CHAPTER FOUR #2
Ronan looked away. “Close enough,” he echoed, though they both knew he didn’t believe it.
The step Elysian took toward Ronan was soundless. “Some sacrifices feel like theft,” he said it carefully. “But those that might seem to take the most are often the ones that matter in the end.”
Only once, Ronan’s shoulders rose, refusing to accept it before they settled.
Elysian dipped his chin, inhaling and immediately grimacing. His mouth curved as he nodded past Ronan, down to the carcass as he approached. “I thought you didn’t care for deer.” Ronan pivoted, letting him pass, tensing as Elysian crouched, fingers ghosting over the body. “Did you do this?”
Ronan scoffed, rubbing the faint mark on his wrist. “You know I don’t play with my food before I eat it.”
A sly smirk curved across Elysian’s mouth as he dipped his hand into a pool of blackened blood. Lifting it to his nose, he consumed the scent again.
A shudder rippled through him, his moonlit leathers almost changing deeper from the stench.
“Depends on what kind of food you mean.” He stood fluidly, gaze lingering colder on the doe now.
Ronan’s voice cut clean, snapping him back. “Report.”
Elysian clasped his hands neatly behind his back, soldier straight.
“Six of them. All men from the rebellion.” His jaw worked, ready to shatter.
“And her. They had the Bright soldiers down in minutes. Recovered a few scripts, content unknown. Two slipped away with them. I stayed with her, as ordered.”
His eyes locked on Ronan’s. Movement shifted there, too subtle to name as raindrops began to fall—thin, splattered jewels sliding through the canopy, dotting leather and skin.
Ronan arched his brow. “And?”
Elysian’s mouth twitched, his glare dipping to Ronan’s wrist as he exhaled. “She ran into trouble. Had to mist her own weapon, along with all the ones they recovered. And in the end…” A pause, too long.
“Say it.”
Elysian’s jaw clenched tighter. “In the end, she poisoned him. Exactly as we knew she would.”
Ronan gave a short, bitter laugh.
For one breath, he’d allowed himself the cruelest hope. That the rumors were lies. That the woman fated for demise might yet be saved. That myth or fate would spare them both.
But the more he had followed her, the more he studied the way her sins bent to her will, the more he knew.
It would never be true.
“The only safe option is to kill her and end it clean. Letting her run free, letting her gather strength from that curse—” Elysian didn’t want to say it, despite his hatred toward what she brought upon his prince. “It’ll only doom us all faster.”
Ronan studied him in silence, drawing in a breath that he had to force out slowly.
“The moment you start believing she could ever be anything more, Ronan, anything other than what the gods made her—”
“You think I don’t know what she is?”
Ronan glanced to his wrist, to where the worn leather band sat against his skin, darkened by age and sweat, the kind of thing no one would look twice at. But beneath it was the brand that bound him.
A promise carved in blood.
Elysian didn’t know. Could never know. If he did, he’d cut the scar from Ronan’s flesh himself.
His thumb brushed over the edge of the band, feeling the tether to his oath beneath it. To the one who had told him what he was fated for.
He could still hear the voice when she branded him. A curse for a curse, Dragon Prince. You’ll end her reign or burn in it.
Ronan exhaled, deeper this time, letting his hand fall away.
He hated lying to Elysian; his brother deserved the truth. But some truths were better starved. Especially when the rewards—freedom, resolution— felt so close.
Or maybe just the illusion of both.
“I think,” Elysian exhaled, “you’re suffocating in the same fire you think defines you.
I see it. You want to be more than destruction, more than smoke.
But by fang and frost, Ronan, stop trying to burn with her in this.
Rise. Became more after she’s gone and Selvarra is saved. Become a fucking king.”
Ronan’s expression didn’t shift, but the flames in his eyes burned still.
He ignored the predictable report, ignored the echo of Elysian’s assertion as rain slicked down harder now, silver sheets blurring the forest, washing away the blood on their skin.
Proof of what they’d touched, what Ronan had done.
A killer. That’s all he’d ever be. He ignored it all.
“You’re the only one who can read the scent beneath the blood, so what lingers here, Ely? Unravel the air, tell me what the threads are hiding. What I’m missing.”
A muscle ticked, branches swaying against one another as if reacting, as if being pulled.
Elysian’s nostrils flared, the blue in his eyes icing over as he said, “Death.” His eyes shot toward where the trees breathed, toward the fog that hung there.
Ronan chuckled, looking skyward for too long. “That is obvious.”
Elysian’s eyes narrowed then, his tone dropping deeper. “No. What did this…is death.”
Tension tugged at the corner of Ronan’s mouth before he forced it into a straight line. His mind worked, slow at first, confusion scratching. But realization crawled up his spine, cold and cautious.
