49. Chapter 49
DREADSCALE
She said hello.
Not the way she used to—with that quiet knowing behind her eyes, the weight of every thread she'd ever woven twining into the word until it meant something closer to I see you.
I had carried fae out of burning cities. I had held the dying while their blood turned the rivers black.
None of it had prepared me for hello.
The boy had her hand when I found them. His knuckles were white around her fingers and his face—that face he hid behind ten thousand masks—was bare. Wrecked. He'd looked at me the way soldiers look at healers when they already know the wound is fatal.
She fell asleep in the room with her hand in the boy's hair and the little dog curled at her side, and I sat in the doorway and listened to her breathe until the rhythm convinced me she was still in there. Somewhere. Behind the fog.
Then I left. Because staying would not fix her. And because if I stayed much longer, I would break something I could not repair.
I turned the corner. The medical wing announced itself by smell—iron and alcohol and the thin, astringent lie of cleanliness. A lieutenant was waiting at the far end of the corridor, clipboard in hand, posture arranged into something he probably thought conveyed authority.
The fae and their endless hubris.
I'd agreed to this “medical checkup” because it kept the peace.
Because Amaria needed time to untangle the mess of her bond, and I would not be the reason the King found an excuse to tighten the noose.
So when the medical lieutenant requested an audience—requested, as if I were a guest and not a predator tolerating their hospitality—I said yes.
I should have known better.
The room they led me to was designed to look like a medical chamber. Clean stone walls. A table with leather restraints. Shelves lined with vials and instruments that gleamed with sterile menace. But I recognized the runes carved into the floor, the dampening wards humming in the walls.
A cell. Dressed up in healer's clothing.
They think this will hold me.
I smiled to myself and sat in the chair they offered. Let them fasten the restraints around my wrists—thick leather lined with suppressing runes, meant to weaken magical creatures.
It did nothing.
But they didn't need to know that. Not yet.
I wondered how long this would take. How many words this fae would need to spit out to feel important before I could leave.
The medical lieutenant entered with the confidence of a male who had never been hunted.
He was young, for a fae. Sharp features. Cold eyes. He carried a small wooden case under one arm and set it on the table between us with the reverence of a priest presenting a relic.
"Thank you for agreeing to meet with me," he said. His voice was smooth. Practiced. "I know this must be... uncomfortable."
I said nothing.
He opened the case. Inside, nestled in velvet, was a single vial. The liquid within was pale silver and luminescent.
"Do you know what this is?"
"Poison," I said. "Dressed up in pretty glass."
A flicker of annoyance crossed his face. He smoothed it away.
"It's called a Severing Draught. It's designed to sever the bond between a Dragonborn and their... partner." He said the word like it tasted sour. "We've been perfecting it for decades. The results are quite remarkable."
I looked at the vial. Looked at him.
"You think I want to be severed. From my dragon."
"I think you've never had a choice." He leaned forward, his expression shifting to a cloying, practiced pity. "The dragon bond—we know what it does. It claws at your thoughts. Fills your mind with noise, with instinct, with hunger. You've never had a quiet moment in your life, have you?"
The restraints creaked as I shifted. He didn't flinch. He should have.
Quiet.
The word almost made me laugh. This fae—this child playing healer—thought he understood what lived in my blood. Thought centuries of fire and sky could be reduced to noise.
"You could be free," he continued. "No more roaring in your blood. No more being a vessel for something ancient and violent. You could just be..." He spread his hands. "A fae. Peaceful. Whole."
A fae.
I let the words settle. Let him think I was considering them.
They really believe this bullshit.
"You misunderstand," I said.
The lieutenant's eyebrows rose. "Oh?"
"You think the bond is a cage." I tested the restraints. The leather groaned. "You think I am a prisoner of my own blood. That the dragon is a parasite I would cut out if I could."
"Isn't it?"
"No."
The word came out flat. Final. He blinked.
"The bond is not noise," I continued. "It is not hunger. It is not a voice screaming in the dark." I leaned forward, and the chair creaked beneath me. "It is the sky. It is the fire at the heart of the world. It is everything your small, obsolete life will never understand."
His composure cracked. Just a fraction.
"You're... romanticizing your condition. It's common, in cases of long-term—"
"I am not sick."
"The bond alters perception. It creates dependency. You think you need it, but that's precisely what—"
"I am not sick," I repeated. "And I am not yours to cure."
The lieutenant opened his mouth to argue. More words. More explanations. More of this endless fae conviction that they understood things they had never touched. I was already tired of empty words.
Then he made his last mistake.
He picked up the vial and moved toward me.
Perhaps he thought the restraints would hold or that the dampening wards would slow me. Perhaps he was simply too arrogant to recognize the predator sitting three feet away.
"The King has authorized treatment for all magical creatures in the palace," he said. His voice had gone hard. Official. "For your own safety and the safety of others. If you won't take it willingly—"
I stood up.
The restraints didn't break. They simply... ceased to matter. The leather tore like wet paper. The iron buckles clattered to the floor, useless, as I rose to my full height.
The lieutenant stumbled backward. The vial shook in his hand.
"Guar—"
I was faster.
My hand closed around his throat before he could finish the word. I lifted him off the ground. His feet kicked and his hands clawed at my wrist uselessly.
The heat came next.
The promise of a fire to come and the air thickened. The lieutenant's skin prickled where my palm touched his throat.
"You want me quiet?" I asked.
He couldn't answer. His eyes were bulging. His face was turning red.
Something in me unhinged. The pretense was over. The playing house, the tolerating, the sitting in chairs while lesser creatures fastened useless restraints around my wrists—
Done.
I let the roar build.
It started low. So low it didn't register as sound at first—just pressure, building in the bones, vibrating in the teeth. The lieutenant's ears popped. Dust shook from the ceiling. The vials on the shelves began to rattle, then dance, then crash to the floor in cascades of shattering glass.
Then I distended my jaw to its full length and let the roar rip out of me at maximum strength.
It cascaded through the room in a river of violence.
Filled the corridor beyond. Filled every crack and corner of this sterile little cage they'd built to contain something they didn't understand.
The walls cracked. The table split down the middle.
The silver liquid in the Severing Draught began to boil in its vial, bubbling and hissing, before the glass exploded in a spray of steam and shards.
The lieutenant was screaming now. Or trying to. It was hard to tell over the sound of the world shaking.
I held him there for three more seconds. Let him feel what it meant to be prey. Let every animal instinct in his fragile little body understand exactly what he'd tried to cage.
Then I threw him through the door.
The reinforced wood splintered on impact.
The lieutenant hit the corridor wall and slid to the floor, groaning, clutching his throat where my palm had left a perfect red handprint. Guards were shouting. Boots pounding on stone. Alarms wailing somewhere in the distance.
I walked out over the wreckage.
The guards skidded to a halt when they saw me. Six of them. Armed. Armored. Trained to handle magical threats.
I looked at them.
They looked at the lieutenant, crumpled against the wall. At the smoke still curling from the ruined doorway. At the cracks spreading across the ceiling like lightning frozen in stone.
None of them moved.
Smart.
I stepped over the lieutenant's body—still breathing, unfortunately—and walked down the corridor. The guards scrambled back, treating the empty air around me like a blast radius.
They think the bond is a cage.
My boots crunched on broken glass.
They think silence is freedom.
The dampening wards flickered and died as I passed, overwhelmed by something they were never designed to contain.
They understand nothing.
I needed to find Amaria and get the fuck out of here.