I turn to face the hall. Thirty-six dragons stare back at me, every one of them perfectly still. Even Kaelreth. Even Seravax. The minor dragon writhes at my feet, gasping, and no one moves to help him.
Kaelreth’s expression has gone carefully blank. Whatever he’s planning, whatever move he’s holding back, he keeps it locked behind centuries of political experience. But he doesn’t challenge me. Doesn’t speak.
Seravax watches, cataloging everything, assessing implications I probably haven’t considered yet. He doesn’t speak either. Smart. He’s always been smart.
The other dragons—the ones who came to watch, to posture, to advance their own agendas—they barely breathe. They’ve seen me execute. They’ve seen me enforce. But this is different. This wasn’t law or duty or the cold calculus of Flight authority.
This was personal.
And every dragon in this hall can sense the difference.
“This council session is concluded.” I step over the still-gasping dragon at my feet. “I’ll provide written updates on the Blood Regent situation as intelligence develops. If anyone requires clarification on the witch’s status?—”
I pause at the edge of the platform, letting the fire flicker visible in my eyes for a moment.
“Don’t.”
Then I walk out, and no one tries to stop me.
The corridoroutside the Throne Hall stretches empty and silent. My footsteps echo against black stone—too loud, too fast, betraying the turmoil I should be governing.
I attacked a council member. In front of witnesses. Over a prisoner’s status. Over a witch I’ve known for less than two days.
The witch is mine. I said it. Imeantit. The words came from somewhere below conscious thought, somewhere the dragon lives, somewhere I’ve spent three centuries learning to suppress.
And I meant them.
The realization hits like ash to the lungs. Not strategy. Not tactical positioning. When that minor dragon suggested disposing of her, my fire didn’t respond with professional outrage or calculated political maneuvering. It responded with pure, primal fury—the kind of rage that levels cities, that I’ve spent my entire adult life learning to suppress.
I stop walking. Press my palm against the corridor wall, feeling volcanic heat seep through stone. My pulse hasn’t slowed. My body still braced for a fight that’s already over.
Dispose of her. The words echo in my memory. Casual. Dismissive. As if she’s nothing. As if the defiance in her eyes, the intelligence in her responses, the strength that kept her unbroken through cell after cell—as if all of it means nothing beyond temporary utility.
My hand clenches against the wall. Obsidian fractures beneath my fingers.
I have executed hundreds of people. Watched them turn to ash without feeling anything beyond professional satisfaction at a job completed. I have made examples of traitors, eliminated threats to Flight authority, maintained order through violence so absolute that no one questions its necessity.
I have never reacted like this.
She expected me to be another owner, another captor, another entry in a long list of people who saw her bloodline before they saw her.
And, instead, I’m standing in a corridor, hand fracturing obsidian, fire burning beneath my skin, trying to convince myself that my reaction in that council chamber was strategy.
It wasn’t strategy. The honest voice, the one I usually ignore, surfaces with brutal clarity.It was possession. It was claiming. It was the dragon seeing a threat to what it considers its own and responding with annihilating force.
I push off from the wall and keep walking.
I need to see her. Need to confirm she’s still there, still contained, still within my jurisdiction. The urge is irrational—of course, she’s still there, she’s in the Ash Cells under full dampening and guard rotation—but it pulls at me with relentless force.
The corridors blur as I descend. Checkpoints I don’t remember passing. Guards who step aside without being told. The temperature dropping as I go deeper, away from the volcanic heart of the city, into the cold stone where the Ash Cells wait.
Cell seven. And her—sitting on the stone bench, head turned toward the door as if she knew I was coming before I arrived.
I stop outside the viewing slot. My fire quiets. Not gone, but calmer. Responding to her the way it’s been responding since the moment I first saw her.
She doesn’t speak. Watches me through the iron bars with that dark gaze that sees too much.
“Something happened.” Her voice drifts through the slot, flat with certainty. “I see it in you.”
