I could’ve tapped the Coldiron’s connection, maybe reached the Oracle again, and learned where Missy was.
Instead, all my focus and power went to preventing the Coldiron lightning from striking them dead.
I wouldn’t get another chance. They’d watch me now. They’d never let me near the Veil alone.
You shall not enter the DarkVeil again, girl. Not before you’re ready.
I might not trust the creature coiled inside me, but it had always guarded its own interests with ruthless precision. And I knew I’d be a fool to ignore its warning. It understood far more about this world, about the DarkVeil, about all arcane knowledge. Compared to it, I was a toddler hosting an ancient entity.
“Snap out of it, Cadet Private Max!” Drakken barked. “Calm down.”
Calm?Who could calm down that fast after what I’d just lived through? If I had a shred more energy, I’d have rolled my eyes hard enough to see my own skull.
Did he order his girlfriend around like a soldier too?“Suck my cock, Cadet Private Delia. Suck it with enthusiasm, soldier, or you’re running the death tracks. Twenty laps!”
That image of Delia on her knees for the dragon prince would’ve been hilarious if it didn’t spark something hot in my chest and leave a sour taste on my tongue.
Aelindor, moving with that effortless grace of his, conjured a silken handkerchief and pressed it gently beneath my nose. It came away crimson. The blood was still dripping, a warm, slow crawl over my lips.
They were bleeding too—all three of them, thin red lines tracing from their nostrils—but they ignored it, as if bleeding were as unremarkable as breathing. And it was for warriors who shed blood on battlefields the way other people shed sweat.
“I’m fine,” I managed, the words scraping out of me like gravel.
“You’re not fine,” Caspian shot back, no trace of his usual smoothness in the retort. “Give Max that water, Aelindor.”
Someone had produced a bottle of water—Frost, I think—and passed it to his prince.
Aelindor didn’t hesitate. He handed me the bottle, his fingers brushing mine. “Drink, Max.”
By every rule book of the military hierarchy, the heirs ate and drank first. A first-year cadet was the last mouth to be fed. Yet they kept placing me above themselves, and I still didn’t know if I should feel honored or haunted.
Aelindor treated me as if I were rare and precious, valuable in a way that had nothing to do with my ability.
Caspian looked at me with the shameless hunger of a man who’d never been told no. His reputation preceded him by several miles, and I was probably one of the few women in the Covenant he hadn’t bedded. I’d have to make it clear to him eventually that if he thought of me as a conquest, he’d be wasting his fucking time.
And Drakken. The softening was marginal at best. His jaw stayed locked whenever his eyes found me, and those cold eyesstill held the suspicion of a man waiting for me to prove him right about something terrible.
But he’d learned that I would never bow to him.
The water hit my cracked throat, and I drank in small, careful sips—a miner’s habit—and felt my breathing ease for the first time in what felt like hours.
“The lightning you saw, sirs—that’s Coldiron. A network of it,” I said, lowering the bottle. Emotion later. Intel now. “The DarkVeil contains a vast deposit of the sentient metal. Hundreds of times more than Crimson Ridge.”
A sharp breath moved through the three heirs.
“That’s why no one survived crossing the DarkVeil,” Aelindor murmured. His blue eyes had gone distant, the look he wore when a century of unanswered questions rearranged themselves into devastating truth. “The Coldiron attacks anything that enters.”
“No one stood a fucking chance.” Caspian’s voice was stripped of all its usual careless purrs. A Spartan had handed him trousers, but he made no move to put them on. “If Max hadn’t held them back, we’d be dead.” He let out a ragged breath. “All three of us. Gone in seconds.”
I bit my lip, tasting copper where the blood had dried. The next part was harder—not simply to reveal, but toconfess. Some truths pressed against your ribs like a knife you weren’t ready to pull.
“There’s something else.”
“Speak up, cadet.” Drakken’s voice had settled back into its default register: command. No surprise there. I’d wager the dragon prince’s softer tones had fossilized a decade ago, assuming they’d ever existed at all.
“I told the Coldiron to guard the Veil. To stop anything from coming out. They agreed, but—” I swallowed, the motionscraping. “They can’t hold indefinitely. Not without me stationed here to reinforce the barrier.”
I held Drakken’s gaze. “There’s an heir who can command Coldiron as well.”
