Chapter 7 The Dragon's Truth

By the time the sky goes from bruised purple to full black, my muscles have gone from aching to numb.

The stars fight their way through the haze in stubborn little pinpricks, and the outpost below becomes a dark square carved into the rock, outlined only by the faintest gleam of metal and the memory of wards.

Beside me, Drake is a steady presence—too steady. While I’ve spent the last hour cataloging every ache and flinch in my body, he’s just…there. Still. Watchful. Heat wrapped in a human shape.

The bond thrums under my skin like it’s humming to itself.

“Alright,” I murmur at last. “We move.”

Drake’s head turns, golden eyes catching what little light the stars give. “You’re sure you’re ready, witch?”

I ignore the way my knee protests as I stand. “I’m sure we’re out of options.”

“Options are a luxury,” he says, rising with that infuriating, unbothered grace. “Survival isn’t.”

“Then try surviving quietly.”

He smiles—half amused, half something else. “Lead the way, Knight.”

We descend from the ravine in slow, careful steps, keeping to the deepest shadows. The rocky slope drops down in broken shelves toward the outpost. From up close, the structure looks even more like a bunker someone carved straight into the mountain—steel-reinforced stone, narrow slit-windows, antennae crooked like snapped fingers.

The wards across the main door are dark now, but that doesn’t make me breathe any easier.

“This close enough for you?” Drake murmurs as we duck behind a jagged boulder.

“For now,” I say. “We watch the patterns. See if anyone’s still inside.”

“You think they left this place intact for decoration?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “I think whatever set those sigils might still be here, and I don’t feel like walking face-first into their ritual.”

“Reasonable,” he concedes. “For a Syndicate asset.”

I shoot him a look. “Is that your favorite word?”

“‘Syndicate’ or ‘asset’?”

“Both.”

His smile edges sharp. “I’ve had time to think about them.”

I open my mouth to ask what exactly that means, but movement at the outpost’s side entrance cuts the question in half.

A figure slips out—a woman this time, slim and hooded, cloak fluttering around her boots. She glances up at the sky, then down the canyon, then rests her hand on the doorframe. Sigils flare faintly where her fingers touch, then sink back into the metal like embers.

Her magic feels like oil on water. Spreading. Coating.

Definitely not Syndicate.

Drake leans closer, shoulder brushing mine as he angles for a better view. The bond jolts like it’s been startled, and my heart stutters once before falling back into its double-beat.

“Rebel?” I whisper.

“Not one of mine,” he murmurs back. “Not that I ever commanded an army, but dragons remember faces. She’s not from our old alliances.”

“Then who?”

His jaw tightens. “Another piece on the board your Syndicate hasn’t told you exists.”

The woman’s eyes scan the canyon one last time, then she pulls her hood up and strides into the darkness, heading away from us. When she turns a corner and disappears, the silence she leaves feels… expectant.

A trap that hasn’t decided if you’re worth snapping on.

“We could slip in now,” I say. “Fast and quiet, grab supplies, find a working relay—”

“And what?” Drake cuts in. “Call your Syndicate to tell them you’ve leashed a dragon with a forbidden bond? You think they’ll send congratulations fruit baskets?”

“I think they’ll send extraction,” I shoot back. “Which I need. Badly.”

“And what do you think they’ll do to you when they realize you’re not just carrying their weapon anymore,” he asks softly, “you are one?”

The words land harder than I want them to.

I look down at my wrist, at the glowing ring of ruined sigils. The skin around it is pink and tender now, the center flame-sigil pulsating like a second pulse. The more I use my magic, the brighter it gets.

“I’m already their weapon,” I say. “This doesn’t change that.”

“Oh, Christine,” he says quietly. “You really believe that?”

I grit my teeth. “Don’t say my name like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you pity me.”

“I don’t,” he replies. “I pity anyone who still thinks the Syndicate is the only thing between this world and chaos.”

