Read Chapter 19: The Heir's Choice

Cedric’s hand hovered over the brass lock, the metal cold enough to bite through his gloves. Below the academy’s wine cellar, the air smelled of dust and old iron—and beneath that, something sweet and wrong, like rotting flowers. Voss’s private storeroom. He’d found it exactly where the letter had hinted, tucked behind a false wall marked with the royal seal.

*His* seal, technically. His father’s. The one Voss had been forging for years.

He pressed his palm to the lock and whispered the unlocking charm Aldric had taught him in fencing lessons, years ago, when the old knight still believed Cedric might be worth teaching. The lock clicked. The door swung inward.

Inside, the room was smaller than he’d expected. No treasure. No stolen documents. Just a single pedestal, and on it, a sphere the size of a child’s head, dark as dried blood, pulsing with a faint, sickly light. The source. The thing that had been drinking dragons dry for three years.

Cedric’s throat tightened. He could feel it from the doorway—a pull, like a hook in his chest, trying to draw him closer. *Dragon essence.* Riders had died protecting less. And this—

A sound behind him. Footsteps, soft and quick.

He spun. Anya stood at the end of the corridor, Voss’s attendant, her face pale and unreadable. For a long moment, neither of them moved.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said quietly.

“Neither are you.” Cedric’s hand drifted to the dagger at his belt. “Are you going to stop me?”

Anya’s lips pressed together. She looked at the sphere, then back at him. “She knew you’d come. She’s been waiting for you to choose.”

“Choose what?”

“Whether you’re her heir or your father’s son.”

The words hit like a slap. His father, the old lord, who’d died believing the academy was a place of honor. Voss, who had whispered in Cedric’s ear for years that honor was a leash for fools. He’d wanted to believe her. It had been easier than believing the truth—that he was surrounded by liars, that the woman who’d raised him after his father’s death had been poisoning everything he loved.

He looked at the sphere. It pulsed again, slower now, like a dying heartbeat.

“Tell her,” he said, “that I’m not her heir.”

He grabbed the sphere. It was heavier than it looked, and cold—so cold it burned through his gloves, searing his palms. A scream built in his throat, but he swallowed it. Anya took a step back, her face shifting into something harder, older. Voss’s creature, through and through.

“She’ll hunt you,” she said. “She’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth.”

“Let her try.”

He ran.

The corridors blurred past him—wine cellar, kitchens, the long stone hall where his father’s portrait still hung, watching him with painted eyes. He didn’t stop. Behind him, he heard the distant clash of armor, the shout of orders. Voss’s loyal knights. Her private guard, the ones who wore the black-and-gold livery her family had never officially claimed.

He burst through the side gate, into the cold night air. The sphere burned against his chest where he’d shoved it inside his coat. The pain was constant now, a gnawing ache that reached into his bones. He gritted his teeth and whistled.

From the darkness above, a shape unfolded—wings like torn silk, scales the color of old embers. *Ashfall.* His dragon. Smaller than Ignis, younger, but loyal. Ashfall landed before him, eyes bright with worry, and Cedric vaulted onto his back without a word.

“Fly,” he gasped. “The village in the mountains. Hare’s Hollow.”

Ashfall didn’t need a second command. His wings beat once, twice, and then they were rising, the academy shrinking below them into a smear of candlelight and shadow. Cedric looked back once. On the battlements, a figure stood watching him—a woman in black, arms folded, utterly still. Voss.

She didn’t send riders after him. Not yet. She just watched, and Cedric knew, with a cold certainty that had nothing to do with the sphere burning against his ribs, that she was letting him go. That she wanted him to lead her to Elara.

But that was a problem for another hour. For now, he held on, letting Ashfall carry him through the night, toward the mountains and the village of outcasts—and toward a girl who had every reason to hate him.

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The village was little more than a scattering of stone huts huddled around a dying fire when Ashfall touched down at its edge. Cedric slid from his back, knees buckling. The sphere had gone quiet now, almost dormant, but he could still feel it, a weight in his chest like a second heart.

Figures emerged from the shadows—ragged, wary, carrying knives and clubs. Outcasts. The ones the academy had thrown away.

“I’m here to see Elara,” he said, raising his hands. “I’m Cedric. She wrote to me.”

A pause. Then the crowd parted, and Elara stepped through.

She looked different than the last time he’d seen her—standing in the academy courtyard, a stable hand with muck on her boots and defiance in her eyes. Now she wore a rider’s leathers, patched and worn. A sword hung at her hip. She looked like someone who had learned to fight, and fast.

“Cedric.” Her voice was flat. “You came.”

“I brought something.” He reached into his coat—slowly, because her hand had drifted to her sword—and held out the sphere. It pulsed weakly in the firelight, and a murmur ran through the crowd.

Aldric stepped forward, his face grim. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s the source.”

Elara didn’t look at the sphere. She looked at Cedric. “Where’s Voss?”

“Watching.” He swallowed. “She knew. She knew I’d take it. She let me.”

“Then you’ve led her straight to us.” Elara’s voice was cold, but beneath it, something else—tiredness, maybe. Hurt. “You couldn’t just send a message. You had to *come*, with her knights at your back.”

“There are no knights at my back.” Cedric’s jaw tightened. “I chose. I chose you. I chose the dragons. I chose—damn it, Elara, I brought you the only thing that can stop her. Doesn’t that count for something?”

For a long moment, she just stared at him. Then, slowly, she reached out and took the sphere from his hands. The cold bit into her skin, but she didn’t flinch. She looked at it, then at him.

“It counts,” she said finally. “But it doesn’t make us even. Not yet.”

From the ridgeline above the village, a distant sound split the night—the shriek of a dragon, high and hungry. Ashfall shifted uneasily beside Cedric, wings half-spread.

Voss’s riders were coming. And they were not alone.

Elara’s eyes met Cedric’s, and for a single, breathless moment, they were just two kids from the academy with the world collapsing around them.

“Welcome to the fight,” she said.