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Dax let out a low, satisfied grunt, stepping out of the ranks with a swagger that even the King’s presence couldn’t suppress. He marched up the steps, received his brand with a sharp bark of a laugh, and took his place.
Fifteen names. Sixteen. Seventeen.
The remaining spots on the sea-drakes were vanishing like blood in winter snow. Around me, candidates gripped the hilts of their weapons, their faces pale as the realization set in. They were being left behind in the stone keep while the elite sailed for glory. Or a grave.
“Princess Tauriel Drakhar of the Royal Bloodline,” the Grand Mage called out, his voice sharp and unyielding.
Here we go.
I took a steadying breath, forcing the panic out of my head as I stepped out of the ranks. Hundreds of eyes locked onto my back. Some burning with resentment, others heavy with contempt. To them, I was just the half-breed princess receiving a premium seat simply because of my royal name.
They weren’t wrong.
But they were ignorant of the brutal truth. This selection wasn’t a privilege. It was a calculated sentence designed to break me piece by piece.
I marched up the marble steps, the wind whipping my copper-red waves as I stopped before the ancient mage. I braced myself as the glowing silver stamp descended, pressing hard against the leather of my right shoulder. A sudden, white-hot flash of agony shot straight down my arm as the magic branded itself into my skin, the scent of burning leather filling my lungs.
It left no ordinary burn. The stamp hit my flesh not with the familiar heat of an orange flame, but with a sub-zero luminescence. A violent flash of compressed ice and molten starlight that seared itself directly into my life force. As the white smoke cleared and the heat receded, the flesh beneath the ruined leather was permanently altered, left with a raised, shimmering scar that looked like a vein of mercury embedded in the skin.
The design was a testament to the ancient laws of the North. At its center sat a vertical line cut through by a jagged diamond, mirroring both the slitted gaze of a dragon’s eye and the silhouette of a frozen mountain peak. Enclosing that core was a thin ring representing the moons of Nymeria. Radiating outward were interlocking, angular runes—the ancient northern sigils for The Hunted and The Bound—anchoring the trial’s blood-contract directly to my pulse. The moment the mountain air bit at the fresh scar, the silver lines began to wake, pulsing with a low, cold light.
I didn’t cry out. I locked my jaw, forcing the pain behind a mask of defiance as I turned to take my place among the chosen.
I looked out over the remaining guard from the high dais as the final names were read.
“The twenty are chosen,” the Grand Mage announced, hurling the heavy scroll into the brazier beside the throne, where it was consumed by emerald fire. “The midnight tide waits for no male. Prepare your souls for the crossing. The North demands blood, and the Drakoryn do not accept the weak.”
The assembly broke, the rigid ranks dissolving into a rush of final preparations. I turned, scanning the dark yard for Caspian, but he was already moving—his tall, leather-clad form descending the back steps of the dais, heading toward the lower docks where the sulfur-burning engines of the sea-drakes were roaring to life in the dark.
The sky above had turned to a bruising midnight black, the three silver faces of the moons rising over the mountain peaks to bleed a cold light across the stone.
There was no going back. We were leaving. Tonight.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The descent to the lower docks was a march through a living purgatory.
The stone stairs winding down the exterior cliffside were slick with black ice, every step a calculated gamble against the howling northern wind. The heavy leather rucksack weighed down my back, the iron straps digging into the fresh, raw burn on my right shoulder. The silver brand didn’t just ache; it vibrated. The symmetrical diamond and the runes for The Hunted and The Bound pulsed, reacting to the ambient magic of the turning solstice tide.
The air grew heavier, choked with the foul stench of burning sulfur, old brine, and the predatory musk of the beasts waiting in the dark below.
When my boots hit the wet timber of the lower shoreline, the sheer scale of the deployment knocked the remaining breath from my lungs. The harbor was a shadow-drenched scene of steel and sea.
Moored to massive stone pylons were two towering vanguard command ships—colossal vessels built of black oak and reinforced iron. Their hulls groaned against the rising tide, inscribed with protective sigils that glowed with a faint, defensive amber light. These ships were the anchors of the expedition, carrying heavy supplies, high mages, and the equipment required to establish a base camp on the desolate islands.
But we weren’t boarding the ships.
Stretched out in a thrashing line along the specialized slipways was the creatures of the deep: the sea-drakes.
They were terrifying, amphibious beings of muscle and malice. Each beast spanned forty feet of sleek, hydrodynamic muscle, covered in iridescent cerulean scales kissed with emerald. They possessed long, serpentine necks, webbed talons capable of tearing through iron sheeting, and powerful, multi-jointed tails designed to propel them through the water at unnatural speed. Their eyes were horizontal slits of burning phosphorescent green, cutting through as they snapped at the iron tethers holding them to the docks.
Leather saddles were bolted directly into the thick, bony ridges of their spines, secured by massive iron rivets surgically anchored to their frames. There were no reins or stirrups—only two reinforced iron handles welded to the pommel of each saddle.
“Look at them,” Dax’s voice cut through the roar of the surf as he stepped up beside me, his green eyes reflecting the wild glow of the beasts. He checked the straps of his heavy leather gauntlets, a sharp smirk splitting his features. “They aren’t mounts, Taur. They’re swimming executioners. If you lose your focus for a single second, they’ll roll in the deep and drown you just to clear the weight.”
“That’s the point,” a gravelly, dominant voice rumbled from the shadows behind us.
I didn’t need to turn around to know it was Caspian. The sudden shift in air temperature, the way the ambient cold seemed to deepen and wrap around my space. It was his signature footprint. He strode past us, a towering monolith of black steel and vanguard leathers. The honeyed darkness veining his golden hair looked sharper under the moons, his features cut from pure, impenetrable ice.
