Chapter 1 #3
I poured the remaining acknowledgments in a daze. My hands moved through the proper motions, but my mind kept circling back to that moment—Sereis's eyes on mine, the curiosity there, the unexpected warmth beneath all that ice.
When the ceremony finally ended, hours later, my feet ached and my arms trembled from holding the pitcher. But as I followed Tam back to prepare for the feast, I risked one glance back.
Sereis was watching me.
N ight fell like a curtain of smoke over the Conclave, and with it came the welcome feast—a celebration that felt more like a wake.
The great hall blazed with floating fire-spheres that cast dancing shadows across the obsidian walls, and the air hung thick with the scent of roasted meat and mounting tension.
"New pattern!" Caelus announced for the fourth time since the feast began. "Servants should move in figure-eights between the tables! No wait—spirals! Spirals represent the infinite nature of wind!"
Tam shot me a look of pure murder as we adjusted our routes again. My feet already ached from the Introduction Ceremony, and now Caelus had us essentially dancing between the Dragon Lords' tables. The other servants from different households watched with barely concealed pity.
My new circuit included Sereis's table in the far corner, where he sat completely alone.
No attendants. No guests. Just him and an untouched place setting that might as well have been decoration.
While Davoren's table overflowed with his mate's guard, while Zephyron held court with merchant princes, while even antisocial Morgrith had two shadow-cloaked advisors, Sereis occupied his space in perfect isolation.
My hands started trembling three tables away.
"Breathe," Tam murmured as our paths crossed. "He's just another Dragon Lord."
But he wasn't. Something about that stillness, that way he'd looked at me during the ceremony—like he'd seen through the collar and the servant's clothes to something I'd forgotten existed underneath.
The wine pitcher felt slippery in my grip as I approached his table. He wasn't watching me. His pale eyes focused on something in the middle distance, or maybe the middle of time—that thousand-yard stare of immortals who'd seen too much.
I positioned myself at the proper angle, pitcher raised. The wine began its arc toward his goblet—wine he wouldn't drink, food he wouldn't touch, all of this just empty ritual for someone who'd removed himself from physical needs.
"You gave your food to the younger one."
His voice stopped my pour mid-stream. The wine wavered, and I quickly finished filling the goblet before I could spill.
"My lord?"
Those pale eyes shifted to me, and this close, I could see they weren't pure white like I'd thought. There were hints of blue in them, like sky seen through ice, like the deep places in glaciers where light goes to die.
"Earlier. In the servants' quarters." His voice remained quiet, meant only for me. "You gave your bread and cheese to the girl. The new one."
My throat went dry. How could he have seen that? The servants' quarters were three levels down, solid stone between us and the introduction chamber. Unless—
"Compassion is rare in these halls." He said it like he was commenting on the weather, or the wine, or any number of meaningless things. But his eyes held mine, and there was something there that made my chest tight.
"She was hungry, my lord."
"Yes." A pause. Then, softer: "And you were not?"
The question hung between us. Such a simple thing, but the way he asked it—like my hunger mattered. Like it was worth noting. No one had asked if I was hungry in three years. Not since the selling.
"I'm used to it." The words came out before I could stop them. Too honest. Too real. You didn't give Dragon Lords pieces of yourself; they took what they wanted anyway.
But Sereis just nodded, as if that made perfect sense. "The ash wastes. You're from the territories around Mount Kerynthos."
It wasn't a question, but I nodded anyway. "Yes, my lord."
"Harsh lands engender harsh choices." His fingers moved slightly—the first gesture I'd seen him make during the feast. "And yet you choose kindness when you could choose survival. Interesting."
I risked meeting his eyes again and found something there that stopped my breath. Recognition. Like he saw past the collar, past the servant's bent spine and careful words, to whoever I'd been before. Whoever I might still be, underneath.
"If you'll excuse me, my lord." I could barely get the words out. "Other tables—"
"Of course." He inclined his head slightly. "Your . . . what does Lord Caelus call it? Your spiral of infinite wind awaits."
Was that . . . had the Ice Lord just made a joke? About Caelus's ridiculous serving pattern?
I fled before I could do something stupid like smile. But I felt his attention follow me through the rest of my circuit, cool and steady as winter starlight.
At Davoren's table, the conversation had turned sharp-edged. "—betrayals within betrayals," Davoren was saying, his golden marks pulsing with each word. "False accusations meant to undermine what ancient law has already sealed."
"The sealing seems thorough enough," Zephyron observed, gesturing to Kara's glowing marks. "Though I've heard reports of ice magic where it shouldn't be. Frozen merchant ships. Frost in summer."
Kara's hand tightened on Davoren's arm. "Someone sent assassins after me. Three of them, marked with frost-burn. That's not a false accusation—that's attempted murder."
"Many things can leave frost-burn," Garruk rumbled from his table. "Not all of them dragon-sent."
"But most of them are," Morgrith added, his shadow-touched voice carrying despite its quietness. "The question becomes . . . who benefits from such disruption?"
At his corner table, Sereis continued staring at nothing, as if the conversation didn't concern him at all. But I noticed the wine in his goblet had frozen solid.
"Disrupted territories make for disrupted trade," Zephyron mused. "And certain parties have been very interested in reshaping the traditional routes."
