Read Chapter 15: The Escape

“The lock,” Elara whispered, pressing her ear to the cold iron door of the cell. “It’s a pattern lock. Ninth-century dwarven make. They use the same ones on the tack room at the academy.”

Aldric shifted in the darkness beside her, his voice a low rasp from three years of disuse and damp. “You can pick it?”

“I can break it.” Elara slid a thin, bent nail from the hem of her tunic. She’d kept it hidden since her first week as a stable hand, a habit from a childhood of locked pantries. The lock was old, its tumblers worn by rust. She worked the nail into the keyhole, feeling the familiar teeth of the mechanism.

Kael shifted against the far wall, holding his broken arm to his chest. He was pale but alert, his good eye tracking her movements in the sliver of torchlight that bled under the door. “If the guard comes back before that opens, we’re dead.”

“Then I suggest you keep quiet.” Elara’s tongue peeking from the corner of her mouth as she twisted the nail. A soft click. She held her breath, pulled the door open an inch. The corridor beyond was empty.

Aldric rose with a wince, his joints cracking. He was gaunt, grey-haired, but the fire in his eyes had not dulled. “The tunnels you spoke of. Where do they lead?”

“Under the east wing, past the old chapel. They used to run water from the mountain spring to the kitchens.” Elara slipped out of the cell, gesturing for them to follow. “There’s a junction near the wine cellar. If we can reach it, we can go up into the forest behind the stables.”

“And then?” Kael asked, his voice tight.

“Then we run.”

They moved in silence through the bowels of the academy. The dungeon corridor gave way to rough-cut stone, then to the uneven floor of the old aqueduct. Water trickled along a shallow channel at their feet, cold enough to numb the toes. Elara knew every turn from the years she’d spent scrubbing the tunnels clean. She led them left at a fork where three other passages met, her hand against the wall for the carved mark of a fish—her own sign, chalked there months ago.

The air grew fresher. A grate of iron bars appeared overhead, set into the floor of a disused storage shed. Elara pushed against it. It didn’t move.

“Locked from above,” Aldric said, studying the rusted latch.

“Give me your boot.” Elara pointed at Kael. He hesitated, then sat down and tugged off his boot. She wedged the heel into the gap between grate and frame, levered once, twice. The lock groaned. She pressed her back against the wall, braced her legs, and shoved.

The grate screeched open. Cold night air spilled in. Elara hauled herself up first, then reached down for Kael, who came with a grunt, cradling his arm. Aldric followed, the three of them standing in a shed that smelled of old hay and dust.

Outside, the moon was high, the academy’s lights flickering in the main hall. Already, distant shouts echoed from the courtyard.

“They’ve noticed,” Kael said.

Elara’s heart hammered. “The forest. Now.”

They ran. Her feet found the deer paths she knew from gathering herbs, the roots and stones that would trip an unfamiliar runner. Behind them, torches flared—hounds bayed. Voss’s riders had been released from the kennels.

“They’ll run us down before we reach the trees,” Aldric said, breathing hard.

“There’s a ravine ahead,” Elara panted. “A bridge. It’s old, rotted. We can cross if we go single file.”

They broke through the treeline, branches whipping their faces. The ravine loomed, a black gash in the forest floor. The bridge was two planks wide, no railing, sagging over a drop she couldn’t see. She crossed first, feet nimble on the weathered wood, then turned and waved for Kael. He bit his lip, his good hand gripping the mossy rope for balance. Aldric followed, and the bridge swayed dangerously under their combined weight.

Behind them, the hounds burst into the clearing. Sergeant Maren pulled up at the ravine’s edge, her torch gutting in the wind. She saw them on the far side.

For a heartbeat, their eyes met.

Then Maren turned her horse, and in a voice that carried over the chasm, she shouted, “They went south, along the river! Cut off the ford.”

The riders wheeled away. Elara stood frozen, disbelief washing over her. Kael stared at her, breath clouding.

“She lied,” he whispered.

“Move.” Aldric’s hand was on Elara’s shoulder. “Her mercy buys us moments, not hours.”

They pressed on into the deep wood. The moon sank behind the peaks, and the forest pressed in around them. Kael staggered after a mile, his face grey. Elara caught him before he fell.

“We need to stop. He’s losing blood.” She eased him down against a mossy boulder, pressing her scarf to a gash on his ribs she hadn’t noticed. He’d been stitching himself up with silence and stubbornness.

“No fires,” Aldric said. “Voss will have riders within a mile of this spot by dawn.”

“Then we walk until he can’t,” Elara snapped. She examined Kael’s arm. The break was clean, but it needed a splint. She tore a strip from her own undershirt, found two straight branches, and bound it tight. Kael let out a low hiss but didn’t pull away.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice thin.

Aldric crouched beside them. Even in the dark, the lines on his weathered face were deep. “I’m sorry, Elara.”

She looked up. “For what?”

“For what I haven’t told you.” He met her eyes. There was a weight there, three years of stone pressing on his shoulders. “Voss is not draining the dragons to control them. She isn’t even doing it for power over the academy.”

“Then why?” Elara’s voice barely a whisper.

“The essence she collects—she’s feeding it to herself. It’s not a spell for war, or a spell for binding. It’s an immortal spell. She’s been dying for years, a slow rot in her blood. To keep herself alive, she consumes the life of dragons. The saddle leather poison weakens them so their essence is easier to harvest. Aldric was the first to notice. He followed her to the under-depths, found Nyx chained and bleeding light.”

Kael’s jaw tightened. “She’s been killing dragons… for herself.”

“She’s been sacrificing everything for a life that was never hers to keep.” Aldric’s voice was hollow. “And she’ll drain Ignis to the dregs before the week is out unless we find a way back.”

Elara’s chest seized. Ignis. She had fled, and in doing so had left his life in Voss’s hands. The thought was a knife turning in her ribs.

A wingbeat sounded overhead. They all looked up, expecting arrows or black riders. Instead, a shape descended—not large enough for a war dragon, but familiar all the same. A shadow with a dull sheen beneath the moonlight, its flight lopsided, labored.

Ignis landed before them, his scales dull with sickness, his eyes fever-bright. He nudged Elara’s chest with his snout, a low whine in his throat.

“You came,” she breathed, her hands shaking as she touched him.

Aldric rose slowly, his eyes wide. “A dragon. A free dragon, untethered by leather or bindings, come to you of his own will.”

Ignis turned his head to look at Aldric, then let out a throaty rumble.

“He says,” Aldric murmured, reading the gesture with decades of old knowledge, “that he has answers you haven’t dared to ask.”

Elara looked up at Ignis, at the loyalty burning weak but fierce in his eyes. Beyond the river, she could swear she heard the distant ring of hooves.

“Then let him speak,” she said. “We’re out of road and out of time.”

Ignis lowered his neck, nostrils flaring, and Aldric stepped forward, hand outstretched toward the dragon’s steaming hide. It was the gesture of a man about to touch a secret that could not be untold.