Seraphina's POV
Draeven dragged me through the burning library like I was nothing.
I clawed at his arm, trying to break free, but his grip was iron. The chains on my wrists burned hotter with every step, and smoke filled my lungs until I couldn't breathe properly.
"Let me go!" I screamed, digging my heels into the floor. "Please!"
He didn't even slow down.
We burst through the library doors into a hallway that was completely engulfed in flames. The heat hit me like a wall. I screamed and tried to pull back, but Draeven walked straight into the fire like it was nothing.
The flames parted around him.
They licked at my skin, singeing my nightgown, but they didn't burn him at all. He controlled them. Commanded them. The fire was his weapon, and he wielded it like a sword.
"Stop fighting," he said coldly. "You'll only hurt yourself."
"Good!" I shouted. "I'd rather burn than go with you!"
"That can be arranged."
He yanked me forward and I stumbled, barely keeping my feet. We passed bodies I recognized—servants who'd worked alongside me, nobles who'd mocked me. All dead. All burned.
This was my fault somehow. That's what Draeven believed. That I deserved to see this. To suffer for it.
We reached the main entrance—or what was left of it. The grand doors had been torn off their hinges. Through the opening, I could see the grounds outside.
And the dragons.
There were at least a dozen of them in their true forms. Massive creatures with scales that gleamed in the firelight—red, black, green, bronze. Wings spread wide enough to block out the sky. Smoke curled from their nostrils. Their eyes glowed like burning coals.
They were waiting.
"No," I whispered, terror freezing me in place. "No, please—"
Draeven pulled me outside into the cool night air. The contrast from the burning manor made me gasp. For a moment, I could breathe again.
Then I saw what the dragons had done to the grounds.
Bodies everywhere. Servants who'd tried to run. Nobles who'd attempted to fight. Even the horses from the stables lay dead in their paddocks.
Nothing had been spared. Nothing had survived.
Except me.
"Why?" I choked out. "Why kill everyone? The servants didn't do anything wrong—they were just trying to survive—"
"Like the dragons your family kept in cages?" Draeven's voice was sharp as broken glass. "The ones they bled slowly for magic? The hatchlings they tortured for sport?"
"I didn't do that!" I screamed. "I wasn't even alive—"
"But you benefited from it." He spun me around to face the burning manor. "Every meal you ate. Every roof over your head. Every scrap of safety you enjoyed. All of it built on dragon corpses."
Tears streamed down my face. "I didn't know."
"You should have."
He dragged me toward the largest dragon—a massive silver creature that made all the others look small. Its scales caught the moonlight like mirrors. Its eyes were the same molten gold as Draeven's human form.
That was him. That was Draeven's true shape.
"No," I said, pulling back with all my strength. "No, please don't—"
The other dragons watched with hungry eyes. One of them—a red dragon with scars across its snout—lowered its head and sniffed me. Its breath was hot and smelled of sulfur and death.
"This is the last Ashencroft?" it rumbled, its voice like grinding stones. "She looks weak."
"She is weak," Draeven said. "But she carries their blood. That's enough."
"Kill her now," the red dragon said eagerly. "Let us watch the line end."
"No." Draeven's voice carried absolute authority. "She's mine. I claimed her. Anyone who touches her answers to me."
The red dragon backed away, but its eyes stayed locked on me. Hungry. Hateful.
Draeven began to change.
His human form cracked and broke, bones reshaping with sounds that made my stomach turn. Scales spread across his skin. His body grew and expanded until he stood four stories tall. Wings unfurled from his back, blocking out the stars.
He'd become the silver dragon.
Before I could run, his massive claw closed around me. Carefully—almost gently—but firm enough that I couldn't escape.
"Please," I sobbed. "Please just kill me here. Don't take me—"
He didn't answer. Dragons couldn't talk in their true forms.
His wings beat once—a sound like thunder—and we launched into the sky.
I screamed.
The ground fell away beneath us. The burning manor became a distant orange glow. The other dragons took flight around us, filling the night sky with wings and scales and smoke.
We climbed higher and higher. The air grew thin and cold. Wind whipped at my nightgown and hair. Draeven's claws held me secure, but I was hundreds of feet in the air with nothing but dragon scales between me and death.
