Scarlett Meris heard the dragon fall before she saw it. She had spent three years hiding wounded dragons from the hunters who worked these hills, and she knew the sound of wings that had stopped fighting the air. She dropped her basket of red-petaled vines and ran through the ferns, her boots skidding on wet moss. The fae blood in her let her move faster than any human tracker. She needed to reach the dragon before they did. She found it in a shallow clearing. A silver pup, no bigger than a hound, with wings like frost on a window. Blood ran down its flank in a steady, wrong-colored stream — black at the edges, not red. Something small and metal was still lodged in the wound. Scarlett had never seen a weapon like it. It was barbed, thin as a needle, and it hummed against her fingertips when she touched the shaft. The pup whimpered. Its blue eyes rolled toward her, then closed. "No. No, stay with me." Scarlett dropped to her knees. She pressed her palm around the barb and felt it bite deeper as the pup breathed. Pulling it wrong would tear the artery. Leaving it would kill the pup within minutes. Her hands shook. She had pulled arrows before. She had stitched claw wounds and burns. She had never worked around a weapon that fought back. She grabbed the red-petaled vines from where she'd dropped them. The flowers grew only in these hills, and the fae elders had taught her their use — crushed petals slowed bleeding, and the vines held tighter than any bandage. She tore a handful of petals with her teeth and packed them against the wound. Then she gripped the barb with two fingers and twisted the way the humming told her to, not against it, but with it. The barb came free. Blood surged. Scarlett shoved the crushed petals into the hole and wound a vine around the pup's small ribs, pulling until the flow slowed to a trickle. The pup shuddered once and kept breathing. She sat back on her heels and stared at the barb in her palm. It was still humming. The metal was etched with a mark she didn't recognize — three lines crossed by a fourth. Not a hunter's brand. Not any smith's work she knew. Someone had built a weapon designed to find dragons and hold on until they bled out. The pup pressed its nose into her wrist. Alive. For now. Scarlett wrapped the pup in her cloak and stood. She could hear voices further down the slope — men, moving without hurry, following a trail they expected to end in a body. She slid the barb into her belt pouch. Whoever had made it would want it back. Whoever had made it would come looking for whatever had walked off with their kill. She turned uphill and ran.

Scarlett ran until the hunters' voices thinned to nothing. The pup lay slack against her chest, wrapped in her cloak. Blood soaked through the wool and painted her forearm dark. She could feel the small ribs working too fast, then too slow. The petals she had packed into the wound were losing their grip. She needed a healer, and she needed one before the next mile. She cut west through the pines, toward a place most riders never saw. The healing house sat in a fold of the hills, hidden behind a curtain of vines. Its stone walls curved like a sleeping dragon's back, and pale crystals lit the eaves. Scarlett had brought two wounded dragons here before. She had never brought one this small, or this close to dying. She kicked the door twice. It opened on a young human woman with copper hair braided down one shoulder and a leather satchel slung across her chest. Brynn Vael. The only human Scarlett trusted inside these walls — a city-raised healer who had chosen the fae side without ever saying so aloud. Brynn looked at the cloak. "On the table. Now." Scarlett laid the pup down. Brynn pulled the wool back with steady hands. She did not flinch at the black-edged blood or the ragged hole in the silver hide. She pressed two fingers under the pup's jaw, counted, and reached for her satchel. "You pulled the barb already," Brynn said. "With blooddress petals. It fought me." "It would." Brynn crushed a pale root between her palms and packed it into the wound. "Petals slow bleeding. They don't clean it. Whatever coated that barb is still in him." Scarlett's stomach dropped. "Poison?" "Something like it. Older." Brynn worked without looking up. "Hold his head." Scarlett cupped the small skull. The pup's eyes cracked open, blue and unfocused. Somewhere deeper in the house, a green dragon shifted on stone — Rivilin, the old one who slept here between hunts. His tail scraped the floor once, then stilled, as if he had heard the pup breathing and decided to stay awake. Brynn wound a fresh vine tight across the ribs. She pressed her ear to the pup's chest, waited, and sat back. "He'll live," she said. "Tonight, at least. Three days before I know more." Scarlett let out a breath she had been holding since the clearing. She unclipped the belt pouch and set the barb on the table between them. It hummed against the wood. Brynn stared at the mark etched on the shaft — three lines crossed by a fourth. Her face went still in a way Scarlett had never seen. "Where did you get this." "Out of him." Brynn did not pick it up. "I've seen this mark before. On a crate. In the city." She met Scarlett's eyes. "It came off a ship flying a fae flag."

