Chapter 26 Alerie
TWENTY-SIX
ALERIE
We argue for hours.
Not in the strategy chamber—Izan dismisses the others with a growl that sends even Kaelreth retreating. In the private chambers adjacent to his own, where the wards muffle sound and the volcanic glass windows show nothing but gray sky and ash.
He paces like a caged predator. I stand my ground near the window.
“You don’t understand what you’re asking.” His voice has gone raw from strain. “Walking into that cistern alone—”
“I wouldn’t be alone.” The point matters. “You would be with me.”
He stops mid-stride. Turns.
“Your magic and mine.” I keep my voice steady. “We’ve seen what happens when they work in concert. In the market ambush—we fought like we’d been partners for years instead of hours. Your fire clears the path; my power severs the bindings. If anyone can break the ritual at its source, it’s us.”
“Both of us.” The words drag up from somewhere deep in his chest, reluctant.
“Precisely.” I won’t use the word he’s clinging to—too close to the forbidden territory we’ve been circling. “The Blood Regent is expecting a Vireth witch. He’s not expecting what we become when we fight beside each other.”
Izan crosses the distance between us. His hands find my shoulders, grip with barely-controlled strength. His heat radiates through my clothing, and I feel the dragon thrumming beneath his skin.
“If you die in that place, I will burn it to bedrock.” The promise carries absolute conviction. “I will destroy everyone who participated in your death. I will hunt the Blood Regent to the edges of the realm and teach him what happens to those who take what’s mine.”
“I know.” My hands rise to cover his. “And that’s exactly why I won’t die.”
His grip tightens. “You can’t promise that.”
“No.” I hold his stare, letting him see the fear I’ve been hiding beneath tactical arguments. “But I can promise that I’m not walking into this as a sacrifice. I’m walking in as a weapon—your weapon, if you’ll let me be. And weapons don’t die quietly. They take their enemies with them.”
“You’re not my weapon. You’re my—”
He stops. Swallows.
I wait.
“You’re the reason I’m fighting at all.” Barely audible.
“Before you, this was strategy. Politics. The endless game of maintaining power. Now—” His hands slide from my shoulders to cup my face.
“Now there’s a person worth protecting. Someone who matters more than the city or the Flight or any of it. ”
The words make heat bloom in my chest that has nothing to do with his touch.
“Then protect me.” I cover his hands with mine. “Not by keeping me caged. Not by making decisions for me. Protect me by standing beside me when I need you. By trusting that I know my own capabilities.”
“And if being your partner means watching you walk into danger I can’t shield you from?”
“Then you learn what it costs.” I turn my head, press my lips to his palm. “We both do.”
The war council reconvenes at midnight.
Seravax has spent the intervening hours running calculations, projecting scenarios, mapping every possible outcome.
His assessment is clinical, precise, and terrifying: the plan has perhaps a thirty percent chance of success.
Without me, that number drops to single digits.
With me but without Izan at my side, the odds improve only marginally—the Blood Regent has prepared specifically for a Vireth witch working alone.
Our synchronized magic is the variable no one anticipated.
Kaelreth argues for alternative approaches—a siege, a diplomatic solution, an appeal to other Flights for support.
Each suggestion is methodically dismantled by the tactical realities.
There is no time for siege; the ritual could be completed within days.
The Blood Regent won’t negotiate with those he considers inferior beings.
Other Flights are too distant to help before the binding activates, and none have shown interest in Pyraeth’s internal conflicts.
In the end, there is only one path forward.
“The assault begins at dawn.” Izan’s voice carries the weight of the final decision.
“Strike teams hit the remaining nodes simultaneously—including the six Threx-designed containment sites. All of them burn. Dragons take the surface approaches. Alerie and I push for the cistern’s heart while the Blood Regent’s forces are divided. ”
Seravax nods once. “Corveth’s team will run point on the containment sites.
Saelith—Corveth’s deputy, the leak your mate identified—has been removed from the chain of command.
Blood-oath compromised, as she suspected.
