Flint vibrated with excitement. He’d crept down from my back to stand behind my foreleg, poking his head out for a better look.“Do you see them? They’re so big. Are we supposed to bow too?”His thoughts were sharp now, quick and layered, less like a child and more like someone who’d just learned a second language and wanted to test all the words at once.
“Wait and see,” I murmured.
The black dragon raised his head and addressed us directly, not aloud, but as a thundercrack in my mind, a masculine voice with the weight of an ancient cathedral bell.“Queen Adalinda. We wondered if you would ever come. One of our seers had a vision that said you would. I did not believe her. That is my shame.”
Adalinda’s eyes gleamed, caught between mirth and something sharper. “Corvus. You always preferred your own counsel over the wisdom of the court.”
Beside me, Jax was utterly still, watching the encounter or an assassin marking his prey. It was hard to tell with my mate. He let nothing show, but I could feel the calculations running behind his eyes.
Corvus’s bow deepened, almost an apology.“It is good to see you as yourself, my Queen. Will you introduce the others?”
I braced myself, ready to be called out as the impostor in the room, but Adalinda was already answering.“This is Hailey and her mate, Jax. The hatchling is Flint.”
The orange-scaled dragon advanced, her steps lighter, almost musical.“And I am Solenne, once your Voice, now regent in your absence. Forgive my manners; it has been centuries since I greeted a queen.”
She looked at Adalinda, but her gaze flicked briefly over me, then Jax, then Flint. Her eyes lingered on Flint, then she blinked, a slow and deliberate gesture.“You brought a child with you?”
Flint puffed up, every scale standing at attention.“I am not a child. I can fly and hunt and remember every dream I have ever had.”
The telepathic chorus from the surrounding dragons was amused surprise but died quickly.
Solenne smiled, a ripple of warm orange.“You are a treasure. Welcome.”
Corvus straightened and spoke to Adalinda again.“Forgive our caution. This is a dangerous time in Ayrathys. The wild one, Vaelog, remains at large. We have done what we can, but the threat grows.”
Adalinda’s tail twitched, a sign of her irritation.“He is here? Has he built a following?”
I looked at Jax in surprise. How was he here? He was supposed to be trapped
“No. He is alone. But he is not himself. He is mad. I have never seen such hunger.”
At the mention of Vaelog, every dragon in the field fell silent, even the ones circling far above. Their collective memory rolled over me. Fear, hatred, awe.
“Wait,”Flint projected.“Why is he here? I thought he was in prison. Mama said so.”
Solenne’s gaze found me, then Adalinda, then Flint.“When a dragon dies by the dagger, it is not an ending. The human body is lost, but the dragon soul is delivered here, intact and unspoiled. Every dragon that Vaelog killed with the blade is in this world. As are the ones you lost, Adalinda.”
I watched Adalinda carefully. She didn't flinch, but her scales pulsed with a subtle iridescence, the color of regret. “When we separated him from his dragon permanently, we must’ve sent his dragon here. I had no idea.”
Jax took a step forward, breaking the tableau. “You called this place Ayrathys. What is it, really?”
Corvus fixed him with those obsidian eyes.“It is a vault, a refuge. Some say it is heaven. I say it is a grave. We live, we fly, but if we die here, there is nowhere left for us to go. There is no world after this.”
The words hung in the air, cold as interstellar ice.
Flint pressed himself against my side, no longer vibrating.“Do the dead remember everything? Do they remember who they were?”
Solenne answered.“We remember everything. And so do the monsters. That is why Vaelog is so dangerous here. He brings all his knowledge, all his rage, and none of the limitations. Hehas made himself into something new, something we do not understand.”
“There is more,”Solenne went on gravely.“It is our theory, untested, but every fight bears it out, that with each dragon Vaelog killed with the blade, he took something. A measure of strength. A piece of power. He has the weight of every life he ended pressed into him, and he has grown more formidable with each. That is why nothing we’ve tried has worked, and he lives.”
I looked at the sky, at the formations of dragons slicing between the clouds. “How many are there?”
Corvus considered.“More than there have been in centuries. Most lie dormant, but some have formed courts, armies, nests. Others wander. But all remember the old wars.”
The gravity of it settled on me, heavier than the change in my own body. Every dragon killed by Vaelog was here, alive and plotting. And so was Vaelog himself, freed from whatever shackles had once held him in check.
Corvus twisted his mouth, a gesture halfway between a sneer and a grimace.“He is clever. He is cruel. Every time we corner him, he slithers away. Every trap, every strategy, he finds the gap. We have wounded him, but he returns, always more violent.”