Brynn's finger stayed on the mark. Before Scarlett could ask another question, a low horn rolled through the hills — the healing house's warning bell, rigged to the ridge wire. A second dragon was down. Scarlett was on the door before Brynn spoke. "East slope," Brynn said. "The wire runs to the pines." "Watch the pup." Scarlett grabbed her satchel and ran. She found her mount waiting in the paddock and swung up without a saddle. They climbed hard. From the ridge she saw it — a young bronze dragon crumpled in the bracken, one wing bent wrong. Four hunters worked toward it through the brush. Two carried the same short bows that had shot the pup. Scarlett banked low and rolled her mount sideways, dropping behind the nearest hunter before he could raise his bow. She kicked him flat and drove past the second. The bronze thrashed. A barb jutted from its shoulder, the shaft etched with three lines crossed by a fourth. The third hunter loosed. The bolt caught her mount across the ribs. They fell hard into the bracken. Scarlett rolled clear and came up with her knife. She cut the closest bowstring, then his belt, then his leg. He went down screaming. The fourth hunter ran. She crawled to the bronze. Its eye tracked her, then stopped tracking. The barb had gone deep. Blood ran black at the edges. She reached for the red petals in her satchel and packed them into the wound, but the chest had already stilled under her hand. Too late. She sat back on her heels in the wet bracken and pressed her palms against her thighs until they stopped shaking. A branch cracked. She spun with the knife. A man stood between the pines. Dark coat, dragon-scale buttons at the cuff, violet eyes. One hand stayed in his pocket, closed around something with corners. Scarlett had seen him twice at the healing house door, always after dark, always alone. "Kieran," she said. He looked at the bronze. Then at the barb in her hand. "Same mark." "Same ship." She held it out. "Fae-flagged. Out of the city." His jaw set. He took the barb and turned it in the low light. "My father's harbor." "Your father." "Runs the docks." He closed his fist on the shaft. "Signs the manifests." "Fae don't hunt dragons." "Someone in our court does." He tucked the barb inside his coat, beside the thing with corners. "I need this. Quietly." "You'll tell me what you find." "Tonight. At the house." He looked once more at the dead bronze, then back at her. "Move the pup. If they tracked this one, they'll track yours." He walked into the pines. Scarlett dragged herself up. Her mount was breathing but wouldn't fly by dusk. The bronze was gone. The pup at the healing house was next on someone's list, and the list was written in her own court's ink.

Scarlett left the dead bronze in the bracken and climbed on foot back toward the healing house. Halfway up the ridge, the sky turned the color of a bruise. A long shadow crossed the pines. Then the roar came — low, wet, and old. The pup's mother had found the east slope. Scarlett dropped behind a stone and looked up. The silver dragon circled the ridge, wings ragged, mouth open. She was calling for her pup. Every pass took her closer to the valley, where the human village lay under thatch and smoke. If she torched a single roof, riders would come out of the city by dawn. Every dragon in Vereayl would be hunted to the bone. The fae hidden among the humans would burn beside them. Brynn met her at the tree line, satchel already open, copper braid stuck to her neck with sweat. "She's grieving," Brynn said. "She'll burn the valley." "I know." "You can't fight her." "I'm not going to fight her." Scarlett unwrapped the bundle at her back. Inside lay the silver pup, breathing shallow, wound packed with red petals from the winding vines Brynn kept behind the house. "She needs to see him. Alive." Brynn's mouth tightened. "Move him and you tear the wound." "Leave him and we lose everything." Brynn didn't argue twice. She pressed a fresh handful of petals into the pup's side and stepped back. A branch snapped behind them. Kieran came through the pines at a run, coat open, the crown-shape in his pocket knocking against his hip. He looked at the sky, then at the pup in Scarlett's arms. He didn't ask. "I need a mount," Scarlett said. "Mine can't fly." He whistled once, low. A green dragon slid down out of the cloud, spiked tail cutting the mist, yellow eyes fixed on him. Scarlett had never seen the beast on the ridge before. Kieran laid a hand on the green's shoulder like he'd done it a thousand times. From his belt he drew a silver sword — runes lit along the blade in six colors, the wooden grip warm with worked fae flame. He pressed it hilt-first into her free hand. "For the hunters, not the mother," he said. "Show her the pup first. If she strikes, the runes will turn one blow. One." "Where did you get this?" "Later." He looked away. "My house keeps things it shouldn't." Scarlett climbed the green. She held the pup high against her chest and rose through the pines. The mother saw her at fifty feet and folded her wings to dive. Scarlett did not roll. She held still and lifted the pup into the light. The mother pulled up hard, wings booming, and hung in the air above her, breath hot enough to blister. The pup stirred and cried once. The mother answered. She turned from the village and followed Scarlett back into the trees. The valley did not burn. But Kieran stood in the clearing with his hand still open, and Scarlett now carried a fae-court blade she could not explain — and neither could he.

