I shook my head. “We did it. All of us.”
She nodded.“Even so. It needed a hand to guide the blade.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if I could ever be okay with what I’d done. But Flint was alive, and Jax was alive, and maybe tomorrow the world would be something better. We stayed there a long time, the valley quiet around us, the air still trembling with what had happened. When the sun finally set, it painted the sky with every color dragons had ever dreamed.
16
HAILEY
Hundreds of dragons,every color ever coined, gathered in silent, concentric order around a single, raised dais of black stone. Their scales caught the dawn in shards, so the whole room seemed alive with silent lightning. Above, the vault arched so high that clouds formed against the interior ceiling, slow-moving wisps that glimmered with the refracted sunrise.
Adalinda stood at the center.
I hovered with Jax at the edge of the inner circle. We were both in dragon form. Flint, back in his human skin, bounced nervously on his heels between our front paws. He’d worn a shirt that Solenne had given him, with gold embroidery that he swore made him look like a “prince, but cooler,” and his hair was flattened, but it had taken me ten minutes with a bowl of water to get it to stay.
On the dais, Corvus approached, every step measured as if he was timing it to the heartbeat of the crowd. In his jaws, he carried the crown of Ayrathys. I’d seen it once before, during a tour of the castle, but nothing had prepared me for how it looked in daylight. It was less a crown than a sculpture. Intricate loopsof gold and something iridescent, black as spilled oil, carved into a nest of teeth and claw. The top was set with a single, egg-shaped stone, smoky and shot through with lines of blue and silver. Corvus laid it at Adalinda’s feet and stepped back, wings folding in a gesture of respect and ritual.
The hall fell silent. Not just quiet, silent. Corvus’s voice hit my mind with the cool precision of a breaking wave.
“Queen Adalinda, we offer you the Crown of Ayrathys, forged by Tharneval himself when our realm was young. We name you the memory of our blood, the shield against forgetting. We name you Queen, and all we are is yours to command.”
Adalinda dipped her head. She didn't smile, or flare her wings, or even move except to acknowledge the weight of what was being given. She accepted the crown as Corvus lifted it and placed it on her head. It clicked into place around the horns at her brow, fitting perfectly. Her voice, when it came, wasn't loud, but it went everywhere. It vibrated my sternum, and even Flint, who’d been fidgeting, snapped to perfect, breathless stillness.
“I accept this crown not as one who rules over you, but as one who serves you. I will not dwell among you always, but I will come when needed. I will hold the line between worlds, and for as long as my heart remembers this place, you will never be alone.”
She paused, and for a second, every dragon in the hall lowered their head, not just the ceremonial touch, but a genuine, physical surrender to the moment.
“Let us remember the fallen and let us remember ourselves.”
The answer was a telepathic chorus, so perfectly harmonized it felt like a cathedral choir had been loaded into my skull and setto stun. I’d heard mass mind-voices before, but nothing like this. It was a chord that started in sorrow and bent, unbroken, to hope.
Jax must have felt it too. His wing, warm where it touched mine, slid closer until our scales were flush. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to.
The ceremony dissolved, the crowd melting into a thousand private conversations, as dragons broke into clusters or pairs. The mood was less royal court and more extended family reunion. Still, the center of the room was left untouched, a bubble of space around Adalinda as she stood motionless, crown blazing in the new light.
My attention drifted to the edges, watching as the feast was assembled. Dragons didn’t do banquets the way I’d expected. There were no servants, no groveling functionaries. Instead, a team of what I assumed were the local equivalents of cooks and caterers swept in, ferrying giant platters of roasted beast, cauldrons of molten honey, and baskets of fruit that glowed from the inside out. The tables, cut directly from the living stone of the floor, sprouted up in long rows. Some dragons perched on benches or ledges, others simply hovered, beating their wings lazily as they devoured whatever caught their fancy.
Jax and I were steered gently by the crowd toward a platform overlooking the main hall. We shifted to human as soon as we were out of direct sight, the sudden lightness of our bodies a relief after hours in scales. Flint, who hadn’t stopped bouncing for more than a minute since the ceremony had ended, immediately ran for the nearest pile of shiny rocks that had been set out as “garnish” for the feast.
“He’s not going to eat those, is he?” I asked.
Jax grinned. “You never know. He ate a spoon once and didn’t even get a stomachache.”
Flint darted between tables, weaving through legs, tails, and the occasional crash of a dragon’s head as they dove for a particularly good-looking piece of meat. He was the only human-form child in the entire place, but nobody looked at him like he was a freak. They just made room. Let him belong.
My chest went tight, then relaxed, then went tight again. Watching Flint fit in here, the way he never had on Earth, even with a house full of vampires, was enough to make me want to cry or laugh or scream, or maybe all three. I watched as he tumbled with a slate-blue hatchling, rolled across the floor, then leaped onto the back of a copper-scaled dragonling who wore him like a scarf and sprinted three laps around the table.
“He’s going to miss this,” I said, more to myself than to Jax.
He looked at me, eyes soft. “So will you.”
He wasn’t wrong.
The feast rolled on, the food replaced as quickly as it vanished. Conversations drifted from the grand and historical to how will we keep the realms aligned? Who gets the eastern wind ridge now that Vaelog’s gone? Who cheated at last year’s sky race? Which hatchlings were likely to win the next talent duel? Even with the fate of the world decided, the dragons found a way to make the future about small pleasures and incremental victories.
At the high table, Corvus and Solenne rose together. The room fell quiet, not instantly, but in waves, as their minds broadcast a gentle pull that even the rowdiest hatchling couldn’t ignore.
“With Queen Adalinda’s blessing, we will begin our generational quest,”Corvus sent, his voice iron and certain.“The portal between Ayrathys and the human world can now be opened safely. In the coming days, teams will cross to Earth, seeking the halves of our souls lost to time and reborn in new bodies. Our aim is not conquest, but reunion. We seek the restoration of our kind, the rejoining of dragon and human, the healing of what Vaelog tried to sever.”
