Chapter Text
There is still blood on my hands when they escort me to the General’s office.
Not much. I had managed to wipe most of it away before they came for me, but some of it remains, dark in the bruised grooves of my knuckles, dried beneath my nails, soaked into the cuff of my sleeve from where my hand had rested for one ugly, breathless second in the spreading pool beside the prince’s caved-in skull. It should turn my stomach. I know that. It should make me sick to look at it and sicker still to remember how it got there. But it doesn’t. If anything, the sight of it leaves something colder in me. Not pride. Not quite. Vindication, perhaps. The kind that comes only when violence has confirmed what instinct already knew. Garrick is alive. Alic is not. I find I can live with that more easily than I should.
My back still burns where Sgaeyl marked me.
The relic stretches broad and hot across my skin, laid over the old scars carved there three years ago in this very office, as if she has chosen not merely to brand me but to bury one history beneath another. I cannot decide whether it is mercy or warning, whether she has covered those cuts because she knows what they were or because she wants me never to forget them.
Both.
Her voice slides through my mind, cool and calm and vast enough that I have to fight the instinctive urge to flinch. It has only been an hour since I gave her name at roll, only an hour since the bond slammed into me hard enough to feel like death and rebirth in the same heartbeat, and I am still not accustomed to the clean certainty of her inside my head. We had barely returned before Lilith Sorrengail delivered her speech to our year, all iron and control as if the day had not already shifted the balance of the kingdom, and then Emeterio had appeared at my shoulder wearing the sort of grim expression that needed no explanation. The General wanted to see me. Of course she did. She would have noticed already that the heir to Navarre had failed to return.
The orderly outside her office glances up when I reach the door. His eyes go first to the relic that creeps above my collar and lashes dark against the side of my neck, then to the cut that splits my left eyebrow, then lower still to my hands. Something unreadable flickers across his face before he steps aside and says, “You can go in.”
The General’s office has not changed since I was last here, the same map lines the wall and I take a second to study it, looking at the most up to date movement along the poromish boarder. As if sensing my curiosity a gust of wind rolls the map up from the wall and I am met with the beady glare of Lilith Sorrengail.
Right. Rebels son. Got it.
“Cadet Riorson,” she says tersely.
I clasp my hands behind my back and fix my gaze somewhere just above her shoulder, because if I look too closely at her desk, at the neat stacks of reports and the pen she has just set down with such deliberate calm, I might laugh. Or snarl. Neither would improve this conversation.
“General Sorrengail.”
She does not offer me a seat.
Good.
I would not take one. Sitting would feel too much like submission, and I have done enough of that in this office for one lifetime.
“You know why you are here,” she says smoothly.
“Yes.”
Of course I do. There is blood still trapped in the lines of my knuckles, the prince is cooling somewhere under a sheet, and the dragon who chose me is pacing the edge of my mind like a storm learning the shape of its cage. We both know why I am here. The only difference is that she wants the version of it she can use.
Lilith studies me for a beat, pale eyes sharp and cold as a blade laid flat against stone.
“Then explain to me why there is a crown prince dead in my quadrant.”
My mouth curves before I can stop it, though there is nothing amused in it. “Threshing is a messy business. Plenty die each year.”
The sarcasm drips from every word. Childish, perhaps. Pointless, certainly. But some vicious part of me wants to see if I can make the great General Sorrengail crack first.
I cannot.
“Don’t play coy with me, boy.” Her voice does not rise. It does not need to. “He is dead, and I know you killed him. Explain.”
For a second, I don’t answer.
Because I can still see it too clearly.
Alic Tauri with his hands on Sgaeyl.
That is the part that turns everything inside me black again. Not his body after. Not the blood. Not even the crack of bone when I brought the rock down. His hands on her. The dagger buried in the soft joint behind her foreleg, his body hauling itself up her side, his face split with that same smug, grasping certainty all royals seem to be born with, as if wanting a thing badly enough makes it yours.