Scarlett landed the green dragon in the pines above the healing house before dawn. The mother had followed her pup deep into the eastern peaks and settled there. That bought them a day, maybe two. It did not buy them a name. Someone in the fae court was paying for the barbs, and until Scarlett knew who, every strike she made risked hitting the wrong throat and burning her own cover. Brynn was already awake inside the healing house, grinding root at the table. Crystals along the eaves caught the first light and threw color across the stone floor. Scarlett laid the rune-sword on the wood between them. The runes were dim now. Six colors, sleeping. "I need a name," Scarlett said. "Whoever is paying for the barbs. I can't keep flying blind." Brynn did not look up from the mortar. "Then ask the arms dealer." "Thorn Nightwhisper." "He sells to whoever pays. He'll know the buyer." Brynn set the pestle down. "He'll also sell your face to them by morning." "Then I don't give him my face." Rivilin shifted outside, tail scraping the stone. Kieran came through the door with the sound of it, coat wet from the pines, crown pushed deep in his pocket. He looked at the sword on the table and then at Scarlett. "You're going to see Thorn," he said. Not a question. "He knows the buyer." "He knows my father's harbor too." Kieran's jaw set. "If he sees you carrying a court blade, he'll trace it back to my house before you clear the door." "Then I leave the sword." "Then he kills you." Brynn wiped her hands on her apron. "I'll go." Both of them turned. "He doesn't know me," Brynn said. "I'm human. I carry herbs. I buy a knife off him for boar and I ask which lord's coin has been crossing his table. Men like him talk to girls they think are stupid." Scarlett started to argue. Brynn cut her off. "You go, he sees a fae rider. I go, he sees a customer." Kieran said nothing for a long moment. Then, flat: "Take moonpetal. If he pours you a drink, don't drink it." Brynn left at midday with a coin purse and an empty satchel. Scarlett paced the healing house until dusk. Rivilin watched her from the yard with slit yellow eyes. Brynn came back after dark. Her braid was loose. There was a thin cut along her jaw she had already packed with yarrow. "He talked," she said. She set a folded scrap of paper on the table. One name, written in her own hand, because she had not trusted Thorn to write it. Scarlett read it. Her stomach dropped for she knew it was the king of their court. Kieran took the paper from her fingers. He read it. His face did not change, but his hand closed around the edge of the table until the wood creaked. The name was his father's.

