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Marcus frowned. “Look, Blake, Viktor is regent now. Accept it and be grateful. Viktor is strong. With him at the helm, House Drakharrow will rise higher than it ever has. If you’re smart you’ll stop clinging to Father’s ghost and toe the line.” He slammed down the glass and started toward the door. “Real highbloods take what they want. They don’t fucking ask for permission.”

The room vanished, Aenia’s soft weight disappearing like a mist. She and Marcus and the house were gone. In their place was something vast and red and wrong. I was trapped inside a predator. Vorago.

An all-consuming rage, hot and corrosive, was my only constant. I wasn’t in him—not exactly. And he wasn’t in me. We were layered. Overwritten like old scrolls of text.

I wondered if this was what soul-binding felt like or what the dragons had felt like when they’d been turned to stone. Like drowning while still alive. Like being sealed away in a cave while the world outside kept moving. My soul was like a drop of ink in blood: still there, coloring everything, but not free. My own dragon was still alive. Burned down to a kernel of existence, but still somehow there. We were trapped together in this horror, both of us flattened and silent. Waiting.

Perhaps that was the only mercy, knowing I wasn’t completely alone in this fucking hell. But what company to be trapped with. My self … but not myself. The self I’d rejected. The self I’d try to kill. There was no point in thinking about it now. What I should have done differently. All that mattered—all that would ever matter—was her.

I thought back, trying to decipher how many days had passed by since the last time I’d been this aware. At first, I’d been conscious of everything. The beat of wings. The feel of the air. I’d known where we were. I’d known when Vorago fed and when he felt hunger. Now I barely noticed the outside world at all. Days blurred together, indistinct. I was only alert now because of the ache. It never eased. Instead, it was growing stronger. A nagging, endless hunger that persisted no matter how much Vorago gorged himself on meat. We didn’t need meat to survive. We needed her. Her blood.

Vorago knew it, too. I could feel him souring with desperation. He craved her—but not as I did. He craved her like a starving rabid beast that would devour prey whole. Vorago didn’t long for her voice, her form, her defiant spirit; he merely wanted access to her blood. The sustenance he believed she owed us—and thus him. But I would rather waste away and die than let him have that. I clung to that reminder like a shard of glass embedded in my palm. Let Vorago starve. Let him rot. I would not be the instrument that brought him to Medra.

He’d already tried to reach her more than once. Each time, Nyxaris had barred his way—and I’d been glad. I knew it was not Medra that Nyxaris was truly protecting. No, the Duskdrake was guarding his new rider, Florence. He’d done a decent job of it.

Only once had Vorago seized a chance. Nyxaris had been gone, probably out hunting and distracted. Vorago had flown to the Dragon Court. I could remember the sensation of fire pouring out of a throat mine and not mine. Feeling Vorago’s sense of satisfaction as ancient stone melted and shattered. And then the near miss as Nyxaris had unexpectedly appeared. Vorago had fled. We had escaped, barely. Since then, the red dragon had been unraveling.

Every day without Medra’s blood stripped something from me—but I took comfort in knowing that however weak I grew, Vorago was not far behind. There was a sense of thinning. A loss of coherence. I knew Vorago felt it, too. We were starving together. Maybe I should have pleaded, begged to shift back to a man, asked for my body back. The truth was, I’d already tried that back at the beginning. My rage only amused Vorago; my pleading entertained him. So I’d gone quiet. Shrunk in on myself. Now I was exactly what Vorago expected me to be: a defeated captive. Broken and obedient. I’d withdrawn my thoughts as much as I’d learned how. Hoped Vorago would forget that I was even there. Because this was a fucking waiting game. Except I wasn’t waiting to survive—I was waiting to strike. I would be the attacker from inside the city walls. The knife already lodged in the ribs.

I did not need to live myself. I wasn’t asking for that. I only needed two things to die happy: Vorago dead and Pendragon safe. Nothing else mattered.

So I figured I had a chance—a slim one, very slim. After all, Blake Drakharrow had always been pretty good at burning everything down and fucking things up.

Days of agony and despair went by. Days filled with nothing but stillness and the gnawing hunger that I could not quell. Finally, Vorago stirred. His massive body shifted. Then scented something carried on the wind: dragon blood. And not just any dragon. Nyxaris’s blood.

Vorago’s excitement spread through him like wildfire. I could feel his eagerness to strike at an alreadywounded prey. He’d tear Nyxaris from the sky and feast on his rider’s entrails. The Inferni rose, forcing weary wings to beat, driving himself up and outward with brutal determination. I felt it all. His hunger. His hope.

This was it, the opening I’d been waiting for. I’d find a way. I’d burn it down. Burn us both down from the inside out.

Chapter 18

FLORENCE

The wind tore past me, clean and sharp and salty. I shifted a little on Nyxaris’s back. My usual skirt and cardigan were gone. I wore lightweight leather armor, supple and made for easy movement. My hair wasn’t whipping around my face like it was the first time I’d flown on dragonback; I knew better now and had it back in two tight braids. I touched one, looking down at the long black tresses now crisscrossed with dark blue streaks. They were hardly noticeable to others. But I was still shocked every time I saw them in the mirror, another fae trait I’d gained from Medra. Lunaya’s crossbow rested in my hands, strapped securely across my body. Bolts coated with Godsbane and emberfern were strapped to my left thigh in a leather bandolier case. I was prepared. Better equipped than last time. Still …

Are you ready? Nyxaris’s voice was sharp.

I … think so.

You think so?

No, I’m not ready. I’m terrified. The words came out in a rush. Maybe we should reschedule.

Reschedule? Nyxaris snorted. This is not one of your classes or a paper for which you may request an extension.

I never ask for extensions, I exclaimed, offended. I manage my time carefully.

Florence, Nyxaris said, his voice gentler, you are prepared, more so than last time. You have done this before.

I took a deep breath. It was beautiful up here. Below, Blood-wing was a splash of red on an isle of green and brown, contrasting with the dark blue of the sea. Spring had softened the school’s sharp edges, coating it with green vines and encircling it in blades of grass. Nyxaris banked and soared lower, his wings cutting through the air with a steady thundering sound. I leaned with the motion, my body curving against his massive frame. I did it automatically, without thinking, without fear. My thighs were locked tight so I wouldn’t slip. My expertise still surprised me. Not long ago, every flight had left me shaking and sore, muscles screaming, joints stiff for days. I’d bruised easily. But every day since that night in the Dragon Court, that night when Rodriguez had given me that mixture of blood—both Nyxaris’s and Medra’s—my body had been changing. Evolving. My fingers were longer now. Not so long that anyone noticed at first glance, but they held a crossbow more easily. My balance had changed, too. Even my pointed ears caught the rush of sounds differently as we flew, heightened to noises that once had been lost on the wind. My endurance had improved. My strength was still modest, but greater than it had been.

None of these things had come gently. There had been nights I’d barely slept. My joints had throbbed as if they were being pulled, stretched, reshaped. The last few weeks, I’d wondered if Blake had felt something similar. Had it been painful to metamorphose into a dragon?

You are allowing the anxious thoughts to overwhelm you again, Nyxaris chided. I can feel them growing inside you.

I’m still not good enough. Not for something like this. I bit my lip. And if we fail, Medra will—

You are not permitted to doubt your own competence.