Dragon’s Crown — Chapter 6: The Price

The second wave was not eight priests. It was twenty.

Kael saw them from the high ridge an hour after the lava blockade, moving in a loose formation around the obstacle he had created. They were not rushing. They were not panicked. They were adapting — splitting into small groups, sending scouts along the obsidian walls to find alternative routes. Professional. Patient. Well-supplied.

Verath, he said. There are more of them.

I know. The ancient dragon’s voice was tired. This is what the Iron Priests do. They do not retreat when they fail. They escalate. The first team was an extraction team — eight priests sent to retrieve the hatchling and kill anyone who stood in their way. The second team is a suppression team. They will burn this section of the Zone to glass if necessary.

Burn it to glass? Kael looked at the black landscape spreading beneath them, the lava rivers and volcanic ridges and the cave where Ember waited. That would kill everything. Including you.

Including me. Verath’s broken wing shifted against the stone. But it would not kill them, because they have prepared for this. The priests carry heat-shielded tents and cold-stone rations. They can wait out a controlled burn for days. What they cannot do is find us once the smoke clears, because they do not know this terrain the way I do.

Kael’s mind was working fast, running through everything he had learned in seven months. The lava channels. The sulfur vents. The natural basins where water collected. He thought about the trap he had built for the six-legged predator, the pit hidden under ash and branches.

You want to disappear, he said. Become smoke and wait.

Not exactly. Verath opened her eyes. I want you to take Ember and disappear. I want you to find the place the priests do not know exists — the deep canyons beyond the eastern ridge where the lava runs so hot that nothing grows and nothing survives. Except, apparently, the things that do.

You want me to run.

I want you to survive. There is a difference. Verath’s voice carried an edge that might have been frustration or might have been something older. I have lived two hundred and seventeen years. I have seen seven generations of riders rise and fall. I have watched the Iron Priests grow from a regional cult into a mountain-wide authority. I know how this story ends if we stay and fight.

How does it end?

With me dead and Ember captured and you slowly broken by whatever they decide to do to the boy who stole a dragon from the bloodline they spent two centuries exterminating. Verath lowered her head until her eyes were level with his. I do not want that story. I want a different story. One where the bloodline survives not because of my strength but because of yours.

Ember chirped from inside the cave. The sound was small and fierce and certain, and Kael felt something in his chest respond to it — a pull, a responsibility, a clarity that made the choice simple even though it was not easy.

I will not leave you to die alone, he said.

You will not. Verath’s voice was unexpectedly gentle. I am going to collapse the cave entrance once you are inside. Ember and I will be together when the fire comes. It is not the ending I would have chosen, but it is the one that keeps the hatchling alive, and that is what matters.

Kael felt his throat close. He thought about the first time he had sat with Verath, carving channels in the volcanic rock, trying to save something that was already dying. He thought about Ember’s warm weight on his shoulder and the way the hatchling had looked at him like he was the most important thing in the world.

I will come back, he said. When it is safe. When I can fight them. I will come back and I will find you and I will not let them win.

Verath made a sound that was almost a laugh. That is what riders used to say. Before the Cull took all of them away. Verath’s mismatched eyes burned with something ancient and sad and fierce. Go, Kael. Take the eastern passage. Do not look back. And when you are old enough and strong enough — burn them all.

Kael picked up Ember, who was surprisingly heavy now — the hatchling had grown in the weeks since the hatching, scales thickening, wings strengthening. He held the dragon against his chest and walked toward the eastern passage without looking back.

Behind him, he heard the sound of stone grinding against stone — Verath collapsing the cave entrance one large boulder at a time.

The last thing he heard before the passage swallowed him was Verath’s voice, very far away, singing something in a language older than the mountains.