Page 11

The first blow catches me off guard.

I stumble back against the cold stone wall as the larger of Ulric's guards grabs my throat, his calloused fingers digging into soft flesh. The second laughs, a sound like breaking glass, while the third circles behind me, boots scraping against ancient stone. Their eyes gleam with predatory interest in the guttering torchlight—inhuman and yet more vicious than most dragons I’ve known, something worse than both. In the flickering shadows, I catch glimpses of scales rippling beneath their skin, smoke curling from between sharp teeth with each breath like chilled winter sighs.

My head spins, still foggy from whatever Ulric gave me. The edges of my vision blur and swim, making the hallway seem to twist and stretch impossibly before me. Even the torches on the walls appear to float and dance, their flames casting strange patterns that hurt my eyes to look at directly.

"Look at her," the one holding me sneers, his breath hot against my face. "Some heretic you turned out to be. Weak as a nestling. Can't even defend yourself without that storm of yours." His grip tightens, fingers pressing into the soft hollow beneath my jaw. "What's wrong, witch? Too weak to call the wind?"

He's right. I am utterly physically drained, my magic a faint whisper beneath my skin where it once roared like a tempest. I can barely feel the storm that usually rages at my call. Even now, I sense it weakly battering the tower walls, but it feels distant, muffled, like trying to hear through water or thick wool. The connection that once felt as natural as breathing now slips through my fingers like smoke whenever I reach for it.

"Maybe she needs some encouragement," the third man suggests, producing a knife that glints dully in the darkness. The blade is crude iron, unadorned—a torturer's tool, not a warrior's weapon. Its edge is notched and worn, designed to tear rather than cut clean. "The prince said not to mark her face, but he didn't say anything about the rest of her—save the child, of course. Might be fun to see if she bleeds red like a human or blue like the ice witch they say she is."

From his seat by the great hearth at the end of the hall, Ulric watches with that knife-edge smile, making no move to intervene. He’s given up on niceties, I know. The game has changed. The firelight catches in his golden hair, casting about his head a mockery of a crown. He's waiting for my fear—testing me, pushing me, trying to see what will make me break. The wine in his crystal goblet looks black as blood in the firelight, and I wonder if it's drugged like everything else he offers me.

I have to steel myself, I know. I can’t afford to break. I think of my child, growing stronger each day despite everything. Think of how they deserve better than this end in a cold hallway at the hands of common thugs. The fury that rises in me is sharp enough to cut, bright enough to burn. My magic stirs weakly, responding to my fear and rage, but it's like trying to lift a mountain with trembling arms.

"I wouldn't," I manage through gritted teeth, though my voice comes out weaker than I intend, breathless from the grip on my throat. "You have no idea what I'm capable of."

They laugh again, the sound echoing off ancient stones. The one with the knife steps closer, close enough that I can smell stale wine and something fouler on his breath, something that reeks of old blood and cruelty. His free hand comes up to grasp my chin, forcing my head back against the wall.

"Big words from such a small—"

The temperature drops so suddenly that their next breath freezes in the air.

For a moment—just a moment—my magic surges through whatever barriers Ulric's poison has erected, wild and uncontrolled. Frost spreads across the walls in delicate patterns like deadly lace, crackling as it expands. The torches sputter and dim, their flames turning an eerie blue before guttering out entirely. The spy's fingers go slack around my throat as his skin begins to blacken with frostbite, the flesh cracking like river ice in spring.

Something moves within me—a flutter of movement, a pulse of foreign power. The child, lending me their strength. Their presence burns like a star in my chest, cutting through the fog of exhaustion and fear. For one crystalline moment, I feel truly awake for the first time in days.

Then, just as quickly, the power gutters out like a candle in wind. My knees buckle as darkness crowds the edges of my vision. Only the wall at my back keeps me upright as exhaustion crashes over me in a dizzying wave. The child's presence dims, retreating deep inside me as if frightened by the sudden surge and collapse of magic.

"Enough." Ulric's voice cuts through the darkness, soft but full of authority. There's something else in his tone too—interest, maybe, or hunger. As if he's seen exactly what he wanted to see. "Leave her. She's learned her lesson, I think."

The guards—or spies, or lackeys, or whatever they are—step back, though their eyes still burn with cruel promise. The one who held me flexes his frostbitten fingers, wincing. Even in the dim light, I can see the blackened flesh beginning to peel away from bone. "Yes, my prince."

