Chapter 8
T he frost patterns on my arms pulsed with their own light as I climbed the spiral stairs, each step taking me higher into the palace's rebuilt towers.
The destruction from the Dragon Lords' battle had forced the Frost Veil to remake itself, and in its rebirth, it had become something more—a living thing that breathed winter through corridors that shifted when no one was watching.
Three days since the alliance. Three days of tending Sereis while his shoulder healed from Kara’s spear, changing aurora-stained bandages that froze to my fingers, bringing him broths he pretended to drink for my sake.
He'd been precise in his recovery, measuring each improvement against some internal schedule only he understood.
This morning, he'd declared himself sufficiently healed.
Tonight, the twin moons would go dark and our pact would finally be signed.
The dress whispered against my thighs with each step, white silk that Sereis had manifested from winter moonlight or some equally impossible source. It clung to my breasts and waist before flowing loose, the hem short enough that I felt every drift of cold air against my legs.
But I wasn't cold—couldn't be cold anymore, not with the transformation singing through my veins.
The dress had been cut to display what I'd become: ice-blue patterns that had spread up my arms entirely, delicate as lace but raised slightly from the skin, creating natural armor that caught light and threw it back in rainbow refractions.
The patterns had crept up my throat too, forming a living choker that pulsed with my heartbeat.
I'd left my hair loose because he'd asked me to.
The weight of it down my back felt strange after months of severe braids, years of binding it for service.
Vulnerable, like I'd removed armor I hadn't known I was wearing.
The aurora threads that had appeared after my first transformation caught the palace's inner light, making my dark hair shimmer with colors that shouldn't exist.
The chamber door was already open when I reached it—of course it was. Sereis never made me knock, never required the formality of entrance. I was expected, awaited, wanted. The knowledge sent warmth pooling low in my belly despite everything else we had to accomplish tonight.
He'd transformed the space with obsessive precision.
Arctic fox furs covered the floor so thick my bare feet sank into them, each pelt perfectly white, perfectly placed to create a sea of warmth that contradicted the ice walls.
Cushions that I recognized as temperature-responsive were arranged in careful clusters.
They'd adjust to whoever sat on them, becoming exactly as warm or cool as the body required.
At the chamber's heart sat a low table of black ice that would never melt, carved with patterns so intricate they hurt to follow with human eyes.
The star-light from above—the chamber had been positioned to have a perfect view through a ceiling of clear ice—made the table's surface gleam like frozen void.
But it was what rested on that table that stole my breath.
The contract wasn't parchment. The dragon vellum was translucent, letting candlelight pass through it like stained glass, creating patterns on the furs that shifted with each flicker of flame.
I knew without being told that this was wing membrane, preserved and prepared through methods that probably required centuries of knowledge.
An ancient dragon had gifted this for exactly such purposes—the binding of souls across species, the creation of bonds that transcended mortal understanding.
Beside it sat the ink, silver-white in a crystal vessel that looked carved from a single frozen star. Not ink at all, I realized, but Sereis's own scales ground to powder and mixed with liquid starlight. The combination glowed with its own light, swirling in the vessel though nothing stirred it.
"You came," Sereis said from where he stood by the window, his back to me as he watched the moons' progression. He wore white robes that matched my dress, the fabric flowing like water over his lean frame. His white hair was bound in a simple tail that left the elegant line of his neck exposed.
"Did you think I wouldn't?" I moved into the room, letting the door seal behind me with a whisper of ice meeting ice.
"I thought you might reconsider." He turned finally, and his eyes—those pale depths that held winter itself—tracked over me with an intensity that made my skin prickle.
"Now that you understand what this means.
What you're binding yourself to. A Dragon Lord who hoards control like others hoard gold.
Who will dictate your bedtimes and meals, who will discipline you for disobedience, who will never let you go. "
The words should have been a warning. Instead, they sounded like promises.
"I know who you are," I said, moving closer until only the table separated us. "I've tended your wounds, heard your silences, felt your need for control that comes from centuries of everything being out of control. I know you, Sereis. And I still came."
Something shifted in his expression—surprise, perhaps, or recognition.
He moved around the table with that liquid grace that marked him as never fully human, stopping close enough that I could feel the cold radiating from his skin.
Not unpleasant cold anymore, not since my transformation.
Just the presence of winter, eternal and patient.
"You're trembling," he observed, his hand coming up to trace one of the frost patterns on my arm. The touch sent sparks through every nerve, aurora light flaring brighter where his fingers passed.
"So are you," I pointed out, catching the minute shake in his hand, the careful control that couldn't quite hide his own vulnerability.
We stood there in the chamber he'd prepared with such obsessive care, both of us trembling on the edge of something more permanent than human marriage, more binding than any earth-law.
The contract waited on its table of eternal ice, patient as winter.
Through the clear ceiling, the twin moons crept toward their dark appointment, when void would reign and bonds could be sealed that would reshape our very existence around each other.
"When the moons go dark," he said, his hand still on my arm, thumb tracing patterns that made me shiver for reasons that had nothing to do with cold, "everything changes."
"Everything already has," I replied, and felt the truth of it in my bones, in the frost patterns that marked me as his, in the way my body leaned toward him without conscious thought.
The first moon began to dim, its edge eaten by shadow. We didn’t have long to wait.
His hand moved from my arm to my hair, fingers tangling gently in the dark strands. "I've waited so long," he murmured, and I heard centuries of loneliness in those four words.
"The waiting ends tonight," I promised, and felt the chamber itself hold its breath in anticipation.
We sat facing each other across the black ice table, close enough that our knees touched through silk and wool, and the contact sent heat straight through me despite the chamber's chill.
The moons continued their slow dance toward darkness above us, casting strange shadows through the dragon vellum that seemed to move independently of the light causing them.
Sereis withdrew a second document from his robes—regular paper this time, covered in his precise handwriting that looked like frost patterns themselves. The normalcy of it, after the ancient vellum, made me realize this was perhaps more important. The Pact would bind us in magic and law, but this—
"This defines us in practice," he said, spreading the papers between us with careful fingers.
"In daily life, in all the small moments between crises.
The Pact makes you mine. This determines what that means when we wake each morning, when you push boundaries, when you need structure or I need control. "
This was the document he’d been working on for centuries.
My cheeks heated as I read the first section.
Rules, spelled out with meticulous detail.
Bedtime by the turn of the ice-clock unless otherwise permitted—my bedtime, he'd specified, not his.
Three meals daily, no skipping regardless of stress or distraction.
Regular sleep, adequate water, limits on how long I could push myself without rest.
"You've thought about this," I said, tracing one line with my finger. The rule about meals had subclauses about nutritional balance, about treats earned through good behavior, about never using food withdrawal as punishment.
"I've had plenty of time to consider what I would need, if I ever found someone." His knee pressed slightly harder against mine, deliberate contact. "These aren't arbitrary rules, Mira. Your body is mine to care for now. That means ensuring it's properly maintained."
The possessiveness in his voice made my stomach twist in complicated ways—part arousal, part trepidation, part deep relief that someone wanted to take responsibility for the things I so often neglected in myself.
"And discipline?" I asked, moving to that section though my cheeks burned hotter.
"Disobedience, primarily. But also—" his finger traced down the list, "—endangering yourself through action or inaction. Self-harm, whether deliberate or through neglect. Lying to me about your needs or your health. Pushing yourself past limits without communication."
Each circumstance had been considered, detailed.
The types of discipline varied too—impact play for deliberate disobedience, corner time for emotional dysregulation, writing lines for lying, restriction of privileges for repeated infractions.
But throughout, notes about assessment first, about understanding the why before determining the how.