Éirinn did not trust her body.
It felt foreign now—soft where it should be hard, light where it should be sharp. Her human skin trembled with sensation: cold wind on her shoulders, Cianán's calloused palm on her back, the bite of hunger that came without fire to silence it.
She was human again.
But she wasn't.
Not entirely.
They lived like ghosts in the mountains.
Cianán kept the world at bay, claiming a pilgrimage to the old temples of Dúlra. He spoke with no one but Éirinn, tended to her wounds, and quietly cooked meals over low flames, as if afraid noise might scare her back into the sky.
She didn't talk much.
Not yet.
When she did, it was in short, brittle bursts—names, memories, moments shattered by silence.
But the more she spoke, the more the fire inside her began to simmer again. Not as rage.As awareness.
She had power.
The firelight caught the faint glimmer of her scales—still there, still growing beneath the skin of her arms, like a secret ready to surface.
"I died cursing you," she said. "And you earned it."
Cianán didn't flinch. "I know."
She looked at him, and something in her eyes twisted.
"You said you wanted me to punish you. That I could take your other arm. Turn you into stone, if that's what I wanted."
"I still would," he whispered.
She stepped forward. Close.
Too close.
Her hand brushed his jaw.
"And if I wanted to keep you like that forever? As a statue at the foot of my cave?"
His breath caught.
"I would thank you," he said.
She leaned in.
But instead of biting him, she kissed his forehead.
Then shoved him back.
"You're an idiot," she said, trembling.
But he smiled.
Because she'd called him something.
Anything.
That night, she shifted again.
Not by choice.
By instinct.
The fire in her chest roared to life. Her skin cracked, her bones reshaped, and within minutes, she was dragon once more—curled beside the fire, wings shielding the camp like a fortress.
Cianán didn't flee.
He sat beside her, one hand resting gently on her scaled forearm.
"I'll wait," he said.
But word of her survival had already escaped.
Ronan's body had never been recovered, only his shattered cloak at the base of the cliffs.
And the court had noticed Cianán's absence.
The council grew restless.
The nobles began to question: if Éirinn lived, was her sentence invalid? Could she claim the throne?
Some feared her.
Others hungered for her return.
But it was Lady Aithne who made the first move.
She declared herself regent in the king's absence, claiming it was "her duty" to preserve stability.
Her first act?
To issue a warrant for Éirinn's "re-apprehension."
Alive, if possible.
Dead, if necessary.
The order passed without resistance.
No one dared defy the woman who had once nearly poisoned a prince—and gotten away with it.
Éirinn felt it the moment the hounds were released.
Not through spies.Not through letters.
Through the wind.
The sky shifted.
The air grew tight.
And she knew: they were coming.
"I can't stay here," she told Cianán.
He nodded. "Then I'll go with you."
She shook her head. "No. You need to return. If I move openly, they'll panic. If you return, you can draw their eyes."
He frowned. "I won't leave you again."
"You have to," she said. "Because this time, I'm not hiding."
He stared at her—into her flame-lit eyes, her stone-veined arms, the queen he had once broken and who now stood rebuilt.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
She turned toward the east, toward the palace gates far beyond the mountains.
And smiled.
"I'm going to take back what's mine."