POV: Theron
The roar of the arena was still in my bones when the heralds dragged me away from the sand.
People kept calling my name. Men clapped my shoulder hard enough to bruise. Nobles leaned over the railings, smiling as if they’d just watched a play instead of a dragon bind two lives together.
I caught one last glimpse of Ravenna—white and silver and shock-struck—as her dark–haired friend seized her arm and steered her out of sight.
Then she was gone, and the world felt suddenly too loud.
Havoc paced just under my skin, restless and pleased. Solace’s echo hummed like a second heartbeat beneath his. I’d felt it when she crossed the arena to me, when her hand slid into mine and the bond surged. That moment still burned behind my eyes.
We did it, Havoc rumbled, satisfied. We chose well.
“She chose us,” I muttered under my breath.
I wasn’t sure whether that made it better or worse.
A steward bowed me through the corridor to the guest wing, words of congratulations tumbling over themselves. I answered on reflex, short and polite. My thoughts were back in the arena.
Ravenna’s face when she’d stopped in front of me.
The way her fingers had trembled when she’d taken my hands.
The feel of Solace pressing against us both, demanding an answer.
I had expected resistance. Fury. Maybe even hatred.
What I hadn’t expected was the raw honesty in her eyes—terror and relief warring in the same breath. The way she looked like she’d decided to step into a storm and had no intention of stepping back out.
Bonded, Havoc said again, smug.
“Engaged,” I corrected him. “The human word is engaged.”
He huffed. The human word is slow.
***
They gave me a chamber I didn’t need and a change of formal clothes I didn’t want. I washed the sand off anyway, staring at my reflection in the darkened mirror.
Five times I’d stood in arenas like that. Five times the dragon had chosen me and the woman had not.
This time it had been different.
She had crossed the sand herself. Had taken my hands in front of the whole damn court. No one had forced her feet to move.
I could still feel the heat of her palms in mine.
I sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, and made myself breathe until Havoc’s pacing slowed. He didn’t understand human fear. He understood hunger, choice, battle. Not rejection. Not humiliation.
She did not reject us, he said, puzzled. Why are you restless?
“Because she hardly knows me,” I muttered. “Because I don’t know what she’ll think tomorrow. Because this bond doesn’t give me the right to anything she won’t give freely.”
Havoc considered this, then dismissed it the way only dragons could. She is ours. We are hers. The rest is noise.
I would’ve laughed if my chest didn’t feel tight.
There was a knock at the door.
I stood as a servant entered, bowing low, eyes carefully not lingering on the fresh bond–mark on my wrist.
“General Theron,” he said. “His Majesty requests your presence in his study. Immediately.”
My shoulders straightened before I thought about it. Old habits. Old chains.
“Did he say why?”
“No, sir. But—” The servant hesitated, then added, “The Princess has also been summoned.”
Something cold and sharp slid into the tightness in my chest. This wasn’t some private lecture about protocol or a quiet warning. If he’d called us both…
“Very well,” I said. “Lead the way.”
***
The door to the king’s study stood open. Light from the lamps threw long shadows across shelves of ledgers and maps. Aldric of Cindravale stood behind his desk, hands braced on the wood like he was holding himself upright by will alone.
Lysander was there too, pale and drawn, fingers knotted together. The sight of the old healer looking shaken made the back of my neck prickle. I’d seen him steady in battlefields that would make seasoned soldiers retch.
Something was wrong.
I stepped in. “Your Majesty.”
Aldric looked up, his expression unreadable. “Theron. Sit.”
There was a chair facing his desk. I took it, feeling the faint hum of Solace somewhere in the back of my mind, growing stronger with each passing breath.
Footsteps sounded in the hall.
“Ravenna,” Aldric’s voice shifted—still king, not father. “Come in. Close the door.”
She stepped into the room, hair loose around her shoulders, in a simple dress that made her look younger and somehow more dangerous. The bond surged the moment our eyes met—heat, breath, heartbeat stuttering in a way that belonged more to dragons than to men.
Solace’s hum rose, sweet and fierce. Havoc answered with a satisfied rumble.
For a moment, the room dropped away. It was just her and the echo of heat between us.
She looked away first. I couldn’t blame her.
I got to my feet automatically as she approached, then sat when she did, taking the chair beside mine. Up close, I could feel the warmth of her body, the sharp edge of her composure. Solace preened at the closeness; Havoc stretched, pleased.
Steady, I told him. She’s already having to bear enough.
“Focus,” I told myself silently, echoing the word that seemed to flicker across her face. “You’re still in a king’s study, not a dream.”
Aldric leaned back against his desk, arms crossed. His jaw was set like someone had hit it with a hammer.
“The assassin from the feast has finally talked,” he said.
My shoulder twitched, a ghost ache where the arrow had gone in. I’d taken worse wounds. But the thought of that shot hitting Ravenna instead made something ugly curl in my gut.
“What did they say?” I asked.
“That they were hired.” His voice was cold enough to frost steel. “Hired by someone in this palace to kill Ravenna during the competition.”
The words hung in the air. Someone inside the walls. Someone who knew the schedule, the vantage points, the timing.
Coward, Havoc snarled.
I didn’t look at Ravenna, but I could feel her go very, very still beside me.
