Orothyn towered over what remained of the parlor, half his body punched through the shattered bones of the manor and exposed to the town square beyond.
Stone rained from the broken walls. Silk curtains burned. Midwinter lanterns swung wildly from their hooks, painting his emerald scales in flickers of red, gold, and blue while the crowd outside screamed itself hoarse. One of his wings had torn through the upper floor. His claws crushed the marble beneath him with every shift of weight. The noble lord was gone now. No more jeweled rings. No more velvet voice. No more careful smile wrapped around a monster’s hunger.
Only Orothyn.
Liliana’s son.
And me, standing below him with Judgment in my hand and blood drying on my face.
For half a breath, the rest of the family simply stared.
Then the parlor erupted.
“Are you fucking insane?” Brandilyn screamed at Orothyn, her glamour flickering hard enough to show emerald scales along her throat. “You brought half the manor down!”
“He killed Mordain!” Nyssara snapped, backing away from falling debris. “And Ithra! And Veyr!”
Keryndros shoved a broken table off his leg, his polished mortal mask cracking around the edges. “Arguing about the architecture seems secondary right now.”
Velmora stood with dust in her hair and murder in her eyes. “This was supposed to be a quiet gathering.”
“A quiet gathering?” Brandilyn laughed, sharp and hysterical. “There is a god bleeding all over the carpet and Uncle Oriel just exposed his ass to the entire city.”
Orothyn lowered his massive head toward me, lips peeling back from teeth longer than swords.
“No, false god of justice,” he roared. “Your tyranny ends tonight.”
I looked up at him through the drifting dust.
“Good,” I said. “Then die making a point.”
I reared back and swept Judgment upward.
Radiant force tore free from the blade in a wide, brutal arc. It struck Orothyn across the chest and drove him backward through what remained of the manor wall. The impact split stone and sent him crashing farther into the square, scattering nobles, guards, servants, and festival-goers like leaves in a storm.
For one second, the path was clear.
I released Judgment.
The sword shattered into a thousand pieces of light.
Not broken.
Unbound.
Its fragments spun around me like a storm of silver fire, each shard humming with the old verdict that had lived in my hand for longer than most kingdoms had stood. I crouched low, gathering strength through my legs, through my spine, through every buried piece of divinity I had dragged back from starvation, madness, and the gutters of Calimport.
Then I launched upward.
The floor cracked beneath me.
I shot through the collapsed ceiling and into the open night, pulling Judgment’s scattered pieces into my body as I rose. Light swallowed me. Bone shifted. Wings tore free. The stolen half-mortal shape burned away beneath the truth of what I had been before grief, before exile, before Tamara’s mercy became a cage.
In a flash of white-gold radiance, I hovered above Calimport in my true draconic form.
The city spread beneath me in festival fire and panic.
Music still played somewhere, absurdly enough. Drums pounded from the dragonborn street. Fireworks burst overhead, mistaking catastrophe for celebration. Below, Midwinter had become a nightmare of fleeing bodies, overturned carts, shattered lanterns, and blood-bright stone.
Then the rest of Liliana’s brood stopped pretending.
Their mortal forms fell apart one after another.
Brandilyn’s beauty split down the middle as Velithra tore through the glamour, elegant flesh peeling back into emerald scale and wing. Nyssara shrieked, not in fear but fury, gold pins scattering from her hair as her body expanded and crushed the parlor floor beneath her. Keryndros twisted upward through splintering beams, ink-stained hands becoming claws. Velmora shed her noblewoman’s poise like a snake skin, long neck rising through dust and torn silk.
More followed.
Seven emerald dragons broke the manor from within.
Seven.
The building could not hold them.
No mortal structure could.
The lordly manor ruptured outward in a roar of stone, glass, wood, and screaming. Balconies collapsed into the square. Whole rooms spilled open to the night. Guests who had been laughing an hour ago ran beneath falling marble with blood on their faces and terror in their mouths.
I had known this would become a battle.
I had wanted it.
Then I heard the citizens.
Not the brood. Not guards. Not nobles.
The people.
Children crying. Parents shouting names. Bodies crushed beneath stone. Festival music died note by note as Calimport realized the monsters had not come from outside the city.
They had been smiling from the balconies.
That sobered me.
Only for a second.
But a second was enough.
Mira and Darian were here.
Their home was not far. Not anymore. Not with all of us in draconic form, tearing the sky open above the city like old gods fighting over a graveyard.
Caedrel.
Maeril.
The thought hit harder than Orothyn ever could.
