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I was supposed to protect her. Instead I offered her up to the Faerie like a sacrifice and without any thought whatsoever.

Because I never think. Wyrms don’t think. We follow our destiny, our prophecy, and our curse. Not for the first time, I wonder why my parents didn’t leave me anything but this dusty old castle. No warning, no texts, nothing to tell me what I needed to do to break the curse or avoid it.

Instead, they left me in the arms of the Yeavering, and look where it’s got me. A lost mate, a broken heart, and still no flames.

Flames the prophecy insisted would happen when I met my mate. Flames to protect her, to keep her, to warm her.

I have none and the prophecy is false. The only truth is the curse. The curse which the queen’s mother placed on the wyrms of Lambton eons ago. The curse I didn’t believe.

But I believe it now.

The curse which says only one Wyrm can survive and that the birth of another means the end of the father. A curse I hoped it might be possible to break, given the current queen seemed to wish it.

Instead she says it is on Alice now, unless I give her what she wants, and if that’s the case, I may as well be dead because returning to the Night Lands to fight a pointless war may as well be a death sentence. I won’t see my young and it won’t see me.

Instead I will be turning my little one over to the same fate I suffered.

I rise and change back from my Wyrm form, making my way through the debris to my library. More texts have revealed themselves since Alice arrived, a situation she remarked upon with wonder. These texts were not enchanted against her and she often spent time in here reading.

In fact a text balances on the edge of the shelves, her customary ripped piece of parchment sticking from it to mark her place. I snatch it up, dismissing the part of me which wants it left where it was, to respect her decision to leave it there, asif that might bring her back to me. The text represents a link to her, and I want it in my hand.

I scent it, and there is the very faint trace of her on the pages. It falls open at her place holder, and I find it’s a history of the Yeavering. The page she read is one about the Duegar and how the castle is built on their land, meaning it belongs to them as much as it belongs to generations of the Lambton Wyrm.

The place marker has writing on it, and as I look closely, I recognise my handwriting. The wordrocksis scrawled near the top.

A note I made to myself a very long time ago, to check the hermitage at the edge of my lands.

Something I never did because my Alice arrived in my life. For a while, I stare at the note and at the text. My mind is blank. All it wants is her, here, in my arms, and without Alice, it seems I cannot function.

I’m sure the note was in my pocket, but at some point, it must have fallen out, and she has kept it. It makes it hard for me to breathe somehow, the thought of her keeping my note.

Did I know my mate at all? Did I bother to know her? Was the last moon month and more wasted because I thought I didn’t need toknowher.

But I did. I needed to learn what made her eyes dance, her heart beat, her mouth smile. I thought I did because I was there to protect her, to feed her, to mate her, but this simple note, the creases carefully smoothed out, tells me I did not know her at all.

With a roar, I slam the text closed and stomp out of the library. The Duegar pause in their clean up of the great hall. I should apologise to them, but I’m too filled with rage at myself. Instead I sweep past the crystalline creatures without a word, out into the courtyard before swarming up the walls and taking to the sky.

I have received the message from the past, and I may as well perform my duties as the Lambton Wyrm. I should track my boundaries, prepare what is needed to keep the castle in repair. All while I contemplate what, if anything, I can do to lift the curse and get my mate back.

Once I have the answer, no one, not even Queen Mab, is safe from my wrath.

ALICE

The great hall of the queen’s palace is, of course, significantly larger than the one in Fenrother’s castle. It is filled with glittering light, ethereal, which reflects off the thousands of mirrors, off the carved gilt surrounds, the golden furniture, everything which makes this place look like Casanova’s boudoir on an industrial scale.

It is also filled with Faerie lords and ladies. Some of them scuttle to one side when they spot me behind Yarain, their pretty faces twisted with disgust.

He pulls on my bonds, causing me to stumble forwards, and there is an unpleasant titter from those closest when they see my misstep.

The queen is sat on a ridiculously ornate throne, raised above floor level to put her in a commanding position over her court. Around half a dozen Faerie are bowing and scraping to her, one holding her hand and pressing his lips to the back of it as Yarain approaches with me in tow.

She pulls her hand away, and her would be suitor or whatever he is gives me the dirtiest look I think I’ve ever received.

And my aunt was very good at dirty looks.

“Yarain.” She nods at my guard.

“My queen.” He gives her a deep bow.