The morning after the truth came out, I woke before everyone else.
That was nothing unusual. Since the day I first arrived in Velanthar, waking before dawn had been part of me — fear at first, then caution, then habit, and finally just the quiet reality that my mind carried too much for sleep to hold me past sunrise.
What was unusual was how I felt that morning.
Lighter.
For months, the secret of the dragon eggs had pressed against my chest like a stone I could never set down. I had guarded it alone, feared for it alone, carried it so long that the loneliness had fused with the weight itself. Now, after telling Vayrënna, Kaelith, and Lyaris everything — the eggs, the dragons, Elyndra, Ignarion, all of it — the burden hadn't vanished. But it was no longer mine alone.
That changed more than I expected.
