Dawn comes grey and heavy, pressing down on the compound like a hand closing into a fist.

I’m on the eastern sea cliff before the light clears the horizon, pulling the last buckle on riding armor that Theron’s armorers adapted for dragonback — light leather reinforced at the thighs and forearms, cut close to the body so the wind can’t catch it.

My silver hair is braided tight against my skull. My hands are steady, but the rest of me is vibrating at a frequency I can feel in my teeth.

Aspis waits on the cliff edge, and the sight of her stops my breath even now.

The hatchling I held in a sea cave is gone — replaced by a dragon that shakes the ground when she shifts her weight. White scales catch the grey morning light and throw it back in fractured patterns.

Her wingspan, unfurled, blocks out a quarter of the sky. The violet eyes that tracked me from the egg are ancient now, carrying a depth that holds centuries of accumulated memory.

She lowers her shoulder, and I climb onto her back. My legs press against warm scales, my hands find the ridge between her shoulders, and the bond blows open like a door torn from its hinges.

Everything she feels, I feel.

The predatory focus sharpening her vision until every detail of the coastline below is etched in razor clarity.

The electric anticipation running through her muscles, every fiber coiled and ready.

The moonlight power coiling in my chest like a second heartbeat, feeding through the bond, cycling between us in a loop that builds with each pass.

“Are you ready?” she asks.

“No, but let’s go anyway.”

“Good. Readiness is overrated, and it’s commitment that matters.”

Below us, the compound arranges for battle. Warriors move in formation along the walls — organized, purposeful, the choreography of a household that has drilled this for weeks.

Supply runners sprint between positions. Archer teams climb to the platforms Riven’s crews built along the eastern palisade.

The sounds of preparation carry on the salt wind: shouted orders, clanging steel, the rhythmic thud of boots on stone.

Then I look south, and my stomach drops.

Sails emerging from the morning mist like ghosts resolving into flesh. First a handful — dark silhouettes against the grey horizon, their outlines sharpening as the light grows.

Then more and more.

Dozens of warships. More than intelligence estimated — the minor houses must have committed additional vessels, because the fleet spreading across the southern horizon is larger than anything Sera’s scouts predicted.

Blue Dragon banners snap from every mast, the cerulean and gold of my father’s house bright against the grey sea. The formation is wide, aggressive, designed to project overwhelming force before a single catapult fires.

For a moment, I see my father’s house the way the world sees it: magnificent, terrible, and unstoppable.

A naval power that has dominated the southern seas for three generations, crossing the water to crush a lesser house that dared to shelter its runaway daughter.

The fear is physical — a cold fist closing around my windpipe, my lungs refusing to expand.

Then Aspis spreads her wings.

The membrane stretches, translucent in the dawn light, and the shadow she casts across the cliff is vast enough to swallow three men standing abreast.

The power surging through the bond burns away the cold fist, replaces it with something older and hotter — the fury of a creature that was caged from birth and will never be caged again.

“They are not unstoppable,” Aspis says. “They have never fought us.”

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