The road to the Dragon Kingdom cut like a silver ribbon through the obsidian spires and smoking valleys. Josephine rode at Xavi's side, small and steady in his hand, the familiar warmth of him grounding her. Zephyria's wind tangled the hems of her dress; the dragon-kingdom sky was a low, molten blue. Raden met them at the palace gate, broad-shouldered and smiling like someone who had been waiting for a miracle.
The miracle waited in his arms: a tiny bundle wrapped in white and gold. Josephine stopped, breath caught, and for a moment everything else — the clatter of servants' boots, the flaring torches, Xavi's quiet hum — fell away. The baby's face was delicate and fierce all at once; a curl of dark hair, lashes like a whisper. Raden eased the child forward.
"Here you go, Jojo," Raden said, careful and soft.
Josephine stepped closer. She couldn't speak, but her mouth curved into the kind of smile that reached her eyes and settled there like a sunrise. She washed her hands at the basin brought for her — ritual, respect — and then she did what she always did when words failed: she floated, small and buoyant, into the air. The servants exhaled. No one could say precisely how she did it; they only said that when Josephine floated, the world seemed to hold its breath with her.
The baby blinked, and then she giggled.
"Jojo…" Piere said, the name a thread between them. He looked fragile — thinner than before, as if every breath cost him a favor. His voice came out in a wheeze. Xavi's hand tightened on Josephine's without a thought.
"You need rest, love," Raden murmured, taking Piere's hand. The prince's jaw trembled with something like exhaustion and pride all braided together.
Josephine pressed her lips, a soft salute of affection, and then her lips found the newborn's forehead. The child's giggle became a tiny arm searching for fingers; she tangled them in Josephine's. The sound lodged in Josephine's chest — a bright, sharp thing — and she hummed in her mind, a warm current of welcome she could not speak aloud. Piere's hand hovered, then rested on Josephine's shoulder.
"Congratulations," Xavi said, voice light but earnest.
Raden scoffed, mock-offended. "Huh. No — she looks like me."
Piere rolled his eyes dramatically, and everyone laughed, a small, brittle sound around the edges of the joy. Xavi, always practical, asked, "What's her name?"
"Aureth. Princess Aureth." Raden's announcement was both claim and blessing. Josephine whispered the name in thought and the syllables fluttered against the baby's skin like a lullaby.
When it was time, Piere settled into a chair with a milk flask and fed the little princess. Josephine watched, the soft rise and fall of chest and cloth, the way new parenthood made companies of the weary and the overwhelmed. She could not walk yet — only float — and the unusual patterns carved into her midriff, the faint silver tracings of her 'carving', glowed with their own, secret logic. Xavi teased her about the oddities; they laughed together, though Josephine's smile had a private shadow the two of them could not entirely hide.
Night fell by the time they returned. Adris was asleep in a cot with one chubby fist in his mouth; Josephine bent, kissed his forehead — Mama? he mumbled in the thick half-dream between waking and sleep. She stroked his hair. "Nighty night," she thought, pouring the tenderness she could not say into the motion. Adris relented with a sleepy, satisfied hum and kissed her cheek.
Later, when she came to the bath where Xavi had already begun lathering the foam over her bump, Josephine drifted to him. He was all careful hands and murmured tenderness, washing as if the simple ritual could keep them both from the world's claws. He looked at her then, and something in his expression made the hush of the night seem full of promise.
"My sweet wife," he said, wrapping his arms around her. She let herself be still within that embrace.
Elsewhere in the palace, other lives braided quietly: Xantha and Sienna, wrapped around each other with the fierce heat of new love; Haillie and Anya, newly married and newly astonished at the truth of their devotion — "Say it again," Haillie demanded one evening, hands cupping Anya's face, and Anya did, and the world felt easier for it.
Four days later, Josephine had visited Nyx, who had given birth to twin boys, Lucien and Lioren, and Tess, who'd produced a small, moonlit daughter named Auriel. The palace had been a tangle of lullabies and soft linens. Joy spread like oil across water. Then the joy was pierced by a sharp, inexplicable thing: Josephine fell violently ill.
Xavi sat at her bedside like a statue made of worry. He placed two cold towels — one on her forehead, one over the swell of her bump — and watched the fever work across her features. "Why isn't it coming down, sweetie?" he whispered, though he already knew the answer would not be simple. She kissed his hand in answer, a fragile gesture of faith, and slid into sleep before he did.
Sienna moved with quick, practiced hands. From Zephyria's gardens she fetched crushed herbs and brewed them into vials. She injected the tinctures with a steady hand as Josephine slept through the meal, Xavi unable to touch food, only feeding Adris with trembling fingers. Sienna crouched by the bed; her face was drawn. "I think it's because of the hole in her heart," she said finally, and the words fell like jagged stones.
