[Evelyn’s POV]
The days blur into a rhythm that bruises. Morning drills at dawn with newly marked warriors, every strike pulled short.
Afternoon patrols along the eastern ridge.
Evening weapons practice under Sera's command, her voice cracking across the yard like a whip while torchlight turns blades to molten gold.
I settle into it, become exactly what I'm supposed to be—competent, unremarkable, invisible.
The eastern ridge stretches ahead of me in late afternoon light, wind pulling at my braid, salt air sharp off the cliffs.
I'm scanning the treeline below when boots crunch gravel behind me and Riven falls into step at my shoulder, easy as breathing. "You look thrilled," he says. "Truly. The excitement is radiating off you."
"I'm patrolling. It's not meant to be thrilling." I counter half-sarcastically with a small smile.
"Everything is meant to be thrilling if you do it right." He grins—wide, careless, a grin that costs him nothing—and bumps his shoulder against mine.
"I'll show you the overlook past the next bend. Sea-dragon nests in the cliff face—they light up at dusk when the mothers come back."
"I'm supposed to be watching the treeline, not sightseeing."
"You can do both. I believe in you." He walks backward ahead of me, arms spread, the cliff edge three feet behind his heels, and he doesn't even glance at it. "How are you settling in? Post-marking life treating you well?"
"Well enough. Sera runs a tight rotation." His sincere laugh carries across the ridge, warm and unguarded, and something in me wants to lean toward it the way a cold body leans toward fire.
But even as I half-smile at him—charming, easy, open in all the ways his brother is not—my mind snags on Draven.
The memory of his hand hovering at my hip weeks ago, correcting my footwork—not quite touching, close enough that heat radiated across the gap, and my entire body ignited.
The way his voice drops half a register when he gives me orders directly, and I feel it in my spine. I should feel nothing for him but a soldier's wariness toward her commander.
Instead, every incidental contact lands like a brand, and the worst part is he doesn't even seem to notice.
"Evelyn?" Riven tilts his head. "You disappeared for a second."
"Just thinking about the rotation tomorrow." I shrug half-heartedly. “Truly riveting, mind-boggling stuff, you know?”
"Liar." But he says it gently. "I've got to cut north—my patrol forks at the ridge marker. Stay sharp past the bluffs, the footing gets loose." He clasps my shoulder, warm and brief. "See you at evening practice."
He jogs ahead and disappears around the bend, and the ridge goes quiet. Just wind, and salt, and distant waves.
"You're distracted," Aspis says through the bond, her voice stripped of its usual playfulness. Something tight. Desperate. "And I can't breathe. The walls are pressing in again. My wings keep hitting stone and I can't—the ceiling is too low, it's all too low."
The distress slams through me mid-stride. Claustrophobia—thick, suffocating, not mine. Aspis's world closing in through the bond, stone on every side.
I feel her claws raking across rock, gouging lines into the walls of Draven's chamber, wings crumpling against surfaces that were spacious a week ago and are now a cage. "I need out. Everything is wrong. I can't stay here."
"I know. I'm working on it. Hold on for me." I whisper, trying to be more comforting, already calculating the route to Draven.
I find Draven in his study after evening practice, still in my training leathers. He looks up from maps and something shifts behind his eyes—there and gone.
"Aspis can't stay in your chambers anymore," I say without preamble. "She's gouging the walls. The claustrophobia is bleeding through the bond so hard I can barely focus during drills. She needs real space, Draven."
He studies me. "I'm aware. I heard the scratching through the floor last night." So calm and collected, as if he’s not affected by the situation at all.
"Then you know we're out of time. Another week in that alcove and she'll break through the stone herself, and then it won't matter how careful we've been."
He leans back, jaw tight. "The sea caves. Below the eastern cliffs—there's a network large enough. Natural ventilation, water access, a concealed arch open to the ocean. Hidden passage goes from these quarters." He taps the wall behind him. "Narrow. Rough. Built for smuggling, not dragons."
"Can she fit?"
"Barely. We go tonight, middle of the night, when the compound sleeps. No one sees us. No one knows."
His eyes hold mine. "Strict conditions, Evelyn. If anyone discovers that passage, we lose everything." I nod eagerly. "Be here at the second bell past midnight. Don't be late."
And that night, I'm not late. I slip through the service corridors with Aspis's anticipation thrumming through the bond like a plucked wire, and when I ease into Draven's chambers, he's already waiting—dark clothes, shuttered lantern, expression carved from stone.
Behind the alcove curtain, Aspis whines, white scales catching the barest sliver of light. "Stay close," Draven says, and opens a section of wall I never would have found on my own.
The passage swallows us. Damp stone presses from both sides, the ceiling low enough that Draven ducks, the lantern throwing stuttered shadows across rough-hewn rock.
Aspis follows behind me, breathing harsh and rapid, flanks scraping the walls. I keep one hand on her — scales warm beneath my fingers, muscles bunching and flexing with barely contained tension.
"Easy," I whisper to her. "Almost there. Just a little further."
"The walls are touching me. I hate this. I hate all of this."
"I know. I've got you." The passage narrows, and Draven's shoulder brushes mine as we navigate a turn. His breathing is close enough that I feel it against my temple—warm, steady, controlled.
The darkness makes everything sharper. The rustle of his clothes. The creak of leather. The heat where his body presses briefly against mine before the passage widens enough to separate us.
My hand stays on Aspis but my awareness splits between dragon and man, and I can't decide which makes my heart beat harder.
Then the tunnel opens, and the world expands. The cave is vast—vaulted stone ceiling lost in shadow, black water stretching across a subterranean lake, and there, cutting through the far wall, a natural arch wide enough to frame the sky.
Moonlight pours through it in a silver column, turning the water to hammered metal.
Aspis shrieks. Raw, triumphant, echoing off stone and water—and then she launches. Wings spread for the first time, six, seven feet of glittering span, and she glides over the dark water with white scales blazing in moonlight like a second moon born from the sea.
She banks, dips low enough that wingtips send silver ripples spiraling outward, then climbs toward the arch, bathing in open air. I laugh.
The sound startles me—bright, unrestrained, something I barely recognize as my own.
It comes from somewhere deep, somewhere I'd forgotten existed, and it fills the cave alongside the whisper of wings on water. I turn, still laughing, still breathless, and find Draven watching not the dragon but me.
The moonlight catches his expression before he can hide it—open, unguarded, stripped of every wall he builds between himself and the world.
Something close to wonder. Something closer to hunger. His dark eyes hold mine, and the breath leaves my lungs like he's pulled it from me with his bare hands. "What?" I whisper.
"Nothing." But he doesn't look away. His gaze stays on my face, on my mouth, on the tears I didn't realize were tracking down my cheeks, and the word nothing sits between us like the most obvious lie either of us has ever told.
We stand together in the dark, shoulders almost touching, watching Aspis fly. Her wings catch moonlight and scatter it across the cave walls in shifting silver, and the silence between us is warm.
Not empty—full. Full of everything we won't say, everything we pretend not to feel. The silence hums with it, alive and tender and terrifying, and it is the warmest thing I've felt in years.
Aspis shrieks again, joyful and wild, and the sound settles in my chest beside the mark that still burns with Draven's handprint.
I don't move closer. He doesn't step away. And the cave holds us both in moonlight and silence while the dragon flies.