And then Garrick.
Gods, Garrick had moved so fast.
One second Alic is forcing himself on her, the next Garrick is there, ripping him off before he can settle, before he can do something unforgivable and survive it simply because he is a prince. I can still see Alic staggering back, see the shock on his face at being denied, at being touched, at being told no. Then that look. That murderous fucking look that stripped every last polished layer off him and left only what he really was underneath. He drew on Garrick like he had every intention of carving him open for the insult. And he nearly did. The blade flashed. Garrick twisted too late. Blood opened bright across his chest.
“The prince tried to force a bond,” I say.
Lilith’s face stays unreadable. “With which dragon?”
“Sgaeyl.”
One of her brows lifts, just slightly.
Good. Let that land. Let her understand precisely how stupid Alic was, how close this whole kingdom came to something even uglier than a dead heir on Threshing stone.
“And then?”
“We stopped him.”
“You and Cadet Tavis.”
“Yes.”
The word comes out clipped. Hard. Because she is making me drag this out like it was some neat sequence of decisions and not the sort of moment where instinct does the thinking because if it doesn’t, someone dies.
“Then I am assuming he attacked Cadet Tavis.”
It is a strange thing, hearing it put so coolly. Attacked Cadet Tavis. As if Garrick had not nearly bled out in the dirt because Alic could not bear the humiliation of being denied. As if the whole thing were an entry in a disciplinary report instead of the moment I decided a prince’s skull was worth less than my friend’s life.
It seems this woman has the measure of the fucker after all.
“Yes,” I say. “He almost killed him. I stopped that from happening.”
“Why?”
The question hits something raw in me.
Why?
Because Garrick matters. Because he is the one person in this cursed place I would trust at my back without thinking. Because he was on the ground and Alic had steel in his hand and Sgaeyl was wounded and furious and there was no time for anything except violence. Because I have buried too many people already, and I was not about to add Garrick to the list because some royal bastard thought the world would always bend for him.
But I do not say any of that.
Instead I let my eyes settle fully on hers and give her the answer she earned three years ago.
“Because Garrick is my responsibility,” I say darkly. “Remember?”
And that is the truth of it, isn’t it? She made me responsible for one hundred and seven marked ones when I was seventeen and grieving and desperate enough to bargain with the devil if it meant they lived. Garrick is one of mine. One of the people I said I would carry.
Alic nearly learned what that means.
Lilith says nothing for a moment, and in the silence I can feel Sgaeyl listening too, cool and vast and terrible at the back of my mind.
Then the General leans back slightly in her chair, studying me as if recalculating the shape of the boy who walked in versus the rider who will walk out.
“Then you defended your own,” she says. “You could have wounded him. You could have knocked him unconscious. But you didn’t.”
“No.” The word comes out flat. “I threw him off Garrick and he came for me instead. We fought. He got the weapon from me, so I picked up a rock and smashed his head in. That was when he stopped.”
Even now, the memory rises too easily.
The two of us in the dirt, scrambling like animals, breath ragged, hands slick with blood and grit. I remember kicking the sword from his grip. Remember the split second after, the one where this still might have ended differently, and then the sight of the rock half-buried beside my hand and the way fury swallowed everything else.
The first blow stopped him fighting.
The second cracked his skull.
That was when he looked up at me.
Not arrogant then. Not royal. Not even angry. Just stunned, blood running down his face, something like pleading in his eyes. And all I could see was his father on the dais three years ago, smug as a god, watching mine die.
The third blow killed him.
The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh made him unrecognisable.
“You hit him more than once?” She asks as if she can read my fucking mind
“Yes”
“He was the king’s son.”
“He was going to kill my friend.”
The words leave me before I can stop them.
For the first time, something in her expression shifts. Not pity. Not approval. Recognition, maybe. The briefest acknowledgement that she understands exactly what kind of line I crossed and why I crossed it.
“And then,” she says, “the dragon chose you.”
