A Court Of Mist And Flames Chapter 1
PRESENT DAY
Katama’s wings beat a steady rhythm over the sea, each downstroke pushing a cold sheet of air across my face and tugging at the hood of my travel cloak.
Below us, the coast of Earendall ran like a dark seam between slate water and winter-burned land.
The ocean smelled clean up here, distant enough to pretend it had never swallowed screams.
Amdar had not smelled clean.
Amdar had smelled like brine and smoke and something worse, something that sat behind your tongue and made you taste metal when you tried to breathe.
Remy sat in front of me in the saddle, relaxed in a way that always looked like arrogance until you watched him fight.
Then it became something else. A kind of economy.
A refusal to waste motion or mercy. His gloved hands rested on the reins that were more ceremonial than necessary.
Katama didn’t need guidance. Katama chose a line through the sky the way a blade chose a seam.
“You’re quiet,” Remy said without looking back.
“I’m cold,” I lied.
He gave a sound that might have been a laugh if he’d ever allowed himself one. “You’ve been colder. I watched you stand waist-deep in Amdar’s surf because you refused to admit the tide-caves were flooding.”
“I refused to give you the satisfaction of being right.”
“That’s the closest thing to affection you’ve ever offered me, princess.”
I pressed my forehead to the back of his shoulder for half a heartbeat, just to prove I could touch someone without breaking. “If I start being nice, the sky might crack.”
“The sky cracks all the time in Warriath.”
“Not like that.” My fingers tightened around the strap that kept me anchored to the saddle. “How long until we land?”
“Soon.” His tone shifted, subtle as a blade turning in the light. “I need to deliver reports to your father and to your mother. You are the fastest excuse.”
I didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Remy could have flown to Warriath on his own.
He could have arrived with his grim mouth and those folded papers and his careful phrasing.
But bringing me meant the gates opened. It meant no one questioned why he came straight to the royal compound instead of presenting himself to whatever committee was currently pretending it controlled the kingdom.
I was a key he could carry without drawing blood.
I should have resented it.
Instead, a quieter part of me was grateful to have been carried at all.
“I’m looking forward to seeing Soren,” I said, because if I didn’t give my mind a safer track it would veer into the dark. “He’ll complain that I missed sparring week.”
Remy’s shoulder shifted with the motion of Katama’s glide. “You missed more than sparring week.”
“I missed Galene’s face when she lost at cards.”
“She never loses.”
“She loses. She just makes you believe it was your fault.”
“I’m still not sure how she does that.”
“You’re not supposed to,” I said. “That’s part of her charm.”
The wind found the gap beneath my cloak and slid in like a thief.
I tucked in closer to Remy and tried not to think about how familiar his presence had become since I started training away from the castle.
Away from the polished corridors that always remembered the sound of my twin’s laugh, even when no one spoke her name.
Remy had not been that close to me before.
After, he had been everywhere.
Not hovering, not smothering, not comforting in the ways people tried when they wanted grief to perform politely.
He had simply… understood that silence could be a shelter.
That training could be a kind of prayer.
That sometimes the best kindness was to treat me like I was still a person, not a wound wrapped in silk.
“I heard the delegation from Ishara is nearly here,” I said. “Are you meeting them at the coast?”
“I’ll return with them.” Remy angled his head, watching the horizon as if the air itself might betray secrets. “The riders who were allowed to visit will be escorting the clan leader. The rest are prospects. Warriors. People who have never seen Warriath and will hate us on sight.”
“It’s part of the treaty,” I said lightly.
“It’s survival.”
I let the words settle. Ishara had been a name in stories for most of my life, half threat and half myth.
A place across the ocean where clans didn’t kneel to crowns and dragons didn’t shine like jewels.
The Lost Continent. The place our maps treated like the edge of the world, because it was easier than admitting the world kept going without us.
“I find their dragons interesting,” I said. “They’re all so… drab.”
Remy’s mouth did not soften. “Say that to one of them and see how drab they look when they scorch your skin.”
“I didn’t mean it as an insult.” I did, a little.
The Warriath horde glittered. Silvers and blues and greens that caught sun and stormlight, scales like armor made by gods with taste.
The Lost Continent dragons I’d glimpsed from a distance were smoke and stone and ash.
