PROLOGUE
FINN
Isle of Skara
Off the Coast of Scotland
Centuries Ago
The scent of death reaches me before I crest the cliff path. Salt and copper and the particular stillness that comes when a soul departs. I know what I will find before I see her lying on the rocks where we used to watch the storms roll in.
Saoirse.
My mate. My heart. The woman who taught an ancient dragon what it means to be mortal, fragile, and brave all at once.
But beneath the death-smell, something else lingers. Ash and fire and the distinctive burn of phoenix transformation. Fresh. Recent. Minutes, not hours.
Mikhail has been here.
I drop to my knees beside her, my hands hovering over her body, unable to touch what I have already lost. No visible wounds mark her skin. No blood stains the stone. She looks asthough she has simply laid down to rest, her dark hair spread across the rocks like a silken veil.
But her chest does not rise. Her heart does not beat. And the warmth that has always drawn me to her, that mortal fire that burns so bright and brief, has guttered out.
"I tried to save her." Mikhail's voice comes from behind me, rough with what might be grief. "I arrived too late. The wolves got to her first. They wanted leverage over you, and when she wouldn't tell them where to find you, they killed her."
I keep my gaze on Saoirse's face, refusing to turn, refusing to acknowledge my oldest friend who stands behind me. The phoenix I have trusted with my secrets, my territory, my life. Instead, I focus on Saoirse's features, already committed to eternal memory. The delicate arch of her brows. The curve of her lips. The freckles scattered across her nose like stars.
"They ran when they sensed me coming," Mikhail continues. "If I had arrived sooner, I could have stopped them. I'm sorry, Finn. I know what she meant to you."
I taste the lie beneath the phoenix ash, beneath the careful construction of his story.
I rise slowly, still not looking at him, and finally lay my hand against Saoirse's cheek. She's cold. The woman who burned with life and laughter and fierce, stubborn joy is gone. In her place remains only an empty shell, a mockery of everything she had once been.
"You chose power over her life." The words emerge flat and dead, carrying no inflection. The rage hasn't hit yet. Only the cold knowledge that my closest friend killed my mate. "They offered you something. What was it, Mikhail? What was worth her death?"
His silence stretches between us like a chasm opening in the earth.
I turn then. Guilt writes itself across his face, followed by calculation, followed by the terrible certainty that he has made the right choice even as it destroys the only friendship that has lasted through millennia.
"She was mortal," he says finally. There it is. Justification wrapped in rationalization. "She would have died eventually. Fifty years, maybe sixty if she was lucky. You would have lost her anyway, and then what? You would have grieved and raged and descended into the same madness that took your grandfather. She was a weakness waiting to be exploited. I simply removed that weakness before it could destroy you."
"You killed her."
"I freed you." His eyes burn with the phoenix fire, with the absolute conviction of someone who believes their own lies. "Those wolves wanted you broken, controlled, leashed by your love for a mortal woman. I gave them nothing. I gave you nothing to grieve that you wouldn't have grieved in a few decades regardless."
For the first time in millennia, I break. Something deeper fractures, something I did not know could still shatter after so many ages. My closest friend has murdered the woman I love and stands before me claiming it is a gift.
The dragon inside me roars.
I hold Saoirse's body against my chest, my fingers gentle against her skin, and feel the rage build like storm surge, like magma rising through ocean trenches, like the primal fury of creation demanding destruction.
"I trusted you," I say quietly. "For lifetimes, I trusted you."
Mikhail opens his mouth to respond. I do not wait to hear what fresh poison he will speak.
The transformation takes me in an instant. Silvery mist and thunder, the crack of displaced air as my body shifts from human to dragon in the space between heartbeats. I lay Saoirse'sbody gently on the cliff where she loves to watch the sea, and then I launch skyward on crimson wings.
I do not hunt the wolves who have been Mikhail's tools. Pawns do not matter. Only the one who moves them.
