Selene. Her hair is wild, her clothes hastily donned, but her grip is steady and her fire burns gold around her free hand.
“With us.” She doesn’t wait for acknowledgment, just pulls me sideways through a door I hadn’t noticed, into a narrow stairwell that climbs steeply upward. Aisling and Nasyra are already there, moving fast, flames of orange and shadow-touched darkness flickering at their fingertips.
“What’s happening?” I match their pace, taking the stairs two at a time.
“Shadow dragons.” Nasyra’s voice is flat, controlled, but I see the tension in her shoulders. “At least a dozen. And something else. Something that feels wrong.”
“Twisted creatures.” Aisling’s jaw is tight. “Morrigan’s work. We’ve seen them before—things that used to be dragons, warped by dark magic until they’re barely recognizable.”
My sister’s handiwork. The thought makes bile rise in my throat.
We emerge onto the eastern ramparts, and the world explodes into chaos.
The sky isfull of shadows.
Shadow dragons rain from the darkness at the horizon’s edge—not the gradual approach of a normal attack but a sudden materialization, as if they stepped through tears in reality itself. They’re smaller than Brotherhood dragons, built for speed and stealth rather than raw power, their scales drinking in the dawn light and reflecting nothing back.
But it’s the other things that make my blood freeze.
They might have been dragons once. Now they’re nightmares given form—bodies twisted into impossible angles, wings that beat with wrong rhythms, mouths that open too wide and reveal too many teeth. Shadow magic oozes from them in visible waves, leaving trails of darkness in the air as they fly. They move in patterns that hurt to watch, defying physics, defying sanity.
Morrigan made these. Took living creatures and broke them, remade them into weapons.
The horror of it hits me like a physical blow. My sister did this. My blood.
“Focus.” Selene’s voice cuts through my spiral. “Horror later. Fight now.”
She’s right. I shove the revulsion down, lock it away in the same place I’ve stored my grief and my guilt, and let my fire rise.
The ramparts are lined with Brotherhood dragons in human form, some already shifting, others hurling fire at the approaching horde. Defensive wards flare along the fortress walls—ancient protections that blaze with light as they absorb the first wave of shadow attacks. The air smells of ozone and burning.
Then the brothers shift.
I’ve seen dragons in their true forms before. Valdoria had diplomatic visitors, ceremonial occasions, the occasional territorial dispute that required shows of force. I thought I understood what dragons were.
I was wrong.
Drayke goes first—one moment a man standing at the rampart’s edge, the next an explosion of bronze and gold that blocks out a section of sky. He’s massive, larger than any dragon I’ve ever seen, scales catching the dawn light and throwing it back in blinding flashes. Jagged horns crown his head. Fire glows in his chest, visible through gaps in his armor-thick scales. He roars, and the sound shakes the stone beneath my feet.
Rurik follows—red and gold, flames already licking from his wings before the shift is complete. His form is wild, barely contained chaos given shape. He launches into the sky with a battle cry that’s half laugh, half challenge, and plunges directly into the thickest cluster of shadow dragons.
Zyphon is different. His shift is quieter, darker—obsidian scales appearing as if the shadows themselves are condensing into solid form. Purple cracks vein his scales, glowing with the curse that Selene told me about, the one Ulrik designed to destroy him slowly. His wings don’t reflect light; they devour it. He moves into battle without sound, a blade of living darkness cutting through the enemy ranks.
And Auren.
Auren.
His shift steals my breath.
Gold-white scales shimmer into existence, catching the dawn light and scattering it into prismatic fractals. He’s precise where Rurik is chaotic, devastating where Drayke is overwhelming. Every line of him speaks to controlled power—strength held deliberately in check, violence refined into art. His fire burnswhite-gold, almost matching my own, directed with surgical accuracy at targets his brothers haven’t reached.
Beautiful. The word surfaces before I can stop it. Beautiful in a way that hurts my heart, in a way that makes something in my chest ache with recognition.
“Tamsin.” Nasyra’s voice is sharp. “We need to move.”
I tear my attention from Auren’s dragon form and focus on the battle unfolding around us.
Shadow constructs are breaching the lower wards—not dragons, but things made of pure darkness, given shape by Morrigan’s magic. They pour over the walls in waves, reforming when they’re destroyed, reaching for anything alive with tendrils of consuming shadow.
