꧁ SACRED ꧂

Nothing is set in stone—not time, not fate, and certainly not Death. But in Rudra's existence, one thing has remained constant: a person. In her tears and rage. In her love and hatred. Now, Rudra is determined to figure out why she was the only one who mourned his death while the rest of the world celebrated his demise—especially since they had always stood on opposite sides of the war. And her answer might be the one thing he holds most dear—the only truth that remains truly sacred. In the kingdom of Partha, power does not negotiate. It descends from the mountain, absolute and ancient, in the form of Ravaan Azhdar — the Dragon King — and his son, Prince Rudra, who inherits his father's fire and none of his patience. In his first life, Rudra did what dragons do. He wanted the Saintess of Benevia and he took her — flew across half the known world and carried Teresa Williams out of her country like a thing claimed, imprisoning her in the cursed land of Alaka for months while the kingdoms of men scrambled to respond. He was not cruel to her, exactly. He simply did not think of her as something that required particular consideration. She was leverage. She was a statement. She was, in the particular arithmetic of dragon politics, a piece on a board. He did not expect Percival Leonhart. The hero came through Alaka the way heroes do — through impossible odds and worse terrain, carrying the legendary sword of Mamon, and he killed Rudra with it. Not cleanly. Not quickly. But definitively. Rudra lay dying in the ruins of everything he had built, alone, which was no more than he deserved and he knew it, and he waited for the end with the specific resignation of a creature who has no remorse, no regret whatsoever. Then Tish appeared. Not rescued, not triumphant, not standing over him with justified contempt. She appeared the way she always moved through the world — quietly, purposefully, and in this case with her hands already reaching for him, her holy magic already trying to knit shut wounds that had no business being knittable. She was crying. She was afraid. And she was, against every law of sense and self-preservation, trying to save the dragon who had taken her from her home He didn't understand it. He asked her why, once, in the way a dying thing asks questions — without real expectation of an answer. She didn't explain. She kept healing. And then an arrow found her, from somewhere in the dark, and she died in front of him before he could — before he could what, exactly, he would spend a great deal of time not finishing that thought. Then Rudra woke up in his bed in Ashkavar. Three years before any of it happened. He lay there for a long time. Long enough for the disorientation to pass and the facts to arrange themselves into something he could examine. He had been given time back, though by what mechanism or mercy he couldn't say. The world was reset. Tish was alive somewhere in Benevia, being saintly and blessed and entirely unaware of everything that hadn't happened yet. He did not love her. He wants to be clear about that, if only to himself. He had barely known her in the first life, and what he had known he hadn't particularly liked — she was stubborn and principled and had an infuriating tendency to keep extending grace to things that hadn't earned it, chief among them apparently him. He did not miss her. He missed the answer she hadn't given him. He missed the specific shape of a question that had no other possible source of resolution. Why had she tried to save him. And for that answer, he was determined to burn everything down all over again. (I will be posting this story on RoyalRoad.com )