Chapter 196 Part 2
**Avery**
“Your kind fought,” he said, his gaze sweeping over the five powerful dragons standing beside me. “Gods, how you fought. The sky burned for a century. The very fabric of reality was torn and re-woven. But the force was absolute. Dragons fell like autumn leaves in a storm. Entire bloodlines, erased. Their magic was unmade, their cities turned to dust.”
His eyes found mine again, filled with a pain I now understood was not just his own, but a reflection of all he had witnessed. “The Ravens were tasked with… the harvest. But we refused to be blind executioners. We saw the injustice. We tried to be selective. We took only those whose rage had twisted them into monsters, the ones who were truly deserving of an end. We let countless others escape, to hide, to live on in the shadows, hoping to preserve what little was left.”
He paused, a bitter, self-deprecating smile touching his lips. “Our compassion was seen as defiance. For refusing to carry out the full extent of the decree, we were punished. The force we defied couldn't unmake us, but it could imprison us. It created a cage, a place outside of time and reality, built from our own power turned against us. Blackbriar.”
The name fell like a stone in the silence. The cursed town I freed. The hell he had endured. It wasn't a punishment for a crime; it was a punishment for mercy.
“Adrik… your father… he was a leader in the resistance,” Donn said softly. “One of the most powerful and most feared. He saw our selectivity not as mercy, but as cowardice. A half-measure that prolonged the agony. The last time I saw him, before the cage fell, he found me on a battlefield, surrounded by the souls of his kin I had just reaped. He didn’t fight me. He just looked at me.”
Donn’s voice cracked, just for a second. “He said, ‘You think you are saving them, Reaper? You are just picking which branches to prune from a dying tree. One day, you will be in a cage of your own, and you will regret everything. You will regret not standing with us when you had the chance.’”
The cabin was utterly silent, save for the soft, rhythmic pulse of the bracelet on my wrist. The weight of his story settled over me, a crushing mantle of grief for a world I never knew, for a people I’d never met. The anger I’d felt moments ago was a ghost, a hollow echo. All that was left was a profound, aching sorrow.
I stepped forward, closing the small space between us, and wrapped my arms around his waist, burying my face in his chest. His body was rigid for a moment, surprised, before he melted against me, his own arms coming around me in a desperate, clinging embrace. I felt a shudder wrack his frame.
I tilted my head back and kissed him. It wasn’t a kiss of passion, but of acceptance. Of understanding. A kiss that said, I see you. All of you.
“You did what you thought you had to,” I whispered against his lips. “They put you in an impossible position. In the end, you saved me, and I saved you. That’s all that matters now.” I pulled back slightly, my eyes boring into his. “If my dad has a problem with it, then he can talk to me.”
A low chuckle broke the tension. It was Alden. He was leaning against the bookshelf, his ancient eyes filled with a mixture of sorrow and immense pride.
“You sound like your mother,” he said, his voice warm. “She never let a god, a king, or a cosmic decree stand in her way when it came to the ones she loved.” He smiled, a genuine, heartfelt expression. “And I think you will handle them even better than she did.”
When we returned to the palace, the world felt different. Sharper. The shadows in the corners of the grand halls seemed deeper, the moonlight through the high windows colder. I felt changed. The knowledge of my heritage, of the great dying, of my father’s true identity, had settled deep within my bones.
The bracelet on my wrist was no longer just a piece of jewelry. It was a conduit, an anchor. And through it, I felt him. Adrik. His darkness, his ancient power, followed me. It wasn't a menacing presence, not yet. It was a call, a whisper in the back of my mind, a thrum in the shadows just at the edge of my vision. A promise.
I knew, with a certainty that chilled me and thrilled me in equal measure, that he would come soon. The lonely, reclusive dragon king would come for his daughter. And I hoped, with every fiber of my being, that when he did, he would see not just the daughter of the woman he loved, but an ally.
Because my purpose was suddenly crystal clear, stretching far beyond my wedding, beyond the eggs growing within me. Donn’s story hadn’t just given me a past; it had given me a future. A mission.
I looked at my mates, at my Reaper, at the ancient lava snail who was my guide. We were a force of our own. And together, we could do more than just survive.
We could free them all.
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