Chapter 10
The courtyard echoed with screeches. Not the terrifying kind. The delighted, high-pitched, unholy kind that only children and baby dragons could produce together.
Mireth was covered in soot. Eryx had lost a shoe.
And somehow, this was the most normal I’d felt in months.
“Higher, higher!” Mireth shrieked as a bronze hatchling the size of a large dog flapped its wings, lifting her maybe three inches off the ground before depositing her back in the dirt with all the grace of a sack of grain.
She rolled, came up laughing, and immediately lunged for another one.
Eryx, meanwhile, had discovered that dragon babies made for excellent furniture. He was currently draped over a silver one’s back like a particularly determined barnacle, giggling as the poor creature tried to figure out what this small, sticky human was and why it wouldn’t let go.
“Should I be concerned?” I called out, though I was fighting laughter myself.
“Probably,” Darian replied from beside me, practically vibrating with pride as he watched a golden-haired boy climb onto one of the hatchlings with considerably more grace than my own chaotic pair. “But where’s the fun in that?”
“He’s the spitting image of you.” I said, nodding toward the miniature warrior currently directing his mount in what appeared to be an aerial assault on a pile of training dummies.
Darian laughed, rich and warm. “Yeah, well, he got his mother’s mind, at least. Thank the gods. If Fionn had inherited my sense of self-preservation, he’d have burned the castle down by now.”
Around us, half a dozen dragon young bounded, flapped, tumbled, and shrieked in varying tones of chaos. It was mayhem. Glorious mayhem that smelled of sulphur and adventure and a childhood I’d never imagined my children could have.
And I couldn’t stop smiling.
Not the careful, controlled expression I’d perfected over months of survival. This was raw and helpless and real—the kind of smile that hurt your cheeks and made your chest feel too small to contain what was trying to burst out of it.
Mireth had found her calling, apparently. She was directing a coordinated attack on Eryx’s position, three hatchlings flanking her like she’d been born to command aerial squadrons. Her coffee-brown hair caught the afternoon light, wild and free, soot-streaked cheeks flushed with pure joy.
When was the last time I’d seen her this happy? This fearless?
When was the last time I’d let myself feel this light?
The answer came swift and brutal. Not since Navaire died.
The thought should have cut. Should have sent me spiralling back into that familiar darkness where grief lived and breathed and fed on moments exactly like this one.
Instead, something else rose in me. Something that felt like... permission.
He would have loved this, I realised, watching Eryx finally lose his grip and tumble into a pile of hay, immediately popping up to chase after his former mount with delighted determination. He would have been right there with them, probably encouraging the most dangerous stunts possible.
“How are you feeling?” Darian asked, his voice casual but his eyes sharp with genuine concern. “Now that your fae form has had time to settle, I mean.”
I rolled my shoulders, testing the strange new strength that hummed beneath my skin. “Odd,” I admitted. “Everything feels... more. Like I’ve been looking at the world through dirty glass my whole life and someone finally cleaned it.”
Darian grinned. “Well, it suits you. You look less like a wild skathra, at least.”
I blinked. “I don’t know what that is.”
“They’re basically feral skeletons that haunt forests,” a voice said behind us, dry amusement threading through the words. “So it’s a good comparison.”
I glanced back to spot Brynelle approaching, her iridescent wings folded neatly behind her, magenta-streaked braids catching the light.
I snorted. “So I’m a feral skeleton?”
“No,” Darian said, though his grin suggested he was enjoying this far too much. “But you did look like one when you first arrived. All hard edges and hollow cheeks, ready to bite anyone who got too close.”
“Well,” I shot back. “You spend a year on the run with a three and six-year-old and see how you look.”
Darian mock-shuddered. “No thanks. I’ll stick to my well-fed, castle-dwelling existence, thank you very much.”
A fresh wave of chaos erupted from the training ground as Mireth discovered she could get one of the hatchlings to breathe actual fire—tiny puffs of flame that sent Eryx into raptures of delight. The bronze hatchling looked immensely pleased with itself, puffing up like a scaly rooster.
“They’re going to burn the castle down,” Brynelle observed mildly.
“Probably,” I agreed, making no move to stop them.
Movement across the field caught my eye.