I looked down and immediately regretted it. The world was so far below that trees looked like dots. If he dropped me now, I wouldn't even have time to scream before I hit the ground.
"Why are you doing this?" I shouted into the wind, knowing he couldn't answer. "What did I ever do to you?"
We flew for hours. Or maybe minutes. Time lost all meaning when you were trapped in a dragon's claws, watching the world pass beneath you in a blur of darkness and terror.
My body began to shake from cold and fear and exhaustion. I hadn't slept properly in days. The events of the night played through my mind on repeat—the party, the mud, Kaelen's strange goodbye, waking to fire and screaming.
Everyone was dead. Father. Lyria. Cook Mary. The Duke. Everyone.
And I was flying into the night with the monster who'd killed them.
My vision started to blur. The exhaustion was too much. The fear was too much. Everything was too much.
I tried to stay awake, but my eyes kept closing.
The last thing I saw before darkness took me was Draeven's golden eyes looking down at me.
Not with hatred anymore.
With something else. Something I couldn't name.
Then I was falling into dreams.
Terrible dreams.
I was back in the manor, but this time I was the one burning. Flames consumed my skin and I couldn't scream because fire filled my mouth. I watched my hands turn black and crumble to ash.
Father stood over me, shaking his head. "You were always a disappointment."
Lyria laughed. "Even dying, you're useless."
The scene shifted.
Now I was in a dungeon I'd never seen before. Cages lined the walls, and inside each one was a dragon. Not massive creatures like the ones who'd attacked the manor—these were smaller. Younger. Some barely bigger than dogs.
They were dying. Bleeding. Crying out in voices that sounded almost human.
And standing over them was a man in Ashencroft colors, drawing their blood into vials. He looked up at me and smiled with Father's face.
"Family business," he said. "You understand."
"No!" I tried to run to the cages, to free them, but my feet wouldn't move. "Stop! Let them go!"
The man laughed and drew his knife across a young dragon's throat.
The scene shifted again.
Golden eyes filled my vision. Draeven's eyes, but different somehow. Sad instead of angry. Broken instead of cold.
"You could have saved them," he whispered. "If you'd known. If you'd cared. You could have stopped it all."
"I didn't know!" I screamed. "How was I supposed to know?"
"You should have looked," he said. "You lived in that house. Walked those halls. Ate that food. And you never once asked where it all came from."
The eyes came closer until they filled everything.
"Ignorance," Draeven's voice echoed, "isn't innocence."
I woke with a scream caught in my throat.
We were descending. Below us, black mountains rose like jagged teeth. A fortress carved from dark stone clung to the mountainside, windows glowing orange and red.
We landed hard on a stone platform. Draeven's claws released me and I collapsed, too weak to stand.
His body cracked and shifted, shrinking back into human form. When he stood over me again, he looked different. Tired. The hatred in his eyes had dimmed to something colder.
Emptier.
"Welcome to the Obsidian Fortress," he said quietly. "Your new home."
"This isn't my home." My voice came out broken. "You destroyed my home."
"No." He grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. "Your family destroyed mine three hundred years ago. I simply returned the favor."
Two dragons in human form appeared from the fortress entrance. They stared at me with pure hatred.
"My lord," one said, bowing to Draeven. "The Council has been informed of your... prisoner. They demand an audience tomorrow at dawn."
Draeven's jaw clenched. "Tell them I'll be there."
"And the girl?"
"Lock her in the south tower. Top room." His grip on my arm tightened. "She's under my protection until the Council decides her fate. Anyone who harms her answers to me."
The guards looked disappointed but nodded.
As they led me away, I looked back at Draeven. He stood alone on the platform, watching me go with those terrible golden eyes.
And for just a moment, I could have sworn I saw something flicker across his face.
Regret? Doubt?
Or was it just my imagination, trying to find humanity in a monster?
The guards pulled me inside, and the fortress swallowed me whole.
Tomorrow, I would face the Dragon Council.
Tomorrow, they would decide how I should die.
And tomorrow, I would learn the full truth about what my family had done.
The truth that would make me wish Draeven had killed me in the library after all.