Chapter 2

Cassian’s face stiffened.

His eyes flicked to the moving portrait on the desk, then away. “What are you getting at?”

“You promised that once the north was secure, you’d crown me Dragon Queen.” My voice was low. “Later, you said my dragonfire was too weak and I wasn’t ready for the responsibility.”

“That was the truth.” His patience was already wearing thin.

“You spent my nineteenth birthday at the border. On my twentieth, you said the Council had buried you in work. When I turned twenty-one, you forgot altogether.” I held his gaze. “But you’ve personally chosen Cecilia’s gift every year.”

“That’s enough.” Cassian spun toward me, and the force of the Dragon Lord’s presence filled the cramped room. “You turn every small slight into an old grievance. If you weren’t so sensitive, suspicious, and obsessed with comparing yourself to Cecilia, we wouldn’t be here.”

His power pressed the air from my lungs.

So in his mind, being unloved wasn’t something that had happened to me. It was something I had caused.

“You’re right,” I said quietly. “I’ve disappointed everyone.”

I turned my back on him. “There’s a sealed box in the second drawer on the left. Don’t open it for three days. After that, the spell will release on its own.”

Inside were my Court renunciation, a copy of the dissolved bond scroll, and the last letter I would ever write him.

Cassian didn’t ask what the box contained. He walked out and slammed the door.

The midnight bells rolled through Obsidian Keep. I sat in the weak candlelight with the old portrait in my arms until dawn.

Two days left.

At first light, dragon-drawn carriages landed in the courtyard below, their wings beating hard against the tower windows.

My parents and Cecilia were home.

They hadn’t even reached the stairs when my father’s voice thundered down the corridor. “You have the nerve to come back here, Evelyn?”

The door flew open.

Garrett Ashton had once been the most respected dragon cavalry commander in the Obsidian Court. He stood in the doorway with his face set hard. “You destroyed Cecilia’s ceremony. She cried until she lost control of her fire, and she still begged us to forgive you. Don’t you feel any shame?”

My mother supported Cecilia with one arm, her own eyes red. “Apologize. Admit you were wrong, and we can put today behind us.”

I closed my eyes and drew a slow breath.

The fact that they said we could put it behind us meant they still considered me family. This family simply required me to confess to things I hadn’t done before I was allowed to belong.

Two days.

I only had to endure two more days.

My father hadn’t always been like this.

When I was little and couldn’t summon dragonfire, he used to crouch beside the training yard and tell me, “Going slowly is fine, Evie. Awakening isn’t a race.”

When I couldn’t master the simplest dagger stance, he would guide my wrist and correct me without a trace of impatience.

Things changed after Cecilia joined House Ashton.

At fourteen, she could ride a young dragon. At fifteen, she passed the Dragonwing entrance trials. By sixteen, she was patrolling the canyon alone.

At eighteen, my flame was barely strong enough to light a lamp. Every attempt to form wings felt as if my bones were being torn apart, and I always ranked last in combat training.

Worse, my health began failing during Cecilia’s second year in our home.

I grew dizzy and sick without warning. I couldn’t train for fifteen minutes before my strength gave out. The healers decided I had been born with a damaged dragon core and prescribed stronger tonics.

No matter how much I drank, I only got weaker.

The concern in Garrett’s eyes slowly hardened into disappointment after years of Cecilia’s “innocent” comparisons.

“You receive the same training. Why can she finish while you always collapse halfway through?”

“You’re the Dragon Lord’s fated mate. If you can’t protect yourself, how will you help him defend the Keep?”

Even then, my father sometimes sent hot broth to my room at night or quietly hired a better healer.

But whenever Cecilia tearfully claimed I had refused my medicine just to frighten them, he decided once again that I was the one giving up on getting better.

He didn’t hate me.

He had simply trusted the wrong daughter.

I opened my eyes and looked at Cecilia behind my parents.

She wore the same innocent expression, pale gold hair resting over her shoulders like the meekest saint in a chapel mural.

“Can we stop fighting, Evelyn?” she asked softly. “Can’t things be like they were when we were children?”

She stepped forward with tears trembling in her eyes. “Tomorrow is the Starfire Festival. Do you remember the bellflower crowns you used to make me? Could you make one more as my captain’s gift?”

Relief crossed my mother’s face. “You’ve always been good with flowers. Cecilia is trying to make peace, so meet her halfway.”

The words star-bell flowers pulled me straight back into a seven-year-old nightmare.

When Cecilia first arrived, I had truly wanted a sister. After hearing that she loved star-bells, I picked the fullest stems in our garden and spent an entire afternoon weaving them into a crown.

Their cold sap stung the skin of anyone with weak dragonfire, but I endured the blisters and finished something beautiful for her.

The moment Cecilia put it on, she collapsed. Red welts spread across her face and throat.

The healer said it looked like a severe pollen allergy.

When she woke, the first thing she did was throw herself into Cassian’s arms. “Evelyn meant well. She said wearing it for a little while wouldn’t hurt me. Please don’t punish her.”

One sentence convinced everyone that I had knowingly forced an allergen onto her.

I stood outside the healing room until my voice gave out. “I didn’t know. She never told me she couldn’t touch them.”

No one listened.

Cassian locked me in Obsidian Keep’s cold-iron cell for two nights.

There was no fire, no clean water, and cold iron lined the walls, smothering what little dragonfire I had. I lay feverish in a corner while a thanksgiving feast celebrated Cecilia’s recovery above me.

Through the fever, I sensed Cassian standing outside the door for a long time.

He never came in.

At dawn, he sent a bottle of medicine and a message: [You can leave when you learn to stop hurting people.]

“Have you forgotten?” I asked Cecilia. “You said star-bell flowers made it hard for you to breathe.”

The room went silent.

At that exact moment, Cassian entered. He had clearly heard my last sentence, because he stopped just inside the door.

Cecilia’s smile faltered before she recovered. “That was when I was a child. Dragonwing training strengthened me. I outgrew the allergy years ago.”

She approached and clasped my hand. “See? I’m not afraid of them anymore.”

Hidden beneath our sleeves, her nails dug brutally into my skin.

I jerked away. Cecilia threw herself backward as if I had shoved her, hitting her shoulder against the brass corner of a rug weight.

As she fell, her free hand brushed the small leather pouch at her belt.

Red welts bloomed over her cheeks a second later.

“Cecilia!”

My mother dropped beside her. The rash crawled down her neck, exactly as it had seven years ago.

My father turned to me, fury warring with pain in his eyes. “Evelyn, what did you do to her?”

“I didn’t touch her.”

Even to me, the denial sounded weak.

Cecilia scratched at her skin in my mother’s arms. “Don’t blame her. Maybe she just lost control of her fire. I’m the one who came too close.”

The more she defended me, the harsher my parents’ faces became.

Cassian crossed the room, red eyes blazing.

“You. Again.”