Chapter 25
ESME
We head back through the mountain's passages with more ease than when we came in. The celestial trap doesn't activate as we cross it in reverse. Thankfully, the ancient dragons only cared about keeping intruders out, not in.
As we make our way to the exit, my mind keeps circling back to what happened on that…
throne. My lips still feel the ghost of his touch.
My body is still humming, nerve endings dazed, as if some part of me is still sitting there with him between my knees, still caught in that slow, dangerous gravity he has around him.
Every part of me feels physically satisfied, loose and warm in a way that makes walking feel faintly surreal.
And yet…
Inside, I struggle to make the full emotional connection.
After what just happened, I know I should be feeling more. What exactly I should be feeling, I’m not entirely sure. I’m still trying to figure that out.
Embarrassment, perhaps. That I let him see every part of me—my most intimate self—watch me come completely undone in front of him.
That I allowed a dragon—the dragon king—to kneel before me like that.
That I arched and forgot myself and the world beyond the sensation of his mouth and hands and the relentless patience with which he unraveled me.
That I fell apart so completely under his touch.
Or maybe I should feel something else entirely.
Something I don’t quite dare name yet.
Instead, what I feel is… both nothing and everything at once.
It’s the strangest sensation. Like watching fireworks through frosted glass…
I can see the brilliance, feel the percussion, but it’s all slightly removed.
Muted. I recognize the satisfaction still echoing through my body, but the emotional weight of what we did feels strangely dulled, like the meaning of it is hovering somewhere just out of reach.
As if my mind hasn’t quite caught up with what my body already knows.
We abruptly reach the entrance to the mountain, and I pause, my borrowed tunic suddenly feeling far too intimate for the journey back.
“I should change,” I say, gathering my clothes from where Dayn's been carrying them.
I feel his eyes on me as I slip behind a stone column. I pull on my trousers and shirt, acutely aware of his presence even though he can’t see me directly. My skin still feels hypersensitive, every movement of fabric against it reminding me—unhelpfully—of where his hands were not long ago.
When I step back out, I hold his tunic toward him.
“Thanks for the loan,” I say, aiming for casual.
His fingers brush mine as he takes it, and even that brief contact sends a small, electric jolt up my arm.
“It looked better on you,” he says, pulling it over his head.
I raise an eyebrow. “You say that to all the women who borrow your clothes?”
“No,” he says. A beat. “Just the ones I marry.”
I stare at him.
For a moment my mind simply… pauses, like it’s tripped over the word and hasn’t quite decided what to do with it yet.
“You say that,” I mutter at last, turning toward the path, “with an alarming amount of ease.”
Dayn falls into step beside me as we move toward the mouth of the mountain.
“I am at ease,” he says.
“That’s the concerning part.”
A low chuckle leaves him as we step out into the cool night air. The mountain entrance seals itself behind us. The village below lies quiet, most of the windows dark, the streets silvered by moonlight.
“Esme,” he says after a moment, his low voice carrying through the quiet, “you did marry me.”
“Yes,” I say. “Under rather questionable circumstances.”
“Still counts.”
I slow.
Something in the way he says it—not teasing, not pushing—makes me glance up at him.
Dayn has stopped a step ahead of me on the path.
Moonlight catches in his dark hair, turning the edges of it silver.
His expression is calm, but his eyes are steady on mine, watching me with that same quiet focus he had earlier…
when his hands were on me, when he was kneeling between my knees like the rest of the world had ceased to exist.
For a moment neither of us speaks.
The night around us is very still. Somewhere down in the village a shutter knocks softly in the wind.
I feel that strange distance again—the emotional numbness that’s been hovering over everything since I woke up in Rayala’s lair—but something about the way he’s looking at me pushes against it.
Not breaking through.
Just… pressing there.
“You’re very certain about that,” I say after a moment.
His mouth tilts slightly. “I tend to be,” he says.
I study him a second longer.
It would probably be smarter to break the moment with a joke. Or a sarcastic remark. Or one of the many sensible defenses I usually keep on hand.
Instead I just stand there, looking at him, with the quiet realization that for a man who claims to be so comfortable with all this… he’s watching me very carefully. Like the answer matters.
The thought lands somewhere inside me—but, like everything else tonight, the full weight of it feels just out of reach.
I clear my throat, but before I can attempt an answer, six figures drop from the rocks above us.
The attack comes without warning.
Dressed in the same matte-black tactical gear as the clearbloods who ambushed us at the summer house, one of them raises a weapon—not a rifle this time, but something that looks like a cross between a crossbow and a medical instrument. It fires with a whisper-soft hiss.
Dayn yanks me sideways, the projectile missing my neck by inches. It embeds itself in a tree behind us.
“Shit,” I gasp.
Something feels different about these clearbloods. How did they sneak up on us so easily; evade even Dayn’s radar?
“Dampening wards,” Dayn mutters, as if we’re thinking the same thing. “Down.” He shoves me toward a rocky outcropping as another projectile whistles through the air.
I roll behind the cover, heart hammering, and instinctively reach for my magic. The shadows come to me instantly, coiling around my fingertips.
“Their energy is different. More refined. More lethal,” Dayn growls, his eyes flashing molten gold. “They're not just clearbloods. They're hybrids.”
