Chapter 38
Istrip off my boots and outer clothes, then slide beneath the covers. My body feels like one giant bruise, muscles protesting every movement. I stare at the ceiling, counting the cracks in the stone until my eyelids finally grow heavy.
When sleep comes, it drags me under completely.
I'm small again, so small my feet barely touch the floor when I sit in a chair. The kitchen is warm, filled with the scent of spices and wood smoke. I'm playing with a wooden spoon, making it dance across the tabletop while my mother kneads dough, her hands dusted white with flour.
“Veyra, sweetie,” she says, her voice like music, “careful with that. Your father carved it special.”
My father. Tall and broad-shouldered, with eyes like the sky. He's been quiet today, watching Mother with a strange expression.
Night falls. I should be in bed, but I've crept from my room, drawn by raised voices. I crouch in the hallway, my nightgown pooling around my bare feet.
“You lied to me,” my father hisses, his voice sharp with betrayal. “All this time.”
“I never lied,” my mother answers, her voice trembling. “I just didn't tell you everything.”
“Didn't tell me?” His laugh is bitter. “That you're one of them? That you can—that you've been—”
“I've never used it to harm anyone,” she pleads. “Never.”
“It doesn't matter. They hang people for less. And now our daughter—”
“Leave Veyra out of this. She has nothing to do with my choices.”
Something crashes. A plate, maybe, or a cup. I flinch, pressing myself against the wall.
“The empire hunts people like you,” my father says, his voice lower now, dangerous. “And I won't be caught harboring a witch.”
“Don't call me that,” my mother whispers. “What I can do, it's simple. Natural. Beautiful. If you'd only let me show you—”
“No.” The word falls like a stone. “I won't be part of this. I can't.”
Their shadows dance on the wall, elongated and monstrous in the lamplight. My father's arm sweeps out, and my mother steps back.
“Then go,” she says, her voice suddenly steel. “But know this—what flows in me flows in her too. One day, she'll wake to her own gift. And I pray she finds someone braver than you to stand beside her when she does.”
Heavy footsteps. The scrape of a bag being dragged across the floor. The door opens, letting in a gust of cold night air.
“Goodbye, Isanna.”
The door slams shut with such force that the walls seem to shake. I don't understand what's happening, only that something precious has broken beyond repair. My mother's sob cuts through the silence, a sound so raw it makes my own chest hurt.
I startle awake to a strange, high-pitched sound. A whistling, like wind through a narrow opening, but more deliberate. Disoriented, I sit bolt upright, my heart hammering. For a moment, I don't recognize where I am, then reality floods back: Zeriel's room. The Ironhold. Alone.
The whistling comes again, sharper this time. A faint light dances on the wall, not from within the room, but from outside. I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, every muscle protesting, and move cautiously toward the open window.
The light grows stronger as I approach, a warm orange glow that flickers like flame. When I reach the window, I have to stifle a gasp.
Byron's face hovers just beyond, illuminated by the torch he holds.
His unruly blond hair is whipped by the night wind, his amber-gray eyes intense in the firelight.
What he's sitting on makes my jaw drop lower: a small drake, no larger than a horse, with deep forest-green scales edged in bronze that gleam in the torchlight.
Its wings beat steadily, keeping them both aloft outside my window, which must be at least two hundred feet above the ground.
“Byron?” I whisper, bewildered. “What are you—”
He shakes his head, pressing a finger to his lips. Then he leans forward, extending a folded piece of parchment. I take it, my fingers brushing his briefly. His skin is warm despite the chill air.
I unfold the note, squinting to read in the unsteady torchlight:
Climb through. I'll catch you.
I look up, meeting his eyes. “Are you serious?”
He nods once, firmly.
“Why?” I whisper.
Byron shakes his head again, more emphatically.
Something in his expression—urgency, perhaps, or conviction—makes me hesitate.
I've never spoken to him, know next to nothing about him beyond the way he seems to speak to dragons like I do. Yet here he is, perched outside my window on a drake that has no business being near the Ironhold’s boundaries, asking me to trust him with my life.
The sensible part of me warns I might regret this. But another part, the part that’s tasted magic and possibility, says I might regret it more if I turn away.
I glance back at the door, securely locked. Zeriel won't return until morning. No one will even know I'm gone.
