Chapter 16
HAILEY
Hundreds of dragons, every color ever coined, gathered in silent, concentric order around a single, raised dais of black stone.
Their scales caught the dawn in shards, so the whole room seemed alive with silent lightning.
Above, the vault arched so high that clouds formed against the interior ceiling, slow-moving wisps that glimmered with the refracted sunrise.
Adalinda stood at the center.
I hovered with Jax at the edge of the inner circle.
We were both in dragon form. Flint, back in his human skin, bounced nervously on his heels between our front paws.
He’d worn a shirt that Solenne had given him, with gold embroidery that he swore made him look like a “prince, but cooler,” and his hair was flattened, but it had taken me ten minutes with a bowl of water to get it to stay.
On the dais, Corvus approached, every step measured as if he was timing it to the heartbeat of the crowd.
In his jaws, he carried the crown of Ayrathys.
I’d seen it once before, during a tour of the castle, but nothing had prepared me for how it looked in daylight.
It was less a crown than a sculpture. Intricate loops of gold and something iridescent, black as spilled oil, carved into a nest of teeth and claw.
The top was set with a single, egg-shaped stone, smoky and shot through with lines of blue and silver.
Corvus laid it at Adalinda’s feet and stepped back, wings folding in a gesture of respect and ritual.
The hall fell silent. Not just quiet, silent. Corvus’s voice hit my mind with the cool precision of a breaking wave.
“Queen Adalinda, we offer you the Crown of Ayrathys, forged by Tharneval himself when our realm was young. We name you the memory of our blood, the shield against forgetting. We name you Queen, and all we are is yours to command.”
Adalinda dipped her head. She didn't smile, or flare her wings, or even move except to acknowledge the weight of what was being given.
She accepted the crown as Corvus lifted it and placed it on her head.
It clicked into place around the horns at her brow, fitting perfectly.
Her voice, when it came, wasn't loud, but it went everywhere. It vibrated my sternum, and even Flint, who’d been fidgeting, snapped to perfect, breathless stillness.
“I accept this crown not as one who rules over you, but as one who serves you. I will not dwell among you always, but I will come when needed. I will hold the line between worlds, and for as long as my heart remembers this place, you will never be alone.”
She paused, and for a second, every dragon in the hall lowered their head, not just the ceremonial touch, but a genuine, physical surrender to the moment.
“Let us remember the fallen and let us remember ourselves.”
The answer was a telepathic chorus, so perfectly harmonized it felt like a cathedral choir had been loaded into my skull and set to stun. I’d heard mass mind-voices before, but nothing like this. It was a chord that started in sorrow and bent, unbroken, to hope.
Jax must have felt it too. His wing, warm where it touched mine, slid closer until our scales were flush. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to.
The ceremony dissolved, the crowd melting into a thousand private conversations, as dragons broke into clusters or pairs.
The mood was less royal court and more extended family reunion.
Still, the center of the room was left untouched, a bubble of space around Adalinda as she stood motionless, crown blazing in the new light.
My attention drifted to the edges, watching as the feast was assembled.
Dragons didn’t do banquets the way I’d expected.
There were no servants, no groveling functionaries.
Instead, a team of what I assumed were the local equivalents of cooks and caterers swept in, ferrying giant platters of roasted beast, cauldrons of molten honey, and baskets of fruit that glowed from the inside out.
The tables, cut directly from the living stone of the floor, sprouted up in long rows.
Some dragons perched on benches or ledges, others simply hovered, beating their wings lazily as they devoured whatever caught their fancy.
Jax and I were steered gently by the crowd toward a platform overlooking the main hall.
We shifted to human as soon as we were out of direct sight, the sudden lightness of our bodies a relief after hours in scales.
Flint, who hadn’t stopped bouncing for more than a minute since the ceremony had ended, immediately ran for the nearest pile of shiny rocks that had been set out as “garnish” for the feast.
“He’s not going to eat those, is he?” I asked.
Jax grinned. “You never know. He ate a spoon once and didn’t even get a stomachache.”
Flint darted between tables, weaving through legs, tails, and the occasional crash of a dragon’s head as they dove for a particularly good-looking piece of meat. He was the only human-form child in the entire place, but nobody looked at him like he was a freak. They just made room. Let him belong.
My chest went tight, then relaxed, then went tight again.
Watching Flint fit in here, the way he never had on Earth, even with a house full of vampires, was enough to make me want to cry or laugh or scream, or maybe all three.
I watched as he tumbled with a slate-blue hatchling, rolled across the floor, then leaped onto the back of a copper-scaled dragonling who wore him like a scarf and sprinted three laps around the table.
