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“Vorlith,” I continued. “Massive firebreathers. Temperamental.”

“Temperamental is a remarkably polite way to describe a beast that will melt your armor to your ribs before you can draw a blade,” Aerynn muttered, his mouth twisting into a dry line.

“Nyxalith...” I paused, my eyes narrowing as I studied the faded illustration tucked into the margin. “The two-headed breed. I thought they were extinct.”

Aerynn didn’t answer, his features tightening into a flat, unreadable line.

I kept moving down the list. “Celestryx—rare light-bearers. Umbrax—shadow stalkers. Sylvanis—the forest dwellers. And Rexos—gold-scaled, highly territorial.”

“They’ll rip your throat out before you finish explaining their traits to the court,” Dax added dryly from his spot against the pillar, a faint smirk touching his lips.

“Gravelhide—heavy, slow, practically unmovable,” I concluded, skimming the final entries. “Zephyros—wind dancers. And Lumi—small, bioluminescent, relatively passive.”

“None of them are passive, Tauriel,” Caspian cut in, his voice flat as a drawn blade. He stepped up to the table, resting his broad hands on the edges of the parchment. “Especially not during the rite. Do you actually understand what the Drakoryn trial asks of you?”

I squared my shoulders, meeting his stare. “I’ve read the records.”

“Reading about a hunt in a quiet library is different from standing in the mud,” Caspian said softly, his blue eyes darkening. “At sunset on the first day, every candidate offers their blood to the Dragon Basin. A single cut across the palm, poured onto the stone. The beasts can smell it from miles away. It wakes them. Draws them down from the peaks.”

He paused, letting the silence settle over the cold room.

“Then the hunt begins,” he continued, his tone dropping low. “For two days and two nights, you’re alone in the woods. No guards. No intervention. The dragons track the ridges, the riverbeds, the thickets. Some are looking for a bond. Others are just territorial, looking for something weak to burn. They test your nerve, your instincts, your threshold for pain. And if they decide you don’t belong on their mountain, they will turn you to ash where you stand.”

His gaze stayed locked on mine, stripped of all arrogance, cold and unyielding.

“If you make it through the two days, you’re marched to the northern cliffs at dawn on the third morning. That’s where you take the leap. You step off the precipice into thin air. If a dragon has claimed you, it catches you before you hit the rocks. If not...” He swallowed, his jaw setting hard. “The dragons don’t choose the strongest, Princess. They choose the ones willing to step off the edge without knowing if anything is waiting below.”

He said that like he knew nothing was waiting for him, or like nothing was waiting for me.

The silence in the room turned heavy, the ambient light from the high windows filtering unevenly across the ink-stained table.

Aerynn shifted his weight, his eyes narrowing as he looked across the wood at Caspian. “Four years you’ve turned down the draft, Cas. You’ve bled on every border watchtower from here to the cliffs just to keep my father from looking at Ilasari with an executioner’s eye. Why now? Why suddenly take the risk?”

I looked between them, reading the sudden drop in temperature. Caspian had been High Captain for years—a lethal, veteran warrior who had consistently avoided the dragon trials, claiming the guard required his undivided presence on the perimeter towers.

Caspian didn’t flinch, but the line of his shoulders went rigid. A muscle ticked beneath the faint scar along his jaw.

“Because a captain without a dragon is easily replaced, Aerynn,” Caspian said quietly, his blue eyes turning cold as stone. “My father’s house is already sitting on the ruins of my mother’s. I don’t have the luxury of staying grounded. If I don’t give the King a weapon he can’t afford to destroy, he’ll finish what he started with my line.”

Aerynn stilled, all trace of levity vanishing from his face.

I made a mental note to ask about his mother later. Now was definitely not the time.

Caspian turned his gaze back to me, locking onto my eyes. “And if you want to survive the high lords, Tauriel, you’d better learn that logic quickly. The crown doesn’t keep decorations. It keeps weapons—or it buries them.”

An uneasy tension pulled tight in my chest. Aerynn was right to be suspicious. There was a dark, complicated history tied to Caspian’s family name that I didn’t fully grasp yet, but whatever game he was playing, it ran much deeper than standard guard duties.

“You two can debate royal politics later,” I said, stepping away from the table. I needed to clear the air before the quiet in the room suffocated me. “I have another three hours of archives to get through before Manem checks my progress.”

I didn’t wait for a response. I turned on my heel and walked out of the tactical room, my boots striking the stone corridors in a steady rhythm. As I cleared the archway, the skin on my wrists hummed with a faint, lingering heat—a quiet reminder of the fire waiting at the end of the line. Caspian was playing a dangerous hand, Mal Varyn was a shadow I hadn’t figured out yet, and the edge of the cliff was getting closer every day.

FIVE

My knuckles were split again.

The skin over my right joint was raw and broken, oozing a slow, dark line of crimson that smeared against the grip of my training blade. Back in California, six hours of physical punishment could be fixed with a hot shower and a handful of ibuprofen. Here, bruises were just an accounting ledger, and Caspian was the one keeping score.

“Again,” his voice came from the edge of the ring, rough as unpolished iron.