I remember this.
I remember him.
Not Morgrith. The presence in the vision wasn't him—was someone else, something else, a magnificent creature of scales and wings and terrible, beautiful power. A dragon who had loved with the same desperate intensity I felt burning through the bond now.
A dragon who had been rejected.
I remember running.
The vision vanished as quickly as it came.
I was on my knees somehow, hands still pressed to Morgrith's, shaking so badly I could barely hold myself upright. The transformation was settling into my bones—I felt it like growing pains, like muscles stretching to accommodate new shapes, like my entire being reorganizing itself around something ancient and vast.
The vellum had absorbed our mingled blood. As I watched, trembling, it sealed itself with a pulse of dark light—the terms we'd negotiated becoming permanent, binding, written in magic older than human memory.
"It's done," Morgrith breathed.
He was glowing.
Not just his eyes but his whole body, limned in faint starlight that seemed to radiate from within. More power returned to him in this single moment than in the previous four days combined. I could feel it through the bond—the shadows responding to him with renewed eagerness, the vast darkness of his nature stirring awake from its enforced slumber.
My surrender had given him back more of himself than weeks of rest could have managed.
I looked at my marked forearms. The shadow-fractals had spread past my elbows now, crawling toward my shoulders like living vines. Beautiful. Strange. Permanent.
Mine.
"What did you see?"
Morgrith's voice was quiet. Careful. His glow was fading, settling into something more manageable, but his eyes—his eyes were bright again, searching my face with an intensity that made my breath catch.
"At the end," he clarified. "Your face changed. You were . . . somewhere else."
I didn't know how to explain it. Memories that weren't mine. An ancient sky. A dragon who wasn't him. A love that had terrified someone named Evara so badly she'd run from it.
"I don't know," I said honestly. My voice came out rough, scraped raw by the intensity of what we'd just done. "Something old. Something that felt like . . . remembering."
His expression flickered with something I couldn't read. Recognition, maybe. Or fear. Or hope so desperate it had to hide itself behind neutrality.
But he didn't press.
"Rest now," he said softly. "Let the transformation settle. We can explore what you saw when you're stronger."
I nodded. Let him help me to my feet. Let him lead me back to the nursery, where the weighted blankets waited and the ceiling-stars wheeled their endless patterns.
Let myself be cared for.
And tried not to think about the ancient love that was starting to feel less like someone else's memory and more like something I'd lost.
Themessagearrivedatdawn.
I was in the nursery, wrapped in the lingering warmth of dreams I couldn't quite remember, when the shadows in the corner of the room began to move with purpose. They gathered and twisted, forming shapes that resolved slowly into script—letters that burned with faint starlight, a message only Morgrith could read.
He was beside me in an instant. I hadn't heard him enter, but suddenly his warmth pressed against my back, his breath stirring my hair as he studied the shadowed words. Through the bond, I felt his tension spike.
"What is it?" My voice was rough with sleep.
"Sereis." He reached out and the shadows dissolved at his touch, their message delivered. "Three candidates have been identified—women with bonding resonance signatures that match the frequency we're seeking for Evara's soul."