Yet even watching Vasharax’s bright flurry, the amused warmth in Serenna’s chest dwindled as her gaze drifted past them toward the cavern’s heart.
Suspended between heat and shadow, Cinderax stood sentinel over the nine Emberhart eggs resting in their shallow hollows. Beside him, Velinya knelt, casting a thin ribbon of fire in a sweeping arc to refresh the warmth without letting it scorch the clutch.
The same flame that had once answered for Serenna.
Cinderax hadn’t pried or let his molten eyes linger on her amethyst-stained wings long enough to burn. But his silence carried no absolution, only a muted glow of acknowledgment, banked like coals.
Skylash hadn’t left room for wondering. She’d snarled her vow through fangs and lightning, swearing to tear the tempest from Serenna’s bones if she so much asconsideredreaching for a different boon.
And somehow, Cinderax’s silence cleaved deeper than Skylash’s threats, leaving Serenna unsure if she still belonged in this cavern—among the flames and the hatchlings who would be born to it—when all she carried now was the storm’s restless spark.
Velinya continued turning each shell, but Serenna’s attention kept snagging on the separate ring of eggs—twelve in all.
The Unbound.
After regenerating their magic and recovering from the battle, she and Fenn had hauled the clutch from the mountain in the Maw. The night before, Vesryn had helped shatter their crystal prisons with sunfire, restoring the eggs to a world where time could touch them again.
Steam unfurled from Cinderax’s nostrils, curling upward in hazy spirals. His eyes lingered on one of the Emberhart eggs rocking gently in the sand. Lowering his neck, he breathed a narrow coil of flame around it.
From within, a wavering chirp answered—soft as a whisper, yet sharp enough to pierce the chamber and the center of Serenna’s heart.
“He stirs,”Cinderax rumbled in her mind.“By sundown, he’ll see the sky.”
He padded toward the circle of Unbound eggs, and Serenna hesitantly followed. Approaching the clutch, she knelt beside him, the question rising before she could halt it.
“Since I don’t carry your gift anymore,” she began, voice unsteady with doubt, “should someone else be First Keeper of the Cradle Flame?”
Heat rolled from Cinderax’s hide as he turned from the Unbound, his crimson eyes striking hers.
“The title is about guardianship,”he said.“Choosing to tend what cannot yet tend itself.”
“Even if I carry Skylash’s gift now?” Serenna asked, the storm in her chest pulling tight.
“You’re still scalebound.”Cinderax adjusted one of the eggs with the curve of his snout.“The flame didn’t make you worthy. Your willingness did. You stepped into a future not yet kindled and agreed to carry the ember of its becoming.”
The words should have reassured her. Instead, they slipped into the static where her fire had once burned, dissipating into the hollow the storm had gouged behind her ribs.
Serenna let her hand hover over the heated sand, then swept aside the narrow trench of flame with her connection to the earth. As Velinya had done, she rotated one of the Unbound eggs.
The shells all gleamed like the Emberhart clutch, but beneath the casing, she sensed only silence. No flicker of fire or charge of lightning. No whisper of wind or water or earth. Nothing waiting to bloom or burn.
“Skylash demanded this entire clutch be claimed as Stormstrikes,” Serenna murmured, flattening her palm against the next shell before turning it over.
A low snarl rumbled from Cinderax’s throat, the frills along his crown flaring.“Skylash seeks a legacy hatched from her greed—a twisted bargain to feed her pride.”Heat shimmered in the air around his fangs.“To claim all of these Unbound as Stormstrikes is not balance. But she has seen fit to makeyouher instrument.”
Serenna dipped her head in acknowledgment, accepting his fury without defense. Cinderax had given his gift freely, without demand or condition, and she’d traded it.
But she knew, just as surely as a storm would strike, that Skylash’s aid would be bought in two currencies—her mate’s freedom and this clutch of hatchlings. Serenna had flown into that agreement aware its cost would follow her long past its payment. She didn’t know how Skylash expected her to carry it out, only that the terms were unbreakable.
“Skylash…implied that I have the power to influence what these eggs will become,” Serenna said at last, unsure whether Cinderax would share the truth or guard it close.
“My ancestors forged the scalebound pact with humans and Aelfyn out of necessity,”he said, the weight of centuries heavy in his voice.“The Unbound—those forged from cross-elemental lineages, fire and wind, earth and water, or any combination—enter the world with no inheritance. No power sings in their blood.”
He eased back onto his haunches, a ripple of heat shifting with him.“The skies set no laws against such pairings, even when the bloodlines shape us into different forms. If they hatch, the Unbound young would fly, hunt, endure. But they would do so as beasts, bereft of the magic and memory that have made my kind more than fang and claw. Together with the scalebound, we created balance. A sacred interdependence.”
Across the cavern, Vasharax sprang at Fenn again, a golden flicker of mist steaming from her jaws. Every bright trill, every frantic beat of her wings, carried the effortless promise of a fire yet to burn.
Serenna’s gaze settled back on the Unbound clutch. “And I can shape these Unbound as Stormstrikes to fulfill my…arrangement with Skylash? Why didn’t she just do it?”