That is the part I cannot explain.
I can’t explain the silence that followed. The way the world seemed to fall away for a single impossible beat while Sgaeyl fixed me with that ancient, furious stare of hers, then slashed a claw across my face hard enough to mark me and called me a foolish, impressive boy before telling me to get on her back.
And I know better than to repeat the rest of it. I can’t speak of what passed between us once we were in the air, of the things she told me there with the wind tearing past us and Basgiath falling away below. Of my grandfather. Of the fact that she recognised something of him in me. Of the danger in that bloodline now, and the greater danger still if I were ever to manifest a second signet because then I would have to lie through my teeth to survive command, to survive all of them.
But more than any of that, what stayed with me was the way she spoke to me.
Not gently. Sgaeyl would never be gentle. But with a certainty so absolute it left no room for panic, no room for doubt, no room for the endless, choking question of what I was supposed to do next. She told me. Simply told me. And gods, I had not realised until that moment how desperately I had been craving exactly that. Not comfort. Not kindness. Just someone — something — strong enough to look at the wreckage of my life and hand me an order clear enough to follow. It felt, in a way that still unsettles me to remember, almost like having a parent again. Something I had not had in three years. Something I had been starving for so badly I had forgotten the shape of the hunger until she answered it.
“Yes,” I say. “She chose me.”
Lilith nods once, like I’ve confirmed a detail in a report instead of telling her something that should alter the balance of this entire kingdom. “Sgaeyl is one of the most powerful dragons in Navarre. She is battle-forged, battle-tested, and notoriously difficult. If you train well and work hard, I imagine you will become a formidable rider for Navarre.”
For Navarre.
Of course she says it like that.
Not a formidable rider. Not a formidable weapon. A formidable rider for Navarre. As if the kingdom can claim anything it brands. As if blood spilled on its stones makes what remains of you belong to it. As if the dragon burning across my skin somehow answers to a crown.
I keep my face blank. It costs me.
“You should also know,” she continues, “that Sgaeyl is mated to the riderless black dragon, Tairn. He will make himself known to you if he chooses. You’ll hear him through the bond. Be prepared for that. And be prepared for the fact that anything you share with Sgaeyl may not remain solely between the two of you. Her loyalty will always be to him first.” Her pale gaze settles on mine. “And Tairn does not suffer traitors, Riorson.”
I nod once.
I already know about the black dragon. I saw him above us on the flight back, vast and merciless against the dark, shadowing our descent like some omen with wings. Even from a distance, there had been something unmistakable about him. Not just power. Judgment. The kind that doesn’t need to announce itself because the world bends around it all on its own.
The General mistakes possession for loyalty, Sgaeyl says, her voice smooth and cold in my head. Do not let her unnerve you. You are mine, and I am yours. That is the only truth in this room.
The words settle in my chest like something heavy and dangerous.
Mine.
Gods, I hate how much I need to hear that.
Stand straight, she adds. Do not lower your eyes.
“Understood, General,” I say.
Lilith leans back in her chair and studies me the way officers study damage after battle — not to mourn it, but to calculate whether what survived is still useful. I hold her gaze because I would rather choke on my own blood than submit to this woman with a bowed head. Not here. Not in this office. Not after what she did three years ago, and not after what she made me promise to save the others.
She clicks her tongue softly and taps the report in front of her.
“The official report will state that Prince Alic died during Threshing after approaching an unbonded dragon and ignoring repeated warnings.”
I stare at her.
“The king will believe that?”
What I mean is: why are you doing this?
Why cover for me? Why spare Garrick? Why not hand us both over, let Tauri drown in his grief, and finally be done with two more marked sons of rebellion?
“The king will believe what I tell him happened on my quadrant,” she says. “He does not need to know that his son was fool enough to provoke two marked cadets and arrogant enough to believe royal blood would save him from the consequences.”
The room narrows.