“He’s going to miss this,” I said, more to myself than to Jax.
He looked at me, eyes soft. “So will you.”
He wasn’t wrong.
The feast rolled on, the food replaced as quickly as it vanished.
Conversations drifted from the grand and historical to how will we keep the realms aligned?
Who gets the eastern wind ridge now that Vaelog’s gone?
Who cheated at last year’s sky race? Which hatchlings were likely to win the next talent duel?
Even with the fate of the world decided, the dragons found a way to make the future about small pleasures and incremental victories.
At the high table, Corvus and Solenne rose together. The room fell quiet, not instantly, but in waves, as their minds broadcast a gentle pull that even the rowdiest hatchling couldn’t ignore.
“With Queen Adalinda’s blessing, we will begin our generational quest,” Corvus sent, his voice iron and certain.
“The portal between Ayrathys and the human world can now be opened safely. In the coming days, teams will cross to Earth, seeking the halves of our souls lost to time and reborn in new bodies. Our aim is not conquest, but reunion. We seek the restoration of our kind, the rejoining of dragon and human, the healing of what Vaelog tried to sever.”
Solenne’s mind joined his, softer, but carrying the resonance of truth. “For those who wish it, the journey home begins soon. The first delegation is ready to depart within days. Let us remember the best of who we are and let us bring it with us.”
The effect on the hall was electric. Some dragons roared in approval, others sent waves of color, orange and gold, silver and blue, rippling through their scales.
Even the ancient, jaded elders perched along the upper balconies inclined their heads with what looked like genuine, if grudging, respect.
Flint ran back to us, cheeks pink with excitement and some sort of sauce. I wished I could bottle the moment and take it back for Goldie to see.
“Mama,” he whispered, eyes wide, “did you hear? We can go home.”
I hugged him, so hard he squeaked. “Yeah, baby. We can.”
I caught Jax’s eye over the top of Flint’s head, and he smiled. For a few minutes, I let myself forget everything that had come before. We ate, and laughed, and watched the world go on turning.
But the feast couldn’t last forever. Eventually, the dragons began to peel away, some heading for the launch platforms, others clustering in quiet corners for more serious talk.
The crowd thinned, and the noise faded to a comfortable murmur.
Jax and I stood, stretching out the kinks from hours of sitting on stone, and gathered Flint, now sticky and exhausted, but still glowing with happiness, between us.
We wandered down a quieter corridor, the walls lit by floating orbs of gentle light.
It was almost easy to forget that we were in another dimension, on the edge of everything.
Adalinda found us there. She moved with a quiet dignity that would have suited any human queen I’d ever met.
Her voice was for us alone. “Hailey, Jax. I must speak with you, on behalf of the nest.”
She hesitated, and for the first time, a flicker of something showed almost like nerves.
She continued, “Several families have expressed interest in raising Flint here in Ayrathys. He would not lack for guidance, or for love. He would grow among his kind, learn our ways, become strong and wise. We would see to it personally.”
The world contracted, a single dot of pain shooting right behind my breastbone.
I looked at Flint, who was wiping his hands on his shirt and not really listening.
I shifted to human, knelt in front of him, and made myself look into his face.
“Flint, you’ve seen how wonderful it is here.
There are others like you. You could stay if you wanted to.
You could live here, all the time. It would be your choice, not mine. ”
He looked up at me, then at Jax, then over my shoulder at Adalinda, regal and impossibly gentle. He thought about it for maybe two seconds.
“No,” he said, and took my hand. “Mama, I already have a family. I want to go to the Academy with Goldie.” He hesitated. “I mean, we can visit here, right?”
I pulled him into my arms, and this time the tears weren’t just from relief. They were the kind that emptied you out, made space for something new to grow. Jax wrapped his arms around us, and even Adalinda bowed her head, touching her snout to my hair.
We stood like that for a long time, the four of us, alone in the corridor, while the rest of the world moved on without us. “Yes, baby. We can visit.”
When we finally pulled apart, Flint grinned, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and said, “Can we have pizza when we get home?”
I laughed so hard it hurt. “Yeah, baby. We can have all the pizza you want.”
Adalinda raised her head, eyes bright. “You will always have a place here. All of you.”
As we walked back through the corridor, Flint dragging us forward by the hand, I looked back, just once, to where Adalinda stood, crowned and silent, watching over us with the patience of a mountain.
I thought of everything we’d lost, and everything we’d risked, and the impossible luck of making it out alive. I was so glad I’d learned to fly.