Chapter 41
SERENNA
“She-elf!” Fenn’s voice rang through the nursery cavern, a salt cave carved high into the cliffs above Asharyn’s lake. “She’s doing it again—watch!”
Serenna turned just as a flicker of gold puffed from Vasharax’s tiny jaws, more steam than flame. The hatchling spread her wings, chest thrust forward as though she’d unleashed the wrath of an elder wyrm.
“Oh, she thinks she’s terrifying,” Serenna said, a grin breaking free.
“She is terrifying,” Fenn insisted, crouching low in the sand as he gestured theatrically around the chamber.
Sunlight filtered through honeycomb vents in the stone overhead, casting shifting hexes around them.
“Utter menace. Nearly incinerated that moss. Gnawed a crack in that rock. I nearly perished when she pounced on me.”
Vasharax trilled, the chirrup cracking into a growl as she hurled herself at him—frills flared, jaws open, every ounce of her ferocity bent toward the charge.
Fenn vanished in a warp and reappeared sprawled in the sand behind her. “A valiant attempt,” he chuckled as she spun to face him.
Hissing, Vasharax descended on him, clamping his hair between her fangs and thrashing her neck in a wild shake.
Fenn’s laughter broke off into a wince as he fought to pry her loose from his braids. “Vicious instincts.”
Serenna shook her head. While Vasharax couldn’t yet press her voice into their minds like Cinderax, the hatchling communicated in other ways. Primarily with fangs and claws.
Yet even watching Vasharax’s bright flurry, the amused warmth in Serenna’s chest dwindled as her gaze drifted past them toward the cavern’s heart.
Suspended between heat and shadow, Cinderax stood sentinel over the nine Emberhart eggs resting in their shallow hollows. Beside him, Velinya knelt, casting a thin ribbon of fire in a sweeping arc to refresh the warmth without letting it scorch the clutch.
The same flame that had once answered for Serenna.
Cinderax hadn’t pried or let his molten eyes linger on her amethyst-stained wings long enough to burn. But his silence carried no absolution, only a muted glow of acknowledgment, banked like coals.
Skylash hadn’t left room for wondering. She’d snarled her vow through fangs and lightning, swearing to tear the tempest from Serenna’s bones if she so much as considered reaching for a different boon.
And somehow, Cinderax’s silence cleaved deeper than Skylash’s threats, leaving Serenna unsure if she still belonged in this cavern—among the flames and the hatchlings who would be born to it—when all she carried now was the storm’s restless spark.
Velinya continued turning each shell, but Serenna’s attention kept snagging on the separate ring of eggs—twelve in all.
The Unbound.
After regenerating their magic and recovering from the battle, she and Fenn had hauled the clutch from the mountain in the Maw. The night before, Vesryn had helped shatter their crystal prisons with sunfire, restoring the eggs to a world where time could touch them again.
Steam unfurled from Cinderax’s nostrils, curling upward in hazy spirals. His eyes lingered on one of the Emberhart eggs rocking gently in the sand. Lowering his neck, he breathed a narrow coil of flame around it.
From within, a wavering chirp answered—soft as a whisper, yet sharp enough to pierce the chamber and the center of Serenna’s heart.
“He stirs,” Cinderax rumbled in her mind. “By sundown, he’ll see the sky.”
He padded toward the circle of Unbound eggs, and Serenna hesitantly followed. Approaching the clutch, she knelt beside him, the question rising before she could halt it.
“Since I don’t carry your gift anymore,” she began, voice unsteady with doubt, “should someone else be First Keeper of the Cradle Flame?”
Heat rolled from Cinderax’s hide as he turned from the Unbound, his crimson eyes striking hers.
“The title is about guardianship,” he said. “Choosing to tend what cannot yet tend itself.”
“Even if I carry Skylash’s gift now?” Serenna asked, the storm in her chest pulling tight.
“You’re still scalebound.” Cinderax adjusted one of the eggs with the curve of his snout. “The flame didn’t make you worthy. Your willingness did. You stepped into a future not yet kindled and agreed to carry the ember of its becoming.”
The words should have reassured her. Instead, they slipped into the static where her fire had once burned, dissipating into the hollow the storm had gouged behind her ribs.
Serenna let her hand hover over the heated sand, then swept aside the narrow trench of flame with her connection to the earth. As Velinya had done, she rotated one of the Unbound eggs.
The shells all gleamed like the Emberhart clutch, but beneath the casing, she sensed only silence. No flicker of fire or charge of lightning. No whisper of wind or water or earth. Nothing waiting to bloom or burn.
