Chapter 7
T he silk barely covered what it needed to cover, and even that felt like too much skin exposed to air that shouldn't have been warm but was.
Sereis had chosen it himself—ice-blue fabric that clung to curves I'd never thought about displaying, cut low enough that my collar bones felt naked, short enough that each step threatened to reveal more than I could bear to show.
His fingers had been clinical when he'd adjusted the drape, ensuring it would catch the light just so, ensuring the traders would see exactly what he wanted them to see: a prize, a pet, a distraction from their own loosening tongues.
The Amber Parlor contradicted everything about the Frost Veil.
Where the rest of the palace celebrated winter's absolute dominion, this room rebelled with warmth that made no sense.
Thermal vents had been carved through miles of glacier, channeling heat from the earth's core up through the ice without melting it—an impossibility that Sereis had made real through will and ancient engineering.
The walls glowed amber from within, as if sunset had been captured and pressed between sheets of crystallized honey.
Polar bear pelts covered every surface that might be sat upon, their white fur so thick my bare feet sank into them like snow.
Silver fox throws draped the divans, and when I brushed against one, the fur felt alive, warm, breathing with retained heat.
The contradiction made my head swim—or maybe that was the smoke already thick in the air, sweet narcotic tendrils that made thoughts slow and loose.
The traders had been here for hours. Long enough that their initial terror at being held by the Ice Master had dissolved into something dangerously close to comfort.
They sprawled across the seal-leather divans like they owned them, crystal pipes dangling from lazy fingers, cups of Winterheart Wine constantly refilled by my careful hands.
The wine was deceptive—it tasted of summer berries, sweet and light, but those berries had been preserved in ice for decades, concentrating their potency until a single cup could dizzy a grown man.
These traders were on their fourth refill.
"—and then," the lead trader wheezed through his laughter, gesturing so broadly he nearly dropped his pipe, "then the fool at the gate actually believed we were Ice Lord servants!
As if the Frost Veil employs humans for anything but—" He caught sight of me refilling his companion's cup and leered. "Well. For anything but decoration."
His eyes traveled my body with the lazy entitlement of the thoroughly intoxicated. I kept my expression neutral, submissive, empty—exactly what Sereis had instructed. Let them see what they expected to see. Let their assumptions be their weakness.
"Ingenious," Sereis murmured from his throne of living ice.
The seat had grown from the floor at his approach, shaped itself to his body, and would dissolve the moment he stood.
It never melted despite the room's warmth, because his will was stronger than physics.
"Your employer must be remarkably clever to devise such a strategy. "
The trader preened at the compliment, smoke leaking from his nostrils as he drew deep from his pipe.
"Lord S—" he caught himself, some vestige of caution still functioning.
"Our employer studied with masters of deception.
Spent three years in the Eastern Wastes, learning from those Ghost Monks who remember when dragons walked openly among men. "
Sereis's expression didn't change, but I felt the temperature drop a fraction despite the thermal vents' constant heat.
"The Eastern Wastes," Sereis mused, swirling his own wine though he never drank. "Such a journey. Such an investment. Your employer must have been planning this for quite some time."
"Years!" Another trader, middle-aged with soft hands that had never known hard work, leaned forward conspiratorially.
"He said—we weren't supposed to repeat this, but you've been so generous, Lord Sereis, and clearly you appreciate brilliance when you hear it—he said the dragon lords had grown complacent.
Too used to humans fearing them. Too confident in their ancient laws and bonds. "
The youngest trader giggled—actually giggled—into his wine.
"He paid triple rate for anyone willing to wear your colors, my lord.
Triple! For a few days' playacting. We thought him mad to spend so much gold, but look—here we sit in the Ice Lord's own palace, treated as guests rather than prisoners. His plan worked perfectly."
"Indeed," Sereis said, his voice carrying just enough admiration to encourage more revelations. "Though I confess, I'm curious about the ultimate goal. Surely not just theft, however valuable the cargo."