The routes he handled are now clean.” He meets my gaze briefly. “All assault routes are clean.”
“And if the trap is deeper than we’ve anticipated?” Kaelreth’s question carries no accusation—only the pragmatism of someone who has seen too many battles go wrong.
“Then we adapt. We’ve been reacting to the Blood Regent’s moves since this started. Time to make him react to ours.”
The council disperses to prepare. Soldiers to be briefed. Weapons to be distributed. Tactics to be finalized.
I remain in the strategy chamber, staring at the map that shows our plan in glowing lines and markers.
The Sundered Cistern pulses at the center like a diseased heart. Somewhere beneath those ancient stones, the Blood Regent is preparing a ritual that would enslave every citizen of Pyraeth and would use my bloodline’s power to bind an entire city.
Somewhere down there, a man who sees people as resources is waiting for me.
And I’m going to give him exactly what he expects—right up until the moment I tear his entire network apart.
Izan finds me on the observation balcony as the first gray hints of dawn lighten the sky.
I’ve been here for an hour, watching the city I might not survive to see again.
I never thought I’d care about a place. Never thought anywhere would feel like more than a temporary shelter to be abandoned when circumstances demanded.
But watching the city breathe in the pre-dawn quiet, I understand what Izan has been fighting to protect.
Not the stones or the structures or the political machinery.
The people. Thousands of them, waking to lives they don’t know are threatened.
Going about their routines while a tyrant prepares to strip away everything that makes those routines meaningful.
“You should be resting.” Izan’s voice reaches me before his presence does. He moves quietly for someone who carries so much violence in his frame.
“Couldn’t sleep.” I don’t turn from the view. “Kept running scenarios in my head. What might go wrong. What we might have missed.”
“And what conclusions did you reach?”
“That I’m terrified.” The admission costs less than I expected.
He moves to stand beside me at the balcony’s edge. Close enough that our shoulders almost touch. His heat wraps around me like armor.
“What things are you afraid of losing?”
“The city.” I gesture at the sprawl below. “The people who’ve never done anything to me except exist. The war council members who don’t trust me but are following a plan I designed.” I pause. “You.”
The word settles between us, weightier than I intended.
“I care what happens to you.” My voice drops to almost a whisper. “I didn’t mean to. I’ve been trying not to. But somewhere between the interrogation and the ambush and the balcony, I stopped being able to pretend that you’re merely a dragon who happens to be useful.”
“What am I, then?”
I turn to face him. Dawn softens the hard lines of his face, turns the volcanic heat in his eyes to something almost gold. He looks, for one unguarded moment, like someone worth surviving for.
“Someone I picked.” The words feel like a threshold. “Someone I keep picking. Someone who makes me want to survive this, not for strategy or defiance or the satisfaction of denying the Blood Regent his victory, but because—”
I stop. The rest of the sentence lodges in my throat.
Izan’s hand rises to my face. His thumb traces my cheekbone with devastating gentleness, so at odds with the violence he carries in every other gesture.
“Because?” His voice has gone rough.
“Because I want to find out what comes next.” The confession escapes before I can contain it. “For us. What happens when the war is over and the Blood Regent is dead and we’re still standing beside each other with all this—” I gesture vaguely at the space between us. “Whatever this is.”
“I know what it is.” His other hand finds my hip, pulls me closer.
“What?”
He doesn’t answer with words.
The kiss is different from the desperate claiming of earlier. Slower. Deeper. The kind of kiss that makes promises without speaking them.
When we finally break apart, the sun has crested the volcanic peaks. Golden light spills across the city, turning ash to amber and stone to bronze.
“Time to go.” I keep my voice steady despite the way my pulse races. “The strike teams will be in position.”
Izan’s hand lingers on my face for one more heartbeat. Then he steps back, and the Enforcer slides into place over the man who just kissed me like I was precious.
“Stay close to me in the cistern.” His voice carries the edge of command. “Whatever happens, don’t let them separate us.”
“I won’t.”