I unfold it with trembling fingers.
Fire,
Urgent matters called me back to Noctyras. I couldn’t bring myself to wake you. Brimstone, Ashwing, and the foal are with me.Aetherion is saddled and waiting for you outside the cave. See you soon.
—Keiren
I read it again and again. He didn’t just disappear, after all. He made sure I’d know he hasn’t abandoned me. He left me amessage. A steed. A way home. I look down at the flowers,reallylook, and a memory stirs deep within my mind.
“Everything in a bouquet tells a story,”my mother’s voice echoes, soft and sunlit.
I’m ten again, barefoot in the garden, fingers stained with pollen as I listen to her hum a tune only she seems to know.
She places a lily in my palm. “Hope,”she says,“delicate. Easily lost. But it returns.”
Next, she tucks a sunflower behind my ear. “Sunflowers represent loyalty. They’re a symbol of joy. Of light.”
I ask about the white one with star-shaped petals, and her eyes soften.
“That one’s edelweiss. It means courage—and the kind of love you guard with your life. And this, freesia, is fortrust, fragile but brave.”
My throat tightens again, and I press the bouquet to my chest, breathing them in, letting the warmth of it all bloom beneath my ribs.
Then I rise. I stomp out what remains of the fire and gather our things, rolling them back into a large saddlebag.
When I step outside, the mountain air bites at my skin, brisk and bright. But the sight waiting for me in the trees chases the chill away.
Aetherion, tall and proud, dappled light spilling across his flank. His head lifts when he senses me, his eyes dark and knowing. He steps toward me without my command, as if summoned by the ache in my chest. I swing into the saddle and gather the bouquet against my side. The moment we leave the mouth of the cave, he breaks into a steady canter, hooves thudding over stone and root.
As the hours pass, the forest begins to change, softening into amber light, branches stretching like arms to catch the sinking sun. A hush settles over the trees until every hoofbeat feels like a drum counting down toward something I can’t quite name.
Birdsong fades. The air turns still.
I feel it before I see it. A ripple overhead tugs at my chest, dragging my eyes skyward.
There, high above the trees, framed against the bleeding dusk, a shadow cuts across the heavens, all broad wings and silent grace.
The dragon.
He circles once, slow and wide, his body silhouetted against the light, trimmed in gold by the dying sun. No roar. No flame. Just silent power, peering down from above.
Then he vanishes behind the clouds.
But I still feel him. That presence. That tether. Like being watched by something ancient and unknowable, something that sees straight through skin and bone into the soul beneath.
I don’t know if he came to protect me or to see for himself whether I made it back alive, but something inside me aches with a strange yearning. And with a question I don’t know how to ask, not yet.
The castle gates rise into view just as the sun begins to sink toward the western ridge. I don’t even have time to dismount before I hear someone shout, “There she is!”
Mariel bursts through the gate, skirts flying.
“You’re alive,” Cassy cries, right on her heels.
Vivian trails behind them at a calmer pace—but her eyes shine, and there’s a rare softness in her expression.
I swing down from Aetherion’s back and immediately find myself engulfed in arms.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Cassy mumbles into my shoulder.
