Chapter 8 Ashes of the Record

“I saw you,” he says, voice gone quiet and strangely careful. “They forced my eyes open. Said I had to watch what I’d refused to do. When the blaze hit your street, your shield held longer than most. You’d bought a charm from an old woman with more power than money, didn’t you?”

My fingers drift unconsciously to the thin medallion under my armor—the one thing I’d refused to replace.

“How do you know that?” I whisper.

“I felt it,” he replies. “The resistance. A thread of old magic pushing back against the witchfire riding my lungs. It burned me from the inside. You burned too. You both lived.”

My forearm tingles where the old scar snakes across it. Suddenly it doesn’t feel like a mark of survival, but a signature.

“You expect me to believe the Syndicate dragged you out, chained you over my village, and used you like a weaponized candle?” My laugh sounds cracked. “That’s not how they work. They don’t need dragons to burn us. They’ve got artillery, sorcerers,—”

“And a good story,” he says. “They needed a villain. Something big and terrible to unite you under their shiny new banners. They took our refusal and turned it into your fear.”

The bond pulses. Truth—or at least his version of it—tastes like smoke and iron on my tongue.

“You’re lying,” I say again, but the word has less teeth now.

He ticks his gaze toward my wrist. “The bond doesn’t like lies. You’ve felt it. When you tried to tell yourself you didn’t care whether I lived or died—you remember what it did?”

Heat flushes along my cheeks. “That was just stress.”

“Of course it was,” he says dryly.

I press the heel of my hand against my eyes for a moment, then drag it down my face. The skin there feels hot and strange.

“Let’s say—for one wild, ridiculous second—that you’re telling the truth,” I say. “Why tell me now? Why not days ago? Or weeks? Or the moment you saw me?”

He looks at me like I’ve missed something obvious. “Because I didn’t see you until the bond flared,” he says. “You think I remember every face that has ever watched their world burn?”

“Comforting,” I mutter.

“But I remember the ones who fought the fire,” he adds softly. “Most people run. You turned back.”

My chest tightens. My mind is suddenly full of images I’ve spent years burying: my mother screaming my name from somewhere I couldn’t reach; the boy’s fingers slipping from mine; the roar overhead that didn’t sound like storm or artillery.

“Why didn’t you try to stop them?” I whisper. “If you were chained. Controlled. Whatever. You’re a dragon, aren’t you? All-powerful apex predator. Surely you could have snapped the chains and flown away in a blaze of righteous fury.”

His expression goes distant, something like shame flickering across it.

“I tried,” he says. “They carved spells into my bones. Into my horns. Into my teeth. They bound me with your kind’s magic and fed me on the bones of my kin. Every time I fought, they turned it back on whoever was closest. Do you know what it’s like to watch your own resistance become someone else’s funeral pyre?”

I don’t answer. Can’t. The bond thrums low and frantic, picking up the jagged edges of his memory and scraping them against mine.

“I broke free eventually,” he continues, eyes fixed on the dark shape of the outpost. “Burned half their bastion down. Took three airships with me. But by then, the story was already written. Dragons were monsters. Witches were saviors. The Syndicate was the only thing standing between the world and the fire it had created.”

My stomach churns.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I say weakly. “If that were true, someone would have said something. Someone would have told us.”

“Who?” he asks simply. “The witches whose power the Syndicate bought with gold and fear? The families who relied on their rations? The officers who liked having something they could point at and call evil?”

Images flash: recruits whispering in dorm bunks about dragons; instructors hammering the same narrative over and over until the words stuck even when you weren’t listening. Monster. Threat. Enemy.

Asset, weapon, tool.

“Stop,” I whisper.

He does. The story cuts off mid-thought, like a burning run has been stomped out.

The silence presses in again, thick as smoke.

Below, the outpost’s slit windows show no light. Whoever those hooded figures were, they’ve left their mark and moved on. The building sits like a held breath.

“You wanted truth,” Drake says quietly. “Now you have a piece of it. Do what you like with it.”

“What I like,” I say slowly, “and what I can survive aren’t always the same thing.”

His mouth curves, humorless. “Now you sound like my people.”

We sit there a long moment, two silhouettes on a rock ledge, bound by a chain that didn’t ask either of us for permission.

“How do I know you’re not manipulating me?” I ask. “You gain nothing from me distrusting the Syndicate. Unless you think you can turn me against them and use me as some sort of… spy. Or shield.”

“Can I?” he asks, genuinely curious.

I glare at him. “That wasn’t an invitation.”

“The bond doesn’t make you stupid, Christine,” he says. “It just makes it harder to lie to yourself. If you cling to their story after seeing your village from a different angle, that’s your choice. But someday, you’re going to have to decide which version of the world you’d rather burn for.”

My throat feels raw.

“You talk a lot about burning,” I say.

“I’m very good at it,” he answers.

Against my will, a huff of laughter escapes me. It feels like glass in my chest, but it’s something.

Down below, a faint flicker of movement behind one of the outpost’s slender windows catches my eye.

“There,” I say, pointing. “Top right window. Did you see that?”

“I smell blood,” Drake murmurs. “Old. But not that old.”

“That’s delightful,” I mutter. “Could be wounded. Could be whatever those cloaks left behind.”

“Could be both,” he says. “You still want to go in?”

I think of the cracked recall charm in my pack, of the burned-out circle on the ridge, of Captain Rourke limping through the ruins barking orders while the world reorders itself behind his back.

“I need a comms relay,” I say. “I need to know if my unit made it. If Rourke’s alive. If the Syndicate knows we’re gone, or thinks we’re ash.”

“And you still think calling them is wise?” he asks.

“I think flying blind is worse,” I say. “I may be an asset, but I’m not an idiot.”

He regards me for a long moment, then nods slowly.

“Then we go in,” he says. “But we do it my way.”

“Oh? And what way is that?”

“With the assumption,” he says, “that everything inside wants us dead.”

There’s something almost reassuring in that. Simple. Honest.

“Fine,” I say. “We do it your way. But if we get out of this and I find out you lied about any of that history, I swear I will find a way to set you on fire.”

His grin this time is sharp and real. “You can try, little Knight. But you’ll have to set yourself alight to get to me.”

The bond glows, warm and unsettling, like it enjoys being part of this argument.

I push to my feet, knee protesting, heart doing that double-beat stumble before catching itself.

“We circle around,” I say. “Side entrance. Stay low. Don’t draw attention unless we have to.”

“I’m chained to you, remember,” he says, standing. “If you die doing something heroic and stupid, I go with you. I have incentive to keep you moderately sensible.”

“Moderately,” I echo. “That’s the best I can promise.”

We start down the slope, every step calculated, every breath measured. The outpost looms larger with each yard, its dark doorway waiting like a swallowed word.

Behind my ribs, two hearts beat an uneasy rhythm.

Bound by fire.

Chosen by fate.

And for the first time, I don’t know if the truth I’ve just heard will save me—or be the thing that finally burns everything I’ve ever believed to the ground.