First Chosen by the Dragon (Evelyn) novel Chapter 74

[Evelyn’s POV]

The banquet drags like a blade across stone—endless, deliberate, designed to wear down everyone until exhaustion becomes a weapon. I sit beside Draven at the high table, straight-backed and smiling through courses that taste like ash, nodding through speeches that feel like negotiations wrapped in silk.

The great hall is packed—Mintian representatives in blue crests, Alliance observers in neutral gray, our household warriors lining the walls in black and bronze. Torchlight catches armor and embroidery, turning the room into a glittering theater where everyone performs and nobody relaxes.

Across the table, Cassandra is charm incarnate. She laughs at the ambassador’s joke, inclines her head with perfect respect when the Alliance observer speaks, and offers commentary that sounds both reasonable and gracious without committing to anything.

Every inch the dutiful diplomat. She catches my eye once and smiles—warm, sisterly, utterly false—and something in my chest tightens.

Draven’s hand finds mine beneath the table, steady and grounding. Through the bond, Aspis drowses in her sea cave—content, full, radiating lazy satisfaction that bleeds into me in golden waves.

Then Cassandra rises, pressing fingertips to her temple with a graceful wince. “My apologies, honored guests. The day has been long, and I fear I’m not as resilient as I once was. If you’ll excuse me?”

The ambassador waves her away. The Alliance observer nods understanding. Nobody questions it. She’s been nothing but gracious all evening, and even diplomats are allowed to be tired. I almost don’t think twice about it either. Almost.

Then Aspis jolts through the bond—not words but pure visceral alarm that slams into my chest. The lazy contentment evaporates, replaced by something ancient and predatory. ‘Danger. Close. NOW.’

I’m on my feet before I’ve decided to move. “Excuse me,” I murmur, already stepping away, following the bond’s pull like a rope around my ribs. Draven’s eyes track me, questioning, but I’m already moving, Aspis screaming warning through every nerve.

The hallway outside Draven’s private wing is empty, torch-lit and silent. My footsteps echo against stone as I round the corner, heart hammering, every sense heightened and focused.

Cassandra stands in the center of the corridor. Not lost or wandering. Not uncertain, just waiting.

The blade in her hand catches firelight, slim and lethal, the kind of weapon designed for close work and quiet kills. She holds it with the casual competence of someone who’s trained with steel since childhood, balanced on the balls of her feet, utterly still.

“Hello, sister.” Her voice is soft, almost gentle. “You always did follow your instincts over your brain.”

My blood turns to ice, then fire. “What are you doing, Cassandra?”

“What I should have done the day you stole that egg.” She shifts forward, weight settling into a fighter’s stance that’s terrifyingly familiar. We trained in the same halls, learned from the same masters, but she kept training after I stopped.

The truth is, I didn’t. And that was something she never knew. “Father wanted to do this through politics, through law, through diplomacy. But you were always mine to fix. The prophecy was always about us.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“Liar.” The word cracks like a whip. She moves. Fast. So much faster than I remember, blade arcing toward my throat in a strike meant to open veins and silence screams before they start.

I twist sideways, purely on instinct, feeling the steel whisper past my neck close enough to kiss skin. I block her second strike with my forearm, pain flaring where bone meets steel, and drive my shoulder into her chest to create distance.

She flows with it, pivoting, slashing across my ribs. I feel fabric tear, feel the hot bite of the blade scoring flesh, and something in me snaps past fear into pure survival rage.

We’re too close for the blade, tangled and snarling, siblings reduced to teeth and fury. Then Aspis screams through the bond.

Not warning this time. Command. Protection. The raw primal force of a dragon defending her rider, and something inside me breaks open. Light erupts from my hands—not controlled, not refined, not anything I’ve practiced or prepared for.

Nobody moves. Nobody breathes. Cassandra lifts her head, eyes meeting mine through blood and pain and something that might be fear or might be fury or might be both.

“You were supposed to die,” she whispers.

I don’t answer. I can’t. The light fades from my hands but the shaking doesn’t stop, adrenaline and power still singing through my veins in discordant harmony.

Draven reaches me first, hands on my shoulders, grounding me. But his eyes are on Cassandra, on the blade, on the corridor that almost became a killing ground. His face is stone carved into human form—absolute and unyielding.

“Get her up,” he orders, voice carrying the weight of judgment already rendered. “Everyone to the great hall. Now.”

The guards lift Cassandra, still bleeding, still defiant. The delegations press closer, murmuring, shocked, calculating. The Alliance observers exchange glances that promise documentation and consequences.

I stand in the center of the corridor where my sister tried to murder me, where I threw her across the room with power I didn’t know I possessed, and I feel Aspis’s presence like armor wrapped around my spine.

“You’re safe,” she says through the bond, fierce and certain. “You’re mine. And I will burn anyone who tries to take you from me.” I believe her. I just don’t have the reassurance that she won’t have to.