Read Chapter 12: Crossing Blades

The tower stairs were cold beneath Elara’s palms, the stone rough and slick with centuries of damp. She’d made it three flights before the footsteps began—measured, deliberate, not the frantic scramble of a guard who’d found her cell empty.

She pressed herself into a shadowed alcove, the ledger a hard, accusing weight against her ribs. The footsteps grew closer, and a figure rounded the curve below. Cedric. His silver hair caught the dim torchlight, his face unreadable.

“You’re supposed to be confined,” he said, stopping two steps down. His hand rested on his sword hilt, but his posture was loose. Curious, not hostile.

“You’re supposed to be anywhere else,” Elara replied.

He smiled, thin and tired. “I saw the guard outside your door. He was very insistent you were inside.” He tilted his head. “When I heard someone moving in the Locked Tower, I assumed it was a thief. I came to stop them.”

“You came to stop me.”

“I came to see if you were worth the trouble.” His eyes dropped to the lump in her shirt. “What did you take?”

Elara’s mouth went dry. She could lie, deflect, invent some story about a forgotten book. But Cedric had spared her on the training ground. He’d told her about his father’s vanished dragon. He was the closest thing she had to an ally in this place, and he was staring at her with the look of a man deciding whether to draw steel.

She pulled the ledger free. It was plain, brown leather, the pages edged with gold that had flaked away. She held it out to him.

“The truth,” she said.

Cedric took it, flipping it open with a practiced hand. His eyes moved over the entries—dates, initials, chemical compounds she didn’t fully understand. His face went still. Then his jaw tightened.

“This is Voss’s hand,” he said quietly. “I’d recognize it anywhere. She signed off on quarantine orders before my father’s dragon was taken. Same flourish on the S.”

“She’s poisoning the saddle leather,” Elara said. “Deliberately. There’s a mineral compound in it. The dragons eat through the straps, and it gets into their blood, and they—they fade. Their wings lose color. Their flame sputters.” She swallowed. “And she’s been sending riders north to cover it up. Sir Aldric was one of them.”

Cedric closed the ledger slowly. The sound of the cover meeting the pages was loud in the silence.

“You have to understand what you’re showing me,” he said. “If this gets out, the Academy doesn’t fall. Lady Voss does. But the Academy will burn with her.” He looked up. “My family has been trying to unseat Voss for a generation. She knows it. She’s made my father’s life a misery because of it—lost commissions, reduced stipends, elders who look the other way when we speak in council.”

“Then help me,” Elara said. “Together we can—“

“Can what?” His voice cracked, just once. “March into her office and wave a ledger at her? She’ll say it’s forged. She’ll say I planted it. She’ll have me expelled, my father’s pension revoked, and you thrown in a cell so deep the sun forgets you.” He shook his head. “You don’t understand how she works. She doesn’t fight. She disappears problems.”

Elara stepped forward. “Then we don’t fight her here. We take this north. We find Aldric. We find proof that what she’s done killed him, and we bring it to the King’s Court where even she can’t reach.”

Cedric was silent for a long moment. His thumb traced the edge of the ledger’s cover. When he spoke again, his voice was softer.

“You’re asking me to throw away everything my family has built.”

“I’m asking you to decide what it’s worth.”

He laughed, short and bitter. “You have a commoner’s confidence, Elara. It’s almost admirable.” He handed the ledger back to her. “I can’t help you.”

The words landed like a blow to the chest. “Cedric—“

“I won’t expose you,” he said quickly. “Whatever you’re doing, whatever you find, I’ll turn a blind eye. I’ll give you space. I can misdirect the guards for a night, maybe two.” He met her eyes, and for the first time she saw something raw beneath his usual arrogance. “But I have a younger sister at this Academy. A mother who depends on my father’s title. If I’m seen as a traitor, they starve. They disappear. No one protects the families of the disgraced.”

Elara’s anger rose, hot and sharp. “So you’ll let her poison the dragons. Let her send riders to die. Because you’re afraid.”

“Yes.” He said it simply, without shame. “I’m afraid. You should be too.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but something in his expression stopped her. He wasn’t refusing her because he didn’t believe her. He was refusing her because he saw the shape of the noose and chose to step back from it.

“I’ll do it alone, then,” she said.

“You’ll die.”

“Maybe.” She tucked the ledger back into her shirt. “But Ignis won’t if I can help it.”

Cedric’s face flickered—something like respect, something like regret. “The bond tonic you gave your dragon. Where did you get it?”

“Found it in Voss’s stores while I was looking for the ledger.”

He nodded slowly. “The formula would have been recorded in her journal. The tonic is derived from a stabilizing agent—a rare herb called sindra root. It grows only in the northern valleys, near where the wild dragons still range.” He paused. “If you’re going north anyway, you’ll need more of it. You’ll find the herb there.”

Elara stared at him. “You just said you wouldn’t help me.”

“I’m not helping you.” His voice was flat. “I’m giving you information you might have found on your own, in a library you weren’t supposed to enter. That’s not aid. That’s coincidence.”

A ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “Convenient coincidence.”

“We’re full of those at this Academy.” He stepped aside, clearing the stair. “You have one night before I send the guards to check your room properly. Use it well.”

Elara moved past him, her boots echoing on the stone. At the curve of the stairs, she paused and looked back. Cedric still stood where she’d left him, his silhouette dark against the torchlight.

“Cedric,” she said. “Why did you spare me? On the training ground. You could have humiliated me. You could have ended my place at the Academy before it began.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Because my father’s dragon used to look at me through the fence of his enclosure, and I knew he was dying. I knew what it felt like to watch something you love fade and not be able to stop it.” He turned away. “I saw that look in your eye when you lost control of your flame. I knew you’d fight for something. I just didn’t know it would be the truth.”

He disappeared down the stairs, leaving her alone in the dark with the ledger and the weight of everything it contained.

Elara stood there until her breath steadied. Then she climbed higher, toward the small window that looked out over the eastern wall. Beyond it, the mountains rose, their peaks hidden by cloud. The north passed through them. Sir Aldric had gone that way. The wild dragons had been sighted there. And now she knew she’d find sindra root there too, if she lived long enough to reach it.

She had one night before Cedric’s distraction expired. One night to plan, to gather what she needed, to convince Kael to come with her. One night before everything she’d stolen became impossible to hide.

The wind through the broken window was cold. It smelled of snow and pine—of places no map fully captured. She pressed her hand to the ledger beneath her shirt and made herself a promise.

She would not disappear like Aldric.

She would come back with proof, or she would not come back at all.