I was nine when I first saw the Dragons.
Tyreal had just knocked me flat on my back. My own fault for gaping at the sky like a fool while we sparred. But from the dust of the training yard, I had the better view as they circled the Palace of An'Shar.
They were massive. Any one of them could have carried off a warhorse without strain. But what stopped my breath wasn't their size. No. t was how they moved. Even at that scale, they cut through the air with a hawk's precision. Power and grace, fused into something terrible and perfect.
That image seared itself into me. Through all the centuries that followed, nothing dimmed it.
I thought nothing ever would.
Eight hundred years later, I met her.
The Grand Hall of An'Shar reeked of fear and filth.
Assuredly I had smelled worse, a battlefield of rotted corpses left for the sun and carrion, the great bogs of Rish'Noth, or Vythros, my brother, after he'd spent nearly a week trapped in an owl bear's cave. But this ranked up there, largely due to the fresh terror mixed with weeks spent in the bowels of a cargo ship. Even the jasmine-scent air, brought in from the many surrounding gardens, couldn't mask it.
A quick head count told me there were roughly a hundred prisoners from Vraycia shackled and huddled in the Grand Hall. Their chains rattled softly as we approached. Most stood with their shoulders hunched and their downcast eyes hollowed out. Their spirit's already broken.
But one stood differently from the rest.
She looked like the rest of them, half-starved and covered from head to toe in mud, blood and only the Daeude knew what else. Her hair, its natural color difficult to discern under a layer of grime, hung in mats, plastered to a face that might have been unremarkable under better circumstances. Gaunt. Hollowed by hunger. Strained by sleepless nights of travel in the belly of a barge.
But, unlike the others who looked away, desperate to go unnoticed when we entered, she raised her chin, meeting our arrival with the air of someone receiving guests rather than facing judgement.
Her eyes scanned over the crowd before they settled on mine.
Golden.
By the Daeude.
The shock of it held me in a motionless heartbeat. It had been centuries since I last saw that eye colour. They were a little too large above her sunken cheeks, ringed with deep, dark shadows that served only to highlight the unusual colour. But they were undeniable. Those were the eyes of the Vae Dra Lhar, the Guardians of the Synder Forest.
Then her gaze moved on, dismissing me as casually as she did the rest of this court.
The court swept into the Grand Hall like a glittering tide, still flushed with wine and triumph from the feast celebrating the God King's crushing of the Vraycian rebellion. The evening's entertainment awaited them now—the prisoners themselves, displayed like trophies. Ministers and advisors glided forward in elaborate hooded robes of midnight silk embroidered with gold, while courtiers wore their finest: diaphanous fabrics in jewel tones that caught the lamplight, each garment worth more than a common man could make in a year. Gems winked at throats and wrists. The air hummed with satisfied laughter and the rustle of expensive fabric.
Among them walked Zahir, the God King's eldest son and heir by his Most Divine Empress Soraya. His tall frame moved with the coiled grace of a predator. He was a well built warrior in the way of men trained for battle, not just royal tournaments, his shoulder broad beneath silk and decorated leather armor.
A few paces behind home came Qasim, the second son, born of the concubine Talissa. Neither tall nor formidable, he moved with a fluid quickness that seemed serpentine. Beneath the courtly robes he wore with an elegance that seemed almost careless, his frame was lean rather than muscular. A smile always hoovered at the corners of his mouth, giving him an air of pleasant openness that fooled only strangers.
Anyone who truly knew these brothers understood the truth: it was the younger of the two that you had to watch. Zahir could be cold and calculating, but that could be navigated if you knew the signs. Qasim, however, possessed a far more mercurial nature. His mood likely to change like light shifting upon water. One moment gregarious and charming, the next, utterly vicious and completely merciless. Even the God King seemed uncertain of his second son.
The court's collective presence filled the chamber with animated chatter and barely suppressed excitement. The capture of a rebel Lord's entire court wasn't something that happened every day, and the feast had only whetted their appetite for the spectacle to come.