The name sat on the table between them. Kieran did not let go of the wood. Scarlett watched his knuckles and waited. Outside, Rivilin lifted his head from the yard stones and looked down the slope. His yellow eyes narrowed. Then he growled, low and long, the sound a dragon makes when something wrong is moving under the trees. Brynn went to the window. "Someone followed me." "From Thorn's?" Scarlett was already moving for the sword. "He must have put a tracker on my coat." Brynn touched her satchel. Her hand came away with a small black burr stuck to the leather. "I brushed the whole road. I missed this." Kieran took the burr from her fingers. He crushed it under his boot. "One tracker means more behind him. If he reaches the ridge, he sees the healing house." "Then he doesn't reach the ridge," Scarlett said. "You can't fly out. He'll mark the dragon and send word before you land." Kieran pulled the crown from his coat pocket and set it on the table beside the sword. The gold caught the crystal light along the eaves. Brynn stared at it. Scarlett stared at him. "You're a prince," Brynn said. "I'm the king's son." Kieran did not look up. "The harbor is my family's. The barbs were bought on my father's coin and stamped with my house's mark. The rune-sword came from our vault. I took it because he wouldn't miss one blade." He met Scarlett's eyes. "Now you know why I come here without guards." Scarlett's throat closed. She had ridden his dragon. She had carried his family's steel. "You should have told me." "I'm telling you now." He picked up the crown and pushed it back into his pocket. "The tracker knows my face. I ride down the road as the prince, hunting boar, and I turn him back. He won't question me. He can't." "He'll report you saw him here." "He'll report he saw the prince three valleys south of here, on the wrong road, chasing a stag." Kieran was already at the door. "Keep the sword. Keep Brynn inside. Don't light the eaves tonight." Rivilin followed him to the tree line and stopped there, tail scraping stone. Scarlett watched Kieran vanish into the pines on foot. Brynn stood beside her. "His father," Brynn said. "And he's walking down there alone." "He bought us the night." An hour later Rivilin's growl eased. The dragon turned back toward the yard and folded his wings. No horn sounded on the slope. No hunters came up the path. The crystals along the roof stayed dark, as Kieran had said. Brynn sat down hard at the table. "He gave us his name to save the house." Scarlett laid her hand on the sword. The runes were still sleeping. "He gave us his father but we still don’t know why the king is doing this or whether to trust Killian for keeping this secret," she said. "Now we have to decide what to do next."

Scarlett woke before dawn to a sound that split the sky. It came from the eastern peaks, long and wet and ragged, the cry of a dragon that had found her child cold. Brynn was already at the window, one hand on the frame. The rune-sword lay on the table between them, its runes flickering awake for the first time in days. "The pup," Brynn said. "The poison finished what the barb started." Scarlett pulled on her flying leathers. "She'll burn the valley. She'll burn every human between here and the coast." She lifted the silver blade. Its wooden grip warmed under her palm. "If she does, the king gets his excuse. Hunters everywhere. Every dragon dead by winter." She ran for Rivilin. Above the trees, a shadow crossed the moon. The blue-green dragon dropped through the pines and landed hard in the yard, wings folded tight. Kieran slid from the saddle before the dust settled. His crown sat plain on his head. His coat was open. Behind him, six armsmen in the king's colors rode up the slope on horses lathered from the ride. "He sent them," Kieran said. His voice was flat. "Kill the mother. Bury the story before the humans learn what she is." He met Scarlett's eyes. "I told him I would lead them. It was the only way to be near her first." "You brought his soldiers to her mountain." "I brought myself." He was already climbing back onto the blue dragon. "Stay off the ridge. Let me speak to her alone." Scarlett did not stay off the ridge. She mounted Rivilin and flew wide, low along the treeline, the rune-sword strapped across her back. She saw the mother on the crag, wings spread, smoke pouring from her jaws. She saw Kieran land his dragon on the shelf below and step down with both hands open. He was speaking. The mother lowered her head to listen. Then Scarlett saw the seventh rider. He stood behind the armsmen, in dark leathers no soldier wore. Thorn Nightwhisper. The arms dealer had come with the king's men, uninvited or invited, she could not tell. He held a long crossbow braced on a rest, and the bolt in the groove was black and barbed and wet. "No," Scarlett said, and drove Rivilin up the slope. She was still a hundred yards out when Thorn fired. The bolt took the mother under the jaw. She reared once. Kieran caught her falling head in both arms and went down under it. The mountain shook when she hit the stone. Scarlett turned back to avoid notice by the king’s men but felt the grief hard. Kieran pulled himself out from under the dead dragon's throat. Blood soaked his sleeve. He looked up at Thorn on the ridge above and said, very quietly, "Uncle, I didn’t know you were joining."

