The dragon’s head whipped toward the prince, flinging snow from the leathery spines of his mane. His jaws slammed together with a crack like thunder, the impact blasting frost from the ground.
“You will not address me, star-forged whelp!
Were it not forbidden by the tyrant’s hand,
I’d crack your spine to splinters and salt your bones with sand.”
A surge of alarm lashed through Lykor’s mind—Aesar’s warning.“We need to be careful. He might be reporting back to the king.”
Lykor’s fingers curled at his sides as he stepped forward, voice dropping low.“Galaeryn. He freed you, only to leash you?”
The dragon’s gaze latched onto him, words hissing with venom.“Do I look ‘freed’ to you?”
“We freed Cinderax,” Jassyn said, his voice steady despite the tension shivering through his wings beneath that stare.
“Cinderax…”The name rolled like surf, the dragon disregarding Vesryn as though he hadn’t spoken at all.“So he’s the Emberhart Warden. And he’s nothing but kindling.”
Lykor’s jaw clenched. The judgment stung, too close to words he’d already thrown himself. Because he didn’t wantkindling. He wanted an inferno—a dragon to match the ruin, a beast that could turn the tide.
Like this one before him.
“Perhaps we could free you too,” Jassyn offered, quieter now.
“Free me?”
Jassyn drew breath to answer, but the dragon’s reply hit first, slamming through Lykor’s skull.
“You think freedom is simple? Like your fire? A gift, passed from palm to palm? Unbind one dragon, and you crown yourselves saviors of the rest?”
Like a continent cracking beneath a frozen sea, a sound rumbled from his chest as frost seethed from his fangs.
“These chains do not break. Not while the leash still bites my throat.”He tilted his head skyward, through the gash his landing had torn in the canopy.“But if Icouldbe freed…”
The dragon’s crystalline gaze returned to them.“Death is all I’d ask for.”
Aesar flinched, and the echo ran through Lykor. This wasn’t a plea for freedom, nor even revenge, only that weary mercy found in the wish to stop existing beneath another’s will.
Lykor wondered what would’ve been left of him if Jassyn hadn’t destroyed the king’s coercion on his mind. Maybe he’d be begging for silence too.
Then, softer than Lykor had ever heard him, Jassyn broke the quiet. “Do you have a name?”
The dragon blinked slowly, as if remembering.
“Rimeclaw.”
The name landed without grandeur. Above them, the canopy groaned, a vine sheathed in ice tearing loose and crashing down.
“Why are you here?” Fenn asked.
“And not freezing or drowning us,”Aesar murmured.
Rimeclaw’s gaze clouded, distant and haunted. A long breath fogged the air, frost creeping across everyone’s boots.“I smelled a lake and thought I could rest where no stars scream.”
The surrender seized Lykor’s chest. Too familiar, the same quiet despair that had once chained him in the prisons, when death had seemed the only mercy left.
“You’re bound by a Heart of Stars, aren’t you?” Lykor asked, voice rough. “That’s what’s…controlling you.”
The emptiness in Rimeclaw’s voice said more than any nod could.“‘Aid the mortals. Melt their path.’ That was the command. So I bend the snow. I break the storm. Not by will. Not by want.”