I had brought this to their city. To their peace. To the fragile home that had saved what little remained of me.
“Look at me,” I snarled into the night, though whether I spoke to the brood or myself, I do not know.
Orothyn surged upward from the square, wings beating hard enough to flatten market stalls and send bodies tumbling across the stones. His eyes burned green with old hatred.
I dove straight for him.
Not because he was the largest.
Not because he was the closest.
Because if I could keep their attention on me, maybe the city could run. Maybe Mira and Darian would hear the screams, gather the children, and flee before the brood spread outward. Maybe for once the disaster following me would not reach the people who had made the mistake of loving me.
Orothyn opened his jaws.
Emerald force gathered behind his teeth.
I hit him before he could release it.
We collided above the square with enough force to crack the air.
The shockwave shattered every window for three streets. Fireworks burst sideways. The crowd below fell screaming to the ground as I drove my claws into Orothyn’s shoulders and forced him back, away from the packed streets, away from the direction of Mira’s home.
He snapped at my throat.
I took the bite on my forearm and drove my horns into his jaw.
Blood sprayed hot between us.
Below, the other emerald dragons screamed and cursed as they pulled themselves from the collapsing manor.
“Kill him!” Velithra shrieked.
“He’s alone!” Nyssara roared. “Tear him apart!”
Alone.
Yes.
I was.
But for the first time in years, alone did not mean unmoored.
It meant there was no one beside me to be struck first.
I shoved Orothyn backward through the smoke-choked sky and beat my wings hard, dragging him farther from the square inch by inch. He fought like a cornered dragon, all teeth and rage. His claws opened my side. His tail cracked across my ribs. I barely felt either.
My eyes stayed on the city beneath us.
On the fleeing crowds.
In the direction of that small house where Mira had laughed, Darian had cooked, Caedrel had asked too many questions for a child so young, and Maeril had slept in my arms like I had never been anything worth fearing.
“Go,” I whispered, though they could not hear me.
Then louder, into Orothyn’s face as I tore one claw down across his eye:
“Come on, then. All of you.”
One by one, the emerald dragons lifted from the ruins of the manor.
Seven shapes rose into the Midwinter sky.
Seven pieces of Liliana’s bloodline.
Seven reasons Tamara failed.
I spread my wings over Calimport and let Judgment’s light burn through my scales.
“I’m right here,” I roared.
Then I dragged Orothyn higher.
He fought me the whole way up, claws buried in my ribs, teeth scraping for my throat, wings battering against mine hard enough to make the air crack between us. Every wound he gave me slowed my ascent by inches, but not enough. Not nearly enough.
Below us, Calimport burned with lanternlight, panic, and festival fire.
I inhaled.
Power gathered in my throat, bright and vicious, the kind of radiance that had once meant judgment and now felt dangerously close to hunger. Orothyn saw it coming. His eyes widened. He tried to twist free.
Too late.
I unleashed my breath into his chest.
Radiant force swallowed him whole and drove him from the sky like a falling star. He hit the fields outside Calimport in a white-gold detonation that carved a burning trench through the earth, far from the main roads, far from the worst of the fleeing crowds.
One down.
Not dead.
But down.
Nyssara came at me from the edge of my vision.
I swung my head toward her without cutting off the beam.
The breath dragged across the ground beneath us, scarring the outer road, then tearing through the edge of Calimport’s wall. The stone burst apart. Buildings along the impact line shattered one after another, rooftops folding inward, lanterns snuffed beneath a wave of holy light.
I heard the screams.
I hated that I heard them.
I hated it more that I did not stop until the beam struck Nyssara and hurled her backward toward the sea.
Only then did the energy thin and die on my tongue.
For a moment, exhaustion hit me hard enough to make my wings dip.
Too much power.
Too long.
Two dragons knocked from the sky, half a city terrified beneath me, and still five more circled like knives.
Velithra struck next.
She hit me from behind, breath already pouring from her jaws. Not acid. Not flame. Something uglier. Green fire threaded with corruptive magic, hot enough to blister through scale and clever enough to cling where it touched.
The blast drove me down toward the city.
I could have broken away.
I could have turned and let her breath lance through the streets below.
I didn’t.
With a snarl, I snapped my wings wide and forced my magic forward. A shield of gold light flared around me just as Velithra’s beam slammed harder against my back. The impact shoved me lower, closer to the rooftops, but the shield held.
Then the others joined her.
Saelrith. Keryndros. Velmora. Syrelle.
