Chapter 2 CHAPTER 2

AURORA'S POV

The tunnel was narrow enough that my shoulders brushed both walls if I wasn't careful.

I wasn't always careful.

I walked in the dark with one hand trailing the stone and I cried quietly and didn't bother trying to stop. There was no one to see it down here. Just me and the dark and the distant sound of the world ending somewhere above my head. Every so often the ceiling shuddered — a dragon landing, or something collapsing, or both — and dust sifted into my hair and I kept walking.

Sera's face kept coming back to me. I pressed it down and walked faster.

The tunnel went on longer than I remembered. Three months ago I'd only gone in far enough to understand where it led — out beyond the coven walls, into the open land on the eastern side, far enough that I could disappear into the tree line. I had a plan. Change my hair, my clothes, my accent if I had to. Travel north, to the Ashfen region, far enough from the Dragon King's empire that I could breathe and think and figure out what came next.

It wasn't a perfect plan. But it was mine.

Then I saw light.

Faint, grey, coming from around a bend. Dawn light. I broke into a run, hit the mechanism on the far door without stopping, and the door swung outward and cold morning air rushed in and for one single second I felt something close to relief.

I stepped out.

And stopped.

Cael stood twenty feet away.

The elders were behind him. And behind them — ranked across the open ground in a line that stretched further than made any sense — dragons. Twelve, fifteen, I stopped counting. Enormous and still, their riders mounted and motionless in black armour, the collective weight of all of it pressing down on the morning like a fist.

My brother looked at me across the distance.

"Aurora," he said. Like he was relieved. Like he'd been worried.

I turned around.

Already too late. Three riders had moved in behind me, silent, cutting off the door. Their dragons lowered their heads and the message was clear enough.

I turned back.

My magic rose immediately. My hands started to glow. A dragon to my left made a sound low in its throat — a warning rumble I felt in my back teeth.

I didn't care.

I pulled the power up anyway, let it build in my palms. If this was where it ended then at least it ended on my feet. At least I made them work for it.

Then movement to my right.

One of the dragons — massive, dark-scaled, no rider on its back — was changing shape. It folded inward on itself with a sound like cracking ice, the whole enormous form compressing and reshaping, until where the dragon had been there was a man standing in the grass. Tall. Broad. Wearing armour that looked less like something forged and more like something grown — dark and scaled, fitted to him like a second skin. He looked at me with eyes still faintly gold at the edges.

"Your Highness." His voice was even. Unbothered. "I would advise against whatever you're building in your hands right now."

"I would advise you to step aside."

"The coven is still standing," he said. "Most of it. That can change in under a minute. There are fourteen dragons in position above it right now, waiting on my word." He tilted his head. "How many people are still inside, do you think?"

The magic in my hands flickered.

He watched it happen. Didn't smile.

"Resist, and I give the order, and everything that's left burns. Or you come quietly, and they live." He paused. "I don't particularly mind which way this goes. But I suspect you do."

I thought about Sera.

I thought about the people still running in those streets.

My hands went dark.

I raised them — open, palms out — and the magic died back into my bones like a tide going out.

"Good," he said.

Cael exhaled. He actually exhaled with relief, like he'd been holding his breath, and stepped forward. "Thank you. I want you to know that the terms we discussed — I fully intend to honour everything—"

"Yes." The general turned to look at him and something shifted in his face. Something that made Cael stop talking immediately. "You sold your own blood. Delivered her like a merchant settling a debt." He looked Cael up and down with the kind of contempt that doesn't need to raise its voice. "Our King found it useful. Personally, I find it revolting. If the decision were mine, I would burn you where you stand." A pause. "It isn't. So you may keep breathing. For now."

Cael's face went the colour of old ash.

He didn't look at me.

And I felt a mean, tired flicker of satisfaction — that even the man who'd bought my capture looked at my brother and felt sick. It wasn't enough. It wasn't close to enough. But it was something.

The general reached into his armour. What he produced was a collar — slim, dark metal, with a single stone at the throat. Deep red, like a coal with something still burning inside it.

"Turn around," he said.

I didn't move.

He waited.

I turned around.

The metal was cold when it closed around my neck. The stone pressed against my pulse point and then — silence. Inside me. That vast, deep well of power I had carried my entire life went suddenly quiet, dampened to almost nothing.

He stepped back around to face me. "The gemstone suppresses the source. You won't find a way around it." His gold-edged eyes met mine. "You are a prisoner of the empire now, Your Highness. Behave like one."

Then he stepped back and changed.

The man-shape folded back out into something enormous and dark and ancient-looking, until the dragon stood before me again, one massive wing extended toward the ground like a ramp.