He’ll need a strong potion if he wants to keep his fingers. I relish the thought that they won’t be able to save them.

As they retreat into the shadows, Ulric rises from his chair with fluid grace. He approaches slowly, each step measured and deliberate, boots ringing against stone. When he reaches me, he brushes his knuckles across my cheek in a mockery of tenderness. His skin burns like fever against mine.

"You see?" he murmurs, his voice almost gentle. Almost kind. "This is what happens when you refuse my hospitality. I know you’ve been refusing the draught that would keep you safe, keep you calm. You think I seek to poison you. But I only want to keep you safe. The world is full of dangers, sister mine. Let me protect you from them."

His thumb traces my lower lip, and it takes everything in me not to bite it off. I want to spit in his face. Want to freeze the smile from his lips, to turn him to ice from the inside out. But my child's presence pulses within me, reminding me to be smarter, to play this game more carefully. They need me to survive this, whatever it takes.

Still, I can't quite keep the bitterness from my voice when I speak. "Like you protected those human villagers? I’m not quick to forget cruelty, Ulric.”

Something dangerous flashes in Ulric’s eyes. For a moment, I glimpse the dragon beneath his carefully maintained humanity, ancient and cruel and hungry. Then it's gone, hidden once more behind false concern. But I've seen it now. I always knew it was there, but I can feel its hunger.

"Rest," he says, stepping back. His smile never wavers, but there's a new edge to it. A warning. "We'll speak more when you're feeling less hysterical.”

I flee to my chamber, though I know it's no real sanctuary. The room spins lazily around me as I sink onto the narrow bed, pressing my hands to my temples. My throat throbs where the spy grabbed me, and I know it will bruise. Even that small burst of magic has left me shaking, drained to the point of collapse.

What's happening to me?

The question echoes in my mind as consciousness begins to slip away. Even now, I can feel my power trying to rise, to break free of whatever chains Ulric has placed upon it. But it's like trying to catch smoke—the harder I grasp, the more it seems to slip away. Each attempt leaves me weaker, more confused.

The tower feels wrong tonight, more so than usual. The shadows in the corners writhe and twist when I look at them directly. The carvings on the walls, worn almost smooth by centuries of wind and weather, seem to move in the corner of my eye, forming patterns that hurt to look at. Ancient magic lingers in this place, I know, but tonight it feels active, awakened. As if something is stirring in the bones of this forgotten stronghold.

The last thing I'm aware of is the storm still howling against the tower walls, its voice almost mournful in the gathering dark. Then exhaustion claims me, dragging me down into dreams.

I find myself in an endless expanse of white, where snow hangs suspended in the air like stars. The cold should bite, should freeze me to my bones, but instead I feel only a strange warmth radiating from within. Through the curtain of frost, a familiar figure approaches, tall and powerful, moving with predatory grace.

"Arvoren," I breathe, and the name feels like a prayer.

He's different than I remember, somehow both more and less than the king who kept me captive. His crown is missing, his formal clothes replaced by worn traveling leathers stained with blood and frost. There's an edge of desperation to him that I've never seen before, a wildness in his dark eyes that makes my heart ache. He looks like a man who's been riding through endless winter, searching, hunting.

When he speaks my name, it resonates through my entire being like dragon-song.

"I'm coming for you," he says, reaching for me with hands that pass through me like smoke. His voice carries all the fierce possession I remember, but there's something else there, too—fear, maybe. Worry. Love? "I'm closer than you think. Just hold on. A reckoning is coming.”

I try again to tell him about the baby, about Ulric's schemes, as I know I should, but the words still stick in my throat. All I can do is watch as he begins to fade, his form dissolving into the swirling snow. The last thing I see is the naked anguish on his face, the way he strains toward me even as he disappears. There is something strange in his face, and I recall the distance, the fury, the strain. I recall all we have both lost to one another. Nothing seems so simple all of a sudden.

"Wait," I try to call, but the dream is already slipping away, leaving only that lingering warmth behind.

I wake with tears frozen on my cheeks and the taste of winter on my tongue. The fierce echo of his presence seems to reverberate through me like a tuning fork, sharp and jarring and unending. But still, the warmth of him lingers in my chest, fighting back the perpetual chill that seems to seep from the very stones of this place. I still don’t know whether I hate the feeling of it.

Something moves within me then, a flutter so distinct it steals my breath.

