Chapter 3

The journey north took eight days.

Eight days of walking through ice and snow with nine girls who looked at me like I was garbage.

"Move, Wingless." A bronze dragon girl shoved past me on the narrow ice bridge.

I stumbled, grabbed the rope railing to keep from falling. The guards didn't even turn around.

They'd let me fall. They'd probably cheer.

On day three, the same girl stuck her foot out. I went down hard, my knee slamming into the ice.

"Oops." She wasn't even trying to hide her smile. "Better watch where you're going. We don't want the Wingless freak bleeding all over the dragon god's sacred ground."

The other girls laughed.

I stood up slowly, brushed the ice off my pants, and said nothing.

The world changed around us as we traveled north. Green forests turned into dead trees, then disappeared completely. Just ice everywhere.

Two girls collapsed on day six. The guards had to heal them with magic, and one of them cried the entire time.

"I want to go home," she sobbed. "Please, please, I want my mother."

The Emerald Dragon captain, face hard as stone, wings tucked tight, didn't even slow down. "Keep moving."

On the eighth day, right before dark, we saw it.

The Eternal Winter Tomb.

It came out of the ice like something from a dream. Huge towers of crystal and ice reaching into the sky. The aurora wrapped around it in ribbons of green and purple and blue, moving, alive.

Absolutely beautiful.

And absolutely terrifying.

"Oh my god," someone whispered.

The captain stopped and turned to face us. His face was grim. "Listen. Once you're inside, you wait on the altar for the dragon god. Don't leave the chamber. I don't care what you see or hear. You're giving your lives for the dragon race. Don't disgrace your families."

I followed them inside.

The inner chamber was massive. Ten stone beds in a circle around a central altar. Dragon scale blankets on each bed. Bowls of fruit, pitchers of water. The aurora shining through the ice walls made everything glow in shifting colors.

It might've been peaceful if we weren't waiting to die.

The girls settled onto their beds. Some were praying. Some crying quietly.

I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling.

Mother said my destiny is here. So where the hell is it?

Hours went by. Maybe it was midnight when the aurora suddenly got brighter, the temperature dropped fast, and the doors opened.

A man stumbled inside.

Scars everywhere on his face. His left wing was mangled, hanging at a weird angle. He was limping badly. His clothes were torn and stained with blood. Dirty cloth covered his left eye.

"Monster!" a girl screamed.

The other girls started screaming too. Scrambling away from him.

"Get out!"

One girl threw a fireball at him. He dodged it so easily, so smoothly, even with the limp.

That's when I saw it. The way he moved. Yeah, he was hurt, he was broken, but underneath all that damage there was something strong.

"I... I just wanted..." His voice was rough but gentle. "I'm sorry."

He turned to leave.

I don’t know what made me run after him.

“Wait!”

He hadn’t gone far when he stopped and turned back to look at me.

“You...” I began.

Then everything went black.

I woke up on my stone bed. Dragon scale blanket tucked around me. Warm and safe.

And completely alone.

I sat up fast and looked around.

The other nine beds were empty. No blankets, no girls, just bare stone.

The scarred man was gone.

What the hell happened?

I checked myself over, panicking. No injuries. Nothing hurt. But my left wrist, there was something on my left wrist.

A mark, but it didn't hurt.

Flames and ice twisted together in this intricate design, glowing faintly on my skin. It pulsed with warmth, like it had its own heartbeat.

"Hello?" My voice bounced around the empty room. "Is anyone here?"

Silence.

I was the only person left.

After that, the days began to blur together, and I could only record the past as best I could by feel.

The temple gave me everything I needed to survive. Food that never went bad. Fresh water from an ice spring. Books in some ancient language I couldn't read. But no answers. No dragon god. No explanation for any of this.

Every morning I woke up hoping something would be different. It never was.

Mother, what did you send me into?

The mark on my wrist got warmer sometimes. At night I had these dreams about fire and ice moving together, dancing. My body felt strange, stronger maybe? Different? I couldn't figure it out.

Day 90, I finally couldn’t take it anymore and slipped outside for a breath of open air, only to hear the temple behind me groan.

The temple shuddered as if something inside it had woken, ice cracking, the tower shedding sheets of frost, then the entrance sealed in a heartbeat, a towering wall of ice blooming over the doors.

“No!!!” My fists hit the ice again and again, skin burning numb, blood darkening the snow.

It didn’t so much as tremble. The temple didn’t answer. It stood there in absolute silence, as if it had never existed at all.

I collapsed against the ice wall, gasping for air.

The sacrifice ceremony is over. But I never saw the dragon god. Not once.

This had never happened before. Not in a thousand years of dragon history.

And I was alive. The only sacrifice who'd ever made it back.

So what does that make me?

The wind howled across the empty ice field. I was alone out here with no food, no shelter, no choice.

I had to go back to the capital.

Will they call me a hero? Or a monster?

I didn't know.