“This better be worth it,” I mutter, climbing onto the windowsill. The space is hardly wide enough for my slim frame to fit through.
The drop below is dizzying. The small drake shifts, positioning itself closer to the window. Byron extends his hand, his eyes steady on mine. A promise, without words.
I take a deep breath and reach for him.
His grip is strong, sure. In one fluid motion, he pulls me from the windowsill onto the drake's back behind him. I wrap my arms around his waist instinctively, feeling the solid warmth of him through his thin shirt.
The drake gives a soft chirp, adjusting to my added weight. Then, with a powerful beat of its wings, we're moving away from the window, soaring into the night sky.
The Ironhold falls away beneath us, its imposing silhouette receding as we climb higher. The wind tears at my hair, cold enough to make my eyes water. I cling tighter to Byron, pressing my face against his back for shelter. There’s no saddle, only the rough ridges of the dragon’s spine.
“Where are we going?” I gasp over the rush of air.
He doesn't answer—of course he doesn't—but reaches to squeeze my hand slightly, as if to reassure me. We bank left, the drake responding to some subtle command from Byron, and head toward a cluster of jagged peaks that rise from the mountainside like broken teeth.
As we draw nearer, I notice a narrow opening in the rock face: a cave entrance, barely visible in the darkness. Byron guides the drake toward it with expert precision. The creature folds its wings at the last moment, slipping through the gap with inches to spare.
Inside, the cave opens into a larger chamber. The drake lands gently on a flat stone platform. Byron slides off first, then helps me down, his arm steady around my waist.
The torch he carries provides the only light, casting long shadows across the rough walls. The cave extends deeper than the light reaches, its depths lost in darkness.
“Byron,” I say, my voice echoing slightly, “what is this place? Why bring me here?”
He still doesn't speak, but gestures for me to follow him. The small drake settles onto its haunches, watching us with intelligent eyes that reflect the torchlight.
We move deeper into the cave, the flame throwing our shadows into warped shapes on the walls. After about thirty paces, the passage widens again, opening into a second chamber.
Byron lifts his torch higher, and I gasp.
The walls are covered in paintings—ancient, by the look of them, but still vibrant with color. They depict fae and dragons, not in combat but in harmony. Figures with hands raised, connected to dragons by swirls of energy. Dragons in flight, carrying fae on their backs.
But what truly steals my breath is the central image: a woman with her arms outstretched, surrounded by dragons of all sizes. From her hands pour streams of light that connect to each creature. Their eyes—both hers and the dragons'—are painted with the same golden pigment.
“What is this?” I whisper, moving closer.
Byron steps up beside me, close enough to make the cold feel less sharp. He lifts his torch higher, the golden eyes in the painting blazing in the light. Then he glances at me, holding my gaze for a moment before tracing two deliberate words in the dust on the wall with the tip of his finger:
HISTORY. TRUE.
The words make my pulse quicken. “These are… dragon-bonded?”
He nods once, then sweeps his hand across the mural. His palm stills over the painted woman’s heart, then he looks back at me, something unreadable in his expression.
“The old way,” I murmur. “Before the empire twisted everything.”
I move along the wall, taking in other images. Some show rituals: fae and dragons gathered in circles, sharing some kind of communion. Others depict what appear to be battles, fae and dragons fighting together against armored warriors.
The events had to be hundreds of years old. Maybe thousands.
Byron moves beside me, his torch illuminating a sequence I hadn't noticed before.
He indicates a spot where the images shift, showing soldiers capturing dragons, forcing them into submission with chains and blades.
Fae in elaborate robes overseeing the construction of what might be early versions of the Ironhold.
Dragons in pits, their wings clipped, their spirits broken.
These pictures tell the story of how it changed.
How our world changed.
“The empire rose on broken bonds,” I say softly. “They didn't just squash our own gifts… They severed the connection between other creatures too. Made us forget what was possible.”
I turn to study Byron in the flickering light, seeing him up close for the first time. A loose strand of hair falls across his handsome face, shadowing eyes that seem to hold a weight far beyond his years.
“Why show me this?” I ask. “Why now?”
Byron meets my gaze, then lifts one shoulder in a casual shrug that somehow conveys more than words could. The gesture seems to say: Because you should know. Because this belongs to you too.
“What does dragon-bonding even mean, though?” I ask, turning back to the paintings. “I mean, practically speaking. What does it actually do?”