[Evelyn’s POV]
Three days since the revelation, and the compound treats me like something breakable and dangerous at once. Servants stumble over honorifics when I pass, eyes dropping, voices cracking on "Lady Evelyn" like the title might shatter in their mouths.
A girl spills tea this morning because her hands shake when she serves me, the cup rattling against the saucer while she stammers apologies I don't want. "Evelyn is fine," I tell her gently. "The same as yesterday."
But she backs away anyway, and I'm left holding tea I didn't ask for in a kitchen that suddenly feels too small. Through the bond, Aspis rumbles with amusement. "You terrify them now. Quite the transformation."
"I preferred being invisible." I take the tea to the eastern wall where the patrol changes shift and wind carries salt across stone. The view stretches for miles—hills darkening to forest, the eastern road cutting through green like a wound. Empty now, but not for long.
Aspis launches from the highest roost, white wings catching sunlight until she blazes against blue sky. She's massive now—the size of a warhorse, scales shimmering like pearl. She circles twice, then banks toward the open ocean where fish run silver beneath the surface.
Khaira rises to join her, and they fly in tandem—Khaira leading, Aspis matching her wingbeat with the respect of something younger learning from something ancient. Through the bond, I feel pure joy. Aspis dives, talons extended, emerges with a fish thrashing in her grip. Khaira rumbles approval.
"They bonded faster than I expected," Draven says behind me, and I don't startle—I've learned his footsteps. He joins me at the wall, gaze tracking the dragons hunting over churning waves.
"Khaira treats her like a daughter. Aspis treats her like an equal who happens to know more. It's respect, not submission."
"Khaira raised three clutches before Lyanna died. Maternal instinct runs deep." His voice carries weight saying her name. "She sees potential in Aspis. Something worth protecting."
Silence holds while the dragons wheel and hunt, their cries echoing across the empty sky. But it doesn't last.
"Sera confirmed the numbers this morning," Draven says, and the shift in his tone pulls my attention from the ocean to his face.
His jaw is set, eyes holding the flat darkness of a man preparing for war. "Forty mounted warriors. Full battle gear. Cassandra leads them. They'll be here by tomorrow evening, maybe sooner if they push through the night."
My chest tightens, ribs compressing around lungs that can't draw enough air. I grip the stone, feeling rough grain bite into my palms, and force myself to breathe.
"Forty warriors for one dragon and a runaway daughter. That's excessive even for Father."
"Your father wants the dragon. Cassandra—" Draven pauses, something unreadable crossing his expression. "Cassandra wants something else. Sera's intelligence suggests the military force is Father's play. But Cassandra requested command personally."
The fear coiled in my gut spreads through my chest like ice water, and through the bond, Aspis feels it. She wheels mid-dive, abandoning her hunt, attention snapping toward me with the force of a blow. "Evelyn. Your heart just went cold. What's wrong?"
"Cassandra is coming. Tomorrow, maybe tonight." Hearing my answer, Aspis banks hard toward shore, wings carving air with violent precision.
"Good. Let her come. I've wanted to meet the woman who made you afraid of your own reflection." But something shifts in her, fury cooling into something more deliberate.
She circles lower, amber eyes fixed on me through the distance. "Your sister carries a fire inside her that has nothing to do with politics. She wants to destroy you. Not politically or strategically. She wants you erased from existence. I feel it inside—a pressure building at the horizon, dark and hungry and inevitable."
The words land like blows, each one striking true because I've always known this. Buried beneath years of trying to please her, trying to be small enough not to provoke her—I've always known that Cassandra's cruelty ran too deep to be strategic.
The insults finding the exact wound to reopen, the humiliations crafted with surgical precision, the way she'd smile when I flinched—it was never just about politics or prophecy or Father's approval.
"I know," I tell Aspis. "I've always known. She hates me for existing. For breathing. For being born when she was supposed to be enough."
Draven's hand finds mine on the stone, fingers lacing through mine with a grip that grounds me when everything else feels like it's tilting sideways.
"We'll handle it. Together. The Protocol protects you. Alliance law protects you. And if law isn't enough—" He doesn't finish the sentence, but I hear it anyway in the set of his shoulders, the way his other hand rests on the blade at his hip. He'll fight. He'll bleed. He'll burn the world before he lets Cassandra take what's his.
And I am his. The mark on my chest confirms it, warm beneath my tunic, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. But more than that—the way he looks at me confirms it. The way he stands between me and every threat that comes through those gates. The way his fingers tighten around mine when he thinks I'm not paying attention.
"I don't understand it," I say quietly, watching Aspis and Khaira climb toward the highest roost, wings synchronized. "I've spent years trying to understand what I did to make her hate me so much. What was wrong with me, that she couldn't even look at me without contempt. But I never found an answer that made sense."
"That's because there isn't one." Draven turns to face me fully, and his free hand comes up to cup my jaw, thumb tracing the line of my cheekbone with a gentleness that contradicts the violence coiled in every other part of him.
"Some people carry poison in their blood, and it has nothing to do with you.” His conviction is intoxicating. “You could have been perfect, and she still would have hated you for it. There's no version of you that would have satisfied her because the problem was never you."
The words settle into me like stones dropping into still water, and I let them sink, let them displace the old questions I've carried for too long. He's right. Understanding Cassandra's hatred won't change anything. Won't make me safer. Won't make tomorrow easier.
What matters is surviving it. What matters is that when she comes through those gates with forty warriors and Father's authority and a fire inside her that wants me erased—I'll still be standing.
With my dragon screaming defiance from the roost above. With this man's hand in mine and his mark burned into my chest. With every lesson learned in the dark, every wound survived, every chain I broke to get here.
Cassandra is coming. And this time, I'm not running. Through the bond, Aspis settles onto the highest roost beside Khaira, white scales gleaming against black, and her voice rumbles through me with absolute certainty. "She can bring her fire. We have ours."
I watch the eastern road stretch empty toward the horizon, and I breathe, and I wait for the storm I've always known was coming.