Page 244 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
As though the man standing before them was no longermerely a drakonian king, but something far older, something that had shed the limits of mortality without quite abandoning its shape.
Kai approached him first.
The two men embraced, clapping each other’s backs in a brief, wordless greeting. Zaydan followed with a respectful nod, and Isla and Arena inclined their heads in turn.
No one spoke.
Then Ash’s golden glare shifted.
It fell upon his sister.
Dawn held her breath.
She expected tears. A desperate reunion. Arms thrown around each other after everything that had been lost. But Alina did none of that.
She walked forward with steady steps and, without a word, reached up to pull aside her rasguita and karash, uncovering her face, revealing the ruin of her features and the broken remnants of her horns.
Ash stared at her.
And not a single emotion broke across his face.
‘So it’s true,’ Alina said, her voice edged with something sharp and brittle. ‘You’re alive.’
Ash gave a single nod. Then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, he stepped forward and pressed a kiss to his sister’s cheek.
From where she stood, Dawn saw the way Alina stiffened beneath the touch, her entire body going rigid for the briefest of moments.
A quiet sigh escaped her.
And without another word, she turned and strode into the castle.
Mareena lingered a heartbeat longer. Her gaze locked ontoAsh’s, something unspoken passing between them, something measured, and deliberate. He returned the look in kind, as though acknowledging a game neither had yet named.
Then she, too, followed Alina inside.
And just like that, Dawn was alone.
Alone beneath the looming shadow of the castle, staring at the man who had once held her heart so completely and shattered it without mercy.
When Ash’s golden eyes found hers, it felt as though the fracture split open all over again.
Raw.
Unhealed.
For a fleeting moment, she wondered if he could recognise her beneath the borrowed wyverian form. Surely not. How could he?
But the way he stepped towards her told her everything she needed to know. Heknew.
Of course he knew.
‘Hello, Adara,’ he said.
The name struck like a blade.
Dawn lifted her hands, and green smoke curled from her fingers, rising like something alive. It wrapped around her, unravelled the illusion, until her true form stood bare before him.
She would not face him wearing another’s skin.
