“Declare it now—before you know what tomorrow holds.”
Viktor blinked, heat flaring in his chest.
“I’m sitting here, aren’t I? With you. With her. What more proof do you need—of where I stand?”
Gabriel held his gaze, something unreadable flickering in his eyes. His answer came quiet, almost to himself.
“Proof won’t be enough tomorrow.”
The words landed heavy. Viktor caught the edge in them—something brittle that didn’t belong to the friend he knew.
“The queen’s mad,” he rasped. “I was a fool to think Storne could reason with her.”
Gabriel’s shoulders tensed with something more than weariness.
“He was trying to stop a war. Lady Zrynon isn’t just next in line to the throne—she’s Queen Cassandra’s daughter. Every curfew, every betrayal, every decree from a hall full of elves… it tears at Casqadia. People remember when it wasn’t like this.”
Viktor’s eyes lifted.
“Amerei is hope.”
Gabriel nodded once, as if it cost him.
“She is hope.”
The room went still.
Only the faint creak of rafters, the slow groan of the timbers with the sea, kept the silence from swallowing them whole.
Viktor leaned back against the headboard, but sleep was far from him. Gabriel sat rigid on the edge of his bed, hands clasped tight, gaze fixed somewhere Viktor couldn’t follow.
“Will you fight for her, Viktor?” he asked, voice quiet but unbending.
“Even if she doesn’t love you?”
Viktor stared at the dark rafters overhead, breath rough in his chest. The truth lived there, solid as steel—no sense denying it.
“Even if she never loves me… I was made to fight for her.”
Gabriel’s eyes cut toward him, sharp and searching. Disbelief softened first; then the corners of his mouth twitched, as though he’d seen something terrible and holy all at once.
“Storm take me,” he muttered, low and rough. “You mean it.”
Viktor drew a slow breath, ribs aching with it.
“I can’t let her face Zeporah alone,” he said at last. “And I can’t let her men fight alone. Not when I know now why we were given these powers.”
Gabriel’s gaze narrowed—as if bracing for something he didn’t want to hear.
Viktor’s fists clenched in the blanket.
“They’re not just beasts—the dragons.” His chest heaved once. “There are men trapped inside them—souls bound, enslaved. And Zeporah…” His voice broke, then hardened. “She means to use them as her protection.”
The silence after was a wound that refused to close.
Gabriel’s face shifted—from disbelief, to dread, to something like grief.
“That’s madness,” he said hoarsely. “No queen could—” A bitter sound caught in his throat, half laugh, half snarl. “Does she even know what she’s unleashed?”