Scarlett flew Rivilin back through the pines with the mother's cry still in her ears. She landed in the yard behind the healing house and slid down before the dragon folded its wings. Brynn met her at the door with a lamp and a clean cloth for the blood that wasn't Scarlett's. "She's dead," Scarlett said. "Thorn shot her while Kieran stood under her jaw." Brynn's mouth went tight. She set the lamp down. "Then the others saw it too." "What others?" "The ones still in the peaks. Look up." Scarlett stepped back into the yard. Above the ridge, three shapes circled high and wide, keeping the cloud between them and the ground. A green. A rust-red. A smaller blue that flew crooked, favoring one wing. They had come to answer the mother's cry and found her body on the shelf with a fae standing under it. "They won't land," Brynn said behind her. "They saw a rider let it happen." "I have to reach them before they scatter. If they scatter, the king's men pick them off one by one." Scarlett looked at the light blue dragon in the yard. Rain had carried her for two years. Rain knew her weight and her voice. "They'll trust a dragon before they trust me." "Then send her up alone." Scarlett unstrapped the rune-sword from her back and laid it on the step. She unbuckled the saddle next and dropped it in the grass. Rain watched her, yellow eyes steady. "Go," Scarlett said. "Tell them what I am. Bring back whoever will come." Rain pushed off the ground. Wind flattened the herbs by the door. The blue climbed in a slow spiral, calling once, low and long, the sound a mother uses for a lost clutch. The three circling dragons broke pattern. The green dropped first, matching Rain's climb. The rust-red followed. The small blue held back, wing trembling. Brynn came to stand beside Scarlett. "The little one's hurt." "I see it." They watched Rain lead the two down the sky toward the eastern peaks, away from the healing house, away from any road a soldier could ride. The small blue turned and flew north alone. "Two," Brynn said. "Out of how many were left?" "I don't know." Scarlett picked the sword up off the step. Its runes had gone cold. "The rest won't come near a rider now. Not this season. Maybe not ever." "You saved two." "I lost the sky." She looked north where the injured pup had gone. "And there's one out there bleeding that won't let me close enough to help." Brynn didn't answer. She picked up the lamp and went inside to boil water for the two dragons who would land, and the one who would not.

Scarlett sat on the back step of the healing house with the rune-sword across her knees. The two dragons Rain had brought were bedded down in the yard behind her, breathing slow. The third, the small blue with the bad wing, was somewhere north and bleeding. She had watched the sky until it went dark and the stars did not tell her anything. Kieran came around the side of the house without a lantern. He walked the way he always walked here, hands in his coat, crown out of sight. He stopped when he saw her face. Whatever he had come to say, he set it down. "You shouldn't be out alone," he said. "Neither should you." He sat on the step below hers. Close enough that his shoulder touched her knee. The crystals set into the eaves above the door threw soft color across the yard, pink and green over the sleeping dragons. The house did not know what had happened today. It kept glowing the way it always did. "They saw you under her," Scarlett said. "They saw me let it happen." "I know." "One flew north. It won't let me near." "Then we find another way to it." He looked at his hands. The dragon-scale buttons on his cuff caught the light. "My uncle used my name to get close enough. He'll do it again. I brought him there." "You didn't pull the bolt." "I stood under her." She put her hand on the back of his neck before she decided to. His hair was damp from the ride. He went still, then leaned into her palm like a man who had not been touched in a long time. She felt the shape of him give. "Kieran." "Say it plain." "I don't know if I can trust you." Her thumb moved against his skin anyway. "And I want to." He turned his face up to her. Violet eyes, too close. "I've been coming here every night since the first one landed. Ask the old dragon inside. She stopped watching the door." "That's not the same as telling me." "It's what I have." She leaned down. He met her halfway. The kiss was short and not gentle. When she pulled back his hand was on her wrist and hers was in his coat, and the crown pressed hard against her knuckles through the lining. She felt it and stopped. He felt her feel it. He did not let go of her wrist. "The injured one that flew north," she said. "We go at dawn. Both of us. On one dragon. If a dragon will still carry you." "And if it won't?" "Then we walk." He nodded once. He kept her wrist a moment longer, then stood and went inside to the old dragon who trusted him. Scarlett stayed on the step with the sword and the crown-shaped bruise on her hand, and waited for morning.

