31. Chapter 31
AMARIA
I woke to clouded light filtering through the canopy.
My body ached. The good kind of ache—muscles used, skin marked, the physical evidence of what we'd done pressed into my flesh like a signature.
Eryndor lay three feet away. Close enough to hear the slow rhythm of his breathing. Not close enough to touch. Not without those damn suppressor cuffs.
I rolled over to face him, finding his eyes already open—grey in the early light, shadowed with something neither of us had words for yet.
He didn't ask how I'd slept. Didn't say good morning. We both knew the answer to any question he might ask.
"It wasn't enough," I whispered, the words slipping out before I could stop them.
"No." His voice cracked. "It wasn't."
The cruelest part? I'd felt more of him with a willow branch than I had with his body inside mine. More of him through bath water and commands and ten feet of empty air than I had skin to skin in the moss.
We'd spent weeks learning how to reach each other without touching. Last night, we finally touched—his body a revelation that ruined me for anyone else—but the space where our magic should have entwined was completely silent.
"The prophecy," I said, my voice thick. "Before we die—but after we complete the bond for real, at the end—"
"We'll feel everything." His voice was rough, his gaze dropping to my lips. "For whatever time we have left. We'll feel it all."
My throat tightened. The only way to have the real thing—the full, world-shattering connection we were meant for—was to die. The suppressors kept us alive. The careful distance kept the King from siphoning our power.
And it would keep us starving for each other until the very end.
AMARIA
Umbra kept us dangerously low, her belly practically skimming the treetops. Every downstroke of her wing sent a jarring stutter through her spine—a sickening hitch in the rhythm where the void soldier's grip had bruised the muscle deep beneath her scales.
We’d pulled her from the wreckage, bleeding and exhausted, and may have lied through our teeth when we promised it would be an easy flight.
Eryndor rode far back by her haunches to balance the uneven drag, leaving me to settle myself at the base of her neck.
Ahead of us, the serrated peaks of Skal'Varin cut into the afternoon sky, catching the gold of the fading sun. Home. Or at least, the closest thing we had left to it. We just had to clear the final ridge.
But she didn't so much land as decide she was officially done flying.
The stone platform rushed up to meet us, and Umbra hit it with a heavy, ungraceful thud. Her exhausted wing immediately called it quits, sending her massive frame tipping sideways in a dramatic heap.
I threw my body in the opposite direction, hugging her neck for dear life to keep from being unceremoniously dumped over the edge.
When the dust finally settled, I looked up. A team of healers was already rushing the platform, swarming toward Umbra's folded wing. But my eyes locked on the welcoming committee waiting just beyond them.
Dreadscale stood at the front, motionless as carved stone. Serenya beside him, hands clasped, smile fixed in place. And Maxx—
Maxx was already talking.
"—and THERE they are! The conquering heroes!
Slightly singed, moderately traumatized, but intact!
" He spread his arms wide as we dismounted, but then his fingers were twitching, tapping rapid, nervous rhythms against his own thighs.
"I was just telling everyone about our glorious tactical retreat.
Did you know Pyrrath can do a barrel roll?
Neither did I! Neither did my stomach! My stomach is still somewhere over the eastern mountains, actually, I should probably go collect it—"
He grabbed my shoulders. The grip was bruised-knuckle tight. He didn't just hug me; he clung, like he needed to prove both of us were still solid.
"You're alive." The words came out fast, muffled against my hair. "You're alive, you're both alive, that's excellent, that's the best news I've had all day, and I've had some VERY good news today including the discovery that dragon vomit is not, in fact, as toxic as previously believed—"
"Maxx." I pulled back. "Breathe."
"Breathing is for people who aren't running on pure adrenaline and spite." He released me. Spun toward Eryndor. "And YOU. You dramatic bastard. Getting stabbed? Really? That's your move? Very original. Very on-brand. Ten out of ten for commitment to the aesthetic—"
His eyes were blown wide, darting from Eryndor, to me, to his own hands.
He was vibrating. The jokes tumbled out rapid-fire. His hands moved constantly—gesturing, fidgeting, reaching toward Serenya and then pulling back.
"—so there I am, half my arm doing its best impression of a ghost, thinking 'well, this is a stupid way to die,' and Dreadscale just APPEARS like some kind of fire-breathing deus ex machina—"
His eyes cut to Serenya. Quick. Checking.
She smiled. A full two seconds too late.
"Right," she said. "That sounds terrifying."
The timing was off. The words landed in the wrong place, responding to a sentence that had already moved on.
Maxx didn't blink. He just talked louder, rushing to fill the wrongness of that gap.
"—and the HEAT, Amaria, I cannot stress this enough, dragon fire is HOT, who knew, certainly not me, I was too busy being reconstituted like some kind of fae soup—"
Serenya turned to me. Her smile was warm and completely untroubled.
"The funny one." She gestured toward Maxx. "I like him. He makes everything feel less frightening."
She said it the way you'd describe someone you sat next to once at a banquet.
Maxx's face did something terrible. A flash—the shape of devastation compressed into half a second.
Then he laughed.
"That's me." Bright. Easy. "Professional comedian. I take requests. Anyway, the important thing is we're all here, we're all alive, and I've discovered I have a VERY low tolerance for existential dissolution, so if we could avoid that in the future, that would be—"
Dreadscale's hand landed on his shoulder.
The manic stream of words snapped shut. Maxx stared at the stone floor. For one agonizing second, his shoulders caved, the frantic comedian vanishing to reveal a male who was still terrified he might fade away.
Then he dragged in a ragged breath, and the mask snapped back.
"Anyway. Welcome home. We have ale. We have food." He turned, reaching for Serenya's arm, gripping her sleeve like an anchor. "We have a LOT to discuss."
