Chapter 1
ELARA
Iwas kneeling beside a body I couldn’t see.
My hands were moving anyway, steady and practiced, folding something invisible into place. Aeliana’s voice murmured near my ear. “Good,” she said. “You remember.”
Pain dragged me back from sleep first, then heat, then the realization that the world was not where I left it.
I rose through darkness on the back of a creature older than time, its talons locked around my ribs like a second, merciless spine.
Wind knifed through my nightgown, ash painting my pale skin in soot-kissed streaks.
Far below, the earth churned in molten hues, a kingdom splitting open to swallow itself whole.
Ashenveil. Ancestors, I was in Ashenveil.
Storm light flashed over jagged ridges and boiling rivers, turning ruin into something almost beautiful, if beauty had claws.
The dragon’s roar split the air, so vast it rattled my bones. Smoke clawed down my throat until my lungs burned, and then, through storm and fire and terror, came the voice I loathed more than the pain.
“Stop squirming.”
Valen.
He sat astride the dragon like he’d been carved from the same primordial blaze, gold eyes glinting with the quiet violence he never bothered to hide. “Tell your beast to release me,” I screamed over the wind. “Unless watching me suffocate is your evening entertainment.”
His boastful laugh skimmed my skin, a blade deciding where to press. “Everything you do entertains me, Frostbite.”
I hated him. I seriously hated him. “Freeze off!” I screamed.
Aeliana hated when I cursed. Said it wasn’t ladylike. But this Dragon King, Valen, had murdered her. I had been used, betrayed, chained, and stolen. Cursing was the least of my problems.
I fought harder, not caring if his murderous dragon dropped me into the lava below. His gaze slid over me, slow, savoring. “If you insist on dying,” he murmured, “I prefer it be at my hands.”
“Let me go.”
His smile sharpened. “Ask prettier.”
I sucked in air and let out another scream. “Let me fucking go!”
“As you wish.”
The dragon’s talons released and I was yanked into the roaring void between earth and heavens. Wind tore the breath from my chest, the sky a blur of smoke and flame, and then a shadow cleaved through the fall.
Valen reached out and caught me mid-plunge, the force slamming us together on the back of his dragon, heat consuming every inch of cold left in me as we soared. “Reckless,” he breathed against my cheek.
“Put me down!” My words battled the wind to be heard.
“No.”
“I said put me down!”
“And I said no.” His fingers curled at the back of my neck. Steady, claiming, and terrifyingly sure. “Struggle again and I might drop you for real. We’ll see whether the ground breaks before you do.”
“Don’t you dare, or I’ll… I’ll…” I started, the words catching on my tongue like a shard of ice I couldn’t swallow.
Because what was I supposed to say?
Or I’ll stab you? With what, exactly? My nails? My pride? The last ragged thread of dignity I’d been dragging around like a blanket that became threadbare months ago?
Valen tilted his head, studying me like a puzzle he intended to break before solving. Slow. Methodical. Like he had all the time in the world to decide which part of me to unravel first.
“You’ll what?” he asked. “Freeze me? Kill me?”
His voice dropped, molten and amused, like heat curling around my throat. The kind of sound that didn’t belong in a frozen room. The kind that made my skin remember it was still alive.
“Earn my attention?”
A soft hum rolled through the air.
It wasn’t loud. It didn’t have to be.
It crawled through my bones anyway.
“Frostbite,” he murmured, almost fond, almost mocking. “Threats land better when you’re not shaking.”
I clenched my hands so hard my nails bit into my palms. “I’m shaking from rage.”
His mouth twitched. “Lie prettier.”
I hated him.
I hated the way he looked at me like I was something he could take apart.
I hated the way my body wanted to flinch and lean in at the same time, caught between instinct and idiocy.
And I hated most of all that he could see it. Every ugly, human tell. Every trembling breath. Every flicker of fear I refused to name out loud.
My chin lifted anyway, even if the motion cost me. “Say one more thing, and I swear to the ancestors, I’ll make you regret it.”
Valen’s gaze dropped to my mouth like it was the only honest part of me, then returned to my eyes.
“Mm,” he said softly. “There you go.”
Like I was performing. Like he was enjoying the show.
Like he’d already decided I belonged in his hands.
The dragon tucked its wings, plunging toward the scorched cradle of his kingdom. Heat climbed in spiraling currents, glowing against Valen’s skin like a brand the world had placed there. My stomach lurched. My ribs throbbed where the talons had held me through the night.
Then, impact.
