“She pushed too far,” he said.
“She always does.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You’re not supposed to.”
He exhaled through his nose. “You’re serious about this Veyne?”
She didn’t answer right away.
Instead, she reached into the folds of her cloak and pulled out a sigil-stamped scroll. The details of her guide. His record. His past. Or what little of it had survived the purges.
“He’s dangerous,” she said. “But not like Vaela thinks. Not reckless or unstable. Besides, you know I don’t want him. My father chose him, he just chose to leave that part out in there.”
Torren crossed his arms. “Then what would you say he is?”
She turned.
“He’s unclaimed. Untamed. Like a blade never filed down. And if we’re facing the end of everything... I’d rather fight beside someone who never learned how to lose.”
Torren said nothing for a long time. Then, gruffly, “He won’t kneel.”
“He doesn’t have to.” Seraphine looked back out at the city.
Not for the first time, she wondered what her mother—long dead, long buried beneath the Drakar spires—would havethought of this mission. Of this alliance. Of the woman she’d become.
Would she have seen the cracks beneath the armor? Would she have told her it was alright to be afraid?
Probably not.
Drakar women didn’t fear.
They burned.
Seraphine Drakar was about to walk into the darkest fire the world had ever known.
FOUR
CASSIAN
The gates of Drakar Citadel opened like the maw of a dragon—slow, wide, and full of old menace.
Cassian stood just outside the threshold, jaw tight beneath days-old stubble, one hand resting on the pommel of his sword. He didn’t move when the twin guards flanking the obsidian path narrowed their eyes at him like they were deciding whether he’d bleed red or something else.
Probably figured it’d be goldfire.
Let them wonder.
He stepped through the threshold with all the calm swagger of a man who’d long since accepted that he didn’t belong anywhere—didn’t need to.
The air inside the walls was hotter, the wind tight with ash and sulfur. Aethermoor may have been the capital, but Drakar was the beating heart of fire itself. Gold-veined stone towered overhead, laced with flames that pulsed like veins beneath the rock. Statues of dragons watched from high ledges, their mouths open in warning.
This place,he thought,hasn’t changed in a hundred years. Still built to make bastards like me feel small.
Too bad he didn’t give a damn.
A steward approached—skin pale, robes too clean, voice too clipped.
