Chapter 36
ELARA
The heat that hit my back wasn’t weather.
It wasn’t mercy. It was a living thing, furious and intelligent, sweeping over the snow in a wave so violent it made my skin sting beneath the thin fabric of my dress.
The frost at my feet hissed and collapsed into steam, and for the first time in days, I felt something other than cold clinging to my bones.
I looked up, and the sky was no longer a sky. It was a shadow.
Wings blotted out the pale light. A massive body cut through the clouds with the kind of certainty that didn’t belong to anything mortal, and when the Dragon King descended, it wasn’t graceful. It was deliberate. It was a verdict.
The ground shook when he landed.
Snow burst upward in a wide ring as talons hit packed ice, and the air vibrated with a sound that was not a roar but an announcement.
Something ancient, something that did not ask permission to exist. Wind slammed into me hard enough to shove me back a step, my hair whipping across my face, my eyes watering instantly from the heat and the force and the sheer wrongness of seeing that much power take up space in the world.
The dragon’s scales glowed faintly beneath ash-black ridges, lit from within like a furnace behind stone, and above him, seated between spines like a throne made of bone and fire, was Valen.
He wasn’t looking at the soldiers first.
He was looking at me.
His gaze locked on mine like a chain snapping tight, and I felt it in my ribs, in my throat, in the deepest part of my body that still remembered his name like a wound.
“Elara,” he said, voice carrying over the chaos as if the world itself made room for him to speak.
The next second detonated into movement.
From the tree line, soldiers poured out in disciplined waves, armored figures spilling from the forest like it had been holding them back with clenched teeth.
From the castle wall and the broken gate behind me, Icespire’s men surged into the barrens, their steel flashing in the brittle sunlight, their boots pounding the snow hard enough to make it look like the land was trembling in fear.
Cries tangled together, commands in sharp bursts, the sound of power waking up all at once.
I didn’t have time to count faces, only to understand the shape of it. They had planned for this.
They had wanted him here.
The first ballista fired.
The sound was monstrous, wood and tension releasing with a scream, and the bolt tore through the air like a spear meant for gods.
It didn’t hit. It slammed into the snow just behind the dragon’s flank, the impact throwing ice and dirt high into the air.
The dragon reared, wings flaring wide, and the heat that rolled off him made the soldiers nearest the landing stumble back, raising arms to shield their faces as if sunlight itself had turned predatory.
Valen leaned forward in the saddle, one hand tightening around a ridge of scale, the other braced like he was holding the world steady.
“Get up here,” he snapped, voice sharp enough to cut through the noise. “Now.”
My mouth opened, but the words that came out were not brave.
“You’re going to get killed,” I said, because it was the only truth I had left to offer.
Valen’s eyes flashed, bright and furious, and his smile was not kind.
“I came anyway.”
Another ballista launched. Another shriek of wood and iron.
“Move!” Valen barked, and the dragon shifted, huge and sudden, tail sweeping, talons carving trenches into the snow as he pivoted.
A wave of fire erupted from the dragon’s mouth, not a single stream but a wide, brutal burst that washed across the ground like the world had been lit on purpose.
Soldiers screamed. Ice cracked. The air warped with heat.
The snow melted in a flash into slick black slush, and bodies stumbled and fell as the land turned treacherous beneath them.
I ran.
Not elegantly. Not heroically. I ran like a half-starved servant with her hands chained behind her back and her death still clinging to her skin.
My feet slapped raw against the thawing ice, the cold-scorched flesh protesting every step, but the dragon was right there, massive and breathing and alive, and I was so close I could feel the heat pulsing off his scales like a heartbeat.
Valen’s gaze cut downward again. “Jump,” he ordered.
“I can’t,” I shouted back, nearly slipping as a tremor shuddered through the ground from another impact. “My hands?—”
A soldier lunged from my left, blade raised.
Another from my right. I twisted, instinct dragging me sideways, and ice exploded upward from the ground in a jagged ridge between us.
It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t controlled. It was rage made physical.
The ridge caught one soldier at the knees, sending him sprawling, but the second kept coming, and I saw the moment he realized I was unarmed and decided I would be easy.
Valen moved before the blade could reach me.
He didn’t throw a weapon. He didn’t shout.
