Page 148 of Crown of Wrath

This is a much different set of guests compared to the High Fae that attended Cole’s birth celebration. For the first time since they awoke fifty years ago, the gods have assembled. This is the first time that Saelira, the Unseen Hand, has been seen since she awoke. While the merry-makers enjoy their celebration, she stands quietly, as is normal for her.

Cole and Maeve do not approach her, but they watch. Two dragons stand beside them, two far away, and one still lays in rest from its last battle. Yes, the dragons have risen from the Anchors; the Thrones cracked. They have partaken in the warsalong with everyone else. They have endured just as much battle as the High Fae, and scars cover their scales. There is no reason to hide their power any longer.

Saelira leaves her place and walks toward the cradle that holds the little boy. She is not like the other gods. She is small, nearly the same size as Maeve, and she does not resonate magic. Her movements are almost forgettable. If she were unknown to the rest of the guests, and the rest of the gods did not take quite so much care with how they step around her, it is unlikely anyone would take notice of her movement.

But she is Saelira, the Goddess of Inevitable Fates. Unlike Calyr, she does not read the lines of the future. She reads the lines of a person’s soul. She sees into what the soul is destined for rather than the series of probabilities, and her visions are never wrong. As she gets close to the parents of the baby, the crowd quiets, silence overtaking everyone.

“I offer a vision as my gift to the child,” she says, her voice cracking with each word. The veil she wears over her face hides her expression, and even Maeve’s Earth senses cannot penetrate it. “This boy will be the one who decides the fate of Nyth. His decisions will shape her future. He will be the first of many Riders. He will hold all the powers of the High Fae as his mother once did, but he will do it naturally. Gods will step aside when he walks. The enemy shall tremble at his blade. Despite that, his decisions are uncertain. He will either be your savior or your destruction.”

She bends over the cradle, and Maeve shivers in fear as Saelira lifts her veil for a moment to lightly kiss the child’s forehead. Then, without even standing up, she becomes mist and disappears.

Moments of silence pass, and Maeve glances at her husband. Another god seems to have accepted that this is the time for the presentation of blessings and gifts. Draeven the Ironboundwalks toward the cradle with heavy steps. Chains hang from his body, brushing against the floor with every movement with soft clangs. In his hands appears a sword made of red metal that no one in the court had ever seen before. “I offer Mournfang. Unbreakable. Unaffected by any magic. It is a sword forged from the souls of broken oaths. No other like it has ever been crafted. It is the sword of a hero.” He places it solemnly on the ground in front of the cradle, and just like Saelira, he disappears in a cloud of red dust.

One after the next, each of the gods offers a blessing or item to the Prince. One after the next, they disappear.

Then, when all the assembled gods have disappeared, Inni steps away from Kasan. The dragon is smaller than the others, yet still a full thirty feet tall, and covered in flame-red scales. She does not walk like a cat like Calyr, nor does she take ponderous steps like Kasan. Instead, she walks with purpose, her eyes focused on the child in the cradle.

In the minds of every person watching, a voice is heard.I claim you, Prince Azric. I claim you as mine in a way that has never been done before. I have learned. I have grown. I have become more because of your parents. I, Inni the Destroyer, claim you.

She inhales, and for a moment, fear washes over Cole and Maeve. They have seen a dragon breathe fire many times. They know what it looks like. Yet, after all the battles they have fought beside her, they both trust her with more than their lives. She is more than just an ally. She is a friend. She exhales, and no flames leave her scarred jaws. Instead, there is only bright-red smoke that covers the boy.

The fear that had filled everyone’s hearts only a moment ago turns to wonder at what is obviously a first.

A mark spreads across Azric’s chest, spanning from shoulder to shoulder, its design a fusion of fire and prophecy. At its heart,a sun rises—its core a molten gold, its edges licked by swirling crimson flames. The light it casts is not soft or yielding, but fierce. The raw brilliance of dawn burning away the night.

Beneath the sun, a jagged mountain range stretches across his chest, its peaks unmistakably those of Skycrest, their darkened silhouettes standing against the rising blaze. And yet, the fire does not consume them. Instead, veins of gold and ember-red coil through the stone, as if the mountains themselves have awakened, bearing the blessing—or the warning—of the dragon.

