Seth Galanthyus stood in the throne hall of his ancestors, and it was a graveyard. The great seat of the Dragon Kings lay broken across the floor. Centuries ago, fire and siege had split it in two. He had come home to rule from that throne, to seat a queen beside him and bring his dead people back to life. Instead he stared at rubble. A king without a seat draws no one. He was the last of his kind, and he had nothing left to offer the world but ruins. Boots crossed the stone behind him. He did not need to turn. He knew her step, her scent, the warmth that came before her voice. "You've been standing here for hours," Thea said. His mate. The girl who carried the Godflame, and the only person in three centuries who made him imagine a future. She stopped beside him and looked at the wreckage. "That's it? The famous throne?" "It was," Seth said quietly. She crouched and pressed her palm to the largest broken piece. Blue light gathered under her skin. Her white hair lifted in the current of her power. "These runes are still alive," she said. "They're warm. Feel it." He knelt beside her and laid his hand over the stone. She was right. Beneath the ash, old dragon-magic still pulsed, faint as a heartbeat. His ancestors had bound their bloodline to the throne itself. It had not truly died. It had waited. "I can wake it," Thea said. "But I can't hold it alone. You'll have to burn with me." "If it fails, the backlash could kill you." She met his eyes. "Then don't let it fail." He should have argued. He wanted to shield her, to send her out and try alone. But her jaw was set, and he knew that look. So he did the harder thing. He trusted her. Seth drew the great silver greatsword from his back. Its dragon-wing crossguards caught the light, its runes waking blue along the blade. He drove the point into the broken seam of the throne. Then he called his fire. Silver-blue flame poured down the sword. Thea's Godflame rose to meet it, blue-white and roaring, and where the two joined, silver threaded through her fire. The broken stone glowed. It shuddered. Cracks sealed inward. The two halves ground together and rose, reshaping under their linked hands. The heat threw them both backward. When the light cleared, the throne of the Dragon Kings stood whole, its runes burning steady. Thea laughed, breathless, a burn mark on her wrist. "We should really stop doing that indoors." Seth pulled her up and pressed his forehead to hers. He had a seat of power again. But when the throne woke, the sealed runes had woken too, and far beneath the mountain something answered the call. A low tremor rolled through the stone under their feet. The city had heard its king return. And so had whatever his ancestors had buried below it.