"The council is already gathered," Dreadscale rumbled. "They are waiting in the chamber for your report."
"Ale in the council chamber, obviously," Maxx amended without missing a beat.
He turned and walked toward the great hall. His hand brushed Serenya's arm as he passed—guiding her, checking she was following, unable to stop touching her even for a moment.
Dreadscale fell into step on her other side, his massive frame shielding her blind spot.
They moved like a closed circuit. An unbreakable formation forged somewhere in the smoke of the battlefield.
Whatever had happened in those twenty heartbeats of fire—in the space between Maxx fading away and Dreadscale refusing to let go—had bound the three of them into a knot that couldn't be untangled.
I watched them walk away.
Eryndor stepped up beside me. His hand rose, instinctively reaching for my lower back, before muscle memory collided with reality.
He let his hand drop. "Come on," he said quietly. "Let's go inside."
We followed them up the path, close enough to feel the absence of his hand and too far apart to do anything about it.
The council chamber hadn't shrunk, but the walls felt like they were closing in. The air was stale, heavy with the smell of old stone and our own singed clothes. I stood near the carved table, my muscles locked in a permanent, aching tension, listening to Dreadscale dismantle our only hope.
He didn't sugarcoat it. His voice was a flat, heavy rumble, laying out the facts like autopsy findings. The King survived the fire. The King regenerated.
Dragonborn.
I watched the word hit the room. It didn't cause an uproar; it caused a collapse.
Thyra gripped the edge of the stone table so hard her knuckles bleached bone-white. "You're certain." It wasn't a question. It was a desperate, quiet plea for him to be wrong.
"I watched Pyrrath's flames turn the road to glass," Dreadscale replied, his tone devoid of pity. "I watched the King stand in the center of it and smile."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Dreadscale didn't stop to let them breathe. He moved straight to the void soldiers. The phasing. The reality distortion.
I watched centuries of strategy and arrogance drain out of their faces, replaced by the exact same hollow, sinking terror I’d felt on that battlefield.
The isolationists—the ones who'd argued against involvement, who'd wanted to let the lowlands burn—they looked like men watching their walls crumble. They'd believed the mountains would protect them. Believed Skal'Varin was too high, too remote, too dragon-guarded to reach.
They'd been wrong.
"How many void soldiers?" Thyra's voice was tight.
"Hundreds. Maybe more. He was showing us a fraction of what he has."
"And they can't be killed."
"They can be unmade." Dreadscale's eyes found mine. "The Fury burns through the reality distortion. But one fae cannot fight an army."
Frantic murmurs broke out among the Dragonborn.
Dreadscale raised his hand for silence. "She is not the only frequency that cuts them.
Mirror-Fire dragons carry it too—the same truth-vibration in their scales.
I've felt it myself. Held it in flashes, seconds at a time, long enough to unmake what came at me.
" A pause. "But not all riders will be able to.
Some riders will burn clean enough to feed it.
Others won't. We won't know until the void is on them. "
The chamber erupted.
Voices overlapping—arguments about defenses, about evacuation, about alliances they'd spent centuries refusing. The isolationists blamed the interventionists. The warriors demanded action. The elders spoke over each other in languages I didn't understand.
I sat in the chaos and watched.
Maxx had positioned himself at Serenya's side. His leg bounced under the table—constant motion, nervous energy with nowhere to go. Every few minutes he'd lean over and murmur to her, and she'd nod and smile in a way that almost looked natural.
Eryndor stood against the wall. Silent. His arms crossed over his chest, pressing against the wound that had barely stopped bleeding. He hadn't spoken since we'd entered. His eyes tracked the room—the exits, the threats, the tactical reality of their situation.
Dreadscale remained at the head of the table. Still as stone. But his weight had shifted—angled slightly toward Maxx and Serenya, like a compass needle finding north.
"—can't hold if they bring those creatures here—"
"—the passes are defensible, we've held them for centuries—"
"—against mortal armies! Not against things that walk through walls—"
The arguments blurred together. I stopped listening to the words and watched the faces instead.
Fear. That's what I saw. Fear dressed up as anger, as strategy, as outrage. The elders who'd felt untouchable were realizing they'd always been within reach. They just hadn't been worth reaching for.
Until now.
Thyra slammed her palm against the table.
Silence fell.
"The King knows where the Rupture is." Her voice cut through the room. "He knows she carries the Fury. He knows his son is here, bound to her in ways he can exploit." Her eyes found mine. "We are no longer neutral ground. We are a target."
The truth settled over the chamber like ash. I felt it in the set of shoulders, the tightening of jaws, the way hands drifted toward weapons that couldn't help them.
Skal'Varin had been a sanctuary. A refuge carved into stone and guarded by dragons and the simple fact that no one had ever bothered to come this high.
That was over now.
"You brought this to our door." The words came from a Dragonborn in the back. His truth-stone flickered between amber and a smoky red.
"You struck the King from our territory. Used our dragons. Wore our colors." His finger jabbed toward me. "And now he knows where we are. He knows what we have. He knows—"
Dreadscale interrupted him. "The King is Dragonborn. Same bloodline. Same ancient heritage that runs through every warrior in this room." His eyes swept the councilors. "This is a corruption of our people. Our legacy. A male who carries dragon-fire in his veins and uses it to slaughter our kin."
"That doesn't make it our—"
"It was always our war." Dreadscale's voice hardened. "We just convinced ourselves it wasn't. We hid in our mountains and told ourselves the lowlands could burn without touching us. We were wrong. This is our war and we will not cower from it."
The arguments guttered out. The councilors exchanged looks. Calculation. Resignation. The slow acceptance of people who'd run out of walls to hide behind.