Without warning, invisible manacles snapped cold around his wrists, his throat, his wings. The firelight twisted, scorching the scales beneath his skin.
He could smell iron. Hear the crack of chains. The same chains that had bound him once before.
“Ronan.” Fear threaded Aero’s voice. “There isn’t much time—”
The dusk at Ronan’s feet spilled upward in tendrils, bleeding from his palms, his chest, his mouth. His eyes flared molten, the fire before them shuddering beneath his will.
“Ronan—” Aero flinched, arm raised. “What are you doing?”
Ronan didn’t hear him, didn’t flinch, but he burned.
Flames swelled, feeding off everything he poured into them. They thickened, warped, until silhouettes began to rise inside the blaze.
Visions and memories.
The battlefield unfolded in the fire’s place, ash turning to wings, haze to bodies writhing and falling. The air reeked of sweat and scorched flesh, iron searing the back of his tongue.
The room was gone. The palace was gone. There was only chaos.
Only death.
Embers stung his eyes as wings thundered overhead across a battlefield, the shriek of steel splitting bone. Through it all was a voice, familiar and urgent, calling his name.
Ronan.
Through the clash of metal. Through the dark churn of fire—
Ronan.
Louder. Fiercer. Until it was no longer a call, but a scream tearing through his skull—
RONAN.
Then it vanished.The voice, the battlefield. His body stood eerily still, but pain raced up his arm. He looked down, and choked, breath snagging in his chest.
Not a blade. Not burned skin. A dark mark winding from his fingers to his neck. A dragon, reborn from the smoke itself.
His eyes snapped black, wraith itself erupting from his spine, shattering the air behind him. That stain would only ever mean one thing, an inevitable, dangerous reality—
His father was dead. And Ronan had been marked.
Not heir, not king.Prisoner.
A voice grumbled his name again, this one real, securing him as he was yanked back. His eyes snapped open, the battlefield collapsing into the chasm where it belonged as flame rekindled instead.
His chest ached, lungs seizing as though he’d been holding his breath for hours. Heat burned raw behind his eyes, and he pressed his palm hard against his forehead, squeezing them shut in hopes of lessening the sting.
“Ronan—” Aero coughed, waving a hand before his face, dispersing the dust and fumes.
Ronan dragged his hands down, forcing his sight up, past the fire, to the books lining the walls. All was still. No scorch marks, no damage. Just dust.
He didn’t dare turn. Not yet. Not when the memory felt so close he could still taste it. Not when it had beenyearssince he’d slipped that far, since his magic had become unhinged enough to let him.
Boots crunched over grit and glass as Aero edged closer. “You still haven’t fully transformed on Ryuu soil,” he voiced.
Ronan finally turned to face him, and winced. It wasn’t ruin, not truly. A few charred pages. Splinters of glass scattered across stone. The windows were intact, the sea roaring behind them. The portraits all hung straight, though some he swore were glaring at him from beyond death.
But the chair…
