The compound is quieter now, the frantic energy of battle replaced by something heavier and more purposeful. I walk the grounds alone, touching stones that are still standing, passing workers who hammer and lift and rebuild what the war tried to destroy.

Warriors nod to me as I pass and I nod back.

We don’t need words. We all survived something together, and that creates its own kind of language.

I am not the same person who arrived here a year ago: disguised, terrified, hiding a dragon the size of a cat in my commander’s private alcove. I am not the person I was yesterday, either.

That woman killed her sister with a power she couldn’t control and broke a prophecy and a family in the same breath.

“You are walking in circles around the compound, Evelyn. I have been watching you from the healing yard.”

“I’m processing. Some of us need to move our bodies while we think through what happened to us.”

“And some are grounded with damaged wings and must think while lying very still. I am merely observing that your path has no destination.”

“Maybe I don’t have it yet. I’m still figuring out where I’m supposed to go from here and what I’m supposed to become.”

“That is a reasonable answer to give. I will accept it for now, but I expect a better one eventually.”

I find Draven on the high wall, in the same place where we stood together before the world caught fire and the fleet appeared on the horizon. He’s staring at the sky.

I can see the exhaustion etched into every line of his body: the lord who held his house together through revelation and treason.

He made it through the war, through something ancient enough to stop the world with a single word.

I climb the stairs and cross to where he stands. He doesn’t turn, but I see his shoulders relax slightly when he senses my approach behind him.

The bond between us isn’t magical like the one I share with Aspis, but it’s real in its own way: built on trust and battle and something deeper.

I take his hand in mine and feel the warmth of his skin against my fingers, the steadiness that has anchored me through everything.

The moonlight bends toward my fingers unbidden. It always will now, I finally understand that.

The power is part of me, not a tool I control with any real precision. The gap between my will and its reach is the wound I’ll carry forward. The reminder of what I did to Cassandra.

“Draven, I just want you to know, one more time, that I tried to save her. I fought the entire battle trying to disarm her, to make her see the truth.”

“I know you did. Everyone who saw the fight knows. You gave her every chance to choose differently.”

“It wasn’t enough. She couldn’t hear me through years of Father’s voice telling her whom to hate.”

“Some people can’t be saved from what they were made into. That’s not your failure.”

“That knowledge doesn’t make it hurt any less… It doesn’t bring her back or change what happened between us.”

“No, it doesn’t. Just allow yourself grief without blaming yourself for what you couldn’t influence.”

Above us, Aspis and Khaira circle against a sky that is darker than it should be. The storm clouds haven’t dispersed — they’ve thickened at the horizon.

“Evelyn, I need to show you something important. I have been sensing it through the old connections.”

“What does it mean, Aspis? What is happening to the dragons?”

“I do not know entirely, but the Watcher’s presence has triggered something in the old places. Dragons that have slept are beginning to stir.”

“That sounds like either very good news or very bad one, depending on what they do when they wake.”

“I suspect it is both at once. Whatever comes next will require more than two riders and a fractured household to face it.”

Draven laughs — a short, exhausted sound, but genuine despite everything. “That sounds exactly like something the loremaster would say over the tea.”

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