Lucius POV
The irony tasted like ash.
I came to that mountain with blood on my mind and a plan so simple a child could have walked me through it: find the dragon, kill the dragon, take her — my mate — away from whatever maw had wanted to devour her. Rescue, reclaim, punish. There was poetry to it. A clean line: predator cut down, prey recovered. Except life, as usual, was noisier and far less obliging than my schemes.
I had expected to find her dead—tiny and broken, the ritual completed, her light spent to fill those eggs. I imagined grief, that hot, clean grief that lets you close a chapter and move on. I had planned for the theatrics: storm into the cave, cradle the corpse that had belonged to my mate, kiss the ashes of that final betrayal, and drag her back to Rosa to be judged and punished. That, at least, would have been honest. That would have been what the Oath demanded.
