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Blood freezes black on snow in the gathering dark.

My roar splits the dawn like thunder, echoing off ancient walls, shaking ice from battlements. The sound carries all my fury, all my fear, all my desperate need to find her before it's too late. Already dragons burst from towers and guard posts, my elite warriors taking wing like living shadows, their scales catching the first rays of sunlight as they spiral upward. The response is immediate, instinctive—they know that sound. Know their king hunts.

"Arvoren!" Darian races across the courtyard toward me, steam rising from his armor as his own dragon nature responds to my partially transformed state. Behind him, more warriors pour from the barracks, weapons half-drawn. "The trackers found signs of struggle in the lower gardens. And this—"

He thrusts something toward me that makes my blood run cold—a scrap of blue silk, embroidered with silver patterns. The fabric Calliope wore this morning still carries her scent, crisp sweetness mingled now with copper-sharp fear. Through our bond, I feel her terror like physical pain.

"How?" The word emerges in a snarl that's barely human. Smoke pours from my mouth as scales ripple faster beneath my skin. "How did he get past the wards?"

"We don’t know." But Darian's voice carries the weight of bitter understanding. Deep down, we both know what it must be.

My brother's betrayal doesn't change the fact that he was born here, that our parents' magic runs in his veins just as it runs in mine. Once again, my own heritage, my own blood, has been turned against me.

Around us, more warriors gather, their own transformations beginning in response to my fury.

"Search patterns!" Darian barks to the assembled warriors, not waiting for my command. He knows we have only minutes. "Northern quadrant first—across the lake—"

"He'll want somewhere defensible," I cut in, already moving. Every second feels like an eternity. Like failure. "Somewhere he can…" I break off as another wave of fear hits through our bond. "Somewhere symbolic. Begin with—"

"The peaks." Darian nods sharply. "Of course."

More dragons launch themselves from the castle walls, their wingbeats stirring snow into whirlwinds. The courtyard becomes a chaos of orders shouted, weapons distributed, warriors transforming in sprays of steam and shadow. My elite guards know what Ulric is capable of. Know what he'll do to Calliope if we don't find her in time.

But first, there's something I must do.

"Coordinate the search," I tell Darian, already turning toward the highest tower. "Start with the northern ridges, the old hunting paths. He knows them as well as I do. But when you find him…" Smoke curls thicker as my control slips. "Wait for me. He's mine to kill."

I don't wait for his response. The tower stairs blur beneath my feet as I take them three at a time, my partially transformed state letting me move faster than any human could manage. Guards flatten themselves against walls as I pass, sensing their king's fury. Steam trails in my wake where my too-hot skin meets frozen stone.

The Sanctum doors burst open at my approach.

Inside, time seems to slow.

Sunlight streams through walls of enchanted glass, casting rainbow patterns across floors still scarred from that final battle. Here, where ancient magic runs deepest, I first tried to bind Calliope to me through ceremony and force. Here, where my ancestors communed with powers older than kingdoms, I learned that some things cannot be contained, only cherished.

My parents were married here. Died here, defending their throne from assassins when Ulric and I were barely more than boys. Their spirits still linger in this place—I feel them in the way the air thickens, in how the light seems to catch on nothing, casting shadows that move when you're not looking directly at them.

I have so little time. But I need to do this. I need to, or I’ll never be able to live with myself.

"I know what you'd say." My voice echoes strangely in the vast space. Despite my desperate need to move, to hunt, to find her, something holds me here. Some power older than my rage. "That he's my brother. That we're meant to protect each other, no matter what. That's what you taught us, isn't it? Family above all?"

The shadows shift, and for a moment I swear I catch a glimpse of my mother's face in the glass, the curve of her brow as she laughed, gentle and sad as the day she died. Her soft voice as she played with us, held us.

Dirt flakes from our clothes as Mother separates us, holding us by our collars like scruffed cats. Ulric's nose bleeds freely, the blood freezing before it can drip onto his fine tunic. My eye is already swelling shut where his elbow caught me.

"Look at you both," she says, and there's something in her voice that makes us both stop struggling. Not anger—disappointment. It cuts deeper than any scolding. "Princes, fighting like common street children."

"He started it," Ulric spits, golden hair wild around his face. "Said I wasn't strong enough to—"

"I did not! You're the one who—"

"Enough." Mother's is firm, unyielding, but not unkind. She kneels before us, taking one of our hands in each of hers. Her skin burns fever-hot, like Father's. Like mine will someday, though Ulric still runs cooler. "Do you know why Kaldoria was founded by your— our family, so very long ago?"

We shake our heads, though we've heard this story a hundred times. Some lessons bear repeating.

Her slip of the tongue doesn’t register in my young mind. But I’ll remember it later.

"Because they understood that true strength comes not from power alone, but from the bonds between us. From protecting what we love." She squeezes our hands. "You boys are all each other has. The world will try to turn you against each other—the crown, the court, your own pride. But you must never let it."

"Why?" Ulric's voice is smaller now, younger.

Her eyes grow distant for a moment, a single blink. I’m not sure whether my brother has seen it there, too.

“Losing one’s family is the worst pain a person can go through,” she murmurs. “You must never lose each other, not if you can help it.”

"I don't understand. I could just find someone else," I say, but she just smiles sadly.

"You will understand it. Not now, but someday." She draws us both close, and for a moment we're just children again, safe in our mother's arms. "Promise me you'll protect each other. No matter what comes. Promise me you'll remember that you're brothers first, princes second."

"We promise," we say in unison, and we mean it. We're too young to understand how promises fail. How they mean nothing. How there is nothing in the world that can hold us together, not really.

But Mother is pleased by our answer. I see it now in my memories—the bittersweet grief in her eyes, the way she held us tighter. The quirk of her downturned lip. It was as if she already knew how it would end. As if she'd seen all of this in some terrible vision: her sons at each other's throats, the castle burning, winter descending at last.

"I'm sorry, Mother," I whisper to the empty Sanctum. "It was never meant to be.”

Time crashes back into normal speed as another wave of fear hits through our bond—sharper this time, more urgent.

No mourning. Not anymore.

I have no brother.

I burst from the Sanctum at a dead run, shattering its glass like Calliope once did, my transformation ripping free from me with a ferocity I cannot recall ever having felt.

He has to die. The words emerge rough with smoke and grief from the recesses of my tired, furious, terrified mind. For her. He’ll die for her.

As I soar upward, breaking free from the Sanctum, something brushes my scales—a touch light as falling snow, gone before I can be sure it was real. The air grows heavier, charged with magic older than my bloodline. I see more dragons high above the city, their wings casting shadows like storm clouds across Millrath's streets, soaring toward the mountains.

No answer follows me into the cold air. No ghostly voices offer absolution.

I roar, a terrible, rapturous sound.

Above, my warriors take wing in perfect formation, scales glinting like stars against the morning sky. They fall into hunting patterns with practiced precision, years of training evident in every movement. But I barely notice them now. All my focus narrows to that flickering connection, that pulse of magic and life that tells me she still lives.

Let Ulric play his games. Let him think he knows what power is, what strength means, what it takes to rule. I've learned better. Learned that true strength comes not from forcing others to kneel, but from choosing to kneel yourself. From letting love transform you into something greater than you were.

I am not the same man who once kept Calliope in chains. Not the same King who thought fear was the only way to rule. She changed me, with her fierce heart and gentle wisdom, with her endless capacity for growth and forgiveness and love.

And now I'm going to prove it.

My wings catch the wind as I bank north, toward the ancient peaks where this all began.