A woman stood watching the chaos with a mixture of amusement and exasperation, her long, light brown hair cascading in waves past her shoulders, strands catching in the dappled light like spun gold interwoven with chestnut and honey.
They framed a face that was gentle, but not fragile—alabaster skin, high cheekbones and a mouth that hinted at wisdom shaped by both kindness and sorrow.
She was beautiful in that devastating, effortless way that made you forget to breathe for a moment.
“That’s Eilrys,” Darian said, following my gaze. His entire expression had gone soft, reverent. “My mate.”
The word mate caught in my mind. The term had come up in the old fae fables I’d heard as a child, tales whispered by the wind and passed down in stories, where it was said that some fae were bonded in a way that went deeper than friendship or even love.
Brynelle drifted a few steps away, her attention caught by something none of us could see—a butterfly, maybe, or the way light fell through the leaves. She hummed under her breath, the melody strange and haunting.
“Mate?” I asked, the word sitting strangely on my tongue.
“It’s… complicated,” he admitted. “A bond. Powerful, lifelong. Not a choice, exactly. It finds us.”
Ice skittered under my skin. A bond that found you. A bond you didn’t choose. I forced my breath to stay steady. “So, what, you’re just bound to someone forever? You just wake up one day and that’s it?”
Darian chuckled at my obvious horror. “I mean, it’s not always instant. Sometimes it can take time to settle, years before it’s felt. For others, it’s immediate—like lightning.”
Brynelle paused in her humming, something darker flickering across her features. “Sometimes it never settles at all,” she said, the statement carrying a weight that made both Darian and me glance at her.
“It’s not a choice,” Darian added, either not catching the shadow in Brynelle’s tone or choosing to ignore it. “But for most, it’s a good thing. The best thing.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to rail against the cosmic unfairness of having your heart decided for you by forces beyond your control. The idea was disturbing, being stripped of agency in the most fundamental way possible.
But then I thought of Navaire.
My soul had felt like part of his, hadn’t it? Losing him had felt like someone had carved out half of my existence and left me bleeding in the dark. Maybe that’s all it was. Maybe humans just didn’t have a word for it.
A particularly loud shriek drew my attention back to the training ground, where Fionn had apparently decided that riding dragons was for amateurs and had moved on to trying to teach them fetch. The results were... explosive.
I decided to steer the conversation to easier topics. “How many other courts are there?” I knew the answer already, but it was an easy distraction.
Darian’s shoulders loosened. “Including Nyxaria? Eight.”
“That’s not a lot.”
He gave me a curious look. “It isn’t?”
“In the human realm, we have the king, and he rules over about twenty different territories. And that’s just one kingdom. There are countless others.”
Brynelle perked up as she turned toward me with genuine interest. “Twenty? That sounds exhausting. All those different customs and laws to keep track of.”
Darian shrugged. “Aethermire is small. There are lands beyond it, but we don’t trade with them, and we don’t travel beyond our borders. The fae are largely self-contained. Whatever we need, we have here. We don’t… expand.”
“And travel between realms?” I prompted.
“Exceptionally rare.”
“Good thing too,” Brynelle said with a grin, settling cross-legged on the grass beside us. “Can you imagine the paperwork? ‘Dear Court of Whatever, please accept this formal request to not murder our diplomatic envoy.’”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Is that really how fae diplomacy works?”
“Only on the good days,” Darian said dryly.
Brynelle giggled, a bright sound that made something in my chest ease. “On the bad days, we just send Cindrissian to stare at people until they agree with us.”
“That... probably works disturbingly well,” I admitted.
“Oh, it absolutely does,” she said, eyes sparkling with mischief. “I once saw him make a merchant cry just by asking about fabric prices.”
The laughter felt foreign in my throat, rusty from disuse, like a skill I’d forgotten I possessed.
But watching Mireth directed her aerial squadron with the intensity of a seasoned general, I couldn’t help but let it spill out of me.
Eryx finally managed to climb onto a particularly patient silver hatchling’s back.
The little dragon turned to look at him with what I could only describe as resigned acceptance.
“They’re fearless,” I murmured, and wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or a curse.
“They’re children,” Brynelle said simply. “Fear is something they learn. Usually from watching their parents.”
The words hit deeper than they should have. Because she wasn’t wrong. How much of my children’s early terror had been learned from watching me flinch at every shadow, every sound, every stranger’s face?