I turn on him, temper sparking sharp enough that even the bond flinches. “Then why did they build the wards?” I demand. “Why did they train people like me? Why do rebels and monsters keep trying to burn everyone to ash—”

“Monsters,” he repeats, voice flat.

“You roasted half a battalion two hours ago,” I snap. “What would you like me to call you? A misunderstood kitten?”

His eyes flash, not with offense—but with something slower. Older.

“You think I wanted to be there,” he says. “You think I woke up and chose to be the last of my kind in the open, painted as the enemy in every one of your little briefings?”

“That’s what the reports said,” I shoot back. “Dragons turned. Dragons broke their oath. Dragons burned cities, villages, children—”

“Because the Syndicate made us,” he snarls.

The chain between us flares, hot enough that I gasp. The mark on my wrist burns, echoing the wild jump of his pulse.

For a moment, his human veneer cracks. Heat rises off him in a visible shimmer; outlines of talons flicker where his fingers grip the rock. For the first time since the firestorm, I get a glimpse of the thing under the skin.

“You want truth?” he says, voice low and rough. “Fine, Knight. Here’s some for you.”

I should shut him down. I should tell him I don’t care. But something in the way he says truth hooks into the hollow spaces inside my ribs and won’t let go.

“…Talk,” I say. “You’ve already ruined my concept of a quiet night.”

He huffs something almost like a laugh, bitter and soft.

“Once,” he begins, “before your Syndicate stamped its sigil on every piece of stone and steel in these lands, there was balance.”

“With dragons,” I say dryly. “That sounds suspiciously like propaganda.”

His eyes cut to mine. “Propaganda doesn’t come with scars this old.”

He rolls his shoulder, and for the first time I notice the pale, ancient line along his collarbone. Not blade. Not fire. Something else.

“We were oath-bound to the old covens,” he says. “Witches. Seers. The ones who held the lines between this world and what waited beyond it. We guarded passes. Burned back monsters that crawled out of the Deep. Made sure the storms didn’t eat your coastlines, the void didn’t leak too far into your rivers.”

I snort. “And we’re just supposed to take your word for that?”

He shrugs. “You don’t have to. The bones of it are still in your oldest stories, if you knew how to read them. You don’t call dragons when you want cities razed. You call us when you want a world to survive.”

“If that’s true,” I say, keeping my voice low, “why did the records only show fire and ruin? Whole towns wiped out. Villages—including mine—burned. That wasn’t survival.”

His gaze softens just a fraction. “I know,” he says. “I remember your village.”

The world tilts beneath my feet.

“What?” The word scrapes up my throat like it has claws. “No. No, you weren’t there. You couldn’t have been. That was years ago. I was—”

“Twelve,” he says quietly. “Hiding under a collapsed oven when the flames went through the walls. You tried to pull another child out—older boy, brown hair, that stupid red scarf.” His eyes go distant, unfocused, as if looking through me at something only he can see. “The roof came down too fast. The wave of heat took you when you turned back.”

My knees want to give out. The only thing keeping me upright is stubbornness and the damn chain between us.

“And you just—watched?” My voice shakes. “From where? The sky? High enough that it didn’t matter that people were screaming?”

His jaw tightens. “I was already bleeding out by then.”

The answer throws me off more than anger would have.

“What are you talking about?”

“The Syndicate wanted the dragon who refused to torch that town,” he says. “They wanted an example. They flew airships with cannons loaded with witchfire. They drove your soldiers into a frenzy with stories about monsters at their doors. I was chained over the main square, Christine. Chained. Wings pinned. Muzzle bolted. They poured spellfire through my veins and steered my breath.”

My stomach turns.

“No,” I say, because my brain doesn’t know what to do with any other word. “That spellwork would take an army. That would be in the records. Someone would have—”

“Written it down?” he finishes softly. “How cute. You think the people who rewrote history left footnotes about what they erased.”

I sink back against the rock, suddenly too tired to stand upright. The outpost below blurs at the edges.