He stands at the center of a throne room that stretches upward into infinity, walls pulsing with captured constellations, floor reflecting battles fought in dimensions I can’t even perceive. And there, chained to an icy throne with iron that burns her flesh, is Roxy.
Our eyes meet across the impossible distance.
I see her fear, her rage, and her absolute refusal to break even now. I see the iron chains around her wrists, the same kind I used on her when she first stumbled into my world, and something in my chest cracks open with fury so profound it transcends fire and ice and becomes something entirely new.
“Dragon,” the prince says, his voice carrying musical poison. “How predictable! But you are too late. I’ve already taken her as my consort.”
I don’t respond with words.
Human flesh tears away as scales erupt across every inch of skin, wings bursting from my shoulders with enough force to crack the throne room floor, tail lashing out to reduce a marble pillar to dust. Bone stretches, reforms, and locks into place with brutal precision as the dragon rises, not wild and feral but deliberate and controlled.
But this isn’t the creature that burned villages three centuries ago.
This isn’t even the cursed monster who could only wield ice while his fire died behind glass.
Fire and frost surge together beneath my scales, red and orange with glacial blue, wings unfurling in a storm of heat and killing cold that should be tearing me apart from the inside out.
But they don’t.
The elements fold inward instead of exploding, almost like they’re being sucked in like a vacuum.
Flame drains to a soundless glow. Frost tightens until the air bends around me, light thinning at the edges of my wings like something is swallowing it whole. Not shadow, not darkness, just a hollow pressure that warps everything it touches, heat and cold compressing into a dense, invisible gravity that makes the throne room feel smaller, heavier,wrong.
The fae sigils along the walls flicker, their glow stuttering as if the realm can’t decide how to react. Colors dull. Sound drops away. Even the Prince’s Court hesitates, eyes tracking the faint distortion curling around my body like cracks in reality no one else can see.
I feel it inside my chest, not rage, not hunger, but a dense, coiled force demanding release.
My dragon pushes for annihilation.
But I hold it back.
The pressure deepens instead of breaking loose, the unseen weight settling over the room until every breath feels like it has to fight its way through something thick and ancient.
The room goes still. One of the closest fae stumbles, sliding toward me with the suction, but he grips onto a column of ice, holding tight before he’s sucked into whatever the hell I am creating.
Scar’s voice cuts low behind me. “Prez… what the fuck is that?”
Even Wreck pauses, hollow eyes narrowing, hunger replaced by something like wary fascination. Ruckus takes an involuntarystep back, gold at his throat dimming as probability stutters around me.
And then the prince laughs.
Not mocking.
Not pleased.
But shocked.
“Impossible,” he murmurs, his voice stripped of its usual arrogance. His gaze tracks the distortion curling around my wings, the way heat and frost collapse into something that makes the air buckle. “You shouldn’t be able to do that. Not without tearing yourself apart.”
The fae around him hesitate, their formation faltering for the first time since we entered this realm.
He widens his eyes with something that looks dangerously close to fear. “That isnotfire,” he says quietly. “And it is definitelynotice.” His smile twitches, reverence and horror warring in equal measure. “That is the thing of legends that ends courts.” For a heartbeat, real terror flashes across his face. “If you lose control…” he murmurs, almost to himself, “… this realm willnotsurvive you.”
The dragon inside me surges, urging me to unleash it, to let the pressure tear outward and erase everything standing between my girl and me.
But I don’t.
I force it tighter, holding the collapse in place, refusing to let rage decide what happens next.
