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She snickered. “Maybe.”

“Fine, then. I’ll allow you to love me.” I sounded like an asshole and knew it.

“Oh, he’s smirking again. Now, there’s the Blake I know,” she muttered, rolling her eyes. “What a relief.”

“Wait, you need to know this, Pendragon.” I took a deep breath. “I worship you. I serve only you. From the beginning until the end, you are it for me. You alone, for all my days. Nothing and no one else will ever claim me.”

She held very still. Then she said, “There’s been a lot of talk of burning the world down, but I don’t want ashes at my feet. I want your hand in mine as we make this world into something better.”

She kissed me gently—but I could feel something lingering there, something she wasn’t saying. Still, I didn’t argue. I just held her there in the safety of the dark, my wings raised around us.

Chapter 23

KAGE

A warm breeze blew through the tall arched windows as I strode down the corridor. Someone had thrown the windows open at some point earlier in the day. The air smelled like salt from the sea and green, budding life. Laughter drifted around me as students rushed by, heading to class or study halls.

A student bumped me hard, and the mug of kava they were holding sloshed over the edge and onto my dark gray jacket. They stared at the spot on my lapel in horror, the kava dribbling down their hand. “S-s-sorry, House Leader.”

I glared at them. Then I noticed the blue and silver First Year colors they wore. Dwarven, too. They looked like they wanted to melt right through the stones. I imagined what my face must look like and decided to take pity on them. “It’s fine,” I said gruffly. “Get a move on. Watch where you walk from now on, First Year.”

“I will, House Leader,” they assured me, their voice a high-pitched squeak. “I swear I’ll be more careful.”

I didn’t respond, just moved on. I flexed my shoulders as I walked. My body felt good. Healed. The torn flesh in my chest had closed. The pain was just a memory now. Lysander had stressed how severe my wounds had been. I had scars that might even last. For now, I treasured them. They were a reminder of her.

Weeks had passed since I’d last seen Regan. Since Viktor had taken her away. Weeks of fruitless searching that had led absolutely nowhere. Lysander and I had torn through maps, dispatched scouts, called in favors. The maps were still spread out over the tables in Lysander’s room. We marked and remarked them almost every night. We’d gone out searching ourselves whenever we’d been able to get away. Lysander had been using his special abilities—the ones Orphos kept such a closely guarded secret. But Viktor Drakharrow remained a ghost, and Regan a ghost along with him.

Then there was the matter of Veilmar. For a while there, I’d thought I might be the last of my line, but I should have known Elaria Avari would be harder to kill. My mother hadn’t been as lucky. They found her body a few days after the fires were put out, pulled from the rubble of the Avari estate. My grandmother and I had gone to identify her. She’d looked so small lying there, wrapped in a white sheet. My grandmother had sworn vengeance, but secretly I wondered who most deserved our revenge. Because unlike my grandmother, I knew the truth: Viktor Drakharrow hadn’t destroyed Veilmar, his nephew had done that. Sure, Blake had been commanded to do it. And sure, he was supposedly being controlled by Vorago. Medra and Rodriguez had told me all that, and I believed them, but didn’t Blake still bear some responsibility for what he’d done? It had been him, not Viktor, who’d swept over Veilmar and laid the Avari compound to rubble, killing my mother inside it. Yes, Blake had been dragged there by Viktor’s greed and cruelty, but he’d done the burning and the breaking and the killing.

He’d asked me for help with his dragon before, but I’d balked at sharing Avari secrets. I’d honestly thought he’d figure it out on his own. That, or wind up dead. How was I supposed to know he’d use blood magic and accidentally invite an ancient Inferni to share his soul and body with him? Truthfully, these days, it shouldn’t have really surprised me. It was the dull and ordinary moments that were the real surprise. Besides, it didn’t matter, did it? I couldn’t squeeze my hands around Blake Drakharrow’s throat even if I wanted to. He’d disappeared just like Viktor. If I wanted to be sympathetic—which I didn’t—I might even say he’d been abducted by a dragon, too, like Regan.

I gave a bitter laugh, and some students walking a little too close jumped away, looking like startled sea gulls on a beach.

As soon as I’d left the Orphos infirmary, my real life had crashed down hard. I had House Leader duties. School council meetings and rebuilding committee meetings chaired, of course, by my grand-mother. She’d even stuck me on the Dragon Oversight Committee that seemed like a joke considering the circumstances. I was held together by sheer force of will—and by Lysander. Without Lysander Orphos, I’d have been lost. He reminded me to hold fast to hope. He reminded me that Regan was still out there—alive. And she needed us. With every day that passed, she needed us more, even if she didn’t know it yet.

Belatedly, I realized something was happening. Around me, the corridor was breaking into chaos—students running to the windows, dropping books and bags as they collided with one another in their eagerness to look outside. There were shouts and screams. A student turned from the window and started to run past me, his face deathly white.

I grabbed him by the shoulder. “What is it?”

The boy’s breathing was rapid. “T-two dragons.”

I released the boy and shoved my way over to the window, not bothering to move aside the students who were already at the front. I could see over their heads anyway. I looked out at the sea and saw them. The first I recognized immediately—Nyxaris with his obsidian wings. He was far away, but I thought I glimpsed a rider on his back, which would be Florence. The other dragon was red, obviously an Inferni. But which one? With the sunlight reflecting off the red dragon’s scales, I couldn’t tell.

“Bloodmaiden! Will you look at that,” a student nearby me shouted.

There were gasps and screams as the red dragon began to chase the black. We watched as bolts flew into the sky from somewhere below the castle. The red dragon was wounded. We saw it swoop low, then disappear. There was a moment of stunned silence.

“Is it gone?” a highblood girl whispered from behind me.

I turned to tell her it seemed to be over, that everything was all right. Then, someone else screamed. I turned around.

“Oh, Bloodmaiden,” someone moaned.

“What happened?” I demanded.

“Another bolt. It went toward Nyxaris,” a boy cried.

“Where did the bolt come from?” I asked the crowd.