Page 6 of Sereis
At Davoren's table, the conversation had turned sharp-edged. "—betrayals within betrayals," Davoren was saying, his goldenmarks pulsing with each word. "False accusations meant to undermine what ancient law has already sealed."
"The sealing seems thorough enough," Zephyron observed, gesturing to Kara's glowing marks. "Though I've heard reports of ice magic where it shouldn't be. Frozen merchant ships. Frost in summer."
Kara's hand tightened on Davoren's arm. "Someone sent assassins after me. Three of them, marked with frost-burn. That's not a false accusation—that's attempted murder."
"Many things can leave frost-burn," Garruk rumbled from his table. "Not all of them dragon-sent."
"But most of them are," Morgrith added, his shadow-touched voice carrying despite its quietness. "The question becomes . . . who benefits from such disruption?"
At his corner table, Sereis continued staring at nothing, as if the conversation didn't concern him at all. But I noticed the wine in his goblet had frozen solid.
"Disrupted territories make for disrupted trade," Zephyron mused. "And certain parties have been very interested in reshaping the traditional routes."
Caelus, who'd been rearranging his food into patterns, suddenly looked up. "Oh, are we talking about the Zarathos thing? Because that's been brewing for—"
"Lord Caelus," Davoren's voice could have melted iron. "Perhaps this is a conversation for tomorrow's formal declaration."
The Wind Lord shrugged, already distracted by a new arrangement of his vegetables. But the damage was done. Zarathos—the conquered territory where dragon magic ran wild, where humans lived under the worst kind of exploitation.
The feast continued, but the forced celebration felt more strained with each passing minute. I moved through my spirals—which Caelus changed to concentric circles, then back tospirals—catching fragments of conversation. Territory disputes. Trade route violations. And underneath it all, like a bass note too low to properly hear, the word "war."
Finally, Davoren stood. The motion was abrupt enough to make Kara stumble slightly, though she recovered with grace. His golden marks blazed so bright that several servants had to look away.
"Tomorrow," he said, and his voice carried to every corner of the hall. "All will be revealed. Every betrayal. Every deception. Every violation of ancient law."
His eyes found Sereis across the room.
"Tomorrow," Davoren continued, "justice will be served. Whether by law or by flame."
He swept from the hall with Kara beside him, leaving silence in their wake. The other Dragon Lords exchanged glances—worried, calculating, preparing for whatever storm was about to break.
But Sereis didn't move. Didn't react. Just sat there with his frozen wine and his thousand-yard stare, as if tomorrow was just another day in an endless succession of days.
Theservants'quartersfeltlike a tomb that night. I lay on my thin pallet, listening to Tam's steady breathing and the distant crash of waves against volcanic rock, but sleep wouldn't come. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw pale ones looking back—ice blue with hidden depths, seeing too much, knowing too much.
Three years of serving Caelus, and no one had ever looked at me like that. Like I existed. Like my choices mattered. Like my hunger was worth noting.
"You choose kindness when you could choose survival."
The words circled in my mind like Caelus's endless serving patterns. My skin felt too tight, too warm despite the cool night air. I could still feel where his attention had rested on me, gentle as snow but somehow burning.
When exhaustion finally pulled me under, the dreams came vivid as spilled wine.
I stood in a garden that couldn't exist—ice sculptures that bloomed like flowers, each one perfect and impossible. The air tasted of winter and something else, something that made my pulse quicken. Frost patterns spread beneath my bare feet, but they didn't burn. They felt like coming home.
"You're here."
I turned, and there he was. Sereis, but not quite as he'd appeared in the great hall. His edges seemed softer here, less controlled. His white robes moved like water, like smoke, like they couldn't decide what they were. Sometimes I could see through them to skin that held its own inner light.
"I don't understand," I said, but my dream-voice sounded different. Stronger. More like who I'd been before the collar.
"No?" He moved closer, and he was dragon and man and something in between, scales and skin shifting like breathing. "You gave away what little you had. Do you know how rare that is? How many centuries I've watched, and how few choose as you chose?"
His fingers lifted to my face—I should have flinched, should have remembered my place, but this was a dream and dreams had different rules. His touch burned cold, frost blooming across my cheek in patterns like the ones on Kara's skin, but silver-white instead of gold.
"So warm," he murmured, and his voice held harmonics that resonated in my bones. "You burn so bright, little flame. Even starving, even collared, you burn."
His hand trailed down my throat, and wherever he touched, the frost patterns spread. Not claiming marks—something else, something that felt like being seen, being known, being wanted. The collar around my neck turned to ice and shattered, the fragments becoming snow that swirled around us.