Four more streams of green fire struck the barrier at once, each one burning with its own twisted signatures.
All of it poured down on me a few hundred feet above Calimport.
The shield screamed.
So did I.
The magic barely held. Golden light buckled inward, cracking under the pressure. I poured everything I could into it, not because I feared dying, but because beneath me were streets full of mortals who had come out tonight to drink, dance, kiss, buy trinkets, watch fireworks, and pretend the world was kind for one fucking evening.
I would not let the brood turn them into ash just to reach me.
That focus cost me.
Nyssara came back from the sea like a javelin in dragon shape.
Her claw punched into my left side.
Pain tore through me.
Before I could wrench free, Orothyn slammed into me from the right. His jaws closed over my shoulder and bit deep, teeth grinding through scale into meat. He clung there like a beast drowning in his own rage.
Then he collapsed his wings.
And mine.
We fell.
The city rushed up beneath us.
We hit among the buildings in a wreckage of stone, glass, and screams. My body tore through rooftops and market stalls before slamming into a street wide enough to hold only part of me. Orothyn rolled away. Nyssara ripped herself free from my side. The others descended almost immediately.
Then they were on me.
All of them.
Claws pierced under my scales. Teeth tore at my wings. Tails lashed my ribs. Someone’s horn punched through the soft space beneath my jaw. I tried to rise and was driven back down beneath the weight of emerald bodies and old hatred.
When their breath returned, they used it together.
Seven streams of green fire crashed into me at once.
The blast became a tidal wave, rolling outward through the city streets, burning cobbles black, shattering shutters, turning festival banners into cinders. I felt my own blood boiling where it spilled. Flesh beneath my scales crisped. The world narrowed to pain and pressure and the unbearable knowledge that this was how the city would remember Midwinter.
Not lanterns.
Not songs.
Me.
I was fading.
Not dying, perhaps. Not yet.
But slipping.
Then golden fury dropped from the sky.
Darian hit Syrelle like divine punishment with better timing.
His jaws clamped around her throat, and he tore sideways before she could finish turning. Syrelle’s curved horns, shaped almost like a ram’s, scraped across his cheek as she thrashed. She tried to roar. Blood filled the sound instead.
Darian ripped deeper.
Her body convulsed once, twice, then collapsed backward onto a house behind her. The building gave way beneath her dead weight, folding into dust and splintered beams.
Six remained.
Darian spun, wings flaring, tail sweeping in a brutal arc that knocked Velithra and Keryndros back hard enough to clear space around me. Saelrith lunged for him. He met her with a blast of fire that forced her to recoil, then landed between me and the brood with all the stubborn, infuriating courage that had always made him impossible to hate.
He shifted just enough to place both foreclaws against my chest.
Healing surged through me.
Not gentle.
Darian had never been gentle when gentle wasted time.
Bone snapped back into place. Torn muscles knitted. Scale sealed over blackened flesh. The hole in my side closed around a rush of heat so bright it nearly blinded me. I sucked in a breath and came up on all fours, wings flared, claws gouging the street beneath me.
Ready.
Bleeding, still.
But ready.
I looked at him, fury and relief tangled too tightly to separate.
“Why didn’t you run with Mira and the children?”
Darian gave a low laugh, smoke curling from his jaws.
“Her exact words were, ‘If he dies to those bastards, I can’t kill him myself for fucking up Midwinter.’”
Despite the blood in my mouth, despite the city breaking around us, I laughed.
I actually laughed.
For one heartbeat, with Darian at my back, the odds felt less impossible. Not good. Not clean. But less like a death sentence written in emerald fire.
The six remaining dragons circled through the smoke and ruins, wounded, furious, and finally afraid enough to stop underestimating us.
Darian’s shoulder brushed mine.
“Still with me?” he asked.
“For now.”
“Good. Try not to make Mira a widow by proximity.”
“I thought you were here to help.”
“I am. That was helpful.”
A smile pulled at my mouth, sharp and bloody.
Then the old worry crept in.
My friends dying beside me.
The brood had scattered the city once already with a single exchange of breath and claws. If even one of them broke away, if even one decided to stop fighting me and start hurting what I had tried to keep behind me—
No.
I shoved the thought down before it could become panic.
I could not afford it.
Not yet.
I fixed my eyes on Orothyn as he dragged himself from the burning street, one side of his face scored raw from my breath, his hatred bright enough to light the smoke around him.
“Come on,” I growled.
Darian lowered beside me, wings spread.
The brood charged.
And for the first time that night, I was not alone.