Page 72 of Heartflame

“I felt her die,” he said. “Across an ocean, while I kept our one egg safe. I felt the bond between us snap like a twig underfoot. And I couldn’t do anything. I wasn’t there. I couldn’t do a thing to save my mate from being tortured to death by those monsters.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and I meant it. Even if my mate was chained to the floor, and even knowing what he was about to do to us. “But that doesn’t mean⁠—”

“Let me finish,” he snapped, rounding on me with a fury that made me stumble back a step. “You want to understand? Then you’ll listen. Because it happened again. My daughter, Aeron’s mother, and her husband. They trusted witches. Befriended them. Thought the industrial age and the Elder Council had made everyone civilized, made everyone equal. And those witches slit their throats in their sleep for their scales. Then they sold the parts to alchemists practicing illegally who wanted eternal youth.” His voice cracked on the last word, just barely, just enough that I caught it. “Aeron wasn’t hatched yet. He never even got the chance to meet them. But I do. I found their bodies. I raised their son alone because witches, your kind, decided dragon blood was worth more than the lives attached to it.”

Behind me, I heard Aeron make a small, wounded sound, and I understood in that instant that this was the first time he was hearing any of it laid out so plainly, so brutally.

“So don’t talk to me about fairness,” Thaddeus said, leaning down until his face was inches from mine. “Don’t talk to me about love, or mates, or whatever nonsense you and my grandson have convinced yourselves is real. I have watched my family die at the hands of witches twice now. Twice. And I will not watch it happen a third time when I hatch my daughter’s remaining eggs. I will not raise more dragons in a world where witches and monsters are allowed to mingle and betray one another.”

Aeron made a strange sound, but I needed to keep Thaddeus talking.

“So you’re going to kill him yourself,” I said, my voice shaking but somehow steady enough to get the words out. “You’re going to do exactly what you’re trying to prevent. You’re going to be the reason another dragon dies at a witch’s hand.”

Something flickered across his face, there and gone so fast I almost missed it.

“Better by design than by chance,” he said quietly. “Better a lesson the world learns on my terms than another surprise slaughter in the dead of night. At least this way, something good comes of it. At least this way, no one else’s grandson has to bury his parents in unmarked graves because you witches can’t stop lusting after power.” He leaned in close, his lips against my ear. “And the best part?” he whispered. “The witches take all the blame.”

Everything suddenly clicked into place. For years the Purity Front had been run by witches. Everyone knew that. It was the most talked about thing in witch society. They tried to keep everyone separate at Widdershins, they spoke openly and proudly about being involved before things went south. The whole world had painted them as the bad guys because, deep down, they believed what they were fighting for.

But all of them had been deceived, manipulated by the monsters they despised, and made into a pawn to be sacrificed before the entire world.

I stared up at Thaddeus, my mind reeling with the horror of what he’d just admitted, and something inside me shifted. The fear was still there, cold and heavy in my gut, but underneath it a different feeling was building.

He wanted witches to take the blame. He wanted the world to believe I was a monster capable of murdering my own mate in cold blood.

I wasn’t going to give him that.

“You’re wrong about one thing,” I said, my voice trembling but audible. “You said I don’t scare anyone.”

Thaddeus straightened, tilting his head with something like amusement. “Is that so?”

“I’m not scared of you,” I lied, my fingers curling tighter around the vial in my pocket. “I’m just sad for you. All that grief, all that pain, and you still couldn’t figure out that it wasn’t witches who did this to you. It was cruelty. It was greed. And now you’re the same thing you hated, just wearing scales instead of skin.”

Something dark passed over his features, and for a moment I thought I’d pushed too far, that he’d simply snap my neck right there and save himself the theater. But instead he laughed, a low, humorless sound.

“Clever boy,” he said. “Trying to bait me into losing my composure. It won’t work. I’ve had centuries to perfect my patience.”

“I don’t need you to lose your composure,” I said quietly. “I just needed you close enough.”

His brow furrowed for half a second, confusion flickering behind those golden eyes, and that was all the time I needed.

I yanked the vial from my pocket and hurled it directly at his feet.

The glass shattered against the floor, the opalescent liquid splashing over the marble, a cloud of shimmering smoke rising from it. For one terrible, silent moment, nothing happened. The potion just sat there on the floor, glimmering faintly in the chandelier light, and I felt my heart plummet somewhere down into my shoes.

It hadn’t worked. All that effort, all that risk, and it had done absolutely nothing.

Thaddeus looked down at the floor, then back at me, and began to laugh. It was a deep, rolling sound that echoed through the foyer, full of genuine delight at my apparent failure.

“Oh, Quill,” he chuckled, shaking his head as he looked up at me. “Is this truly the best you could manage? Some backwater concoction thrown together in my basement? Even with your pathetic background, I expected more than that.”

Behind him, Morgana’s masked laughter joined his, and several of the witches snickered too, the sound bouncing cruelly around the marble hall. I felt my face burn with humiliation, felt the last threads of my hope fraying to nothing.

“You really thought a witch’s little parlor trick could touch a dragon of my power?” Thaddeus said, shaking his head as he stepped toward me again, closing the distance with slow, deliberate strides. “How precious. How utterly⁠—”

He stopped mid-sentence as a sudden boom filled the air followed by one of the large doors being blown off its hinges. Splinters of wood and metal rained across the marble, and through the settling dust came a voice I recognized instantly, bright and mocking and utterly unbothered by the carnage he’d just caused.

“Well, isn’t this a party?” Wild called out, sauntering through the wreckage of the door like he owned the place, green magic crackling playfully around his fingers. “And nobody thought to invite me? Rude.”