Another dragon rose from below, sapphire scales flashing until the sunlight found the violet hidden beneath. Shadows trailed its ascent, swallowed whole as it crossed the rim of the cliff. I tracked them both, the sapphire and its counter, watching the way they cut through the gloom, streaks of fire and color slashing a canvas of storm. They teased the sky like it belonged to them.
A twinge wound through my wrist when a gust came off the sea, sharp with burned magic, and beneath it, something heavier, older. A memory refusing to fade.
It was the same scent that had clung to my lungs the day Ronan burned half of Csolenia to the ground. It drifted over me now like a phantom.
Had it followed me here, whispering that nothing stays buried? Or was it rising from across the cove, where scorched land masqueraded as black sand?
“Do you know what happened here?” I turned to her. “When King Rhydan died?”
Her lashes lowered, her voice a thread nearly stolen by the wind. “Fed by their hand. Bred by their fire. They waited, not to strike, but to be believed.”
I exhaled sharply. Gods damn these Veyari and their riddles. “What are you saying? That Sahfyre was betrayed by its own blood?”
When she spoke again, it wasn’t just her voice. It was a layered chorus through her small frame. “The shadows walked beside the jewel, and no one thought to check its twin.”
Another chill needled down my spine. The words meant nothing, and yet, the way she said them, it felt as if they meant everything. Maybe in Ryuu, they did.
Jewel. Twin. The only jewels I knew of were—
“The divinity stones?” My eyes narrowed. “Are you talking about the stones forged by the gods?”
Something shimmered, a vortex swirling in her eyes as my hand slipped from the railing. It had iced over completely.
“Not jewels of stone,” she said. “Anomalous iridescence.”
Of course. A law written into their blood—answer all life-or-death questions in coded puzzles.
I huffed warm breath into my palms, turning the words over, chewing them like glass.Jewel. Twin. Iridescence.
My mind went stupid places first. Eyes, maybe, sharp as gems. Or even teeth, glinting in a predator’s grin. Eggs? Gods, no. Gold, perhaps, a palace dripping in it, or some beast hoarding it in the dark.
None of it fit. None of it breathed like truth.
Walkbeside,Willa had said. Beside. Not stone. Not gold. Not egg. Something that moved, somethingalive.
My heart stuttered.Scales.
A jewel not carved from stone but grown. Shed.
What dragon would they even call a jewel? Ronan? Absolutely not. He was far too brooding, too smoke and shadow. My mind rifled through the skies I’d seen these past days, searching the rare flashes, amethyst, molten gold, a pearl hide maybe. Nothing settled. Nothing clicked.
Until the wordanomalousgnawed its way back through me.
Rare. Unnatural. Like a fucking dragon the color of dusky rose. Aelora.
But if she was here, and important enough that Ronan had forbidden me to touch her—
Wonderful. There were two of her.
I moved from the rail just as a pine-shaded dragon burst from the depths, its armored belly pulsing with an inner glow.
“Aelora has a twin?” I had to yell over its rise.
Willa blinked. “Had a brother. One she was bound to with a devotion deeper than fire.”
The world tilted beneath me. My hand shot for the rail, steadying again as my thoughts reeled. Ronan had said Aelora was bred, crafted to stand against whatever slept beneath our core. But he never mentioned two. Never said she had lost half of herself, a twin torn away, leaving her split.
The look in Aero’s eyes flashed back, that guarded grief I hadn’t wanted to name.