A bolt of energy scorches the rock above us, sending stone fragments raining down. I peer around the edge and catch a glimpse of our attackers' movements—fluid, unnaturally graceful, with a predatory edge that reminds me of Mazrov.
“They've integrated dragon magic?” I realize aloud. “Not just in their weapons this time.”
Dayn nods, his voice dropping to a dangerous register. “In themselves. Or started to.”
The clearbloods fan out, attempting to flank us. Their movements are coordinated with military precision, each covering the others' approaches.
Dayn shifts slightly closer to me without looking.
“Stay with me,” he murmurs.
I scoff. That was already the plan.
The next thing I know, Dayn has stripped and shoved his clothes into my satchel. His skin ripples, bones cracking and reforming with violent sounds. The air shimmers with heat so intense it distorts everything around him.
Where Dayn stood moments before towers the dragon, dark scales gleaming in the moonlight. His wings unfurl, spanning wider than the clearing. Those glaring amber eyes fix on me with unmistakable intent.
“Get on,” he projects.
I don't hesitate. I scramble onto his back, my fingers finding purchase between the smooth, burning-hot scales along his spine.
Then Dayn's massive body launches upward, the force of it knocking the breath from my lungs.
I flatten myself against his neck, my thighs clamping around his spine as tightly as I can manage.
Below us, the clearbloods scatter, seeking cover.
Before they can regroup, the world tilts and blurs.
Wind tears at my face, my hair whipping painfully against my cheeks.
Dayn descends, his massive jaws snap shut around one man's torso, the sound of bones crushing audible even over the wind.
He whips his head to the side and releases, sending the broken body flying into the gloom.
Dayn's tail lashes out, catching two more of them in a single sweep. The impact sends them careening into a boulder with a sickening crunch. Then his flame engulfs two others—a torrent of golden fire so hot it swallows the men before they can even scream.
The last clearblood, slightly shorter than the others, tries to scramble up the rocks. Dayn's tail snakes out, coiling around the man's legs. He lifts him into the air, shaking the weapon from his hands and dangling him upside down like a child's toy.
“This one,” Dayn's voice rumbles in my mind. “We keep.”
Dayn beats his enormous wings, launches us back into the sky, and soars to a wide cliff overlooking the valley. There, he lands, keeping the clearblood pinned against the ground.
I slide from Dayn's back cautiously. My legs feel like jelly after the short but intense ride. I force myself to stand tall.
“Why are you tracking us?” I ask, keeping my distance. Even without his weapons, he could be dangerous.
Dayn’s tail crushes him harder into the ground.
“The… Ides,” the man gasps.
Apparently getting crushed by a full dragon is enough to get a clearblood to talk. I take a step closer, my interest piqued. “What about them?”
“They're... spreading. After you unleashed Merlin… he beckoned in more Ides… and they didn't stay contained. They've been moving to other… fallen darkblood covens… working with living hosts, rebuilding what was destroyed.”
A small chill snakes down my spine despite the heat radiating from Dayn. “Rebuilding? What do you mean?”
“Whole covens are being... restored. But they're… different. Stronger. More unified. And we… don’t really know what they're planning.”
I exhale. This should be good news—the darkblood covens rising again, strengthened by ancient power. It's what we wanted, isn't it? What we fought for?
So why does something feel… off?
“Even if you caught me, it won’t undo what happened,” I say, strengthening my voice. “Why the constant chase? I don’t even have an Ide inside me right now.”
Dayn gives the man another squish.
“Argh! Because… we want leverage… Any leverage is useful.”
“Right, well I suggest you get off our tail, unless you want a whole lot of leverage.”
I exchange a look with Dayn, whose massive draconic face somehow manages to convey concern.
I swallow, turning back to the clearblood, making a decision.
“Listen carefully,” I say. “We’ll let you go, this time.
Go back to your people. Tell them that coming after King Daynthazar and me won't stop what's already been set in motion.
Tell them that if they continue hunting us, they'll only make things worse.” I step a little closer.
“The dragons are already at war with you. Do you really want to give the darkbloods extra grudges?”
The clearblood rasps, “I’ll… go.”
Dayn's massive tail loosens around the clearblood, who scrambles away as soon as there's space. He doesn't look back as he staggers down the mountainside, his dark silhouette quickly disappearing among the trees.
I watch him go, my arms wrapped around myself against the night's chill. The absence of immediate danger leaves more room for the implications of what the man said to sink in.
The Ides are spreading… moving between covens… rebuilding.
It should feel like victory, but instead, it still sits like ice in my stomach. It’s all unknown, all new, this idea to use ancients as weapons and tools.
Dayn shifts beside me. “We should leave.”
I nod, moving to climb again onto his back. But instead, his massive form contracts, scales disappearing, wings folding, until… my husband stands before me once more, naked and magnificent in the moonlight.
For a moment neither of us moves.
The wind lifts a strand of his hair across his face. His eyes linger on me—not in the heated way from earlier tonight, but something quieter. Steadier.
He takes his clothes from my satchel and pulls them on. When he finishes, he turns back to me.
“We should go by portal,” he says quietly. “We’ve one last stop to make before we complete this.”
This retuning ritual.
The final step.
To restore me to myself so that I’m whole again. So that I can return and… figure out what my place in all of this is. Or what our place is?
First things first, I repeat to myself.
I nod, letting him take my hand. Familiar power flickers between us the moment our fingers interlace, and soon, the portal is consuming us both.