Which were, at the moment, terrible company.
Scrape. Turn. Scrape.
The problem wasn’t that Fergal had asked provocative questions during their lesson. He’d been doing that for years, even before he’d gone off to college, and on every break he’d been home—testing boundaries with the same fearless curiosity he brought to everything else, pushing closer while Gregor pulled back.
Gregor could handle provocation. It was an offensive maneuver, and offensive maneuvers could be countered, redirected, neutralized. As a red dragon, he’d been a guard his entire life, predestined by the gift bestowed on him. First with the Murphys, and then, once the Fitzgerald princes no longer needed a full-time tutor, for the royal guard of the Fitzgerald clan. He knew how to handle attacks.
No, the problem had been that moment after, when Fergal had reached for the book on Gregor’s side of the table and their knuckles had brushed, and Gregor’s carefully constructed fortress had developed a crack so profound he was surprised the whole compound hadn’t heard it.
His fingers had twitched. His voice had dropped. And for one second, he’d looked at Fergal and allowed himself to see what was actually there—not the boy he’d seen grow up, not the prince he served, but the man. The man with the wild black hair, the close-cropped beard, and the brown eyes that held more intelligence, warmth, and stubborn determination than any Gregor had encountered in three and a half centuries of living.
He’d shut it down. Of course he had. Gregor had been shutting things down for as long as he could remember. It waswhat he did. It was who he was. But each time, it got harder. Each time, the door took a little more force to close, and the lock held a little less firmly, and the thing on the other side pushed back a little stronger.
Five years. That was how long he’d been fighting this particular battle, ever since the evening that had ruined everything.
It had been an ordinary Tuesday, unremarkable in every way except for the fact that it had rearranged the entire landscape of Gregor’s inner life. He’d been on his way to his workshop, walking past the library, when he heard voices. Fergal had been home during his winter break from college, and he’d been arguing with his father. Not unusual. Lorcan and Fergal had been clashing more frequently as Fergal grew into his own opinions, and those opinions were strong, well-argued, and increasingly diverged from his father’s. But this time, something in Fergal’s voice had made Gregor stop.
“You can’t keep ignoring what’s happening to them.” Fergal’s tone had been fierce but controlled. “The omegas in this compound are afraid to speak, afraid to eat, afraid to exist too loudly, and you sit in your study pretending everything is fine.”
“You know nothing about leading a clan.” Lorcan’s voice had been dismissive. Cold. The voice of a man who had stopped listening to others years ago, especially the son who never should’ve been the crown prince.
“I know that a leader who ignores suffering isn’t leading. He’s just occupying a chair.”
The silence that followed had been so charged that Gregor had held his breath, waiting for the explosion. Lorcan had a temper. Unlike Peter, his wasn’t violent, but it was cutting, the kind that could flay a person with words alone.
But Fergal hadn’t backed down. Through the door, Gregor heard him take a steady breath and continue, his voice quieternow but no less resolute. “I’ve been studying the Code, Father. Section Eight, subsection C. Omegas are to be treated with dignity and provided equal protection under clan law. That’s not a suggestion. It’s a mandate. And we’re violating it.”
He’d cited the Code. To his father. To the king.
Gregor had stood in that hallway, his security report forgotten in his hand, and felt the ground shift beneath his feet like an earthquake—the kind that rearranged mountains and redirected rivers and left nothing where it was before.
Oh, he’d thought, with the numb clarity of a man who had just been struck by lightning.Oh no.
Because the person on the other side of that door was not a boy. Was not a student. Was not a child who needed protection or guidance or careful shepherding through the complexities of dragon politics. The person on the other side of that door was a man of extraordinary courage and conviction, wielding the law like a weapon to defend people who couldn’t defend themselves, standing alone against the most powerful person in his world without flinching.
And Gregor, who had spent over three centuries building walls inside himself so thick and so high that nothing could breach them, had felt every single one of them crack.
He’d done what he always had with a threat he couldn’t fight. He had contained it. Reinforced the formality between them. Started using “Your Highness” like armor, wrapping it around every interaction until the title became a barrier as impenetrable as the compound’s outer walls. He’d told himself it was temporary. He’d told himself it would pass. He’d told himself that what he felt was admiration, respect, a tutor’s pride in a student who had surpassed all expectations.
He’d told himself a lot of things. None of them had been true.
Scrape. Turn.
The blade gleamed in the lamplight. Gregor tested it against his thumb, and a bead of blood welled up immediately. Too sharp. He was overworking it, and overworking a blade was as dangerous as neglecting one. Both led to failure at the worst possible moment.
He set the whetstone down and reached for the leather he’d been meaning to oil. A shoulder guard, cracked along one seam. Routine work. The kind that required enough attention to keep his hands busy, but sadly not enough to stop his mind from wandering into places it had no business going.
Places like the frozen lake.
He hadn’t thought about it in a while. At least, that was what he told himself. The truth was that the memory surfaced every time Fergal was near water, every time the temperature dropped below a certain point, every time he heard the pitch of fear in a child’s voice.
It had been early spring, and the ice on the lake behind the compound should’ve been thick enough to hold. Gregor had been on the east perimeter, going for his daily brisk walk to keep in shape, when the magical ward he’d placed on Fergal—a simple proximity alarm, one of many he’d maintained since he’d realized the seriousness of the threat against Fergal’s life—had screamed to life inside his head.
He’d run, faster than any human body should’ve been able to move, his magic boosting his muscles as he tore across the compound. He’d reached the lake in time to see the hole in the ice, the black water churning, and no Fergal.
He’d gone in without hesitating. The cold had been absolute—a fist closing around his chest, crushing the air from his lungs. He’d found Fergal by touch, a small body sinking in the darkness, and had hauled him up and out and onto solid ground with a strength fueled by the absolute terror that Fergal was dying.
He’d held Fergal against his chest, wrapping his own body around the boy’s shaking frame, calling his fire to the surface to push warmth into frozen limbs. Fergal had been blue, barely conscious, his small fingers clutching Gregor’s shirt with a grip that belied his size.
