We’re winning. Against expectations, against the odds, we’re actually winning.
Then Ulrik arrives.
THIRTY-FOUR
AUREN
He erupts from the fortress gates, and the sky goes dark.
Not metaphorically. The sun itself seems to dim as the Shadow King takes flight, his massive form blotting out what little light reaches this cursed place. He’s enormous—nearly as large as Drayke, scales the black of a starless void, sucking in light until looking at him directly makes my eyes cross. Eight centuries of accumulated power radiate from him in waves that press against my scales, trying to force me back through sheer magical weight.
Every dragon in the sky falters. Even Drayke. Even Rurik. The Shadow King’s presence is a physical force, a pressure that demands submission from anything that shares dragon blood.
His fire isn’t fire at all. It’s absence. Void given form, shadow made weapon. Where it touches, things simply cease—rock, air, the unfortunate shadow dragon too slow to get out of his way. No burning. No destruction. Just erasure. As if whatever his fire touches never existed at all.
This is what we came to kill.
This is the creature who cursed my brother. Who destroyed Valdoria. Who would claim Tamsin and use her power to remake the world in his image.
“Zyphon!” Drayke’s roar carries across the battlefield.
I don’t need to see my brother’s response. I feel it—the surge of curse-magic as Zyphon launches himself at the dragon who created his suffering. He is pain and hatred given form, obsidian scales meeting starless void. His battle-scream isn’t a word. It’s pure rage, shaped by centuries of torment into something that cuts through the chaos and silences everything else.
Their collision shakes the mountain.
I feel the impact through my scales, through my bones. Rocks shear from cliff faces and tumble into the valleys below. The very air seems to shudder as two masters of shadow magic tear at each other with everything they have.
Shadow meets shadow. Darkness against darkness. They twist around each other in combat that defies physics—disappearing and reappearing, striking from angles that shouldn’t exist, moving through dimensions I can barely perceive. Ulrik is stronger. Eight centuries of power against Zyphon’s five. But Zyphon fights with something the Shadow King lacks.
Desperation. Fury. The absolute conviction that this ends here, one way or another.
Nasyra screams from below. Not in fear—in rage. Her mate is fighting the monster who destroyed her life, and she can’t reach him. Can’t help him. Can only watch as shadow tears at shadow, as the dragon she loves battles the creature who nearly unmade them both.
“The wards.” Tamsin’s voice cuts through my focus, steady despite the apocalypse unfolding around us. “Nasyra’s almost through the outer layer. I need to get closer.”
I bank toward the fortress, using the chaos of Zyphon and Ulrik’s battle as cover. Enemy dragons are too focused on the clash of titans to notice a single gold-white form slipping pasttheir lines. Those that do notice don’t survive long enough to raise an alarm.
The outer wards shimmer ahead—weakened by Nasyra’s assault, flickering in ways that healthy wards never should. Still dangerous. Still powerful enough to kill anything that touches them unprepared.
“Hold on,” I tell Tamsin. “This will hurt.”
Her arms tighten around my neck. Her cheek presses against my scales, her breath warm against the ridge of my spine. “I trust you.”
Three words. Simple words. They hit me harder than any of Ulrik’s magic ever could.
I fold my wings and dive.
We hit the ward barrier at speed. Pain lances through me—death wards trying to stop my heart, pain wards screaming through every nerve, magic designed to repel dragons clawing at my mind and body. But I’m through before they can take hold, momentum carrying us past the barrier in a single desperate push. My scales smoke with residual magic. Blood drips from my nose, from my gums, from wounds that opened when the wards tried to unmake me.
Tamsin gasps against my neck. I feel her shuddering.
“Are you?—”
“Fine.” She doesn’t sound fine. She sounds winded, shaken, like someone who just touched death and lived to remember it. But when I twist my head to check on her, her amber eyes blaze with determination rather than fear. White fire flickers at her fingertips—her power rising in response to threat. “That was unpleasant. Let’s not do it again.”
“No promises.”
I land on the rocky plateau before the fortress gates, shifting to human form as my claws touch stone. The transformation leaves me disoriented for a moment—six centuries of practiceand the shift still feels like being unmade and remade—but I recover quickly. Tamsin slides from my back, steadying herself against my chest for a moment before finding her footing.
