Unbroken.
Defiant.
Exactly as dangerous as they fear I might be, even if I don’t understand why.
Chapter Seven
RAZE
A Week Later
I’ve let her rot down there for seven days, iron burning her skin, cold seeping into her bones, darkness pressing against her skull until most humans would be begging for death just to make it stop. Seven days of Wreck feeding on her terror through the viewing slot, of complete isolation broken only by the bare minimum sustenance required to keep her breathing. Seven days to teach her that defiance has consequences, that touching my flame comes with a price she cannot afford to pay.
The flame in the dome burns brighter every time I pass it, mocking me with colors that shouldn’t exist, pulsing with life it hasn’t shown me in decades. Gold threads through crimson, blue edges the dancing fire, and beneath it all runs something else entirely, something that tastes like her scent on the wind, wild, untamed, andabsolutely infuriating.
My boots echo on stone as I descend the stairs to the lower levels, each step carrying me deeper into the mountain’s belly, where we keep the things too dangerous to let roam free. The temperature drops with every turn of the spiral, cold enough that moisture freezes on the walls in delicate patterns that catch torchlight and throw it back in fractured rainbows. The air down here tastes stale, recycled through too many centuries without seeing the sun, thick with the weight of too many bodies that entered these corridors and never left.
I reach her door and stop, my hand hovering over the lock as something in my chest tightens without permission. The flame’s response to her touch haunts me in ways I refuse to examine too closely, whispering possibilities I can’t afford to entertain.
Humans break.
They always break.
Fear, pain, and isolation strip them down to their base components until nothing remains except the instinct to survive at any cost.
Sheshouldbe broken.
The lock disengages under my touch, mechanisms clicking with sounds that promise there’s no escape from the inside, no hope of freedom without my explicit permission. The door swings inward on hinges that don’t creak, despite their obvious age, revealing the cell beyond bathed in that weak, flickering light that does more to cast shadows than to eliminate them.
She’s sitting against the far wall exactly where I left her a week ago, chains pooled around her wrists and ankles in heavy coils of iron that have burned patterns into her skin. The raw wounds stand out in stark relief against pale flesh, angry and red, weeping slightly where metal has eaten through layers of epidermis to expose the vulnerable tissue beneath. Bruises bloom across her exposed arms in varying shades of purple and yellow, marks left by cold and iron working in synchronization to break her down piece by piece.
But she doesn’t flinch when the door opens.
She doesn’t cower.
She doesn’t beg.
She just looks at me with eyes that should be dull with despair and exhaustion, but instead burn with something harder, more dangerous than anything I’ve seen in a human who’s spent seven days chained in darkness.
Defiance, raw and unbroken.
Absolutely intoxicating in ways that make my dragon stir beneath layers of ice and curse, interested despite every rational instinct screaming that she is a problem I don’t need.
“Why. Won’t. You. Break?” The question leaves my mouth before conscious thought approves it, genuine curiosity bleeding through the glacial control I maintain over every word, every gesture, every breath. “Humansalwaysbreak. Fear does that… isolation, pain, you should bebeggingme for mercy by now, promising anything if I’ll make it stop!” I growl.
Her lips curve into something that might be a smile if it carried any warmth instead of the bitter edge that makes it look more like a snarl. Blood has dried in her hair, crusting against her scalp where wounds from the crash haven’t properly healed in the absence of medical attention. Her clothes are filthy, torn in places, stained with blood and dirt, and gods only know what else she’s been sitting in for the past week.
“Becausefuck you! That’s why.” The words land with the force of a physical blow, sharp and cold, carrying enough venom to poison rivers. She doesn’t raise her voice, doesn’t scream or rage, or give me the satisfaction of seeing genuine emotion. Just delivers the statement in a dead, even cadence, like my question is a minor inconvenience rather than a challenge.
Something cracks.
Not loudly.
Not obviously.
But I register the fracture running through the glacial armor I’ve built around whatever passes for a heart in creatures like me, a hairline fissure that shouldn’t exist, that can’t exist, because allowing prisoners to affect me is how mistakes get made and empires crumble.
I step into the cell, my presence filling the small space until there’s nowhere for her to look except at me, and the temperature plummets in response to the confusion and frustration warring beneath my skin. Frost races across stone, climbing walls and coating the ceiling in layers thick enough to crack mortar. Ice spreads from my boots in unique patterns thatreach toward her with translucent fingers before stopping just short of touching the iron chains.