I stood there and looked at him and thought about what this moment meant. My burning coven. A collar around my neck. My magic stuffed down to a whisper. My brother, who had arranged every piece of it. The same empire that had taken my mother had just taken me, and I still didn't know why, and there was no one left to ask.

My eyes burned.

I was not going to cry in front of these people. I was not going to give Cael that.

I looked at my brother one last time. He was standing with the elders, not quite meeting my eyes, and he looked smaller than I had ever seen him look. A tear slipped out before I could stop it. Just one. I didn't wipe it away.

I walked to the dragon, put my hands on the dark scales, and pulled myself up.

The moment I was seated, he moved. Surging upward, wings spreading wide, and the ground fell away beneath me faster than I was ready for. I grabbed the ridge in front of me and held on.

I looked back as we climbed.

My coven below — the towers, the rooftops, the eastern quarter still smoking, the outer wall cracked in three places. Everything I had been given. Everything I hadn't been ready for and had tried to hold onto anyway.

Getting smaller.

Getting smaller.

Gone.

I faced forward and said nothing and let the wind take the tears before anyone could see them.

---

We flew for a long time. Long enough that the sky shifted from grey morning to full daylight. Long enough that my hands stopped shaking.

I watched the land change beneath us. The green and brown of the territories I knew gave way to something darker — earth that looked scorched in places, vast stretches of black rock cutting through the landscape like old scars. The air changed too. Warmer. Denser.

Then I saw it.

Draconis.

It was enormous. Built into a landscape that looked like the earth had been broken open at some point long ago and simply never closed. Black rock formations jutted between buildings. Rivers of cooling lava cut through the lower districts in controlled channels, glowing dull orange at the edges. The people in the streets were small from this height but I could see dragons moving among them, casual as horses in a market town. Some shifted as I watched — dragon to human, human to dragon — like it cost them nothing.

And at the far end of it all, the castle.

It had been built into a volcano.

The mountain rose up behind it and the castle rose with it, carved directly from the rock face, towers and ramparts growing out of the stone like they had always been there. The peak still smoked faintly. The walls were black and red at the edges where heat had done something permanent to the stone over a very long time.

It was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.

We flew toward it.

The courtyard was wide and open, ringed by torches burning even in daylight. We came down one by one, the dragons landing with a heaviness that shook the ground. The moment we touched down I swung off without waiting to be told. My legs were unsteady but I locked my knees and stood straight and didn't let it show.

The riderless dragons landed and shifted, one after another, until a row of people in dark scaled armour stood where dragons had been seconds ago.

The general landed last. One smooth motion — dragon to man, scales pulling back into skin, gold eyes settling — and then he straightened and turned to me.

"I am General Aldric," he said. "Commander of the Dragon King's aerial guard." Plain. Informational. "Follow me. The king does not appreciate waiting."

He turned and walked toward the castle entrance without checking whether I was behind him.

I looked around the courtyard. Riders on every side. Dragons in human form flanking the entrance. The walls of a volcano rising in every direction.

I followed him.

"The Dragon King ordered this," I said, matching his pace. "My capture."

"Yes."

"Why."

Aldric glanced at me sideways. "That is his to tell."

"You don't know or you won't say."

"I won't say." A pause. "Keep up."

The castle entrance swallowed us whole, torchlight replacing daylight, heat replacing cold. The corridors were wide enough for dragons, the ceilings high and vaulted and carved with things I didn't have time to look at properly.

"He took my mother," I said.

Aldric didn't slow. "I know."

"And now me."

"Yes."

"Is she alive?"

He was quiet long enough that I thought he wouldn't answer.

"That," he said finally, "is for the king."

We stopped in front of a set of doors. Massive. Black iron, a dragon worked into each one in extraordinary detail — wings spread, heads raised, facing each other across the seam where they met. Two guards flanked them, looking straight ahead.

Aldric turned to face me fully.

"You are the first witch queen to enter this castle willingly," he said.

"I didn't come willingly."

"No," he agreed. "But you came quietly. In the end." Something moved behind his gold-edged eyes — not sympathy exactly, something more complicated. "The king does not make decisions carelessly. There is a reason you are here. Whether you find it sufficient is another matter."

He turned back to the doors and pushed them open.

The room beyond was vast and very warm and at the far end of it, on a throne cut from the same black volcanic rock as the mountain itself, someone was waiting.

I thought about my mother. About every witch queen before her who had faced this empire and not come back. About the collar cold against my throat and the silence where my magic used to be.

Then I lifted my chin.

And walked in.