Page 57 of A Court of Darkness and Dragons

Jax winked at me over his head, and a thread of tension eased in my chest. He was going to be okay.

We navigated the castle’s wide corridors, the echo of our boots chasing us toward his chambers. Guards straightened as we passed, eyes following the three of us, but no one dared speak.

Inside his room, the heavy curtains were drawn, and the air was warm from the fire. I guided him to the bed, and by the time Jax lowered him onto the mattress, Zander was already halfway asleep.

Carefully, I pulled off his boots and set them aside, then drew a thick coverlet over him. His breathing was slow, steady, the harsh pallor of exhaustion still clinging to his skin—but his chest rose and fell, and that was enough for now.

I brushed a lock of hair from his forehead and let out the breath I’d been holding since the battle.

Jax shifted his weight toward the door, glancing once at Zander before looking back at me.

“I’ll head back to the Ascension Grounds. I need to unsaddle Koddos. Will Kaelith let me take hers off? That way, you can stay here for a bit. You could use a nap yourself.”

I reached for Kaelith’s mind, the familiar hum of her presence sliding into mine. Jax wants to remove your saddle. Is that acceptable?

Her answer was warm and smug. Kass’ rider already did. He was suitably reverent… and told me my scales remind him of night violets.

Despite everything, I smiled. “She says Cordelle already took care of it, and complimented her in the process.”

Jax snorted but tipped me a two-fingered salute. “Good. Stay with him. Get some rest, Ashe.”

When the door shut behind him, the quiet pressed in. I sat on the edge of Zander’s bed, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. The battle exhaustion tugged at me, a slow, heavy pull. I was about to lay down beside him when Kaelith’s sudden hiss split through my mind.

The world tilted.

I didn’t just hear her. I was yanked forward, dragged into her consciousness as if I’d stepped off a cliff. My vision went black, then flooded with light—her light—and the sensation of her massive wings curling around me.

But it wasn’t a memory.

It was more.

Colors bled into impossible shapes. The air vibrated like a thousand heartbeats pounding in unison. I threw my hands over my eyes, but it didn’t matter—the images seared through my lids, through my bones.

And Kaelith’s voice whispered, low and ancient.

I can’t stop it.

The world solidified around me in a wash of heat and smoke.

Kaelith’s memory—no, her inheritance—poured through me, and I stood on a battlefield that existed long before my birth. The air reeked of scorched scale and burning sea salt, the cries of dragons tearing across the sky like war drums.

The king rode astride Siergen’s back, his armor gleaming like molten sun under a war-streaked sky. But Siergen… he was not the weathered red Courier I knew now. He was massive, radiant—a gold Striker in his prime, his wings catching the light in blazing arcs. His scythe-tipped tail gleamed wet with enemy blood as it whipped and struck with deadly precision.

Only a dozen riders flew with him—scattered amid the chaos, their mounts fighting desperately to survive. I had forgotten that in the first war, there had been so few of them. Fewer still by the end. Victory had never been inevitable… they had won only because of the Unifier.

Siergen…

I saw it in his eyes even as his body moved like an unstoppable force—rage tempered by grief so deep it hollowed him out. These events were after the loss of his mate. Every strike of his talons, every slash of those wicked golden scythes carried the weight of a creature who no longer cared whether he lived or died, only that he took as many enemies as possible with him.

He tore through a black dragon mid-flight, rending wing from body in one savage twist. The creature’s rider screamed as they plummeted into the frothing waves below.

Another Blood Fae came at him; taller than most, armored in jagged obsidian plates. His dragon shrieked a challenge, but Siergen answered with a roar that split the air. His claws caught the black’s throat, his tail hooking in a lethal arc. One strike. Two. And the enemy rider was airborne—flung from the saddle, his body spinning helplessly before it vanished into the churning sea.

It wasn’t Severeth. This was a fae male; a powerful one. Or had been.

The instant he disappeared beneath the waves, the tide of battle shifted. The black dragons faltered. Their formation broke. And then… they fled. One after another peeling away, retreating into the horizon until the skies were empty save for the king, his battered riders, and the bloodied sentinel at their head.

Siergen hovered there, chest heaving, golden wings dripping scarlet into the sea.