“Who?” she managed.
“They refuse to name their employer.” Aldric’s jaw clenched. “Despite our best efforts at persuasion.”
I knew exactly what ‘best efforts’ meant. I’d used them often enough on the border. I didn’t envy the assassin.
“However,” the king went on, “we did learn something useful. The poison used on the arrow—it’s a rare compound. Very specific. Very old.” He turned his gaze to Lysander. “The healer recognized it.”
All eyes shifted to the old man.
Lysander looked…wrecked. I’d seen him tired, I’d seen him grieving. I’d never seen his hands shake.
“I recognized it,” he said slowly, “because I’ve seen it before. Once. Twenty-one years ago.”
Twenty-one years. The number rang in my head, looking for a meaning I already knew. Ravenna’s birth. The queen’s death.
“Explain,” Aldric said. His voice had gone dangerous-soft.
Lysander’s fingers trembled harder. The sight made my stomach drop. If a man like him was rattled, this wasn’t ordinary bad news.
“I need to check my records,” he said quietly. “Before I make accusations. Before I—” His breath hitched. “I need to be certain.”
“Certain of what?” Ravenna demanded. Too loud. Too sharp. No one in the room flinched at her tone.
He looked at her then. There was something in his eyes that made even Havoc go quiet—a grief that had had years to sink deep, calcify into something heavy.
“I’m talking about your mother’s death, child.”
The air went thin. Ravenna’s fingers twitched on her lap. I’d seen soldiers take blades to the gut and look less stricken than she did in that moment.
“What?” she whispered.
“The poison used on that arrow,” Lysander said, each word careful and raw, “is the same poison that killed Queen Elara.”
Havoc bared his teeth inside my mind. My own hand curled into a fist against my thigh.
“No,” Aldric said, but his voice had lost all its iron. “That’s impossible. Elara died in childbirth. You said she died in childbirth.”
“I said she died shortly after giving birth.” Lysander’s voice cracked. “I didn’t say how.”
Silence slammed into the room like a physical blow.
I kept my eyes on Aldric and Lysander, but my attention kept circling back to Ravenna. She wasn’t fidgeting. That would’ve been easier to watch. She was just…still. Too still. Like someone frozen in place while the ground cracked open under them.
“You’re saying—” Aldric choked on the words. “You’re saying my wife was murdered?”
“I’m saying I need to check my records.” Lysander forced himself to stand straighter; it didn’t help much. “I need to be CERTAIN before I make this accusation. But yes. I believe—I have always believed—that Elara was poisoned. That someone killed her and made it look like she died from childbirth complications.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” The king’s roar shook dust from the ceiling. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I had no proof!” The healer’s composure shattered. “I had suspicions. I had a dying woman and a poison I couldn’t identify fast enough to save her. I had a newborn baby who needed protection.” He looked at Ravenna, and the guilt in his face made my throat tighten. “I did what I could, Aldric. I saved the child. I kept my suspicions quiet because announcing them would have put Ravenna in more danger. And I have spent twenty-one years hoping I was wrong.”
“But you’re not wrong.” Ravenna’s voice sounded like ashes. “Are you?”
“No, child.” His eyes shone. “I don’t believe I am.”
Aldric sank into his chair like his legs had given out. A king unseated, not by enemy armies, but by twenty-one-year-old grief.
I’d seen men destroyed by less.
Ravenna didn’t cry. Didn’t shout. She just sat there, empty-eyed, while her world rearranged itself around a single, ugly truth: her mother hadn’t died by chance. Someone had taken her.
The same someone, or their ally, had tried to take Ravenna too.
My jaw ached. I made myself unclench it.
“One day,” Aldric said at last, voice scraped raw. “You have one day to check your records, Lysander. Then you will tell me everything.” He looked up, and the cold fury in his eyes could’ve melted stone. “And we will find who did this. We will find them and I will make them pay for what they took from us.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Lysander bowed—stiff, shaking—and left as quickly as he could without running.
The door closed behind him with a soft click that sounded much too final.
Silence settled like ash.
Ravenna stared straight ahead, lips parted, breathing shallow. The bond hummed between us like a low, pained note. Solace was a tight coil of fury and grief; Havoc pressed against her, keen to hunt, to burn.
She is falling, Havoc said. Catch her.
I moved before I’d fully decided to.
I set my hand over hers.
Her skin was cold. Too cold. She flinched, just a little, then froze. I expected her to pull away.
She didn’t.
She looked down at our hands—mine calloused, scarred; hers small and rigid—and then up at me. Her eyes were wide, shock-dulled, but there was still something burning in them.
I didn’t tell her it would be all right. It wouldn’t be. Not for a while.
I didn’t tell her we’d fix it. You don’t fix this kind of thing. You avenge it.
“We’ll find them,” I said quietly. “Whoever did this. We’ll find them.”
That much I could promise.
Her throat worked. “Promise?” The word shook, barely audible.
“Promise,” I said, and meant it with every scar I’d earned.
Havoc hissed approval, Solace’s hum rising in answer, wrapping around us both like heat.
She held my gaze for a long moment. Something in her eyes shifted—still terrified, still hollow, but anchored now to the single solid thing within reach.
Me. She believed me. And that terrified me more than any battlefield I’d ever walked onto.