Zabina
I land on the balcony of the emperor's chambers.
I take my human form in silence and enter.
He's alone. Sleeping on black silk sheets with that slow, deep breathing of someone who has never had to sleep with one eye open. Trusting in his guards, his walls, the power that has protected him from any consequence for decades.
The place isn't as ostentatious as I imagined. There's something almost ordinary about how a man sleeps when he spent his life following his ancestors' orders to exterminate an entire race.
I draw the dagger.
I advance slowly, measuring each step, making no sound.
He opens his eyes.
He tries to sit up.
I clench my fist and strike him with the power of the gem before he can scream. He falls back with his hands at his throat, gasping, his eyes wide and searching for something he can't find.
I sit on his chest.
"You have to pay," I say. My voice comes out strangely calm. "You're going to die tonight."
"Who… are you?" he manages to mouth between gasps.
I lean over him.
"Don't I remind you of anyone?" My voice trembles just slightly. "My father used to say I looked a lot like my mother."
His eyes change.
"Grace?"
I let out a laugh that comes out broken.
"Exactly. Grace. My mother." I move closer. "And before you die, I'm going to know everything."
I grip his face with both hands while he still can't breathe properly and let the gem do what it knows how to do: read, absorb, tear out what's hidden behind those eyes that stare at me with terror.
His life passes before me like dirty water.
The images arrive without order. Without mercy.
My mother in a cell. Not as a prisoner of war. As entertainment. This man visiting her with that same calm with which he sleeps, with that same confidence of someone who has never paid for anything. Not once. Many times.
The tears run down my face and I can't stop them.
And not only that.
He wanted to force the bond. He tried with her. He tried with others. He used them and when he couldn't get what he wanted he handed them over to the priests and washed his hands with words like balance and greater good and the kingdom's necessity.
"You're a bastard," I growl.
He's turning purple. His eyes are glazing over.
"You hunted us. You chased us. You tore the gems from our chests and called it sacrifice." The rage rises up my throat like bile. "Coward. You used my mother and then let her die in that temple. And your own son was the instrument because you didn't have the courage to do what you ordered others to do."
I raise the dagger.
"Are you afraid of the silver demons?" I whisper. "Then I'll help you leave this world before they arrive… And by the way. The bond was created between me and your son but I'm going to undo it. Burn in hell."
I plunge it into his abdomen.
His expression shifts from terror to something darker, more final.
But the image of my mother won't let me go. My mother in that cell, alone. Giving up her gem so that this man and his entire kingdom could keep sleeping on silk sheets without his hand ever trembling.
But she did it for me. So they would stop hunting us. So I would be safe.
I lose control.
The dagger rises and falls six more times and I can't stop myself, the tears falling and my teeth clenched and something breaking inside me with each blow that won't give back anything of what was taken from me.
I pull away.
My hands stained red. My breathing in pieces.
The Emperor of Anwar lies dead on his silk sheets.
I run to the balcony and lean against the balustrade, my stomach churning.
What did I do?
At what point did I become this?
But the answer comes on its own and it's honest and it hurts.
I became this the day I found my mother's gem in that stone cemetery and understood that no one was going to deliver justice if I didn't deliver it myself.
And yet.
And yet I couldn't bring myself to hurt Abisai.
Pathetic.
I take my dragon form and leap into the void.

After Abisai leaves, the silence stuns me. I take my mother's gem and hide it in the study. I run to the balcony.
The night air strikes my scales when I open my wings.
Fly. Just fly. Get away.
The castle shrinks beneath me. The torches of the lower city flicker like fallen stars. The dark forest of the north appears on the horizon and that's where I aim — toward the darkness and the silence and the place where no one knows me and no one is looking for me.
A wingbeat.
Powerful. Close.
I tilt my head.
Abisai.
Black, enormous, cutting through the air behind me with the efficiency of someone who has flown his entire life and knows exactly how to catch something smaller than himself.
Panic rises in my chest and I turn it into speed. I beat my wings with everything I have, searching for cold air currents, trying to gain distance.
It's no use.
He's fifty metres away. Thirty. Twenty.
I dive toward the forest.
The treetops brush my wings as I plunge between them. Branches bend and snap in my wake. I'm small — that was always my advantage — and I slip between the trunks where he can't follow with that wingspan of his.
I stop in a clearing, gasping.
Silence.
The forest breathes around me.
Too much silence.
A claw catches me from above and the impact against the ground tears a scream from me. I'm pinned down, cold grass against my scales, his claws over me like stone.
I try to bite his leg.
He tightens his grip.
We take human form at the same time.
He's on top of me. He grabs my face with one hand and forces me to look at him.
He's furious. A fury I've never seen in him — not the controlled arrogance of always, not the calculating coldness. This is different. This is personal.
"What the hell did you do, Zabina?" he growls.
"You killed my mother." The words come out through my teeth as I struggle. "I killed your father. I think we're even."
"Are you insane?!" His voice breaks in rage. "You've sentenced yourself!"
I bite his hand with everything I have until blood reaches my lips and he releases me with a cry.
I get to my feet, half staggering.
His blood is in my mouth.
Our marks pulse at the same time as if the bond is protesting against everything we've just done to each other.
He looks at me from the ground where he remained kneeling, holding his bitten hand. For the first time since I've known him, there's something on his face I don't know how to process — it's not only rage. There's something broken underneath.
"Why?" he says, and there's a wound in that single word that destroys me more than any scream could.
I fight against the tears and lose.
"Because choosing you makes me a traitor," I sob. "Because they ask it of me. The gems. Your father, your lineage, what they did to my mother and my people… They want their revenge and I'm the only thing left to give it to them and if I don't then what did I exist for? What did I survive all these years hiding for if in the end I wind up protecting you?"
He gets to his feet slowly.
"Then so be it," he mutters.
And in those three words there is a sentence I recognise.
The silence that follows is the heaviest we've shared. And we've shared many.
I open my mouth.
Imperial guards with drawn swords, forming a circle around the clearing. No one speaks. No one moves.
One of them steps forward.
His eyes move from Abisai to me. Then only to Abisai.
"Give the order, prince."
The silence lasts three seconds.
Abisai looks at me one last time. On his face there are too many things at once and none of them have an easy answer and we both know it.
Then he turns his back on me.
"Arrest her."
The guards advance.
I don't resist.
I have nowhere to go.