgency and careful escalation rather than open confrontation.
She wouldn’t storm the Academy for dragons.
She’d force it to reveal them.
I swallowed, the weight of it settling squarely on my shoulders. Elira hadn’t just trusted me with their care. She’d trusted me with restraint, and so did the Academy.
And now my daughter’s magic was waking up.
Now, vampires gathered on the steps without fear.
Now, orcs pressed forward.
And the Academy itself had begun choosing when to intervene and when to step back.
I wasn’t sure anymore that the secret was as contained as I’d believed.
I looked at Celeste again, at the way she laughed softly when the toad tried to hop away and failed, at how natural she looked in this place. The Academy didn’t flinch around her. The library didn’t resist her presence, and that scared me more than the orcs ever could.
Because if the dragons recognized her too, if they sensed the bloodline shifting, the inheritance awakening, then secrecy alone wouldn’t be enough. Dragons weren’t passive Wards. They were living, thinking beings, and chose whom they trusted.