Between the sun and Skycrest, blackened wings unfurl—neither fully dragon nor fully shadow, but something in between. They stretch and coil like living flame, bound to Azric as much as the blood in his veins. The wings are not his, not yet, but they will be. When the time comes, when the fire and steel and earth and shadow within him burn bright enough, they will spread wide, and the mark will no longer be just a symbol. It will be a promise fulfilled.

That image of the sun reminds Maeve of Cole's burned shoulder, of how he had been the sun against the darkness of the world they had lived in. Now it is not Cole who will stand and guide the world. It is their son. It is the boy that she had never expected, that they had done everything they could to prevent.

The boy she loves more than anything else in the world.

She looks from her son's mark to Inni, and she feels at peace for the first time since this celebration had begun. The dragon won’t let anything happen to Azric. She’s sure of it. She mouths, “Thank you,” to her, and it’s as though Inni smiles at her before she walks back to where she’d been standing beside Kasan.

Everyone is still for a few moments, and it seems as though the gift giving is over. A din of whispers rises from the silence. And then all thoughts of celebration abruptly end.

“It seems my invitation was lost,” a soft feminine voice rises from nowhere and everywhere at once. “To think, a celebrationof the first child of the Conduits without me included? There must have been a mistake.”

Lysara. The voice takes form slowly a few feet from the cradle as the Goddess of Death and Beauty steps from another world into this one. She is just as beautiful as the last time Maeve saw her. She’s wearing the same black dress made of the midnight sky, and her skin is so pale that she seems a specter rather than a normal human. Yet, her lips are so red they could have been crafted from rubies. Or blood.

She’s barefoot, and as she walks, she leaves behind bloody footprints. A smile crosses her face as she looks from Maeve to Cole. “You have done well for yourself. To have a child during these difficult times is such a blessing. Even after all the precautions you took, it appears fate had a different plan for your bloodlines.”

Lysara’s words curl around Cole and Maeve, whispering to them just as they did the first time that Maeve had asked for her help. This time, they were not so beguiled by a goddess’s voice. “What are you doing here?” Maeve asks softly, not so stupid as to think she could truly stand against the goddess, but also not as terrified as any other would be.

“I am here to remind everyone that I have first claim to the boy,” she says, her voice never wavering in its pleasantness. “And to bestow my own blessing on him, of course. A Prince, especially one destined for such things as him, should have as many blessings as possible, shouldn’t he?”

She stands over the boy, and unlike the rest of the gods and goddesses, she picks him up and holds him as delicately as a flower. She whispers in his ear so softly that none can hear, and another mark takes hold against his skin.

Etched in the deepest black, the mark of Lysara coils down Azric’s spine, a silent vow that binds him to the queen of the dead. At first glance, it appears to be a serpent, its sinuousform winding from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine, its scales inked in shifting shades of onyx and obsidian. But in the right light, the illusion shifts. The creature is no mere snake—it is something older, something endless. Its body is formed of shadows so deep they seem to drink the light, each coil whispering of fate entwined, of a promise that cannot be undone.

Its head rests just below the base of his skull, mouth slightly parted, revealing fangs like slivers of midnight. A single drop of ink drips from one, resting just above his pulse—a quiet reminder that death is never far. Its eyes, though inked in pure black, seem to gleam, always watching, always knowing.

Threaded through the serpent’s winding form are delicate, ghostly silver accents—petals of night-blooming flowers, wisps of mist, faint traces of skeletal wings barely visible against his skin. And near the small of his back, the final piece of the design emerges: a crescent moon, cradled in the serpent’s tail. It is not a soft or gentle moon, but razor-edged, sharp as a reaper’s scythe. The curve of it gleams faintly in silver ink, the only light amid the abyss.

This is no mere tattoo. It is a claim. A binding. A whisper of something inevitable. Lysara does not take. She does not steal. She waits. And now, she has marked him as hers.

A collective shiver runs through the Immortals, humans, and even dragons as they look on, and Inni steps forward, a growl rumbling in her chest. “You do not have the only claim to him,” she says. “He owes you fealty. I have seen the mark on his mother’s soul, and I know what was promised. You may own his fealty, but you do not own his soul, his life, nor his heart. And fealty does not begin at birth. A child cannot be forced away from his parents.”

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