“Skylash demanded this entire clutch be claimed as Stormstrikes,” Serenna murmured, flattening her palm against the next shell before turning it over.
A low snarl rumbled from Cinderax’s throat, the frills along his crown flaring.
“Skylash seeks a legacy hatched from her greed—a twisted bargain to feed her pride.” Heat shimmered in the air around his fangs.
“To claim all of these Unbound as Stormstrikes is not balance. But she has seen fit to make you her instrument.”
Serenna dipped her head in acknowledgment, accepting his fury without defense. Cinderax had given his gift freely, without demand or condition, and she’d traded it.
But she knew, just as surely as a storm would strike, that Skylash’s aid would be bought in two currencies—her mate’s freedom and this clutch of hatchlings.
Serenna had flown into that agreement aware its cost would follow her long past its payment.
She didn’t know how Skylash expected her to carry it out, only that the terms were unbreakable.
“Skylash…implied that I have the power to influence what these eggs will become,” Serenna said at last, unsure whether Cinderax would share the truth or guard it close.
“My ancestors forged the scalebound pact with humans and Aelfyn out of necessity,” he said, the weight of centuries heavy in his voice.
“The Unbound—those forged from cross-elemental lineages, fire and wind, earth and water, or any combination—enter the world with no inheritance. No power sings in their blood.”
He eased back onto his haunches, a ripple of heat shifting with him.
“The skies set no laws against such pairings, even when the bloodlines shape us into different forms. If they hatch, the Unbound young would fly, hunt, endure. But they would do so as beasts, bereft of the magic and memory that have made my kind more than fang and claw. Together with the scalebound, we created balance. A sacred interdependence.”
Across the cavern, Vasharax sprang at Fenn again, a golden flicker of mist steaming from her jaws. Every bright trill, every frantic beat of her wings, carried the effortless promise of a fire yet to burn.
Serenna’s gaze settled back on the Unbound clutch. “And I can shape these Unbound as Stormstrikes to fulfill my…arrangement with Skylash? Why didn’t she just do it?”
Cinderax’s eyes caught a shaft of sunlight as they drifted past her to Velinya, who rose from tending the Emberharts, her steps soundless as she departed the cavern.
“When my kind creates a scalebond,” he said, refocusing on her, “we offer our gift, and you choose whether to accept it. But if we try to force that power on the Unbound, we scorch the mind.” Steam rose from his claws as his talons curled in the sand.
“Even if they were to hatch with our gifts, they would be beasts with power but no control. Such dragons nearly broke the world once, and my kind will not tempt that ruin again. Not even Skylash.”
The scales along his spine lifted and settled again. “All it takes is your spark. The hatchling inside will cling to the scalebond’s gift and become.”
They both watched Fenn wrestling in the sand with Vasharax for a moment before Cinderax murmured, “Your magic is more tempered than that of a dragon—you can stand in for the hatchling, your power becoming the first shape in the dark.”
Serenna trailed her fingers across the nearest shell, tracing where warmth pooled as though the dragon inside pressed closer to meet her palm. An unwelcome thought unfurled, how easily a single touch of lightning might reorder a future.
“So they don’t get a choice?”
“Do any of us?” Cinderax rumbled. “We do not choose the line that bore us. But what we become… That is wrought from how we wield the power we hold.” His inner eyelids swept over molten irises as they narrowed on the clutch.
“And now is the time to shape them. Before hatching begins. Two are close—less than a sunrise away.”
Serenna’s throat tightened beneath the weight of steering a future that did not belong to her, yet she nodded.
Shifting on her knees, she settled deeper into the warm sand and drew a slow breath. Reaching inward, she coaxed the spark from her chest. Violet lightning gathered in her palm, arcing along her fingers. She extended her hand, steering her power gently to the shell’s surface.
The current leapt, veining across the egg before tunneling like roots burrowing into soil. A pulse stirred like a heartbeat—a faint flicker at first, then gathering strength.
From within, light bloomed. A muted shimmer swelled and flared bright before collapsing into darkness.
Serenna exhaled slowly as the echo of her spark hummed in her chest. Before she could reach for the next egg, Cinderax’s head cocked toward the cavern’s mouth.
“The one who scowls at every shadow approaches,” he murmured, amusement simmering at the edge of his voice. “For one who left fire behind, he always burns.”
Serenna knew who he meant before pressure gathered like a storm drawing breath. A cold draft followed, winding through the heated cavern as though frost prowled ahead of him.