Calpurnia and Cercies were already saddled and ready to depart, but Delilah was still on the ground, looking at Aurelius.
Did she feel sorry for him?
“Delilah, get on the dragon!” I commanded.
“Better obey your master,” Aurelius said to Delilah. “Are you okay?” she asked him.
“Just go. I’ll heal,” he replied sharply.
She turned her back, and Drax helped her mount.
We took flight, and I didn’t look back at my injured brother, but my General did, and I hated the sting that pierced through me when I noticed. For years, it had been the three of us, not just brothers, not just allies, but pillars, three forces braced against the weight of a volatile kingdom. Three temperaments balancing flame, strategy, and instinct, three males who had survived my father’s reign and rebuilt something steadier from his ashes. Aurelius had been the sky, Cercies the shield, and I had been the fire at the center. Together, we had held this kingdom upright, unbreakable, until today.
I hadn’t just crushed his wrist. I had cracked the foundation beneath us.
The air rushed past my face as Draxxinar climbed higher, but the pressure in my chest only deepened. The three-pillar system would never stand the same way again, and I knew it. I had chosen. Not the kingdom. Not tradition. Her.
For Delilah’s honor, I would burn the world if I had to.
But as the wind howled around us and my General kept glancing back toward the plateau, I felt the quiet grief of a ruler who understood the cost of that choice.
Some fractures do not heal.
Some pillars, once cracked, never bear weight the same way again.
And I had done it with my own hand, for her.
Kingdoms are not the only things that burn when you decide to cleanse them.
CHAPTER 33
Lanterns
TITUS
The sunsets in my kingdom were the best I’d ever seen—soft pinks colliding with burning oranges, molten gold bleeding across the horizon like the sky itself was being forged.
And on dragon-back?
It wasn’t something you watched. It was something youfelt.
Why watch a sunset when you could touch one—when it could brush your cheeks and leave you breathless?
We let the females show us what they’d learned today. Delilah worked on controlling Draxxinar with mental commands, while Calpurnia handled manual steering. It made the grumpy old dragon huff in annoyance as his movements turned erratic.
Cercies and I took over the commands, and I caught the wry look he sent my way. Then I heard him in my mind.
—Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
SkyGuard performance from the year we graduated?
—Do you still remember it?
I raised a brow and gave him a haughty grin before giving Drax the unspoken command through our bond.
In unison, our dragons began to climb at nearly a ninety-degree angle. Delilah and Calpurnia spread their arms like eagles, wind whipping their hair as they whooped into the sky. The joy in Delilah’s cry warmed me and shook loose the remaining bitterness from earlier like her laughter could cleanse the blood and violence from my hands. I wrapped an arm around her and kept one hand on the pommel of my saddle as I breathed in her scent. It steadied me. My heart felt like it synchronized to the beat of hers. And for a moment, my heart didn’t feel like it belonged to a High Lord or a ruler or a weapon.
It felt like it belonged toher.