“Ronan—" Elysian drew a hand forward, where rain-soaked parchment lay, the ink bleeding into black. “We need to get back to Ryuu. Aero has sent message after message about the missing Kaida, each one more dire than the last.”
The Kaida—small dragons native only to Ryuu. Rare as a dragon choosing to kneel and hunted for centuries for their blood, their tears, their flesh.
Tears that could heal. Blood that could unmake. Their scarcity had made them sacred, untouchable.
And now they were vanishing.
Ronan turned away from him, letting the water wash every sin away.
A ripple moved under Elysian’s neck, skin forming to fur, white and thick, eyes flaring electric.
“You freed me from your father’s service.
” The words, spoken from memory, found their place under Ronan’s skin.
“And that freedom made me unshakable in allegiance, but it didn't make me blind. You’re running.”
Ronan’s head turned sharply. “You think I’ve forgotten? The chains, the way they paraded you like something to tame? That wasn’t for allegiance—”
Elysian huffed a laugh. “You cut the shackles, my prince. You didn’t change the world that built them.”
Ronan’s jaw tightened as he stole a glance toward Ely without meeting his eyes. “I’m trying.”
“That world doesn’t want saving,” Elysian murmured, shifting a step closer. “It needs a ruler who still believes in ruling.”
“I’ve seen what rulers become—” The words came through clenched teeth. “If the throne thinks it still owns me, it is mistaken. I am not its weapon any longer. I am its reckoning.”
Elysian tilted his head, the glow of his eyes catching through the mist. “Reckonings come with a cost. Make sure you’re ready to pay it.” Softer, he said, “Taking the throne won’t turn you into him, Ronan. The dragons need a king. You carry his blood; you were born for this—"
Ronan turned, meeting his stare head-on. “Then the blood is the burden.”
The branches above them groaned in the wind, scattering droplets like shards of glass.
Elysian’s jaw worked, pale leathered wings shooting from his back. “You can’t keep fighting what’s already written.”
“I’m not fighting it.” Ronan’s steps closed the space between them. “I’m rewriting it.”
Lightning split the clouds in the distance, flashing across their faces. The reflection of flame and frost. Elysian’s wings flared instinctively.
“And when Ryuu falls because of your stubbornness?”
Ronan’s stare jerked away, toward the trees where the shadows deepened. “You think I don’t fear that every godsdamned day? I don’t want a throne,” he whispered. “I want... redemption.”
Elysian’s wings folded back, going still. “Then you’ll have neither.”
Ronan rolled his shoulders, the crack of bone hinting at the dragon beneath. “Very well.” He didn’t take the parchment still in Ely’s grip, only ignored the hand stretched toward him. “You return to Ryuu and meet with Aero.”
Thunder answered him, rolling across the trees.
If Elysian was surprised by the orders, he didn’t show it. His eyes only flitted back to the carcass where rot had quickened, the doe collapsing in on itself until it was more bone than flesh.
Death was spreading too fast.
Finally, raising his voice above the storm, he asked, “When will you return?”
Ronan flexed his hand once, murky tendrils curling from its center. “If I’m not back in three days’ time, you have permission to hunt me down, hound.”
Not an insult or cruelty, only a jest. A brother’s love sharpened into a blade.
Rain rushed down his curls, down his jaw, dripping from the chain around his throat.
He would not return in three days. He knew it. Ely likely knew it too.
The closer he came to Ryuu, the heavier the weight. The throne waited, looming like a beast in the dark, pressing its collar against his neck.
His people did not need him there. Not to guide, not to oversee. Perhaps they were relieved he stayed away. Relieved that their would-be king was too far to fail them.
He wondered how much they knew, how much of the truth seeped past the barrier. If the dread of the Bale troubled them at all, or if it was only him they found displeasing.
Elysian’s expression dulled, smoothed into obedience as he bowed to his prince and took one small step back.
Ronan’s chest tightened, his mouth opened, hand lifting as he took a step forward, ready to stop him. To tell him to stay.
The words never came.
His lips closed, his hand fell—and Elysian lifted his head, eyes still frost, and opened a void, sifting and disappearing into shadow.
An ache bloomed in his chest as memories surged, dragging from the dark—
Rhydan’s stare, every time Ronan failed the significance of his name.
Rage seared through him, breaking loose, leaking fire from his palm. Black flame roared upward, a funnel spiraling into the storm. Smoke curled after, rising to tangle with thunderclouds as if the sky itself could choke on his shame.
He knelt, fingers tracing shapes into the dirt before his palm stretched toward the skeletal doe, rain streaking down his arms.
His voice rumbled low, meant for gods and shadows both. “For your suffering.” His hand pressed flat against bone. “May the gods guide you to the Aureveil.”
Bone turned to ash. Ink to wings.
And the skeleton vanished into the realm as a beast rose above it.