Page 230 of The Fifth Heir

Fire returned to Torren without striking him. Storm entered Rafe’s torc. Shadow flowed back to Sebastian, and frost settled around Leander.

Their surrendered power had not become mine.

It had become ours.

The gates shattered together.

All four men entered the central chamber.

Torren reached me first and placed his palm against the scales of my foreleg. His hand looked small against my transformed body.

I lowered my head.

He touched the ridge above my eye.

The contact sent heat through the bond. My dragon recognized him with an instinctive certainty that was not possession and was not submission.

Fire.

One point of the crown.

Rafe came to my other side. Silver current leapt from his fingers to my scales, racing harmlessly through the crystal.

“I knew you’d have impressive wings,” he said.

My dragon nudged him hard enough to make him stagger.

He grinned. “You understood that.”

Sebastian approached more carefully, studying the bands of color moving beneath my scales. Shadow curled around my claws, and I felt his wonder even though little showed on his face.

“The scale was never colorless,” he said. “It contained every color.”

Neither was I.

I touched my snout to his shoulder.

He closed his eyes.

Leander stopped before me last.

Frost covered one side of his coat, and blood marked his temple. He lowered himself to one knee.

“You don’t kneel to me,” I tried to say.

The sound emerged as a deep crystalline rumble that shook dust from the ceiling.

Leander understood anyway.

“This isn’t surrender,” he said. “It is recognition.”

He pressed one fist over his heart.

“My queen.”

The word entered the bond.

My dragon recoiled from it.