Chapter 2 #3
His control, that perfect stillness he wore like armor, shattered completely. His eyes went wide, pupils blown black with shock that transformed into something else—determination that made the mountain itself tremble.
The bond didn't ask permission. It simply was, slamming into place with the force of natural law. Mine to his. His to mine. Written in frost and fire, sealed in magic older than the dragons themselves.
Through the connection, I felt his thoughts—not words but understanding. He'd been falsely accused, evidence planted, and none of that mattered anymore because I was here, I was his, and he would burn the world before he let anyone take me.
The ice marks reached my throat, and when they touched the collar—Caelus's collar, the thing that marked me as property—it shattered. Not cracked, not broken—shattered into dust finer than snow, dispersing into nothing like it had never existed at all.
I was on my knees in front of him, my hand still pressed to his chest through wine-soaked fabric, and I could feel his heartbeat through the bond—steady as winter, inexorable as glaciers, but underneath it something wild, something hungry, something that had been frozen for centuries suddenly, violently thawing.
The truth-wine pitcher fell from my other hand, shattering on the volcanic glass floor with a sound like breaking bells.
And Sereis moved.
Through the bond, I felt him shatter and reform into something else entirely.
"MINE."
The word didn't come from his throat—it came from somewhere deeper, carried on harmonics that predated language.
The volcanic glass walls cracked. Every piece of metal in the hall sang.
The other Dragon Lords stepped back, even Davoren, because this wasn't a claim—it was a fundamental rewriting of reality.
Caelus jerked forward, outrage overcoming his usual theatrical nature. "She's my property! Ancient law states that servants bound by collar and contract—"
"Mine." Softer but somehow worse, like the quiet before an avalanche. Sereis's eyes had gone pure white, not pale but white, as if winter itself looked through them. "She bears my mark. The bond has chosen. Your collar is dust, and your claim is void."
"You can't just—the trial isn't even—Davoren, tell him—"
But Davoren stood frozen, his fury suddenly redirected.
"The trial," Morgrith's shadow-voice observed with something like dark amusement, "has become significantly more complicated."
Sereis's hand covered mine where it still pressed against his chest. His skin burned cold, but through the bond I felt the careful control he maintained even as everything else shattered—gentle with me, so gentle despite the rage building like an avalanche.
"The trial," he said, and his voice harmonized with itself, becoming something that transcended sound, "is over."
He didn't transform—he exploded.
One heartbeat he was a man in wine-stained robes. The next, reality itself seemed to tear as something massive erupted into being. The throne shattered beneath him. The platform cracked. Dragon Lords who'd thought themselves prepared scrambled back as air displaced with thunderous force.
The dragon that replaced Sereis defied comprehension.
Scales like captured aurora borealis, shifting between blues and greens and colors that didn't have names.
Each scale contained its own inner light, as if stars had been frozen mid-death and forged into armor.
Wings that seemed made from frozen starlight itself, translucent and solid at once, impossible geometries that hurt to perceive directly.
His eyes remained white, but now they were the white of the empty places between stars, the white of absolute zero, the white of endings and beginnings.
He was beautiful. He was terrible. He was mine, the bond sang, as surely as I was his.
His roar turned the truth-wine to ice in every goblet. Created a blizzard in the enclosed space, snow manifesting from nothing. The volcanic heat that should have made ice impossible here simply . . . stopped mattering. His will overwrote physics.
Caelus invoked ownership law, shouting about contracts and possession and the price he'd paid. Davoren roared something about the trial, about justice, about ancient law. Other Dragon Lords called for order, for reason, for restraint.
Sereis ignored them all.
One talon wrapped around me—claws longer than my entire body but gentle, so gentle I barely felt the pressure. He lifted me like I weighed nothing, cradled against scales that should have frozen me solid but felt like coming home through the bond.
Then he looked up at the volcanic glass ceiling, that perfect sphere that had contained Dragon Lord conclaves for a thousand years.
And he went straight through it.
The ceiling didn't break—it fractured, erupted, ceased. A million rainbow fragments fell like deadly rain, each piece singing a different note as centuries of embedded magic released at once. The sound was beautiful and terrible, like the world's most violent symphony.
Wind hit me hard enough to steal thought, but Sereis's talon curved, creating a pocket of still air. We rose through smoke and shattered glass and the chaos of seven Dragon Lords shouting at once. His wings—those impossible wings of frozen starlight—beat once, twice, and we were above it all.
The last thing I saw through the destroyed ceiling, before distance and dragon-flight stole it away: Caelus's outraged face, red with fury at losing his property.
Davoren's dawning realization that something far more significant than his accusation had just occurred.
Morgrith's shadows writhing with what might have been laughter.
Garruk's deep sorrow, as if he'd known this would happen.
And Kara.
Kara was smiling. Just slightly, just barely, but unmistakably smiling.
Like she recognized something in this impossible escape, this violent claiming.
Like she understood what it meant to be chosen so completely that ancient laws and Dragon Lords and the world itself became secondary to the claiming.
Her hand rested on her stomach, over the life growing there, and her golden marks pulsed in time with something that looked like approval.
Then Sereis banked hard, wings catching wind that shouldn't exist at this altitude, and the Conclave vanished behind us. Ahead lay the Northern Range, his territory of ice and isolation.
No—our territory now. The bond sang it with every wingbeat, every breath, every impossible moment.
I was no longer a servant. No longer property. No longer Miraof the ash wastes who'd been sold to pay grain debts.
I was Sereis's mate, marked by ice and claimed by winter.