Xavi's whole face crumpled. "Will my mama be okay?" Adris asked, small and alarmed.
"Yes," Sienna said, cupping his cheek with the gentleness of someone who had room in her soul for other people's children. "She will."
When Josephine woke, she descended the stairs slowly — a yawn, a steadying float — and flitted into the great hall. A guard from Zephyria stood there, scroll in hand. He looked small and nervous under the high arches. Josephine took the parchment. The ink was cold with malice.
Theron read the words aloud before Josephine's eyes had finished tracking the letters: "Dear Queen Josephine — I hope this letter finds you. Unfortunately, a woman is not supposed to have such a powerful kingdom, especially one that cannot speak. I know your place — Xavi's wife and Adris' mother — and you are meant to stay beside him, not build your own realm. Therefore, I will take over your kingdom. I declare war upon you. — King Noctar, King of Erevale."
The hall reeled. Xavi's fingers curled into a fist so tight his knuckles blanched; a whispered command slipped from him, and the guard was moved aside as urgency ate through the room. Josephine's hands found Queen Oliyda's as if by habit; the older queen squeezed back, a tether against the tide. "Josephine," Oliyda said, holding her firmly. "You will stay here."
Josephine looked at Xavi. She could not stay. She would not watch him go. She felt the heat of a shape forming beneath her ribs — a dangerous thing — and she pressed her fingers to her lips in a private vow.
Xavi's jaw worked. "I will end this war myself," he declared, a blade of determination in his voice. "That bastard has the audacity to threaten us."
The word 'Kara' rose in Josephine's mind like a bell. Kara, distant but ever present, answered immediately. "Yeah? What is it?" her voice sounded plain in Josephine's thoughts, a thread connecting them across distance. Josephine laid out the letter, the outrage, the plan of a king who thought himself above consequence. Voices in other rooms hushed as a rumor of what Josephine communicated with her mind spilled outward.
Kara's reply came clean and sharp as a blade. "Use your weapons, Jojo. You can control them now." The command was not spoken aloud, and Xavi's eyebrows lifted in a mixture of awe and alarm. Even from afar, Kara's presence trembled like a drumbeat. "Kill that bastard!" she said, a raw, furious spark.
Something in Josephine shifted. She had spent years learning to contain her power — to keep it small, domestic, curated to smiles and floating and the gentle, private miracles she performed for those she loved. Now rage, bright and volcanic, pooled in her eyes and blackened the irises until they looked like wells. Her mind thrummed a single, simple note, and the palace answered: the very sky seemed to tense.
"That bastard will PAY!" a voice — not spoken in any tongue — echoed from the vault of the sky itself. It was not Josephine's voice as others heard it; it was her power made thunder. The family looked up, and some of the servants crossed themselves or fell to knees in a kind of reverent terror. Xavi's hand went to her, but he did not restrain her. He knew what this meant.
By sunrise, they were in Zephyria, and Josephine sat on the throne. Anger hung about her like a cloak. Outside the gates, soldiers massed — a number that turned speechless mouths into murmurs: over seventy million guards, the proclamation claimed, ranks upon ranks stretching beyond sight. The number meant to intimidate was obscene; the sight of it made even hardened generals pale.
Xavi stood before the battlements and addressed the troops in a voice that carried like iron. "This is war," he said, and his words found the stone and heart of every soldier. The cry rose at his command: "ZEPHYRIA!" The soldiers answered with a single, thunderous consonance of loyalty. The maids and servants bowed low as Josephine took her place; their eyes were wide, reflective pools of devotion.
"We will serve you till our last breath, Your Majesty!" they chanted, and Josephine felt it, a warmth that steadied the tremor in her chest.
I will not put anyone at stake, she thought, the words a hard, cold promise. I will end this war myself and hang his head as a warning to all kingdoms who dare challenge me.
As she thought it, dark smoke wreathed her like living silk and her eyes bled black. Adris ran across the throne room with the reckless fearlessness of a child and climbed onto her lap; his small body fit into the curve of her hip. "Mama!" he crowed, and Josephine's anger softened, the way ice softens beneath a patient sun.
She watched him press a sloppy kiss to her bump, felt the ripple of his innocence, the comforting blab of his talk about school, and something that was not tenderness alone but a steely resolve coiled beneath it.
Kara's voice brushed Xavi's mind again, quieter now. "She's calm for now," Kara observed. Xavi exhaled like a man who had carried the ocean in his chest and set it down. "I will end the war before it starts," he promised. His fingers closed around Josephine's.
She did not answer aloud. She didn't need to. Her silence had grown teeth. The palace hummed with the anticipation of a storm that had found its center — and at that center was a woman who could not speak, and whose quiet had become the world's fiercest language.