"They reek worse than the dead!" declared the round faced Lady Milora. The God King's current favorite concubine. Her young face twisted in disgust as she pressed a perfumed handkerchief to her nose.
"My lady, they've been in the bowels of a ship for the better part of the past month," Qasim said as he made his way around the huddled mass, running a dark, critical eye as he went. "How else would you expect them to smell? Like a perfumed whore?"
Somewhere, someone inside the crowd gasped as the thinly veiled barb landed. The second of the God King's sons had made it clear his opinion about concubines. Even if his mother was one.
"Could you have not at least given them a bath first, Jarvis?" the God King asked as he raised a scented cloth to his delicately hooked nose. One of the God King's more prominent traits.
Captain Jarvis stepped forward from among his soldiers, clearing his throat. "No time, my Most Divine Grace."
I knew Jarvis. Had fought and killed beside him enough to know he was a sadistic bastard who enjoyed the suffering of his enemies. That is why they were still filthy because offering them even the small dignity of a bath never crossed his mind.
The God King hesitated. From the look on his face, I could tell he debated what could be more important than to take time and save him their stench. "Where is he?" Finally, when he spoke, the God King's voice boomed across the hall.
The captives flinched in unison. The woman jerked as if struck.
"Bring me that damned traitorous Lord of Vraycia!"
Jarvis turned and motioned to a nearby guard, who stepped forward, in his hands a leather satchel stained with dark patches that could only be dried blood. When he opened it, the pungent sickly-sweet smell of decay rolled across the crowd.
Several courtiers gasped
The guard grimaced as he reached into the sack and withdrew a head by its hair.
This time someone screamed.
What had once been Lord Orellious Drathex, Protector of Vraycia, was barely recognizable. Three weeks across the Inner Sea in the height of the summer months had bloated the features, turned the skin a mottled purple-grey. They'd hadn't even bothered to close his eyes, so that Orellious' milky gaze returned the court's horrified stares.
The ragged flesh where his neck had been severed from his body spoke of neither clean nor quick work.
And through it all, I watched her.
For a heartbeat, her mask slipped. Grief. Pain. Rage. Her throat worked in a convulsive swallow. Her manacled hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.
Then the mask slammed back into place, and she was gold and granite once more.
The God King scowled, his eyes narrowing into slits of fury. "Dammit, Jarvis! I gave specific instructions to bring Lord Drathex to me alive! What am I to do with that?" He gestured at the ruined, rotted head, rings and jewels glinted.
"Forgive me, my Most Divine Grace." Jarvis's voice remained steady, controlled, even as began his explanation. "Before we set sail, Lord Orellious broke free and tried to escape…"
"I gave you one task, captain! One! And you have failed me."
"He killed four of my men trying to get to his wife…"
My eyes flickered to her and suddenly it all made sense. She must be the Lord of Vraycia's wife, or rather his widow, now.
"I don't care if he killed a hundred! I told you to bring him back alive!" The God King's face turned a shade of crimson beneath his bronze complexion. "I could have broken him!"
Jarvis finally broke and dropped to one knee. "My Lord, I beg your forgiveness…"
A figure broke away from the crowd. Qasim moved with an unhurried grace. A smile played at the corners of his mouth. That smile made my stomach sink.
The captives shrank back as he passed them. One of the younger ones whimpered. All save for her. Her eyes remained fixed on her husband's severed head still hanging by its hair from the guard's hand.
Prince Qasim paid them no mind. He walked past the God King, unphased by his father's rage. The soles of the prince's fine leather shoes clacked softly against the veined marble floors until he stood directly behind the kneeling Jarvis.
Jarvis's shoulders stiffened, but he didn't move. Didn't turn. Perhaps he still held onto some hope that his years of loyalty and service might stand for something. It wouldn't.
"Please," Jarvis pleaded. "My Divine Grace…"
Qasim's hand emerged from his silken robes holding a small curved blade. The kind favoured by assassins of An'Shar. It flashed across the captain's throat in one smooth motion.
The cut was precise and utterly vicious.
"Forgiveness?" Qasim leaned down, his cheek nearly touching the dying man's. "The God King doesn't deal in forgiveness."