My hands fly to my stomach as I feel it again—the lightest of movements, like butterfly wings against my palm. The child, making themselves physically, tangibly known for the first time, cutting through my very worst fears. Their presence feels stronger suddenly, more defined, as if the dream has awakened something in both of us.

And with that touch comes understanding, sharp and clear as breaking ice.

The strange warmth I've been feeling, the impossible connection to my husband that grows stronger each day—it's not just my magic reaching for Arvoren. It's our magic. The child's power mingles with mine, amplifying everything, creating a bond that even Ulric's poisons can't fully sever. No wonder he's so desperate to keep me drugged, to keep me weak. He must suspect what's happening to me, must have suspected it long before I could hope to guess it. He must have figured my magic will only grow stronger still as my child grows.

Dragon and Windwaker blood combined. Something unprecedented. Something that could reshape the world, for better or worse. I know what he meant now, though I still despise the words.

A tap at my window draws my attention. Through the narrow arrow-slit, I catch glimpses of the storm still raging outside. But it looks different now, more purposeful somehow. The wind seems to move with intent, driving snow against the ancient stones in patterns that almost look like words, but then they’re gone again, and I am alone, and I am cold, and I yearn so strongly for safety and warmth that it feels as if it might break me open.

I press my hand harder against my stomach, feeling that precious warmth. The child moves again, stronger this time, as if responding to their father's voice on the wind. Whatever else Arvoren might be—dragon, tyrant, monster—he is also the other half of this miracle growing within me. And something deep in my soul knows he would die before letting Ulric harm us.

"Your father's coming," I whisper to our child, though the words catch in my throat. My voice sounds small and lost in the vastness of the tower, but I feel the truth of it in my bones. "And whatever your uncle has planned, whatever poison he feeds us, he can't break this connection. We just have to survive until then. We just have to hold on.”

And after Arvoren finds me?

No matter what, I will fight for this child until my dying breath.

The wind howls fiercer, making the tower's ancient bones creak and groan. I curl around my midsection, trying to share what little warmth I have with our child. Outside my chamber, I hear the heavy tread of guards changing shifts, the whispered conversations of servants who never meet my eyes. Sometimes I catch fragments of their words, carried on drafts that whistle through cracks in the mortar. Whispers of armies moving in the night, of strange lights in the northern sky.

Ulric's lies still weigh on me—the possibility, if he speaks the truth, that Arvoren truly has ordered my death, that my husband sees me as nothing more than a threat to be eliminated. But the dream planted more than doubt. It gave me hope, dangerous as that might be.

I refuse to believe a single lie again in this life, I swear to myself.

And when I doubt, when I fear, I close my eyes, remembering the desperate longing in Arvoren's gaze. Despite all else between us, his love is an anchor, an island in a vast and churning ocean. A single solid thing. My feet seem to brush against it for a moment, a single instant of stability before I am whisked away. No matter what Ulric claims, those weren't the eyes of a man who wants me dead. They were the eyes of someone who would burn the world to find what he's lost. I've seen that look before, in quiet moments when he thought I wasn't watching—when his mask of cold control would slip, revealing something fiercer and more tender beneath.

I know it. I know so few things in this world, but I know Arvoren will love me until he dies.

Whether that will be enough is another question entirely.

The child moves again. I swear I feel something else—a pulse of foreign emotion that cuts through my exhaustion like a blade. Determination. Fury. A bone-deep need to protect. Arvoren's feelings, bleeding through our connection, growing stronger with each passing hour.

Let Ulric play his games. Let him think his poisons and schemes can break us. He doesn't understand what he's really fighting, not truly. He cannot understand that which he will never feel.

We just have to survive long enough for Arvoren to find us. Just have to stay strong, stay smart, stay alive.

The storm rages on, and somewhere out there in the swirling white, a dragon hunts through the night, following the impossible tether of magic and blood and love that binds us all together. I feel him drawing closer with each passing hour, his presence growing stronger in my dreams, in the child's movements, in the very air around me.

I press my hand to the cold glass of the window, watching frost spread from my fingers in delicate patterns. The storm responds to my touch, snow swirling closer, and for a moment I swear I can smell smoke and dragon-fire on the wind. Somewhere out there, Arvoren rides through the endless night, drawing closer with each passing hour.

And when he finds us—when he discovers what his brother has done, what he planned to do—I’m certain that one way or another, there won't be enough left of Ulric to bury.