“Esme—” he starts, reaching for me.
“Don't.” I hold up a shaking hand. “Just... don't.”
He studies me, his amber eyes searching my face for something I refuse to give him. After a long moment, he steps back, giving me space. The absence of his heat is like stepping into winter.
“My lord.” Nyssa’s voice cuts through the charged silence and startles us both—I’d forgotten she was even here. When I turn, she’s pale, her silver hair slightly dishevelled, eyes wide with something between shock and concern. She takes a hesitant step forward, moving as if approaching a wounded animal. “Perhaps… perhaps we should move to something less strenuous for Lady Esme’s introduction to the Bellatorium. I’d suggest the Repository, my lord. If she is to understand her place in Draethys, perhaps she should first understand our history… The artifacts there tell the story better than any lecture could.”
Dayn’s gaze lingers on me, heavy and searching, as if measuring the aftermath of what’s passed between us. Whether I’m able to stand and move.
I give a quick nod. Despite my exhaustion, the Repository is a place that catches my attention. A vault of ancient dragon artifacts. If there's anywhere in this cursed city that might hold answers, it could be there.
There’s a long pause, before Dayn nods slowly in return, still watching me. “Then, let’s go.”
9
DAYN
The walk to the Repository is a silent torment. Every step away from the arena feels like stretching a cord that wants to snap me back to her side, to the pillar where our power became one. The echo of it still thrums under my skin—a perfect, terrifying harmony of shadow and flame. It was more than I anticipated. More than just a fusion of blood magic. It felt like two halves of a fractured whole locking into place.
I felt her need like a physical blow. The desperate, clawing hunger for my blood, for me. It called to the beast in my own veins, the ancient possessiveness of my lineage that roared to life at her touch. It wanted to answer her craving, to pull her closer and taste the salt on her own skin. Maintaining composure and denying her was like denying myself air.
Nyssa’s suggestion was a lifeline. A necessary retreat. I need to reassert control, to keep it framed as a lesson, a simple exercise in power. But the truth is a venomous thing. She is not my student. She is my counterpart. And that makes her the most dangerous being in all of Draethys.
I watch Esme walk past me, her shoulders still set in a line of rigid defiance, but I see the slight tremor in her hands as sheclenches them into fists at her sides. She moves with Nyssa's steadying hand on her elbow, and her face is pale, jaw set in that stubborn line I've come to recognize as her default defense. She won't meet my eyes. Smart woman.
The Repository lies in the eastern wing, deep enough that the temperature drops with each descending step. I notice Esme shiver and resist the urge to offer her warmth. She'd likely stab me for the gesture.
“The Repository houses our most sacred artifacts,” I say, forcing my voice into the detached tone of an instructor. I can’t control everything I feel, but I can control what I show. “Items recovered from the surface before our descent. Relics from the Blood Wars. Documentation of treaties both honored and broken.”
“Including treaties with my people?” Esme asks quietly.
I pause at the heavy ironwood doors, my hand on the latch. “Yes. Including those.”
Recognizing my touch, the doors swing open with a groan that echoes through the cavernous space beyond. Torches flicker to life automatically, their flames casting dancing shadows across rows upon rows of display cases. Glass and crystal gleam in the firelight, each containing some fragment of our history.
Esme steps past me, and I catch the subtle intake of her breath. Despite everything—her exhaustion, her anger, her fear—curiosity still burns bright in her eyes. That insatiable need to know, to understand. It's one of the things that makes her so formidable. And so vulnerable.
“This section contains artifacts from before the wars,” I say, gesturing to the nearest cases. “When dragons, darkbloods, and clearbloods coexisted. When there was a certain... balance.”
She moves closer to examine a ceremonial dagger, its blade etched with runes in three different languages. “Hard to imagine,” she murmurs. “My grandmother's stories always made it sound like?—”
“We were always monsters,” I finish for her, my voice low. “History is a weapon, Esme. It's forged by the victors to justify theirbloodshed. Your grandmother told you the stories that kept her people sharp, angry, and afraid. Our ancestors did the same.”
I lead her past the relics of that fragile peace and into the heart of the collection, where the artifacts of war are kept. The air here is colder, heavier with memory. I feel Nyssa trailing behind us, a silent, uncertain shadow.
“The Blood Wars,” I say, stopping before a massive shard of obsidian, easily seven feet tall. It's a fragment of a warding stone, shattered and scarred. Runes of power still pulse faintly within it, a dying heartbeat. “This was from the Gates of Ashkar, a darkblood fortress. It was said to be impenetrable.”
Her eyes trace the jagged edges, the deep gouges scored into its surface. “What broke it?”
“A single dragon,” I reply. “My great-grandsire. He flew into it at full speed, sacrificing himself to create the breach that allowed our forces to pour through. We lost thousands that day. So did you.” I let the silence hang, letting the weight of that mutual destruction settle on her. “We celebrate him as a hero. Your people likely remember him as the butcher of Ashkar.”
She says nothing, her gaze fixed on the stone. I see the conflict in her face, the way her coven-trained certainty wars with the tangible evidence before her. This is another reason I agreed to bring her here. For a lesson in perspective. If she is to be of any use, she needs to see beyond the propaganda she was fed from birth.
My gaze drifts to a smaller display case nearby. Inside rests a single, petrified scale, as large as a shield and the color of midnight. A familiar, aching pang goes through me.
“And this,” I say, my voice softer than I intend, “is all that remains of my mother's flight armor.”
Esme's head turns sharply, her dark eyes finding mine. The animosity in her expression is momentarily replaced by something else. Curiosity. Perhaps even a flicker of empathy.
