Elara's POV
The cold hit me like a thousand knives.
One moment I was being dragged from the prison cart, and the next the guards were throwing me forward into darkness. I hit the ground hard, ice scraping my palms and knees through the thin white dress they'd forced me to wear.
"Please," I gasped, my breath forming clouds in the freezing air. "Don't leave me here—"
The sound of chains answered me. Heavy iron clamped around my ankle, bolted to the cave wall. I pulled against it uselessly, my broken fingers screaming in protest.
"This is where traitors go," one guard said. His voice echoed in the cave. "Either the cold takes you, or the Destroyer does. Either way, you'll be dead by week's end."
"I'm innocent!" The words were automatic now, meaningless. I'd screamed them at the trial yesterday while Father testified against me with tears in his eyes. While Adrian stood silent and Isolde sobbed prettily in the front row. While the judges declared me guilty and sentenced me to death by dragon sacrifice.
The traditional punishment for traitors. Chained in the ice caves at the edge of the Scorched Territories, left as an offering to the Destroyer—the ancient dragon who had burned entire kingdoms to ash.
"Save your breath," another guard said, almost kindly. "You'll need it to stay warm."
Their torches disappeared up the tunnel, taking the light with them. Taking any hope with them.
I was alone.
The darkness was complete, so thick I couldn't see my own hands. The cold pressed against my skin like something alive, hungry. My thin dress—white, like all sacrifices wore—might as well have been made of paper.
I pulled my knees to my chest, trying to conserve warmth. My broken fingers throbbed. The cuts from the interrogation pulled with every breath. My ankle ached where the iron bit into skin.
Three days in the dungeon. One day of trial. And now this.
I should cry. Should scream. Should rage against the injustice of it all.
But I was too tired. Too empty.
So I just sat there, shivering, waiting for the cold to take me.
Time stopped meaning anything in the dark. Minutes? Hours? I couldn't tell. The cold crept deeper, numbing my toes first, then my feet, working its way up my legs. My jaw ached from clenching my teeth to keep them from chattering.
Somewhere in the darkness, water dripped. The sound was steady, rhythmic. Like a countdown to death.
I thought about my mother. She'd died when I was seven—too young for me to remember her face clearly. But I remembered her warmth. The way she'd held me during thunderstorms. The songs she sang.
Father said she'd been weak. That her soft heart had made her a poor match for a dragon-slayer's wife.
Had he hated her too? Before he destroyed her daughter?
"I'm sorry, Mother," I whispered to the darkness. "I tried to be strong like Father wanted. But I guess I'm weak like you."
The warmth in my chest pulsed—that strange heat that had appeared in the dungeon. I pressed my good hand against it, feeling the impossible fire beneath my ribs.
What was it? Some kind of sickness brought on by the torture?
It should scare me. But instead, it was the only thing keeping me from freezing completely.
I don't know when I started drifting. The cold pulled me down like water, drowning me slowly. My thoughts scattered. I dreamed I was back home, warm in my bed, with sunlight streaming through the windows.
Then I dreamed I was flying.
No—not dreaming.
I jerked awake, my heart hammering. Something had changed. The air felt... different. Warmer.
And I could smell smoke.
Fear shot through me, burning away the numbness. The Destroyer. He was coming.
Part of me wanted to curl up tighter, hide from what was approaching. But another part—the part that had survived three days of torture without confessing—made me sit up straighter.
If I was going to die, I'd face it.
The warmth grew stronger. I heard something massive moving outside the cave, scales scraping against rock. The sound of breathing—deep and powerful, like a furnace.
Then light appeared at the cave entrance. Not torchlight. Fire. Dancing flames that lit the ice walls, turning them into mirrors of orange and gold.
A shadow filled the opening. Huge. Impossibly huge.
I stopped breathing.
The shadow moved closer, and I saw him properly for the first time.
Part dragon, part man, wrapped in flames that should have terrified me but somehow didn't. His scales were dark as midnight and gleamed like metal. His eyes—molten gold, ancient and burning—fixed on me with an intensity that made my chest tight.
He was the most terrifying and beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
"Please," I heard myself say. "Make it quick."
The dragon-man tilted his head, studying me. When he spoke, his voice was deep and resonant, and the words shouldn't have made sense—they were in some ancient language I'd never learned.
But I understood them perfectly.
"Who did this to you?"
I blinked, confused. "What?"
He moved closer, and the flames around him grew brighter but not hotter. They warmed the air without burning.
"Your injuries. Your chains. Who dared to break you like this?"
The question was so unexpected that honest words spilled out before I could stop them. "My father. My fiancé. Everyone I trusted."
Something flickered in those golden eyes. Anger? Recognition?
He reached toward me with a massive clawed hand, and I flinched despite myself.
But he didn't strike. Instead, with shocking gentleness, he touched the chains around my ankle. They glowed red-hot for a moment, then shattered like glass.
I stared at my freed leg, then up at him. "I don't understand. Aren't you going to kill me?"
The dragon-man crouched down, bringing his face level with mine. This close, I could see the human features beneath the scales—sharp cheekbones, a strong jaw, lips that looked almost kind.
"I am Cael," he said, switching to common tongue with a voice like gravel and silk. "The Destroyer. The Scorched One. The monster they sent you to die for."
He paused, and his tail—long and powerful—moved closer, curling gently near my side as if to steady me.
"And I do not kill those who speak the old dragon tongue."
"But I don't speak—" I started.
Then stopped.
Because I'd just understood him. Perfectly. When he'd spoken in that ancient language.
My hand went to my chest, to that impossible warmth beneath my ribs.
Cael's eyes followed the movement. His expression shifted—surprise, then something that looked almost like wonder.
"Impossible," he breathed. "You carry dragon-fire in your blood."
Before I could ask what that meant, he scooped me up in his arms as easily as if I weighed nothing. His scales were warm against my frozen skin, his heartbeat steady beneath my ear.
"Wait—where are you taking me?"
He looked down at me, and for the first time in days, I felt safe.
"Somewhere you won't die," he said simply. "And then we're going to find out exactly what you are."
His wings spread—massive and powerful—and we launched into the air, leaving the ice caves and my death behind.