Chapter 9
HAILEY
The morning came in mean and cold, with a wind off the obsidian cliffs sharp enough to take the skin off my knuckles.
I was up before the bells, nerves refusing to let me sleep.
The east ridge caught the first light, soaking it up like a black sponge, and by the time I reached the sparring ground, Corvus was already waiting, settled into a low crouch that made him look like a fossilized murder machine.
He took up half the plateau even with his wings folded, each claw dug into the basalt as if daring the world to move him. He followed my approach with no pretense of welcome.
“You’re late,” he said, the words hammering straight into my cerebrum with the delicacy of a depth charge.
“It’s three minutes before dawn,” I said, but he ignored it, flicking a talon at the sword strapped to my back.
“Draw.”
I did, unsheathing the blade in a single, practiced motion.
The edge caught the light, runes flickering in their secret language, and I wondered if the sword had moods.
This morning it felt sullen, heavier than usual, and I fought the urge to test the balance with a flourish.
Corvus had made it clear. Showmanship wasn't only wasted on him, it was punishable by immediate, savage correction.
He began with footwork. My job, apparently, was to learn how to move like a dragon while stuck in a human-shaped meat suit, and Corvus’s job was to make sure I didn’t get attached to any one stance, limb, or illusion of safety.
“Pivot. Angle. Commit. Recover. Again.”
His voice lanced through me, every instruction timed to the microsecond.
I did as told, planting my left foot, swinging my hips, letting the torque power the blade guide my momentum.
The burn started in my thighs, which had begun to shake on the third rep and by now were auditioning for a new career in unlicensed vibration therapy.
He waited until I found a rhythm, then pounced. Literally. The bastard covered fifteen meters in less than a blink, slamming his snout into my guard so hard it nearly knocked the breath out of me. Good thing I was a vampire, and my human form was tougher than, well, a human.
“Dead,” he said, and touched a single claw to my sternum.
“Didn’t even get to attack,” I muttered, but forced my feet to reset.
Corvus didn’t gloat. His whole thing was efficiency. Wasted energy meant death. A complaint meant already dead.
The next round, he swept low, telegraphing the strike so broadly I nearly missed it. I overcommitted, lunged to parry, and the moment I extended, his tail lashed out, thumping my ankle.
“Dead,” he said, as I landed in a graceless sprawl.
Damn it. I scrambled upright, cheeks burning hot, and made a mental note to never, ever underestimate a dragon’s tail. Or ego.
Above us, the wind was alive with dragons. They looped and cut through the cloud bands, three on one, all hammering after a big green fella who, even from here, was unmistakably Jax. I recognized his movements. Quick rolls, hard banks. Even without the bond, I would’ve known it was him.
Every so often, one of his sparring partners would clip his flank or catch him in a shallow dive.
He never flinched, just readjusted, claws spread wide, learning on the fly.
One of the dragons tried to force him into a stall, but Jax tucked and spun, wings folding in a way that made the others overshoot, and he righted himself clean.
If Corvus was watching, he didn’t show it, but the flicker of approval rippled through the telepathic undercurrent, which even though I was in human form, I could still pick up on.
We reset. Corvus signaled for me to attack.
I did, using every trick I’d learned, pivoting off the back foot, slashing for the exposed joint at the base of his wing.
He didn’t move, didn’t even blink, just let the blade get within a millimeter of his scales and then, with a contemptuous twist, redirected all my momentum.
“Dead.”
Ugh. He was trying to teach me something, but I was too winded and furious to see it yet.
“Again,” he said, and this time I charged without waiting for the count, feinting high and cutting low.
He let me get close, almost inside his reach, and for half a heartbeat I thought I had him.
Then his paw closed around my wrist, claws retracted but pressure unyielding, and the bones ground together, not quite breaking but definitely promising to if I didn’t yield.
I dropped the blade, flexed my free hand, and tried not to show how much I wanted to scream.
Corvus studied me. “You are slow because you think you have time. Plus, you are thinking too hard. Trust the blade, use your magic to connect with the metal and own it.”
He released me, picked up the sword with two claws, and held it out, tip extended. He waited, staring. I took the sword, gritted my teeth, and set again.
The next few rounds blurred. He was everywhere, above, behind, at my throat, sometimes bashing, sometimes parrying with such precision I wondered if he’d lived this moment a thousand times.
He drilled my footwork until the muscles in my calves sang with lactic acid, hammered my ribs every time my guard slipped, and each correction was the same.
Dead.
I lost count at ten, maybe twelve. By then, my shirt was stuck to my body, sweat running down my spine. My breath came in shallow gasps, hair plastered to my face, and the side of my torso where Corvus kept tapping his damn claw was already bruising beneath the skin.
Were vampires supposed to be able to bruise? Eff if I knew, but it felt like I was.
At one point, I caught my reflection in the obsidian walls. I looked wild, feral, eyes wide and teeth bared. It didn’t even look like me anymore. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Above, Jax had closed the gap on his pursuers.
He waited for them to corner him near a break in the wind shear, then doubled back, slamming into the lead with a move so fast I barely tracked it.
The other dragons scattered, then regrouped, this time wary, recalibrating their formation. I grinned. My man.
Corvus noticed. He let me watch, just for a second, as Jax dove through a rolling current and came up behind one of the warriors, catching them completely off-guard. They spiraled together, but Jax held position, and the other was forced to yield, dropping altitude in a controlled stall.
I had time to be proud for maybe half a breath, which was all the time Corvus needed to exploit my distraction. He swept my legs from behind, dumped me flat on my ass, and hovered a claw half an inch from my throat.
“Dead.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The shock, the sweat, the total humiliation, it all broke at once, and the sound bounced off the cliffs like a challenge. I was sure I was going to hear the word “dead” in my sleep for the next century.