That’s what this is, then. Not mercy. Not justice. Not even pragmatism in its cleanest form. This is curation. She is trimming the truth into something the kingdom can swallow without choking on its own reflection.
“Why are you covering for me?” I ask. “Wouldn’t it be easier to tell him the truth and let him execute us? Be done with the most dangerous children of the rebellion all at once?”
Her expression barely shifts, but something in it hardens into steel. “Because I keep my word, Riorson.”
That hits harder than I want it to.
Not because I trust her. I don’t. I never will.
Because I know she means it.
“I told you,” she says, each word clipped clean, “that you and the marked ones would live if you survived my quadrant. You have done exactly that. I am not in the habit of withdrawing terms simply because a prince proved too stupid to understand that dragon law outranks royal blood.” Her mouth flattens. “And it would make the king look weak if he appeared frightened of two orphaned twenty-year-olds.”
That almost gets a laugh out of me.
Almost.
Instead I taste rage.
“So it makes him strong if we fight in his armies?” I ask. “If we bleed for him? If we spread his lies for him?”
“Careful,” she says quietly.
That word lands worse than a shout. Because there’s no anger in it. Only warning. Only the flat certainty of a woman who has long since learned how to end men without ever raising her voice.
“Do not say anything stupid,” she adds. “Not even in here.”
I snap my teeth together hard enough to hurt. The fury in me coils tighter, black and hot and old enough to feel like inheritance.
Do not waste yourself on her, Sgaeyl murmurs. She is trying to see whether your temper is stronger than your discipline.
I hate that the dragon is right.
“Learn to control your face,” Lilith says, like she has heard the thought anyway. “Learn to disguise what you feel before someone cleverer than you decides to use it. Learn that, and you may yet make it to graduation.”
Graduation.
As if that is the horizon that matters tonight. As if I am not standing here with a prince’s blood dried into my skin and a dragon’s bond blistering across my back.
“Now,” she says, folding her hands atop the desk, “go to your friend in the sanitorium and quietly instruct him to keep his mouth shut about this entire matter. Am I understood?”
“Yes, General.”
She tips her head once toward the door. “Then leave. Sleep, if you can. You have a long way to go.”
Sleep.
As if I could close my eyes and not see Alic looking up at me. Not hear the crack of bone. Not feel the weight of the rock in my hand.
I turn anyway. My fingers are almost on the handle when she speaks again.
“Oh, and Xaden.”
I go still.
My given name from her mouth feels wrong. Too intimate. Too deliberate. Like a knife slid between ribs instead of armour.
“Yes?” I ask, without turning.
“That is two favours you now owe me.”
The words hit like a lash.
One favour had already been enough.
Seventeen. My father’s body barely cold. One hundred and seven marked children standing on the edge of extermination while Navarre decided whether our lives were worth the inconvenience. Her office. Her bargain. I take responsibility for every one of them, and she lets us into the quadrant. One favour to be claimed when she chooses.
I have lived with that promise every day since.
Now there are two.
Rage surges through me so fast it almost blinds me. My back burns, the relic Sgaeyl carved there flaring over scars cut into my skin in this very room years ago. Debts on top of debts. Chains on top of chains.
But I do not give her the satisfaction of hearing any of that in my voice.
“I won’t forget it,” I say.
“I should hope not,” she replies.
I turn for the door, more than ready to be out of her office before I say something that worsens the night, and reach for the handle.
The door bursts inward before I can touch it.
Cold air slices into the room, followed by a whirl of movement and outrage. I step aside on instinct before she can crash properly into me, and she catches herself with one hand braced hard against the frame and the other skidding briefly across my arm.
“Violet,” Lilith snaps, “I was in a meeting.”
Violet.
And everything in me stills.
Of course.
This is Sorrengail’s youngest daughter. Brennan’s sister. Th daughter destined for the scribe quarter. The only one destined not to follow in her mother’s footsteps.
