“Yes,” Drako rumbles. “They are.”
We land on a ridge near the mountain’s crown. At the summit, the world feels still—sacred, even. The air is thin and sharp, the silence teeming with life.
“This place,” Drako says reverently, “is hallowed ground. Every star above us is said to be a soul who lived brightly enough to earn a place among the heavens.”
“And the ones who didn’t?” I ask softly.
“They fade,” he murmurs. “Ash in the wind. Forgotten.” His voice deepens, shuddering through my chest. “My soul, if I still have one, is too stained to rise.”
“You’re not alone, then. I’m pretty sure mine’s stained, too,” I whisper.
“One stains their soul by killing another,” he says, craning his head with interest. “Who have you killed, Fire?”
“Oh. Well, no one.”Not yet, at least. “But I almost did.”
“Yes,” he rumbles. “I heard you fought ferociously… like a dragon.” There’s a certain pride in his tone, a flicker of affection beneath the gravel.
“If it weren’t for Keiren’s interference—”
“Oh, so it’sKeirennow, is it? How familiar.”
My cheeks flush.
The dragon snorts. “Your heart is racing, little flame. Your body temperature is rising. And you smell like the female horses when they—”
“Please don’t finish that sentence,” I groan, mortified.
“Ugh. You humans,” he mutters, but there’s no venom in it.
I exhale sharply, grateful for the change in his tone. But something still churns in me. Guilt. Confusion. And, under it all, longing.
“Do you regret it?” I ask quietly, needing to hear it from him.
“Regret doesn’t begin to cover it,” he says. “I have scorched this world, little flame. And still the fire burns, the desire to do it again.”
“So, you regret the curse?” I say, “I figured you wanted us to fail, for it to be unbreakable.”
“If I wanted you to fail, I wouldn’t have brought you here.”
Drako turns toward a ledge overlooking the mountains, where dawn is just beginning to bleed over the horizon.
Light strikes the stone, and a mosaic of crystals embedded in the cliff shimmer to life, catching the first rays of morning and throwing them back tenfold. It’s like standing in the heart of the stars themselves—heaven above, heaven below.
In the mirrored light, I can make out a faint shape etched into the rock: a girl kneeling beneath a pair of outstretched wings.
“One is missing,” Drako says, pointing with a massive talon.
There, near the center, is a hollow socket. Perfectly cut for one of the crystals. Empty.
“It was stolen,” he says. “Lost in the keep, long ago. I want to return it. But I cannot enter that place. Not as I am.”
“You want me to find it.”
“I want you torestoreit,” he corrects me. “To finish something I began long before you were born.”
I look at the hollow star, at the shimmer that dances between us, pondering the quiet ache in his voice. “I’ll help you… if you’ll help me translate this.”
I pull the leather tome from my bag and open it to the page with the sketch of the Dragon King. For a moment, he goes still. Too still. His pupils narrow to slits.