“Better,” he said, with the faintest possible smile.
I rolled to my knees, pushed myself upright, and picked up the blade again. My arms felt like jelly, my sides on fire, but I wasn’t done. Not by a long shot.
“Again?” I asked, the word half growl.
Corvus’s eyes lit up. He leaned in, lowering his head to my level, teeth bared in something that was either encouragement or a promise to eat me for breakfast. He was enjoying this a little too much. And if I was being honest, so was I. A little.
“Again.”
We reset, and I forced the fatigue down, forced my brain to absorb every lesson it could.
This time, when Corvus lunged, I twisted, ducked the first feint, and managed to touch the blade to the soft inside of his elbow before he could react.
He stopped, considered the strike, and nodded.
It wasn’t enough to kill, but it was enough to wound.
He touched the spot with his free claw, then looked at me with new interest.
“Live,” he said.
I sagged in place, knees barely holding, but a surge of pride pushed through the exhaustion.
Every bruise, every ache, every warning registered from my body to quit.
I ignored all of them. Above, Jax let out a sharp, victorious call.
The sound was raw and real, and every dragon in the air responded in kind, even the ones who had just been bested by him.
Corvus watched me watching, then rumbled a low, approving sound.
“Again,” I said, the word barely more than a whisper.
He grinned, and the real training began.
After training, every muscle below my neck voted to secede from the union. My arms were still trembling, but my legs had made a secret pact to refuse service entirely. Jax and I, both of us in our human forms, made our way back to the great hall together, neither of us talking much.
The castle’s great hall was a cauldron of noise and color, full of the electric hum of young dragons.
We stopped in the archway, both of us half-expecting a welcoming committee of guards, or at least a herald.
Instead, what greeted us was a rolling dogpile of hatchlings, scales glittering, claws harmlessly sheathed, all wrapped around a single, shrieking bundle of energy at the center.
Flint, in his boy form, was king of the heap.
His laugh was so wild and unfiltered that it gave me a surge of energy and joy.
He pushed off of a wedge of orange-scaled dragons, then went tumbling backwards across the floor, bare feet skidding.
He wore nothing but a pair of ill-fitting shorts and a halo of sweat, and his cheeks were so red I thought he’d explode.
When he righted himself, the nearest hatchling, slate blue, the size of a Shetland pony, lowered its shoulder, and Flint climbed up, bareback.
They took off in a lazy loop around the hall, the little dragon moving at a careful, almost parental pace.
Flint locked his hands around the ridge along the dragon’s spine.
His eyes widened, then he squeezed them shut in pure joy.
He’d ridden on my back before, but this was different. This was... Belonging.
The other dragons bunched below, their voices a chorus of encouragement.
Flint whooped, and the blue dragon trumpeted in response, spiraling upward, then gliding down so gently that Flint barely bounced when he slid off.
For a second, my heart bottomed out. The drop in my gut came, the cold at the base of my ribs.
I tried to smile, but the muscles in my face wouldn’t cooperate.
Jax felt it. I knew because he stopped, just behind me, and slid his hand into mine, his grip warm and careful. I kept watching Flint, not trusting myself to look away.
“Looks like he’s found his people,” Jax said, his tone soft.
“Yeah,” I said. My throat clicked when I swallowed. “He has.”
Flint scampered back to the pile, but when he saw us in the doorway, he detoured. He ran straight at me, arms wide, and I crouched. He hit me at full speed, wrapping his arms around my waist, face buried in my shirt.
“I rode a dragon,” he gasped, voice still giddy. “It was like flying, but with more laughing!” He looked up at me, face gone serious. “You should try it, Mama. It feels better than pizza.”
I ruffled his sweaty hair. “Maybe later. How’s the playground?”
He shrugged, then wriggled free. “There’s a tunnel. It goes everywhere. And if you scream into the tunnel, the castle screams back.”
“Sounds like your kind of playground,” Jax said.
Flint grinned at him, then ran off, immediately tackled by two more hatchlings, all of them rolling in a blur of claws and limbs and laughter.
My vision blurred at the edges. I told myself it was just the exhaustion or maybe dehydration. I didn’t want to name the real feeling. I didn’t want to admit that every minute Flint spent here, he became less mine and more theirs.
Adalinda drifted up beside us. Well, more like towered over us.
She was in dragon form, but somehow smaller than usual, her wings tucked tight, her scales muted in the soft light.
“A dragon child grows into his mind,” she said, telepathy gentle as breath.
“He will always be your son. But you must let him fly, or he will never learn to land.”
I nodded. I couldn’t answer. The words felt too big for my mouth.
Jax squeezed my hand again. I tried to picture Flint in ten years, or fifty, or a thousand.
I tried to see him as a dragon, ancient and wise, maybe even gentle.
Instead, all I could see was the boy, laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe.
“He will come back to you,” Adalinda said. “Even the strongest wings return home.”
I didn’t say what I was thinking, which was not if I lost him here. I didn’t say it, but I knew Adalinda heard it anyway. She spread her wings, turned away, and left us to watch.
I stood in the archway, the sweat cooling on my skin, and tried to memorize Flint’s voice, the exact pitch of his laughter. I let the sound wrap around me, the way his arms had, and for the first time in forever, I was afraid that loving something this much might break me.
Jax let go of my hand, but only so he could pull me into his arms, the two of us braced against the doorframe, watching our kid become a part of this impossible, dangerous world.
He held me, and I let him. I watched Flint, and I let myself love him, even knowing how much it was going to hurt when the time came to let go.
That was the cost of flying, I guessed. The price of landing.
I promised myself and him that I would be here when he did.