She’s smaller than I imagined, fuck she barely reaches my chest, and shee looks fucking fragile. Slender, too, but all wiry temper and restless force, like she is held together by movement and outrage alone. Her cheeks are bright with cold, her hazel eyes wide and furious, and her hair is the strangest thing I have ever seen — brown at the crown, fading into silver as it falls, like winter touched her and decided to stay.
She is beautiful.
The thought lands quickly and unwelcome.
Not in the polished, deliberate way I’m used to. Cat always knows exactly what she looks like when she walks into a room. This girl does not seem aware of herself at all. Or perhaps she simply doesn’t care. There’s something far more dangerous in that.
“Dad said you invited the prince to dinner,” she says, words tumbling out in a rush. “He literally just turned up at the door, you didn’t tell me, and then I hear Alic is dead and—” her eyes flash at her mother “—what the fuck is going on?”
“Language, young lady.”
I ought to leave.
Instead, I stay where I am, half-turned toward the door, and watch her.
She hasn’t really noticed me yet. Not properly. All that fury is aimed squarely at her mother, and there is something almost fascinating in the absolute lack of caution with which she uses it. Most people come into Lilith Sorrengail’s presence already half-defeated. Violet bursts in as if anger itself has granted her rank.
“Sorry,” she says, in a tone that makes it obvious she isn’t sorry at all. “What is going on? How is the crown prince dead, and why is his brother currently sitting in our lounge?”
Lilith doesn’t blink. “Alic was killed in Threshing, as many cadets are. I have invited Halden to dine with us so that he may grieve privately. I thought, given that you are close in age, you might offer him some comfort.”
I nearly laugh.
Of course she has. Of course, Lilith Sorrengail sees a dead heir, a grieving new one, and immediately begins arranging the next shape of the kingdom from her sitting room.
Violet, however, looks horrified.
“You didn’t think,” she huffs, staring at her mother as if she has lost her mind, “that I might like a little warning before you dropped the future king in our sitting room?”
That almost gets an actual laugh from me.
Almost.
Then she turns.
Only a glance at first — the casual look given to the other person in a room she has only just remembered is there. But the moment her eyes land on me, something catches.
Her gaze flicks to the blood at my cuff, the cut through my eyebrow, the relic rising above my collar, then up to my face, and she just... looks.
Not with fear.
Not with the recoil I’ve come to expect.
With surprise. Curiosity. And something else I don’t trust, because I can feel my own answering it.
I know what I must look like to her: bloodstained, bruised, freshly marked, half-feral from Threshing and what followed. Brennan’s sister ought to be more careful. Lilith’s daughter ought to know better than to look at the son of Fen Riorson like that.
She does it anyway.
And I let her.
That’s the worst part.
For one brief, ugly second, I think of Brennan. Alive in Aretia while his mother still mourns him and his sister wears the shape of that loss without knowing it is already a lie. The thought should be enough to break whatever strange pull has just sparked into being.
It isn’t.
Lilith’s voice cuts through the moment.
“You may go, Cadet. Close the door behind you.”
Violet is still looking at me.
Not boldly enough to call it anything. Not softly enough to dismiss it. Just openly, as if she has not yet learned that some kinds of attention are dangerous to give.
So I move before I can do something idiotic like stay.
I step into the corridor and pull the door shut behind me just as her voice rises again from the other side.
“You absolutely should have told me first,” she says. “I’ve nothing to wear.”
The door closes on the rest, but her voice stays with me.
For a second I stand there in the cold, hand still on the latch, Alic’s blood drying on my skin, Sgaeyl quiet and watchful in the back of my mind, and Violet Sorrengail lodged under my ribs with a force that feels deeply inconvenient.
Then I force myself to move.
Garrick is alive.
That matters.
And whatever strange current just sparked between me and Lilith Sorrengail’s daughter means nothing. A moment, nothing more. The sort of fleeting, meaningless collision that happens in doorways and is forgotten by morning. It is unlikely our paths will ever cross again.