“Mom, we have two very powerful nests side by side, run by the same bloodlines.” I allow myself a small smile, though it feels brittle on my face, ready to crack at the slightest pressure. “I also have the fertile fields, soil so rich that things grow almost faster than we can harvest them. And the black unicorns are healers—they help with every birth, ease every pain, save lives that would otherwise slip away. That’s why our numbers are growing.”
The pride swelling in my chest feels dangerous. Fragile. A soap bubble reflecting rainbows just before it pops. We have so much to protect now. So much can be taken from us in a single night of fire and screaming.
I turn back to the map, my smile dying as my eyes trace the western territories. The mountain range that separates us from the fire drake lands rises in miniature, innocent peaks painted white with snow, looking almost peaceful in the flickering torchlight. But I see it differently now. I see it as a wall that isn’t high enough. A barrier that hasn’t held. A line in the sand that our enemies have been crossing while we looked the other way.
“Dad.” My voice comes out harder than I intend, sharp enough to cut. “We may have to torch the western side of the continent. Wipe the map clean.”
I don’t know which of my two dragon fathers will answer, but the words feel like stones dropping from my mouth. Heavy. Final. Irrevocable. The only solution I have for the problem festering beyond the mountain—the hatred growing in the dark like acancer, feeding on old wounds, patient as death, waiting for its moment to strike.
Genocide. I’m suggesting genocide. The complete and utter annihilation of an entire population, down to the last egg, the last hatchling, the last ember of their fire.
And I don’t feel anything but cold, practical necessity. The part of me that should recoil, should argue, should search for another way—that part has gone silent.
Maybe it died with the girl I used to be.
“I know.” Thauglor’s exhale is long and weary, the sound of a male who has carried this burden for longer than I’ve been alive, who has made this calculation a thousand times in the dark hours of sleepless nights and found the same terrible answer every time. “I’ve been trying to avoid that for over twenty years. Hoping time would solve the problem, hoping they would move on and forget. Foolish of me.”
He pauses, and something in his ancient eyes shifts. Softens, almost—but not into mercy. Into anticipation.
“But after we deal with the west, we need to figure out what we’re doing about Amadeus.” His lips curl into something that’s almost a smile, sharp and hungry and eager for the hunt.
“I say we torch him too.”
“I believe we need to formally draft a letter of intent to find out what his thought process was before we go wiping out an entire island.” I keep my voice calm, measured, diplomatic—the voice of a leader, not a warrior, not the predator inside me that howls for blood, that thrashes against the cage of my ribs, desperate tohunt, to kill, to protect. “Give him a chance to explain himself. A chance to surrender, to make amends.”
A chance he won’t take, most likely. But the formalities matter.
“Worst case, the four of us will fly in and wipe the slate clean.”
My eyes find my father’s and Solaris. We have the strongest breath weapons of anyone in this room—fire hot enough to melt stone, to turn armies to ash, to boil oceans and blacken skies and reduce mountains to slag. Between the four of us, we could end an island. End a bloodline. End a thousand-year legacy in a single afternoon of fire and fury.
The thought should horrify me.
It doesn’t.
Mom would need to stay here with Corvus, Finlay, and Abraxis to defend the nests if it comes to that. Someone has to protect what we’ve built, guard the hatchlings and the wounded and the innocent while the rest of us are painting the world in fire and blood. Someone has to make sure there’s something left to come home to.
“Raven!” Mom’s voice cracks like a whip, sharp with warning, sharp with fear for me. She sees what I’m becoming—what I’ve already become—and it frightens her. Good. It should.
“Oh, please.” I roll my eyes, letting my wings flare behind me, the leather snapping taut as I stretch them to their full span. Shadows dance across the walls, making me look larger, more threatening, more like the monster I need to be. “You know, if you didn’t have ten million hatchlings running around, you would be with us. Don’t act innocent.”
You taught me this; I don’t say. You made me this. Every lesson, every story, every scar you showed me and explained—you were building a weapon, whether or not you knew it.
She holds my gaze for a long moment, her eyes searching my face for the daughter she raised, the hatchling who used to crawl into her lap during thunderstorms, who believed her mother could fix anything.
I don’t know if she finds her.
Finally, she nods. The corner of her mouth twitches, and I see myself reflected in that small, savage smile. Recognition. Acceptance. Pride, maybe, mixed with grief for something lost.
Like mother, like daughter.
“So what are you doing first, lass?” Solaris’s arm wraps around my waist, pulling me against the solid wall of his body. His heat seeps through my clothes, chasing away a chill I hadn’t realized had settled into my bones, had wrapped around my heart like frost. His scent envelops me—cedar and wood-smoke and something wild and free, something that makes my dragon purr despite the tension coiling through the room like a serpent. I feel his heart beating against my back, steady and strong and completely unafraid. An anchor in the storm.
“Following protocol.” I lean into him, letting myself have this moment of weakness, this breath of comfort before the world demands I be hard again, be sharp again, be the blade rather than the hand that wields it. “That way the other islands can’t say shit. Gotta cover our asses.”
I straighten, rolling my shoulders, feeling my wings settle against my back like armor, like a promise.
“Klauth and I will draft the letter later today, then send it by our fastest messenger. They have a week to respond—seven days to explain themselves, to beg for mercy, to convince us not to reduce everything they’ve built to memory and ash.”