Scarlett woke before the sky changed. Kieran was already in the yard, checking the straps on the blue-green dragon he had brought up from the lower paddock. The dragon was his own, sleek and calm, the one that would carry them both north to the injured blue. Scarlett buckled the rune-sword across her back and stepped down into the wet grass. "Patrol," Kieran said, without looking up. "My father's men. Northern route, dawn sweep. I heard it from the rider I passed on the road." Scarlett stopped with her hand on the dragon's shoulder. "How close?" "Close enough to see her the second she clears the trees." He nodded at the dragon. "They'll mark the color. They'll follow her home." A sweep at dawn meant the injured blue would be found first. It meant the two dragons behind the house would be found next. Everything she had kept alive was about to be spotted from the sky. Kieran reached into his coat. He pulled out a small square of dark iron on a plain ring. The metal looked dead in his hand. No shine. No warmth. "What is that," she said. "A charm. It hides what it's tied to. Not far. Not for long. A mile of sky, maybe less." "Where did you get it." "My father's armory." He held it out. "He won't miss it.” She took it. The iron was cold enough to sting. She looped the ring through the dragon's harness at the base of the neck, where it would sit against the scales in flight. "One mile," she said. "Then we're on our own." He climbed up first and offered his hand. She took it and swung behind him. The dragon rose without sound, wings wide, and cut north over the trees. Scarlett watched the ridge. The patrol appeared exactly where he said, six riders on the crest, lanterns still lit against the gray. One of them turned his head as they passed overhead. He looked straight through them. The charm was working. The iron pulled heat out of her thigh where it pressed against the harness. She counted wingbeats. Twenty. Forty. The ridge fell away behind them and the patrol did not shout, did not point, did not turn. At sixty wingbeats the charm went quiet. She felt it die like a candle going out. "Now," Kieran said. The dragon banked hard east, off the northern line, into the low cloud above the river. Scarlett kept her hand on the dead iron. They were past the patrol. They were also past the last place anyone friendly knew to look for them. Somewhere ahead, the blue dragon was bleeding into the trees. Behind them, an armory in the king's house was missing a charm.

They found the blue dragon at the edge of a stripped pine grove, curled on its side in a bed of broken needles. One wing lay open at a wrong angle. A barb was still lodged deep in the muscle above the shoulder. Blood had dried black around it. The dragon lifted its head as Kieran's mount landed, and its throat rattled a warning. Scarlett slid down before Kieran could speak. She stopped ten paces out and raised her empty hands. "I'm not here to ride you," she said. "I'm here to pull that out." The dragon watched her. It did not lower its head. Kieran stayed near his own mount and kept his voice flat. "It knows my coat. It saw riders like me in the sky." "Then stay back." She unbuckled the rune-sword and set it in the needles behind her. The runes on the blade dimmed as she stepped away. She wanted the dragon to see her walk from a weapon, not toward one. From her satchel she took a bundle of red petals wrapped in damp cloth. She held them up so the dragon could smell them. It knew the smell. Its ears eased back a finger's width. She knelt at the wound. The barb was seated against bone. She worked the petals into the torn edges, and the dragon's breath hissed but its head stayed down. She braced her boot on the shoulder, gripped the shaft, and pulled straight. The barb came free with a wet sound. She flung it into the pines. Blood came fast. She packed the hole with the rest of the petals and pressed until the flow slowed. Her hands shook once. She steadied them. When she looked up, Kieran was closer than she'd told him to be. He had the dark iron charm out again, turning it in his fingers as if he could wake it. "It's dead," she said. "I know." He crouched across from her. His violet eyes stayed on the dragon, not on her. "You did that clean." "You could have said that from over there." "I could have." The dragon breathed. It closed one eye. Not sleep. Trust, or the nearest thing to it. Scarlett wiped her hands on the moss. Kieran reached across the dragon's flank and covered her wrist with his hand. She didn't pull away. She let his thumb settle on the pulse there. For a breath, the whole grove narrowed to that point of contact. "Not here," she said. "No," he agreed. He didn't move his hand. A horn sounded, thin and far, three times from the south ridge. Not patrol pattern.this was the humans. Kieran let go of her wrist and stood with a furrowed brow. "I’ve studied human military intelligence. That sound means fae spotted. They are going to battle. Scarlett looked at the dragon, dozing off now. Then she looked at Kieran, “where?”

