The battlefield was quiet, way too quiet for something that had screamed with life only hours ago.
Kaela stepped over a fallen blade, the steel still slick with blood, her boots dragging through the scorched earth. The sky above was a burnt gray, filled with ashes that rained like snow, soft and constant.
Around her lay the bodies of several men and beasts, some still smoldering, others already claimed by flies.
Her fingers trembled around the hilt of her blade, but she didn't let go. She couldn't. Not even now.
She hadn't slept in three nights. Not since the breach at Solari Gate.
They had gone in thinking it would be a clean sweep, a final strike against a rogue dragon nest. And that they would be in their various homes latest the day after. But what they found inside had been a trap, an inferno.
A mistake.
Kaela's unit had marched in fifty strong.
Now only thirteen had crawled back out, their faces filled with horror and sheer exhaustion.
She stopped near the edge of the cliff, looking out over the battlefield. It was filled with charred banners. Blackened armor, and the air still stank of a mixture of sulfur and flesh.
A smell Kaela had long gotten used to.
Behind her, someone coughed. Gravel crunched under boots.
"Still standing, my little flame?" came the voice, rough, old, but filled with the same dark humor it always carried.
Kaela didn't turn immediately.
"I'm breathing. That should be something."
General Marek stepped beside her, his heavy armor creaking, the front plate dented and scorched.
His face bore the same stubborn wrinkles it always had, and his once-dark hair was now streaked with gray, cropped short above his weathered brow.
There was a fresh gash running from his temple to jaw, hastily wrapped in bloodied cloth. His storm-colored eyes still burned with the same fire that had trained her to stand tall beside him, not just as a daughter, but as a soldier. One strong enough to rival him on the field.
The man had no business being alive. But somehow, he always was.
"Well well. I saw you take down that big ugly scaled beast near the ridge," he said, grinning through blood-caked teeth. "You tore straight through its throat like it owed you some coins."
Kaela snorted softly. "Very funny father. It killed Ayren. I wasn't feeling generous."
He gave a grunt, more sob than laugh, and let the silence return for a beat. The kind of silence only people who had watched too many friends die could sit in comfortably.
"You were right," Kaela said after a moment. "It wasn't a nest. It was a slaughterhouse, and we've paid the price. Again."
Marek sighed, running a gloved hand over his bald head. "Dragons don't make nests anymore. They make graves."
She finally looked at him then. The lines on his face were deeper. The spark in his storm-gray eyes was suddenly dimmer. But there was something else there, hiding beneath the blood and weariness.
Satisfaction.
He was smiling.
That took her aback.
"Unless my eyes deceive me, you look too pleased for a man who just lost three-fourths of his battalion," Kaela said, narrowing her eyes.
Marek shrugged, his heavy armour clinking.
"Oh, don't worry about that. I'll mourn them with wine and ugly crying when we've gotten to safety and possibly home," he said, stepping a little closer. "But something has happened. Something worth the bloodshed spent today."
Kaela raised a brow, shifting her blade over her shoulder. "Surely, you jest. Unless we found the fire god's off-switch, I doubt it."
He leaned in. "We caught one."
She frowned. "Caught what? Don't speak in riddles."
He didn't answer right away. Instead, he pulled a rolled scroll from his belt, unfurled it, and handed it to her. The sketch was crude, drawn in haste. A man, or something close to it, tall, broad-shouldered, his eyes like coals, burning from within. Sharp cheekbones. A scar over one brow.
Without needing to be told, she immediately knew what it was.
A dragon… in human form.
Kaela's chest tightened.
"No," she whispered. "No way. That's not possible. They're all gone."
"They were all gone," Marek corrected, tucking the scroll back into his belt. "Until now."
Her voice dropped to a whisper. "What is he?" She knew, but it was difficult to believe. She wanted to hear it.
The general turned, looking out over the valley, wind catching the torn edge of his cloak.
"The last prince," he said, voice firm. "Of the Drakebloods."
Kaela's blood turned to ice.
The Drakebloods were legend, a royal bloodline of dragons who could walk among humans, shift at will, and wield fire as easily as breath. The oldest of their kind. The most dangerous. Said to be born during eclipses and blessed with minds sharper than blades.
Every kingdom had feared them.
Every kingdom had celebrated when the last of them was burned fifty years ago during the Siege of Emberholt.
"You're lying," she said flatly. "They're extinct."
"I wish I was." He smiled again, and this time, it wasn't kind. "He's in chains, Kaela. Still breathing. Still smirking. We caught him in the Blackwood storm just some ways from here. He survived five arrows, melted a steel net in his dragon form and still tried to bite my lieutenant's face off."
Kaela's heart pounded. "And you're sure it's a Drakeblood?"
He nodded once. "You'll see for yourself."
A beat passed, and the wind howled.
"What's his name?" she asked quietly.
Marek looked at her, his eyes searching her once innocent hazel eyes.
And then he said it.
"Cassian."