“Already?” I scoffed. They never failed to needle Father, hinting we should gift them dragon eggs. No matter how often we explained that dragons chosetheir riders—notus—they ignored it. Their people settled on the island nearest the Wild Shores decades ago, and to this day, remained dragonless.
“They wouldn’t dare be late,” Mother muttered. “They’ll drive your father mad. If it weren’t for their pearls, we’d have cut ties long ago.”
Kulletti pearls shimmered with multiple colors, but the rare crimson ones held the most worth. They were the only thing that gave them standing among the island nations.
I thought of Radaan, how jewels gleamed on goblets, rings, and every unguarded corner. Gems flowed there like water. Here, pearls were our riches. No room for quarries, no stones to mine. But one day, expanding our homeland might give us that.
Kallias wore no gems on his yoke. Just beaten gold, etched with vines and filigree. No rubies. No opals.
Why?
I pushed the question aside. “If Kalepsi lets me go.”
The dragon queen’s eye narrowed, and I grinned as wide as my injured lip allowed. She stayed still, watching, asking without words if I truly meant it.
I didn’t.
Nestled between eggs warm with life, a steady heartbeat pulsing behind me, a wall of thick scales pressed at my side, and only my mother for company—alone with the wind and remnants of death and birth. I could hide here forever.
But I was a princess.
Duty came first.
Guilt lanced through me.
Mother lingered for hours, catching me up on everything I’d missed. She spoke softly, coaxing me into conversation when my thoughts strayed to Kallias, threatening to pull me under.
Eventually, she rose to check on the Kulletti, leaving me alone again with Kalepsi. I crawled to her great head and curled against the curve of a thick golden horn jutting from her jaw. My cheek pressed to her warm scales, and tears returned. She chuffed and rumbled beneath me, steady and deep. My sobs scattered into the wind. The pain tearing through my chest eased, if only a little, with her near.
But I couldn’t stay buried here forever.
The sun sank low when I left the Nest. I felt hollow. No more than a shell, cracked and worthless, but one that remembered how to move. I was home now. I would not hide from my family or from duty.
By the time I reached my rooms, my knees trembled from the stairs and the ache of hunger. I shouldn’t have gone to the Nest on an empty stomach, but calming Kalepsi mattered more.
“Princess Nienna.”
Freya rose from a chair in my receiving room, a silver tray balanced in her hands. “I began to wonder if you’d ever return.”
The sight of her hit me like a wave. It shouldn’t have. Everything felt foreign, even her presence in my quarters—though of course Mother would assign her here. She knew who I’d need.
“Scythe is dead.” I closed my eyes as the words escaped. They weren’t what I meant to say, but I couldn’t bear to watch surprise bloom across Freya’s face.
Silence settled. The three of us—Scythe, Freya, and I—once stirred chaos through the palace halls. Scythe stuck close, sworn to my service, while Freya floated wherever she was needed. Yet she always found us to join the mischief.
Her loss wasn’t mine alone.
“I know.”
Freya’s lips pressed into a sorrowful curve. Her red hair sat coiled in a bun, with sun-kissed wisps slipping free. Freckles danced across her cheekbones, a cruel contrast to my battered skin.
“Did you burn her?” she asked, shifting toward the dressing room with the tray.
“Yes.” The word scraped my throat. I remembered the smoke curling upward, thick with oil and fury. No dragons lit that fire—only torches and man-made flame.
“Then she is with us,” she said. “In the air, the wind, the sky. Maybe she’ll return as a dragon one day.”
“She’d be worse than Tsunami.” I slumped into a chair and reached for the tray she placed on the small table.