The lead trader's face went crafty, even through the haze of drugs and wine.
"Destabilization. Create conflict between the dragon lords.
Make them distrust each other, fight among themselves.
" He tapped his temple with one unsteady finger.
"Chaos is profitable if you know how to navigate it.
And our employer—he knows every current, every tide. "
"Show him the contract," the youngest trader slurred, fumbling with his boot. "Show the Ice Lord how much we were promised. He'll understand then—only someone with real vision would pay such sums."
"Shut up, boy," the middle-aged trader hissed, but it was too late. The young man had already produced a rolled parchment from his boot, waving it like a trophy.
"Look!" He thrust it toward Sereis, who took it with careful fingers. "Fifty thousand silver marks! Just for stealing one girl! And the seal—" he pointed with drunken pride at the wax impression, "—Lord Varek Solmar himself! The Salt Prince!"
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the narcotic smoke seemed to pause in its lazy spirals.
The lead trader's face went from flushed to pale so quickly I thought he might faint.
The middle-aged trader's cup slipped from nerveless fingers, Winterheart Wine spreading across white fur like blood on snow.
Sereis studied the contract with the patience of winter itself.
"Varek Solmar," he said, each syllable precise as breaking glass. "How fascinating. The same Lord Solmar who recently failed to retrieve his contracted bride from Lord Davoren's territory?"
The traders exchanged panicked looks, suddenly understanding that their generous host had been playing a different game entirely. The warmth of the room felt oppressive now, the smoke that had been pleasant now choking, the wine in their stomachs turning to lead.
"We should—we didn't know—" the lead trader stammered.
"No," Sereis agreed, standing from his throne with liquid grace. The ice dissolved behind him, returning to the floor without a trace. "You didn't know. But you've been so very helpful in your ignorance."
He gestured to me, and I understood. Moving to each trader in turn, I refilled their cups one last time—not with wine, but with water so pure it would burn through the intoxicants in their systems, leaving them stone-cold sober to contemplate what they'd just confessed.
"Rest now," Sereis told them, though it wasn't a suggestion. "Tomorrow, you'll repeat everything you've told me, but this time preserved in testimonial crystal that cannot lie. Lord Solmar's schemes are about to unravel in ways he never anticipated."
But there was no time to rest.
No time to preserve testimony.
No time for anything.
There was a rumble, faint at first, distant, but growing louder by the second. Sereis and I exchange worried glances. The rumble was suddenly so loud that I couldn’t think.
The wall didn't crack or crumble—it simply ceased.
One moment the Amber Parlor's perfect dome of compressed starlight held us in warm contradiction, the next it exploded inward in a rain of fragments that sang death as they fell.
Not shattered—unmade, as if five separate gods had decided this barrier shouldn't exist and reality had no choice but to agree.
They came through simultaneously, five Dragon Lords in their true forms, and my human mind tried to reject what it was seeing.
Davoren arrived as living magma, not flesh and scale but molten rock somehow holding the shape of a dragon.
His scales glowed cherry-red between cracks of obsidian that split and reformed with each movement, and the heat of him turned the air into a weapon that seared my lungs with each breath.
Where his claws touched the floor, stone liquified, creating pools of lava that would burn for days.
Zephyron manifested as barely contained storm, his scales the gray of thunderheads with lightning crackling between his wings in patterns that hurt to follow.
The electricity didn't just spark—it lived, reaching out with curious tendrils to taste everything metal in the room, making the crystal pipes sing with static.
His eyes were the white-blue of lightning strikes, and when he breathed, thunder rolled from his throat.
Garruk's arrival broke something fundamental in the palace structure.
He was too massive for the space, his mountain-form demanding room that didn't exist, forcing reality to accommodate him through will alone.
His scales weren't scales but compressed granite, each one a boulder that could crush a house.
When he moved, I heard avalanches, felt tectonic plates shifting in my bones.
The floor cracked in spider webs from his weight, fissures running up the walls like the palace itself was reconsidering its shape.