Kieran pointed south through the pines. "Two ridges over. We ride close, then walk." They left the blue dragon dozing under a screen of broken boughs and lifted off on Kieran's green mount. He set it down in a hollow behind the second ridge, well short of the horns. The dragon crouched low in the ferns. Scarlett buckled the rune-sword back at her hip. The runes woke faint against her palm. "On foot from here," Kieran said. "Your hair." She pulled her hood up. Her ears disappeared under wool. They climbed the ridge belly-down and stopped in the brush at the crest. Below, a human column had pinned a small fae scouting party against a creek. Bodies already lay in the shallows. The humans fought hard, but they were not fighting like hunters. They were fighting like people who believed they were right. One of them was shouting. A captain, from the sash. His voice carried up the slope. "—burned the mill at Ansel! Dragons on their leash! Every one of them knew!" A soldier near him held up a barb on a strip of leather. The same barb Scarlett had pulled from the silver pup. The same maker's mark. "Off a fae ship," the captain shouted. "Off a fae ship, and the beasts do their killing for them!" Scarlett's hand closed on wet moss. "They think the fae sent the dragons." "They think the fae armed the dragons," Kieran said. His voice had gone flat. "With barbs the fae make." "Which your father sold." "Which my father sold to hunters. And left the maker's mark on. And let both sides find." She turned her head. His face had no color left in it. "He wanted this," Kieran said. "Humans blame the fae. Fae see humans butcher us. The court runs to him. He protects them. From the ones he pointed at us." Below, a fae woman went down in the creek. The captain was already turning his line toward the trees. Scarlett started to rise. Kieran caught her wrist. "Not one sword," he said. "Not here. You draw that blade, they see fae rescue fae, and every word he's fed them is true." She held there, half up, her hand on the hilt. The runes were bright now. She could reach the captain in ten strides. She sat back down. Her breath shook once. "Then what," she said. "We take it from him." Kieran's eyes did not leave the creek. "The barbs. The harbor. The story. We put the dragons somewhere he can't reach. The old nesting sanctum in the eastern rock. Walls he doesn't own." "And your crown?" "Stays in my pocket until it's worth something." The fae woman in the creek did not get up. Scarlett watched her stop moving. She let her hand fall off the sword. "East," she said. "Tonight. We move every dragon that will follow." Kieran nodded once and slid back down the ridge.

They flew back to the blue dragon under a low sky. Rivilin landed hard in the ferns. Scarlett slid down before the green dragon had folded its wings. The horns from the creek had stopped. That was worse than the noise. Brynn was already there. She had climbed the ridge on foot with her satchel slung across her chest, copper braid dark with sweat. Scarlett had not expected her this far east. Brynn was the human healer who had first pulled the barb from the silver pup, and the only mortal Scarlett trusted at her back. "Riders came through the healing house," Brynn said. "Fae. Not yours." "The king's?" "Wearing his colors. They took the last two dragons in my care. They said the court is done hiding. They said the king is going to war for every fae the humans killed today." Kieran had come up behind them. He stopped when he heard it. "He's calling it a rescue," Brynn said. "He's moving tonight." "Then we move first," Scarlett said. Kieran shook his head once. "We can't outrun a court muster. He'll have every rider in the sky by dark." "We don't outrun him. We empty the board." Scarlett turned to the blue dragon under the boughs. It had lifted its head at Brynn's voice. "Every dragon that trusts one of us. We take them east tonight. The old sanctum in the rock. He can't wage his war without dragons to blame." "He'll say we stole them," Kieran said. "He'll say that anyway." Brynn looked between them. "How many can you carry." "Three from the peaks. The blue here. The two from your house if we can find where his riders took them." "They flew north," Brynn said. "Not toward the city. Toward the muster field." Scarlett closed her eyes for a breath. Two dragons already inside the king's line. She was not getting those back tonight. "Leave them," Kieran said. His voice was flat. "We save what we can reach." She hated that he was right. She nodded. They worked fast. Brynn packed red petals and moonpetal root into Scarlett's saddlebag. Kieran cut the screen of boughs off the blue dragon and coaxed it upright. Rivilin crouched for Scarlett. The blue would follow her in the air; it had since she pulled the barb. "Come with us," Scarlett said to Brynn. "No. Someone has to be in the house when the next wounded one comes." Brynn tightened the strap on her satchel. "Go." Scarlett swung up onto Rivilin. Kieran mounted behind her without a word. The blue dragon lifted from the ferns and turned east on its own. They left the ridge as the first war-horn sounded from the fae side of the valley. Two dragons behind the king's line. Four ahead of them, if they were fast. The sanctum was a night's flight east, and the king was already in the air.

