While I was staring, I felt something strange stir inside me. It wasn't fear, and it wasn't hatred either. It was something else. Something closer to admiration.
Then I heard a voice inside my head—a voice that wasn't mine. A faint whisper, like a distant breeze.
"You are part of this too. You always have been."
A shiver ran through me to the marrow.
It was Glacier's voice—my white dragon—calling to me from somewhere far away.
In that moment, I realized that Kieran had been right about everything. We weren't merely bound by fate. We were tied by something deeper. Something ancient—older than the mountains themselves.
Malakai looked at me, his eyes glinting in the darkness.
"Finally," he said quietly. "You're beginning to understand."
I looked back at him, suddenly aware that there was no turning back. The truth burned like fire, and I had to decide: either extinguish that fire… or let it consume the entire world.
Kieran did not return until dawn.
I remained in his chamber; the idea of returning to the cell never even crossed my mind. I sat on the edge of the wide bed, watching the sky shift from black to gray through the open balcony.
Each disappearing star felt like a truth from my old life slowly dissolving into nothing.
When he finally entered, the dust of battle clung to him.
The scent of smoke and sweat surrounded him. His black hair was disheveled, and his gray eyes carried a weariness deeper than mere combat.
He tossed his sword onto the table with a loud clang, then pulled off his gloves with his teeth.
"We put out the fire," he said hoarsely. "But the forest will need years to recover."
"And the hunters?" I asked, trying not to stare at the way the muscles in his arms shifted as he removed his armor. "Dead. No identities." He looked at me, and his hands stilled. "But their weapons… they were forged in Nevis. Made specifically to pierce dragon scales."
It felt like I had been stabbed.
"That proves nothing," I said sharply. "Anyone can get weapons from Nevis."
"True."
He stepped closer, slowly. The smell of smoke, sweat, and something distinctly masculine surrounded him in an unsettling way. "But not just anyone knows the single weak point in Nyktis's scales." He paused.
"The spot beneath his left wing."
My mouth opened, but the words froze in my throat.
I knew that information well. It was written in the ancient legends of our tribe, preserved in scrolls hidden within the deepest libraries of the palace.
Only members of the royal family—and high advisers like Valkar—knew of it.
"There," he murmured, now only a few steps away.
"Now you understand. Betrayal doesn't come only from the outside. Sometimes… it grows inside your own house."
I lifted my chin, trying to hide the tremor running through my body.
"And yet you ask me to trust you?" I said.
"The man who still keeps me imprisoned here?"
He didn't look angry.
Instead, he suddenly dropped to one knee before me, bringing himself level with my eyes.
The movement was so unexpected that I instinctively leaned back.
His closeness was overwhelming.
Up close, I could see the exhaustion in his eyes… and something else.
A desperate hunger for truth. "I'm not asking for your trust," he said in a low, unsettling voice. "I'm asking you to trust your hatred for Valkar. And to trust your desire to protect your dragon—and your people—from his greed."
Slowly, he raised his hand.
For a moment I thought he was going to touch my face, but he stopped just inches away.
The heat radiating from him was almost unbearable.
"Trust between us," he continued quietly,
"can come later… if we survive long enough to build it."
In that closeness, in the silence that followed his words, I could hear my heartbeat pounding like war drums.
It wasn't fear.
It was realization.
The realization that this man—this enemy—was the first person who truly saw me.
Not as a princess.
Not as a prisoner.
But as a possible partner in a terrifying destiny.
And the part of me that should have hated him began wondering what our trust might look like… if we chose to build it together.
We remained like that for a long time.
He knelt before me while I sat on the edge of the bed, our breaths mingling in the narrow space between us.
In his gray eyes I saw the reflection of the fires he had just come from—and a storm of emotions he was struggling to contain.
Anger.
Exhaustion.
And something else…
Something like fragile hope.
"How do we even begin?" I finally whispered, breaking the silence that had grown more intimate than any touch.
He didn't smile, but the intensity in his gaze softened slightly.
"With honesty," he said. "You ask me any question you want answered, and I will answer truthfully. Then you'll do the same."
I glanced around the room before looking back at him.
It was dangerous.
Trust was a double-edged weapon.
"Why didn't you tell me all this from the beginning?" I asked. "Why the deception? Why the imprisonment and threats?"
"Because I needed to know who you really were," he replied without hesitation. "I needed to see you under pressure. To know whether the spoiled girl of Nevis would break… or whether the woman I saw in your eyes that day on the battlefield would emerge."
He exhaled softly. "My instincts weren't wrong".
His honesty was painfully sharp.
The hatred I felt toward him loosened slightly, making room for curiosity.
"And what did you see in my eyes that day?"
"I saw myself," he whispered.
As if admitting a terrible sin."I saw someone crushed under the weight of responsibility. Someone afraid of failure… but determined to protect those she loves—even if it costs her life."
My chest tightened.
He had described me with painful accuracy.
"Now it's my turn," he said, his eyes still fixed on mine. "Why did you fight so stubbornly that day? Why didn't you retreat when defeat was inevitable?"
I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering the moment.
The screams of my soldiers.
The sight of Glacier in pain.
"Because running wasn't an option," I said quietly. "Because if I surrendered, Valkar would have the perfect excuse to seize full control of Nevis. I had to prove that we would fight until the very end."
When I opened my eyes again, he was looking at me with unmistakable admiration. "I suspected as much," he said.
"That's not just courage. That's strategy."
"War is always strategy," I replied. "And sometimes… love is too."