The landing hit hard enough to jolt my teeth. Embers flared around us, spinning in a storm of red gold sparks. The ground trembled beneath the dragon’s weight, but Valen grabbed me and dismounted as though gravity bowed for him alone.
The moment we landed on solid earth, I shoved hard at his chest, separating us. “You bastard.”
A slow, dangerous sound rumbled in his throat. He stepped toward me, firelight cutting edges across his cheekbones, along the predatory line of his jaw.
“I love when you call me names,” he murmured. Not teasing. Testing. Like he wanted to feel whether my hatred could keep its balance once it was forced to breathe the same air as him.
I hated the Dragon King. I hated the merciless curve of his mouth, the way his gaze assumed ownership before I’d ever given consent.
I hated how he moved through my life like a force of nature, uninvited and unstoppable, taking what mattered and calling it destiny.
Nothing survived the wake of his attention, not innocence, not certainty, not choice, and I was standing directly in the path of it.
Footsteps thundered through the courtyard, a coordinated quake of metal on stone. Ashenveil soldiers appeared between the rising embers. Their helmets were blacksteel molded into snarling dragon jaws, runes pulsing faintly along their gauntlets as if the armor itself could forge fire.
“Dominus, we welcome you home,” they said before kneeling before us.
That word struck differently than Dragon King. Older. Not a title earned, but one taken and enforced until the world learned to kneel around it.
Valen didn’t look at them, not once. His focus never left me, dark and unblinking, pinning me in place. It felt deliberate, intimate in the worst way, as though he were daring me to flinch.
“I see the target is secured,” one of them said, voice reverent with fear.
The words slid over my skin like ice water.
A target. I was nothing more than a tactical acquisition.
The soldiers moved like a single organism, boots striking stone in a rhythm that felt older than the mountain itself.
“Iceborn scouts sighted near the northern ridge,” one reported.
“We received word from Night Consort Isolde that Emberfall battalions marshal at dawn,” another added, and my blood boiled at the mention of her. Isolde—Ciaran’s wife and my betrayer. How deep was she involved with Valen?
“The kingdoms gather steel at their borders,” a third finished, bowing lower than the rest.
Their reports weren’t mere updates. They were omens, spoken with the ritual cadence of people who believed war itself was a living thing. The air vibrated with their words, with the heat rolling off their armor, with the weight of a kingdom watching me, measuring me, resenting me.
When Valen turned to face me, the movement alone shifted the soldiers’ posture. They bore fear, hate, and something deeper that rippled through them like a bow pulled taut, all directed at me.
His voice cut through the air, soft but absolute. “Come, Frostbite.”
The words curled through the courtyard like smoke given a command. The soldiers didn’t rise. They remained kneeling, helmets bowed, runes glowing faintly along their gauntlets, waiting to see if I would bend like heat-warped metal or shatter like ice.
“No.”
The word left my mouth like a knife thrown on instinct, far too loud for a kingdom that belonged to him. For a heartbeat, even the embers suspended in the air seemed to hesitate, hovering in the heat-laden wind as if Ashenveil itself wanted to hear what I would do next.
Valen tilted his head, slow and deliberate, like he was studying a creature that had just shown its teeth. That predatory half smile spread across his mouth, sinful in its certainty.
“Oh, Elara,” he murmured. “Defiance suits you. It still won’t help.”
Something in my chest tightened, not with fear, but with the sickening awareness that he enjoyed this. That he liked it when I pushed, when I refused, when I tried to pretend I wasn’t standing at the center of his trap.
I forced my spine straighter. I made my hands stay still at my sides. I refused to step back, even though every part of the mountain seemed to lean toward him.
“You expect me to follow you?” I asked, and hated the way my voice almost shook.
Valen’s gaze dropped, briefly, to my throat. To the pulse there. To the proof I was alive and furious and not nearly as steady as I wanted to be.
“Expect?” He stepped close and the temperature around us climbed. “No. Expectation implies doubt.” His breath brushed my ear, molten and unhurried. “I know you’ll follow. What other options do you have?”
The truth slid between my ribs like a needle dipped in poison.
“I’d rather take my chances in the lava,” I snarked.
He gave a soft, delighted hum and stepped aside with a gesture so dramatic it bordered on reverent mockery.
The soldiers remained motionless, spectators to my impending stupidity.
“Then by all means,” he murmured, sweeping an arm toward the churning rivers of molten gold beyond the courtyard, “march to your death. The lava fields are beautiful this time of year.”
I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
Valen arched a brow, victory glinting in those golden eyes. “No?”
I glared.