He exhaled.
A wave of heat slammed into the soldier so hard his armor glowed and his scream became something wet and horrible, and I flinched away, stomach turning, because it wasn’t that I didn’t understand violence.
It was that Valen’s violence was total. It did not leave room for mercy as an option. It was survival in its purest form.
“Get on,” Valen growled, jaw clenched, and the dragon lowered his shoulder, a massive ridge of scale and muscle dipping toward me like a ramp.
I didn’t think. I climbed.
My knees scraped against ridged scales, my dress snagging, my skin burning from the heat and the friction.
My chained hands were useless behind me, dragging my balance off, making every movement clumsy and desperate.
I almost fell, almost slid backward, but Valen reached down, caught me by the upper arm, and hauled me into the space in front of him with ruthless strength.
“You’re shaking,” he muttered, voice low in my ear.
“I’m barefoot,” I snapped back, breath tearing out of me. “I’m starving. And every kingdom wants to kill me.”
Valen’s laugh was sharp and brief, almost disbelieving.
“But you’re alive,” he said, and then his voice turned hard again. “Hold on.”
The dragon surged upward.
The lift was brutal. Wind slammed into my face so violently I could barely breathe.
The ground fell away, snow and bodies shrinking, the castle wall rising into view like the edge of the world.
Below, soldiers scattered like insects, some running toward the woods, some toward the castle, some simply stopping and staring because their minds could not process the fact that the Dragon King had landed and left with his prize still alive.
And then another ballista fired.
The bolt tore upward, fast and true, and I saw it coming in a blink of horror.
“Valen!” I screamed.
He turned his head, eyes narrowing, and the dragon twisted midair with shocking speed, wings beating hard enough to create a gust that ripped loose snow into swirling spirals.
The bolt clipped the outer edge of one wing with a sickening crunch, tearing through membrane and scale.
Dark blood sprayed into the air, scattering into the wind.
Valen hissed.
Not from fear.
From pain.
His hand went to his forearm like he’d been struck there, too, and when he pulled it back, blood was already soaking through his glove.
“You’re bleeding,” I shouted.
Valen’s voice came out strained. “He feels it. I feel it.”
The dragon roared, a sound that cracked something inside my chest, and then he beat his wounded wing again anyway, powering forward, refusing to drop.
Below us, the soldiers on the wall repositioned the ballistae with frantic speed, crewmen hauling, cranking, aiming again like their lives depended on it, because they did.
“Faster!” Valen snapped to the dragon, voice turning savage.
The dragon answered with fire.
Flame poured downward toward the wall, sweeping across the battlements in a wide arc.
Men scattered. Wood ignited. Ropes snapped.
The world below erupted into orange chaos, and the castle that had swallowed me for days suddenly looked fragile, flammable, breakable, as if it had always been one spark away from becoming ash.
For one breath, I thought we might actually make it.
Then the second ballista fired.
The bolt struck the dragon’s neck. Not deep enough to kill instantly.
Deep enough to make everything go wrong.
The impact jerked the dragon sideways mid-flight, a violent lurch that nearly threw me from the saddle.
Valen’s arm locked around me like iron, holding me in place, but I felt the dragon’s body convulse beneath us, felt the shudder of muscle and the sudden uneven rhythm of his wings.
Blood spurted in thick arcs from the wound, dark and heavy, and Valen made a sound low in his throat, like the pain had punched straight through his control.
His head dipped.
His breath stuttered.
And then I saw it. The way his eyes unfocused for half a second, the way his jaw clenched too hard, the way his grip on me tightened like he was using me to stay upright.
“Valen,” I said, voice breaking, panic rising fast. “Valen, stay with me.”
“I’m here,” he rasped, but it didn’t sound true.
The dragon’s wings faltered.
The world tilted.
We dropped a few feet, sudden and stomach-wrenching, and the cold air rushed up to meet us. Another ballista launched. The bolt rose like fate.
“No,” I whispered.
Valen lifted his head just enough to see it, his face going hard with the kind of determination that didn’t care if it killed him. “Hold,” he commanded the dragon, voice hoarse. “Hold.”
The bolt pierced the dragon’s side with a heavy, brutal thunk. The dragon screamed. A sound so enormous it made my ears ring.