As the next petitioner approached, a slender, jade-green dragon whose scales looked almost translucent, I found my mind drifting. Not out of boredom, the show was too good for that, but because I was trying to recognize the patterns. It was a game of inches. Who dipped their head, who held a gaze too long, who pretended indifference but was really calculating every angle.
Adalinda was the master of the long game. Whenever a petitioner overstepped, she gave a nearly invisible tilt of her head or twitched her tail. When she disagreed, her claws tapped once, always once, against the stone. When Solenne rendered a ruling that aligned with Adalinda’s unseen standard, a hint of approval would ripple in the lines of her jaw, a micro-expression of satisfaction so subtle I was surprised I saw it. Certainly not many others did.
If Solenne noticed the cues, she gave no sign.
The emerald matriarch, who introduced herself as Lady Maevra of the Eastern Valleys, had come to protest what she called an incursion on her ancestral lands. She painted the breach as a violation of a sacred treaty, but the real message in her words was simpler.“Test me, and I will burn your house down.”
Solenne listened, unmoved, then suggested that perhaps Lady Maevra’s clutch should double the strength of their border patrol, for the duration of the lunar cycle. The response was pure politics, solving nothing, conceding nothing, but implying that if Maevra failed to keep her house in order, any retaliation was on her head. Maevra accepted the ruling with a cool, predatory nod, eyes locked on Solenne as if promising to revisit this in a more private setting. I wasn’t sure what all that was about, but I had no doubt that Solenne would put anyone in their place when they stepped out of line.
The line of petitioners dwindled, and the energy in the hall thinned to something more ambient. I took the opportunity to scan for Flint, but he was nowhere in sight. Probably off making friends with the kitchen staff or inventing new forms of chaos in the lower vaults with his new group of hatchlings. Jax was on the outer ring, half-camouflaged in the shadows, his posture lazy but his eyes tracking every movement. Even in dragon form, heprojected a kind of bored competence that made everyone else seem like amateurs.
When the last petitioner, a gray-scaled ancient, had finished his litany of complaints about the sulfur levels in the lower springs, Solenne adjourned the court with a flourish.“The session has ended. May the sky favor your next flight.”
Dragons peeled away from the benches, some in pairs, some alone. I waited, hoping the crowd would thin, but Adalinda caught my eye with a flick of her tail. She said nothing, just inclined her head toward a side corridor. I followed, careful to maintain the correct posture, neck level, wings folded, tail trailing without a hint of agitation. There were rules, and acting like a tourist didn’t earn extra points.
We moved through a hallway lined with carvings. These were older, rougher, their edges worn smooth by centuries of cleaning or maybe reverence. As I passed a depiction of the first portal, a spiral of energy, dragons tumbling through, a chill came that had nothing to do with the draft in the corridor.
Adalinda stopped at a balcony carved into the outer wall of the keep. She gazed down at the world below, her eyes tracking a flock of smaller dragons as they circled a distant ridge. I hesitated, then joined her at the rail.
“You see how they come here,”she said, mind-voice soft, so intimate it felt like a whisper.“Even when there is no hope of return, even when the world above forgets us, they come. It is not instinct. It is longing.”
I nodded, searching her profile for clues. In the light of the setting sun, her scales refracted every color at once, but the lines of her face were tired.
“I thought you didn’t want to rule again,” I said.
She turned, eyes bright as polished glass.“Want is not the word. Need, perhaps. Or perhaps I simply remember what it was like to hold the world together for a single day, and I miss the weight.”
I waited. This wasn't a confession she’d made before, and I suspected she’d already said more than she intended.
She stretched her wings, careful not to hit the stone.“Solenne is strong and wise. She is a good Regent.”
“She does have everyone’s respect. No one questioned her, even with you there.”
Adalinda glanced at me, and I caught the proud gleam in her eyes. “As it should be. She is still Regent, and I’m happy to leave it at that for now.”
I nodded and turned my attention to the landscape beyond the balcony.
After another few moments, she said,“You learn fast, Hailey. Faster than any I have seen. Stay close to me in the next few days. There is much to observe. And perhaps, much to do.”
“I can do that,”I said.
* * *
Flight in Ayrathyswasn’t just movement. It was communion. Jax flew ahead of me, wings stretched, catching every lick of thermal, his green-black scales refracting the dawn into a million possibilities. The sky bent around us, the twin suns trailing us like distant but attentive parents.
We made this run every day now, same window, same ridge, same routine of scheduled communication with the world we’d left behind. But it mattered to the people on the other side, and so we did it, never late. We wouldn’t want them to worry.
The portal itself hung like a vertical sheet of glass. From this side, it shimmered, not with the cheap magic of movies but with the tight, refracted energy of something that shouldn’t exist but stubbornly insisted on doing so. Below, the approach path was cut with crosswinds and odd, whip-fast drafts. Every time I banked in for a landing, it felt like I was threading a needle.
Jax and I dropped below the thermals, banked together, and shifted to human form about twenty feet from the ground. The landing, on mossy basalt, was smooth, almost boring, except that as soon as our feet hit, a noise beyond the portal caught our attention.
At first, I thought it was a fight. Then I realized it was a different kind of sparring.
Zara and Xander were completely entwined, one continuous loop of arms, hair, and aggression. Zara had her fingers buried in Xander’s hair, and Xander had his arms wrapped around her in a way that suggested either imminent wrestling or imminent doingit.
They didn’t notice us until Jax cleared his throat with the volume and precision of a Marine drill instructor. The effect was instantaneous. Zara released Xander as if she’d found a live wire, stepping back so fast she nearly lost her balance. Xander, immortal, all-knowing, former leader of the New York vampires, looked stricken, lips parted, eyes fixed on a point about three feet above the ground. He straightened his tee, squared hisshoulders, and tried to look as if he’d just finished a calculus problem rather than what had actually just transpired.
I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I nearly drew blood. “Portal duty,” I said. “Riveting, I hear.”