They reached the sanctum before dawn. It rose out of the rock like something grown, not built — sweeping stone arches, tiered ledges, a central hall wide enough to hold a wing at full stretch. Scarlett had heard of it from old riders. She had never seen it. Rivilin dropped onto the highest ledge. The blue dragon landed beside him and folded its wings tight. Kieran slid down and stood with one hand on Rivilin's shoulder, watching the sky. "They'll come in scared," Scarlett said. "Three from the peaks. Any that saw the mother die won't land for a rider they don't know." "They know you," Kieran said. "They know one of me. Not this place. If the first one bolts, the rest turn back and the king picks them off in the open." Kieran looked at the blue dragon. It had not left her side since she pulled the barb from its wing. "Then use the one who already chose you." She understood him. She walked to the blue dragon and laid her palm flat on its jaw. It let her. She pointed east, then down at the stone, then east again. The dragon watched her hand. She did it twice more, slow, until the meaning settled. Go out. Bring them in. Land here. The blue lifted off the ledge and climbed hard into the graying sky. They waited. Kieran did not speak. Scarlett counted her own breathing to keep from counting minutes. The first shape came in from the north — one of the peak dragons, a lean red. It circled twice, saw the blue already perched on the lower tier, and dropped onto the stone. It did not look at Scarlett. It looked at the blue. That was enough. The second came behind it. Then the third, slower, favoring one leg. The blue dragon landed each time first, then called once — a low sound that carried down the rock. Each new dragon followed the call, not the rider. Four on the ledges. Then the fourth shape banked wide and would not come in. Scarlett saw it hesitate at the edge of the light. A young one. It had seen too much. It turned north. The blue dragon pushed off the tier and went after it. Scarlett lost sight of both against the cloud. She waited with her hand on Rivilin's neck and did not breathe. They came back together. The young one landed last, shivering, and would not fold its wings until the blue folded first. Five dragons on the stone. None had bolted. None had fled toward the king. Kieran let out a breath. "You have a sanctum full of dragons." "I have a sanctum full of dragons the king doesn't own," Scarlett said. Her hands were shaking. She pressed them against Rivilin's side.

The five dragons settled on the tiered ledges as the sun cleared the ridge. Scarlett walked the lower ring to check each one. The young dragon flinched when her shadow crossed it, then held still. She left them water from the sanctum's cistern and climbed the stone stair to the central hall. Kieran was already inside. He stood at a long stone table under the vaulted arch, coat open, the rune-blade laid flat on the stone. Beside it lay a folded page. He turned when he heard her step. "A rider came in from the west while you were on the ledges," he said. "One of mine. He left this and went back." She crossed to the table. The page was thin fae parchment, sealed with a mark she knew from his sleeve buttons. She broke it and read. Orders from the king. Muster at the harbor by the third night. Barbs to be issued to every rider. Targets: every human settlement within a day's flight, and any dragon that would not fly under royal colors. The word used was cleanse. Scarlett set the page down. Her hand stayed on it. "He's not hunting dragons anymore," she said. "He's using them. And killing the rest." "Both," Kieran said. "He wants the humans gone and the dragons broken to the saddle. What won't break, he ends." She looked at him. He did not look away. The crown was not in his pocket now. It sat on the stone beside the blade, small and plain in the morning light. "You brought it in," she said. "I'm done tucking it away." She waited. "I can take the harbor from him," Kieran said. "Not the court. Not yet. The harbor. Cut the barbs at the dock before the third night and his riders fly out empty." "You'd move against your father." "He gave the order to cleanse. That's the word he used." He touched the page once. "I'm not his son for that." She stepped closer. She could feel the heat off him through the cold hall. He reached into his coat and drew out a small teardrop pendant on a thin chain, milk-white, warm from his body. "My mother's," he said. "She wore it against the court. It hid her from listening spells for thirty years." He set it in her palm and closed her fingers over it. "You'll need it more than I will at the harbor." She held the pendant. She held his hand a moment longer than the gift required. Then she let go. "We ride at dusk," she said. "You take the harbor. I hold the sanctum and the five. If you're not back by the third dawn, I come for you." "Agreed." He picked up the crown and set it on the table between them, in plain sight, and left it there. She did not put the pendant away. She clasped it at her throat where the dragons could see it. The war had a clock now. Three nights.