Chapter 42
Raven
The silencethat follows is suffocating. It presses against my eardrums, fills my lungs, and makes it hard to breathe. I can hear my heartbeat, too fast, too loud. I can hear the torches consuming themselves, the slow tick of wax cooling on iron, the distant groan of ancient stones settling deeper into the earth.
“Then we have far bigger problems than we were already expecting.” Mom’s voice is quiet, barely above a whisper, but it carries the weight of decades of survival, of battles won through blood and cunning and sheer stubborn refusal to die, of losses mourned in private moments when no one was watching. She stares at the map like it holds answers she can’t quite read, like the painted mountains and forests are keeping secrets from her.
Her fingers trace the western mountains, nails leaving faint trails in the dust that has settled there. I watch her jaw tighten, watch something flicker behind her eyes—recognition, maybe. Or fear.
She knows something. Or suspects something. Something she hasn’t said yet, hasn’t given voice to, as if speaking it aloud would make it real.
“That’s what concerns me.” I plant my palms flat on the table and lean forward until the diorama fills my entire vision, until I can see nothing but painted mountains and potential graveyards, tiny trees that could hide armies, rivers that could run red with blood. “How many of the families you had issues with are at the school currently, Mom?”
I look between my parents, trying to piece together a puzzle that spans decades, trying to see the pattern hidden in the chaos of history and hatred. This may be a long-standing silent feud, roots buried so deep we’ve built our homes on top of them without ever knowing what grows beneath, what waits in the dark soil for its chance to bloom.
“I think I killed everyone off.” Mom says it casually, dismissively, like she’s discussing an old chore she completed and forgot about, like genocide is just another item crossed off a list. I arch a brow at her.
“Did you torch the nest or just the people here?” I tilt my head, keeping my voice carefully neutral despite the dread building in my chest. Hoping she connects the dots on her own. Hoping I’m wrong. Praying to gods I’m not sure I believe in that I’m wrong. “Did you hunt down every last egg, every hatchling, every survivor who might have crawled away to nurse their hatred in the dark? Every widow, every orphan, every cousin twice removed who might have been away when the fire came?”
The question hangs between us like a blade suspended by a thread, swaying gently, waiting to fall.
Mom’s face goes pale. I watch the color drain from her cheeks, watch her eyes widen with dawning horror, watch twenty years of assumed safety crumble to dust in a single, terrible moment of realization.
“Holy shit.” Balor’s voice cracks on the words, sharp as breaking ice. He’s staring at the maps, his finger tracing the western territories with a hand that trembles slightly, the mountain ranges, the lands we’ve dismissed and avoided and forgotten for years because they were someone else’s problem, because the threats there were too distant to matter. “Raven is right. You didn’t torch the nests.”
The realization ripples through the room like a stone dropped in still water, spreading outward in waves of dawning horror that touch each face in turn. I watch it hit them—Klauth’s jaw tightening, Thauglor’s eyes going cold and flat, Corvus reaching for my hand beneath the table, Abraxis’s pen stopping mid-word.
The fire drake nests sit in no man’s lands, far to the west, where the other horrid creatures exist—territories we’ve avoided, dismissed, forgotten because they were too dangerous to explore, too remote to matter, too far away to threaten us.
But vengeance has a long memory.
Vengeance has patience that spans generations.
Vengeance raises children on stories of slaughtered parents and stolen futures, feeds them hatred with their mother’s milk, teaches them to smile while they sharpen their knives and wait for the perfect moment to strike. Vengeance remembers every name, every face, every drop of blood spilled. Vengeance never sleeps.
Someone didn’t forget us. Someone has been waiting, watching, planning. Someone has been counting the days until they could repay old debts with interest.
“We need to set patrols close to the mountain and watch for who comes and goes from the other side.” Thauglor’s voice has gone cold, all traces of the contemplative elder replaced by the warlord who once razed entire kingdoms to smoldering ash, who painted the sky black with smoke and the ground red with blood. His eyes burn with ancient fire, and I see the death of nations reflected in their depths—cities falling, armies breaking, enemies learning too late that some sleeping dragons should never be woken. “We’ve been blind. Complacent. That ends now.”
“I’ll set up rotations from the five outposts we have so that no one post is overworked.” Abraxis pulls a notepad from his jacket, already recovered, already planning, already three moves ahead. The scratch of his pen against paper is loud in the tense quiet, precise strokes forming letters and numbers, and schedules. His handwriting is precise, military-neat, each letter a soldier standing at attention. Always the strategist. Always the general. Always preparing for the war everyone else hopes won’t come, making sure we’re ready when hope fails.
“How many hatchlings do both nests have?” Klauth’s question makes my heart clench so hard I lose my breath for a moment. The world narrows to a single, terrible point—a future where tiny bodies lie broken, where nurseries burn, where everything we’ve built turns to ash and memory. “We have to worry about defense at home too.”
Home. Where Nova sleeps with her tail curled around her nose. Where eighteen hatchlings are just learning to spread their wings, just discovering the joy of flight and fire. Where the future of our kind grows stronger every day, innocent and vulnerable and completely dependent on us to keep them safe.
Where our enemies would strike if they wanted to annihilate us. Where they would strike if they wanted to make us feel what they felt.
I look over at Corvus, and something in my expression must frighten him because he reaches for my hand beneath the table with sudden urgency. His fingers are warm and steady against mine, an anchor when I feel myself drifting into dark waters. He squeezes once, twice—I’m here, that pressure says. Whatever comes, I’m here.
“There are a lot of babies of many species at Blackhaven.” Pride wars with fear in his voice, creating something raw and vulnerable that he would never show to anyone outside this room. “Eighteen hatchlings, not including Nova. Four black unicorns, their horns just showing. Six blink hounds learning to jump through shadows. And we are proud to announce six for six on the warhorse births—more than we’ve seen in years, the mares healthy and the foals strong. Between Hemlocke and Raven, we’ve had a very successful birthing year.”
I think of Nova. Her scales mottled obsidian and burnt orange like a calico cat, gleaming in the firelight when I check on her at night, beautiful and strange and utterly unique. Her tiny wings already strong enough to carry her across a room, already eager to taste the sky, already stretching toward a future I’m terrified she might not live to see. Her laughter, bright and pure and completely trusting, was the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.
My daughter. My heart walking around outside my body.
My reason to burn the world to cinders if that’s what it takes to keep her safe.
“That’s more than Sovereign has ever had.” Mom’s voice holds something close to wonder, and beneath it, something close to terror. So much life, so much potential, so much hope gathered in one place. So much to lose.