Caelus, who'd been rearranging his food into patterns, suddenly looked up. "Oh, are we talking about the Zarathos thing? Because that's been brewing for—"
"Lord Caelus," Davoren's voice could have melted iron. "Perhaps this is a conversation for tomorrow's formal declaration."
The Wind Lord shrugged, already distracted by a new arrangement of his vegetables. But the damage was done. Zarathos—the conquered territory where dragon magic ran wild, where humans lived under the worst kind of exploitation.
The feast continued, but the forced celebration felt more strained with each passing minute.
I moved through my spirals—which Caelus changed to concentric circles, then back to spirals—catching fragments of conversation.
Territory disputes. Trade route violations.
And underneath it all, like a bass note too low to properly hear, the word "war. "
Finally, Davoren stood. The motion was abrupt enough to make Kara stumble slightly, though she recovered with grace. His golden marks blazed so bright that several servants had to look away.
"Tomorrow," he said, and his voice carried to every corner of the hall. "All will be revealed. Every betrayal. Every deception. Every violation of ancient law."
His eyes found Sereis across the room.
"Tomorrow," Davoren continued, "justice will be served. Whether by law or by flame."
He swept from the hall with Kara beside him, leaving silence in their wake. The other Dragon Lords exchanged glances—worried, calculating, preparing for whatever storm was about to break.
But Sereis didn't move. Didn't react. Just sat there with his frozen wine and his thousand-yard stare, as if tomorrow was just another day in an endless succession of days.
T he servants' quarters felt like a tomb that night.
I lay on my thin pallet, listening to Tam's steady breathing and the distant crash of waves against volcanic rock, but sleep wouldn't come.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw pale ones looking back—ice blue with hidden depths, seeing too much, knowing too much.
Three years of serving Caelus, and no one had ever looked at me like that. Like I existed. Like my choices mattered. Like my hunger was worth noting.
"You choose kindness when you could choose survival."
The words circled in my mind like Caelus's endless serving patterns. My skin felt too tight, too warm despite the cool night air. I could still feel where his attention had rested on me, gentle as snow but somehow burning.
When exhaustion finally pulled me under, the dreams came vivid as spilled wine.
I stood in a garden that couldn't exist—ice sculptures that bloomed like flowers, each one perfect and impossible. The air tasted of winter and something else, something that made my pulse quicken. Frost patterns spread beneath my bare feet, but they didn't burn. They felt like coming home.
"You're here."
I turned, and there he was. Sereis, but not quite as he'd appeared in the great hall. His edges seemed softer here, less controlled. His white robes moved like water, like smoke, like they couldn't decide what they were. Sometimes I could see through them to skin that held its own inner light.
"I don't understand," I said, but my dream-voice sounded different. Stronger. More like who I'd been before the collar.
"No?" He moved closer, and he was dragon and man and something in between, scales and skin shifting like breathing. "You gave away what little you had. Do you know how rare that is? How many centuries I've watched, and how few choose as you chose?"
His fingers lifted to my face—I should have flinched, should have remembered my place, but this was a dream and dreams had different rules. His touch burned cold, frost blooming across my cheek in patterns like the ones on Kara's skin, but silver-white instead of gold.
"So warm," he murmured, and his voice held harmonics that resonated in my bones. "You burn so bright, little flame. Even starving, even collared, you burn."
His hand trailed down my throat, and wherever he touched, the frost patterns spread. Not claiming marks—something else, something that felt like being seen, being known, being wanted. The collar around my neck turned to ice and shattered, the fragments becoming snow that swirled around us.
"My lord—"
"No." The word rumbled through him, and suddenly he was more dragon than man, wings that were barely there wrapping around me. "Not here. Here, you call me—"
The name he gave me turned to starlight in my mouth, too beautiful and terrible to hold.
I tried to say it back to him, but it came out as a moan that should have embarrassed me.
Instead, it made him smile—such a small thing, but it transformed his face entirely.
The ice melted to reveal warmth underneath, centuries of loneliness cracking apart.
He pressed me back against something—a wall, a tree, a sculpture, I couldn't tell and didn't care.
His body covered mine, all that controlled stillness finally breaking into movement.
His mouth found my throat where the collar had been, and the sensation—ice and fire, pleasure and sweet ache—made me arch against him.
"I've been waiting," he whispered against my skin, and frost patterns bloomed everywhere he touched. My arms, my chest, down my stomach. "So long. Searching the wrong places, the wrong ways. And you were there, hidden in plain sight, burning yourself away to keep others warm."
My hands tangled in his hair—black or white, I couldn't tell anymore. Everything was shifting, changing, becoming. He touched me like I was precious, like I was powerful, like I was his and he was mine and the ancient laws of the universe had written it in stone and starlight.
"Come to me," he said, or maybe I said it, or maybe we both did. The garden around us turned to bedroom turned to sky turned to the heart of winter itself. "When this ends. When the accusations are settled. Come to me."
I woke gasping, my body aching with need I'd never felt before. Sweat soaked through my thin shift, but I was shivering like I'd been touched by winter. Between my thighs, wetness that should shame me.
But I didn’t feel ashamed.
I felt alive.