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Fjörn stood up slowly, his broad frame blocking out the pale light from the window. He did not raise his voice. He did not strike the desk. He simply looked down at me with a terrifying detachment that shattered the last remaining thread of hope in my chest.

“A dragon is an asset to the kingdom, Tauriel,” Fjörn stated coldly, every word cut from frozen stone. “Nothing more. Do not mistake political utility for personal affection. You carry my blood, but you wear my steel. Now take your orders and leave.”

A dragon is an asset. I was nothing. A dog on a leash, just as Caspian had said.

The silence in the solar turned suffocating.

I stared at him—at the King, at the ruler, at the father who looked straight through my soul and saw only a flying weapon for his war. He did not see the daughter who had bled in the mud. He did not see the child he had hidden in the dark. He saw only the Nyxalith sitting on his watchtower.

I didn’t utter another word. I reached out, snatched the heavy ledgers off his desk, and turned on my heel, my boots striking the stone floor in a sharp cadence as I walked out.

The corridor outside the solar was quiet and lined with towering marble pillars.

I marched blind, my knuckles white as I gripped the leather ledgers against my ribs, my breathing ragged.

“Tauriel.”

Aerynn stepped out from behind the shadow of a high archway, his royal blue mantle draped over his shoulders, his posture relaxed yet watchful. He carried none of the arrogance he usually wore in the training yards.

“I don’t want to talk Aeri.”

He looked at my flushed face, then down at the ledgers clutched in my hands. A long sigh left his lips.

“He gave you the border sweeps,” Aerynn said quietly. It wasn’t a question.

I stopped, my green eyes blazing as I looked at my half-brother. “He gave me work. He gave me duty. He looked at me like I was a broadsword he just pulled out of the armory.”

Aerynn took a slow step closer, his expression softening into a rare sympathy that caught me off guard. For years, Aerynn had been the favored son, the golden prince who possessed everything I was denied. Yet standing here in the cold marble hall, there was no victory in his eyes.

“I am sorry, Taur,” Aerynn said softly, his voice carrying quiet sincerity. “Truly.”

I let out a bitter, humorless laugh, turning my face away. “Save your pity, Aerynn. I don’t need it.”

“It isn’t pity,” Aerynn insisted, stepping into my line of sight, forcing me to look at him. “It is the truth. I watched you land on that beach atop a Nyxalith. I watched every lord in the realm drop to their knees before you. And I hoped—for your sake—that he would finally see you.”

Oh, he saw me.

Just not as a person, as just another piece on the board.

Aerynn reached out, resting a hand briefly on my unbranded shoulder, his touch light and brotherly.

“He is a king before he is a father, Tauriel,” Aerynn whispered, his voice tinged with an old sorrow. “He treated me the exact same way when I bonded the Azurion. To him, we are not his children. We are pieces on his war board. I am sorry I cannot give you a father who changes, but you have earned your place. Do not let him steal it from you.”

I stared at Aerynn for a long heartbeat. The resentment I had harbored toward him for years flickered, softened by the shared experience of being raised by a stone king.

“Thank you, Aeri,” I murmured, my voice raspy.

He gave me a small nod, squeezed my shoulder once, and walked down the hall, leaving me alone with the weight of my new reality.

The subterranean sparring vaults beneath the keep smelled of cold damp, crushed iron, and ozone.

“Again,” Malakai growled, his voice echoing off the vaulted stone ceilings.

I stood at the center of the sand pit, my boots sliding in the dirt as I fought to haul air into my starved lungs. My trousers were stained black with soot, my shirt damp with sweat. Opposite me, Malakai circled like a mountain panther, his broadsword resting easy in his right hand, his eyes locked onto my frame with sharp focus.

“You’re fighting it, Tauriel,” Malakai rasped, taking a slow step to his left. “You’re trying to push the light out while holding the shadow in a vice grip. They are not two separate soldiers in your blood. They are the same tide.”

“They don’t want to be the same tide!” I snapped, my jaw locked.