Useful colors. War colors. “It’s just strange to see a whole horde that looks like it was carved from the same mountain. ”
“Only Warriath riders with advanced glamour have been allowed into Ishara’s clan camps,” Remy said. “That’s the price of being trusted.”
“And the price of pretending we are something else,” I murmured.
Remy didn’t argue. He didn’t have to. Glamour was not vanity in Ishara. Glamour was strategy. Glamour was the lie that kept you breathing when the truth would get you killed.
“I’ve seen Cade around his dragon,” I said. The memory flickered bright against the gray sea below. Cade Rowen, all sharp grin and sharper eyes, standing beside Voth as if a red palisade could be domesticated by friendship. “He can make Voth look completely black.”
Katama’s wings shifted, catching a crosswind. Remy’s fingers tightened once on the reins.
“It’s cool,” I added quickly, because I’d learned when not to press. “His craft is… elegant.”
“You wouldn’t call it cool if you had been forced to fight the blood fae’s black dragons,” Remy said.
His voice had gone flat, and somehow that was worse than anger. I’d seen him furious. Fury made him bright, lethal, alive. This was the tone he used when he was walking past bodies and refusing to look down.
I swallowed, throat tight. “I prefer Tae’s approach.”
That earned me a glance over his shoulder. Remy’s eyes were a hard gray, the kind that never fully warmed.
“My uncle could make anyone see him with a gray, black, or pink dragon if he chose,” I went on. “His mind-altering skills are legendary.”
Remy’s expression didn’t change, but something behind it shifted. Wariness. Respect. Maybe both. Tae Rockel was not a man people forgot. Not if they liked their thoughts staying their own.
“My mother assures me it wasn’t always so,” I added, because that was the part that always snagged. The past had teeth in this family. “That he earned that reputation. That he bled for it. That they all did. The first Thrall squad. One meant for commoners.”
“Now it’s the most coveted squad in the Fourth Guild,” Remy said, like he was reciting a fact he regretted.
I looked out over the sea and tried not to think about the word thrall. About what it meant to be bound. About how every bond in Warriath was a choice and a cage, depending on who held the key.
“I always hoped I would have a dragon,” I said softly, before I could stop myself.
Remy didn’t answer right away. Katama’s wings carried us forward, steady and indifferent.
“Sahara wanted it more than anything,” I finished.
The name landed between us like a dropped blade.
Remy’s shoulders went still for half a breath. Then he nodded once, as if acknowledging a truth the world refused to hold.
I didn’t say anything else.
I rarely spoke her name anymore.
Not because I loved her less. Because loving her had become a private language, one my family spoke only in looks and flinches, in the way my father’s hands tightened when a girl my age laughed too loudly, in the way my mother’s guards multiplied whenever I stepped into sunlight.
Sahara was the family secret.
The one we loved more than anything.
The one we never talked about.
Katama banked, and the world changed.
Warriath rose ahead, not as a city but as a fortress grown from stone and sea.
The ocean wall cut across the coastline like a scar made permanent, thick enough to hold barracks and towers and the long, segmented lives of the First Guild.
Beyond it, the castle compound crowned the center, black rock and pale banners, its highest spires reaching into cloud like accusations.
To the right, nearer the water, the Fourth Guild’s sector pressed close to the dragon isles, as if proximity could turn courage into inheritance.
The air tasted different here. Salt and ash.
Metal from the training yards. A faint, strange heat that always made me think of dragon breath even when no dragon was in sight.
Katama angled down toward the Ascension Grounds.
From above, the grounds looked like a scorched plate set into the earth. Dark stone, cracked and glassy in places, marked by old flame and older landings. Warder towers stood, each topped with a watch that didn’t blink.
As we descended, the wind became sound. Shouts. Drills. The distant clang of steel from the infantry yards. And beneath it all, the low, constant hum of the castle itself, alive with politics and prayers and the thin-lipped panic of treaty season.
Katama touched down with a grace that felt insulting for something so large. Stone shuddered under his claws. Heat rose in ripples.
I swung my legs over the saddle and slid down, boots hitting the ground with a dull thud. For a heartbeat I just stood there and let my balance find me again. Flying always did that. Made you forget you were human until gravity reminded you.
Remy dismounted as if he’d never known a moment of awkwardness in his life.