“Formation holds until we breach the outer wards,” Drayke commands. “Then we split as planned. Rurik and I take the main force. Zyphon, you have Ulrik. Auren?—”
“I protect Tamsin.” The words scrape past a throat tight with emotions I still can’t name. “Until she opens the Crown. After. Whatever it takes.”
“And after,” Tamsin murmurs against my scales. Low enough that only I can hear, her breath warm against the cold of my dragon form. “You protect me after, too.”
The words settle into my chest, warming something that’s been frozen for decades. A promise. A claim. An acknowledgment that this thing between us has grown beyond what either of us planned.
I will not let her fall. Whatever the cost.
THIRTY-THREE
AUREN
The Shadow Clan meets us before we reach the wards.
They pour from the fortress in a black wave—dragons whose scales drink light, whose fire burns with shadow instead of heat. Dozens of them. More than our intelligence suggested. More than we planned for. They rise from the gates and the mountain peaks and the valleys below, materializing from darkness itself, until the sky writhes with void-black forms.
“So much for surprise,” Rurik growls, and then he’s banking hard to the left, flames erupting from his wings as he tears into the first wave of attackers. His battle-roar echoes off the mountains, carrying the wild joy of someone who’s been waiting for this fight his entire life.
The sky becomes chaos.
I twist away from a shadow dragon’s strike, feeling Tamsin’s grip tighten as I roll. She moves with me—she’s learned my patterns, anticipating my movements, adjusting her weight to help rather than hinder. My fire—white-gold, precise, controlled—lances through a wing membrane, sends an enemy spiraling toward the rocks below.
Another comes at us from the left. I meet it with claws, raking across scales that part beneath dragon-forged talons. Hot blood—if shadow dragons can be said to bleed hot—sprays across my flank. The creature screams and falls, replaced immediately by two more.
They’re trying to separate us. Trying to isolate Tamsin from the formation.
I won’t allow it.
“Auren!” Tamsin’s warning comes a heartbeat before I sense the attack.
I bank hard, tucking my wings and rolling. Shadow fire cuts through the space where we just were—not hot but empty, a void that consumes rather than burns. It grazes my flank anyway, inevitable at this range, and for an instant, I feel nothing. Absolutely nothing. As if that part of me has simply ceased to exist.
Then sensation returns—pain flooding back, nerves screaming in protest—and I snarl with relief as much as agony. Pain means survival. Pain means I’m still here.
“I’m fine,” I tell Tamsin before she can ask. Her hands have tightened on my scales, nails digging in with concern I can feel through the armor of my dragon form. “Stay low. Don’t let go.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.” Her voice is steady despite the chaos. Despite the death raining around us. This woman who should be terrified is instead calculating, preparing, waiting for her moment. “Three more coming from below.”
I drop into a dive before she finishes speaking, catching the ascending dragons off guard. My fire takes the first in the face, blinding it. My claws take the second across the throat. The third veers away, and I let it go—there are always more. Conserve energy. Stay focused.
The battle spreads across the sky in patterns I track from instinct born of centuries of warfare. Drayke cuts through enemy lines with brutal efficiency, his massive bronze form a battering ram that sends shadow dragons scattering. Whenthey regroup, his chest fire erupts—bright enough to hurt, each blast incinerating constructs of living shadow that reform from darkness.
He’s magnificent. Has been since we first flew into battle together four centuries ago. But even Drayke can be overwhelmed by numbers.
Rurik fights with his usual chaos—unpredictable, devastating, genuinely laughing as he burns through opponents who can’t track his erratic patterns. Fire pours from his wings in sheets, turning the cold mountain air to inferno wherever he passes. A shadow dragon gets too close; Rurik tears its throat out with his teeth and doesn’t stop smiling.
He’s going to get himself killed fighting like that. As he has nearly done a hundred times before. As he will probably do a hundred times again, if we survive this.
And Zyphon?—
Zyphon moves through the battle as if he belongs here. His curse-cracked form blends with the shadows of our enemies, appearing and disappearing, strikes coming from impossible angles. Shadow dragons that should be his allies recoil from his presence. The curse recognizes its source. Same magic, twisted different directions. They can’t predict him because he operates on their wavelength and yet doesn’t.
He’s cutting a path toward the fortress. Toward Ulrik. Hundreds of years of suffering demanding payment.
The Fire-Bringers have dismounted, finding protected positions on the rocky slopes where the fighting is thinnest. Selene and Aisling stand back to back, their flames combining into something brighter than either produces alone. Gold and orange weave together in intricate patterns, creating wards that repel shadow constructs before they can fully form. The constructs hit those wards and dissolve, unable to penetrate the combined will of two Fire-Bringers who refuse to break.
Nasyra fights alone, as she prefers. Her shadow-fire—dark flame that burns in colors that shouldn’t exist—cuts through wards resistant to normal power. She’s carving a path toward the fortress, her magic unraveling protections that have stood for centuries. Every ward she breaks weakens the whole. Every protection she unravels makes Tamsin’s job easier.
