Even if being anything else is becoming impossible.
“Don’t.” My voice barely functions. “Don’t follow me.”
I turn. Walk to the door. Every step feels like tearing off pieces of my own flesh.
“Izan!”
I don’t stop.
The door slams behind me, and I stand in the corridor with my forehead pressed against the cool stone wall, trying to remember how to breathe, trying to cage the dragon that’s screaming at me to go back and take what’s mine.
The wall cracks beneath my palm. I watch fissures spread through volcanic stone, absorb the damage I’m doing to my ownstronghold, and understand with perfect clarity that if I go back into that room, I will destroy everything I’m trying to protect.
Including her.
So I stay in the corridor. Stay with my forehead against stone and my hands leaving scars in walls that have stood for ages. Stay until the red fades from my vision and the scales recede beneath my skin, and I can think again with my mind instead of instinct.
The Blood Regent is planning to bind a city.
Thousands of lives hang in the balance.
A war is accelerating toward a conclusion that could reshape Pyraeth forever.
And I’m standing outside a witch’s door, trembling with the effort of not going back in and claiming her.
What have you done to me?
The question has no answer. No solution. No strategy that can make this need manageable.
Alerie Narayan has broken through walls I spent a lifetime building, and I don’t know how to rebuild them.
I’m not sure I want to.
But I know—with the certainty that keeps me standing in this corridor instead of surrendering to instinct—that when she becomes mine, it has to be her choice.
I won’t take her.
I’ll wait until she gives herself.
And if that wait destroys me, so be it.
Some monsters are worth becoming.
I findthe observation balcony an hour later. The city spreads below me—Pyraeth in all its volcanic glory, the lower districtswreathed in industrial smoke, the upper reaches where dragons rule from heights no human could reach without invitation. I stare at it without seeing. My hands have stopped shaking. The red has fully receded from my vision. The dragon has retreated to the depths where it usually waits, patient and terrible and eternally hungry.
I want her. I crave her with an intensity that’s rewriting everything I thought I knew about myself—about discipline, about the difference between a predator who takes and a predator whowaits. And I can’t have her. Not yet. Not until she chooses. So I’ll burn with need and cage the beast and maintain what discipline I can manage. I’ll fight the Blood Regent and protect the city and pretend that I’m still the enforcer everyone needs me to be. And every moment, every breath, I’ll know that she’s three corridors away. Healing from wounds she hid. Probably hating me for walking out. Probably wondering what kind of creature she’s agreed to ally herself with.
The night air carries ash from the lower districts. I breathe it in, let it coat my lungs, let the taste of the city I’ve sworn to protect ground me in the present moment. Somewhere below, the Blood Regent is preparing a ritual that could enslave everyone I’m supposed to defend. Somewhere in my stronghold, a tactical council is assembling to plan our response. Somewhere, Alerie is touching her swollen lips and remembering the way I kissed her.
War is coming. Real war, not the skirmishes we’ve been fighting.
TWENTY-THREE
ALERIE
He’s avoiding me.
One day since he walked out of my chambers. One day since his mouth was on mine and his hands were in my hair, and everything I thought I understood about survival got rewritten in the space between heartbeats. One day of war councils and strategic briefings and being in the same room while he looks through me like I’m made of glass.
