“I’ve always heard mixed things about Ryuu,” I muttered. “Some say its terror reminded them of Hel. Others say the land the dragons built was a wonder only a few ever witnessed.” Fates, my mouth was so dry.
Before I could even turn, Ronan was already there, a water jug extended. I took it, letting the cool rush slide down my throat like redemption. When I looked up, his eyes hadn’t left mine.
“Easy.” He plucked the jug from my hands before I could drain it dry. “Too much too soon and it comes right back up.”
I groaned, slumping against myself. Wonderful. It looks like I’d be walking for a month before I braved sifting again.
“It gets easier.” He rose, hand extended to me. My body protested as I let him pull me up. “And I’ve heard the same of Nyctom, but it wasn’t all that bad before the Bale hit it.” His attention prowled over me. “You okay?”
A puff of air burst from my lips, collapsing into a yawn I couldn’t bite back. “I’m fine. Just drained, I guess.”
“Then let’s get you into the palace,” he said, voice softening on the word. “I’ll have a whole wing prepared. Rest. No one will disturb you.”
“That’s not—” The words died as I turned and faced the heart of Ryuu.
It was sculpted from salt-scoured obsidian, its walls rising like weathered armor from the cliffs above the Sapphire Sea.
A roar split the sky before I could take it all in, a sound so staggering it shivered through my bones. It wasn’t that Ryuu lacked color as I had thought.
Here, colormoved.
Scarlet and indigo. Plum and emerald. It wasn’t in the walls or the streets. It lived in the sky, in the scales and wings that eclipsed the sun. In the breath and thunder of dragons circling overhead.
And unexpectedly, I understood why Ronan had kept it hidden. Because this brilliance, this wild, priceless beauty, it couldn’t be conquered, couldn’t be sold.
I feared if it was ever lost, if the dragons bled away, the kingdom, Ronan himself, would go grey forever.
I caved faster than I’d like to admit when Ronan insisted I needed an entire wing of his palace. After all, I had been tortured for a week, then shoved straight into a life-or-death march.
Surely, I’d earned one night in a real bed. Maybe the last one I’d ever sleep in.
We entered through a vast archway, a dragon hewn from the very rock coiling around its crown. Its stone talons curved down, warding away any who challenged the threshold.
The last of the sunlight died behind us as shadows swept in and we stopped before a cathedral door forged entirely of steel. Carvings dipped beneath my fingers, etched deep across its surface. Dragons, Fae, battlefields, all immortalized in metal. I flinched when they stirred under my touch, their scales shifting, their wings flexing.
Its magic moved freer when Ronan’s hand pressed beside mine and then instantly, the carvings froze, locking back into place with a grinding click. Smoke lifted from his shoulders as he set his other palm against the cold surface and pushed.
The door groaned open, and Sahfyre let me in.
Inside, it was like falling into his eyes. Emerald walls brushed with veins of gold, like sunlight caught in moss.
The marble floor gleamed just the same, rivulets threading upward into the sweeping staircases that curved to meet in a single balcony. Beyond it, a great arched window framed the endless blue of the Sapphire Sea.
Dragon-flame torches burned low, warming the cool expanse where portraits lined the walls, their frames alive with history, with pride. Memory clung in an arcane haze here.
Ronan lingered in the doorway, arms crossed as I stepped fully inside the palace he had fled.
“It’s...” The proper word caught on my tongue.
This certainty wasn’t Luamis, with its golden cheer and ivory warmth. This was—
“Home,” he rasped.
“Home.” I echoed.
When I turned, he wasn’t looking at the staircases. Or the veined walls. Or the portraits of long-dead phantoms.
He was looking only at me.
