Prologue
Kallias
Molten wax surged around my signet ring, binding Radaan’s fate. My blood pulsed, humming through my veins as I lifted the ring, revealing the precise, crisp edges of my seal.
It was done.
Months of preparation, tedious negotiation, and decades of war—all culminated in this moment.
Beside my signature, scrawled across the scroll in jagged crimson strokes, a name forged in blood.
Nereus, Dragon King of Draconia, Lord of the Wild Shores.
Above it, sketched with the same harsh strokes,Nienna, Dragon’s Heart.
A tremor passed through me as I scanned the oath one final time. This was the last chance to cast it into the flames and start anew. Yet as I read, there wasn’t a single thing to change. Nienna, daughter of the dragon king, would be given to my son in exchange for a grain tithe and the exemption of taxes on Radaan’s goods.
In return, Nienna would bring the dragons’ power to Radaan—with the promise that if war called, they would ride to her aid.
I sighed, leaning back in my chair, gaze drifting to the treaty of Vellos beside the contract. After seventeen years of conflict—over three of failed negotiations, countless deaths and sacrifices—at last, we reached terms with the Velli.
And it all hinged on this contract with Draconia.
The Velli were unyielding, starving, pushed beyond their limits. No matter how hard I tried to project strength—pretending we could endure the war, that our soldiers and supplies were infinite—I knew the truth.
My people were battered, spread too thin. Women tended the fields well enough, but I lacked the men to pull the harvest. Crops rotted in the autumn rains, sowing next spring’s wild growth.
Children went hungry, fatherless. Widows struggled to survive. A generation passed, knowing nothing but war.
I promised the next would know nothing but peace.
Radaan needed dragons—power to deter Vellos from invasion. Without them, another attack was inevitable.
Triumph stirred within as I studied the scrolls side by side. It had taken me a lifetime. Finally,finally,I would know peace.
Nienna
Wind whipped through my hair as a black-tipped tail snaked around my knees with a quiet hiss.
“I only want to see!” I protested, bracing against the purple-hued appendage.
As I leaned over the Nest’s edge, the updraft slammed into me, stealing my breath. It thrummed with power, urging me to leap, to feel wind tear at my skin, to soar like my dragons.
Behind me, the dragon queen huffed, her tail coiling tighter around me like an unyielding vise. I was her wingless hatchling, the Dragon’s Heart.
Far below, the cities appeared as fragile toys, dwarfed by the height of the Spire. The Nest sat at the highest peak of Draconia’s dark palace, where bones littered the floor and the biting wind stung my skin. Yet in that stark, chilling expanse, a strange calm settled over me, as though the winds themselves cradled me. There was no place in the world I felt safer.
Argos swept through the sky, his massive shadow blotting out daylight, a blur of green and blue followed close in his wake. Tsunami, irritable, snapped at his tail. My father, a mere speck on Argos’ back, seemed almost swallowed by the distance. Behind them, ridden by my brother, Gyrak—small and black as night—spun through the air, spewing a jet of flame at the wild blue.
Tsunami ducked, dodging the blast before pivoting toward the Nest, earning a grumble of displeasure from the dragon queen at my back.
“They’re just playing,” I mused, scanning the sky.
Riderless and restless, Tsunami refused to leave our land. Instead of venturing to the Wild Shores as other wildlings did, she prowled our skies, a constant thorn in our side. Even the Dragon Riders struggled to keep her in check.
To contain a ship-sized meddling beast was a full-time job.
A flash of white streaked across my vision. I clenched the muscled scales beneath my fingertips, my heart lurching into my throat. That was not a rock gull’s mottled hue, but the unmistakable gleam of a dove—a symbol of peace.
