[Evelyn's POV]
Draven pulls me away from Cassandra's body with the firm, measured strength of someone who knows that if he doesn't do this now, I'll shatter in a way that can't be repaired.
His hands close around my arms and lift me to my feet, separating me from the weight in my lap, from the body that was my sister, from the blood that has soaked into my leathers and will never wash out.
I try to fight him. Not physically — I don't have the strength left for that — but verbally. I’m broken… A stream of words that don't make sentences is the only thing I am capable of right now.
"Draven, this power wasn't mine, it wasn't something I chose, it just erupted and I couldn't stop it—"
"Listen to me carefully."
"I was trying to save her, I was trying to break the cycle without anyone dying, I told her we could both walk away—"
"Evelyn! I need you to hear what I'm about to say."
"She reached for my hand at the end. She reached for me like I was something worth reaching for, and the last thing she felt was the light that killed her—"
His hands frame my face, forcing me to look at him. His eyes are dark and certain, anchored in a way that makes me want to cling to him.
"You didn't choose to kill her. It’s your power that chose to keep you alive. Those are not the same thing."
The words land somewhere deep in my chest, in the hollow space where grief has carved out everything else.
"It doesn't matter… She's still dead, and I'm the one who killed her. The prophecy said one sister would break the other, and I'm the one still standing."
"The bond acted to protect you from a killing strike. Cassandra committed to that thrust knowing what it would force you to do. She made her choice, and the power made its choice."
"That doesn't make it hurt any less."
"No, it doesn't, but understanding that you didn't choose this — that matters. It will matter more as time passes."
I hear him. I don't believe him — not yet, maybe not for a long time — but I hear him. The words sink into the wreckage of my mind and find purchase somewhere, a handhold in the chaos.
He leads me away from the cliff. It was away from Cassandra's body, away from the blood-soaked stone, from the place where the prophecy ended and everything else began.
I let him guide me because I don't have the will to do anything else. My legs move. My feet find the ground, so my body functions even in the absence of any instruction from my mind.
The compound corridors are full of wounded — medics rushing past, warriors clutching injuries, the aftermath of war written on every face. And then they see me.
Their expressions shift as recognition dawns — respect giving way to fear, fear mixing with pity, pity tangling with awe. They know what I did, as the story has already spread.
"They do not know what to feel about you. You have become something they cannot categorize."
It’s Aspis's voice in my mind, distant but present. She's still at the cliff, grounded by her damaged wing, unable to follow.
"I feel like nothing, Aspis. I should be someone after what happened, but I'm just empty inside."
"It is the beginning of grief, not the end of it. The feeling will come later, when there is room for it to exist."
"What if it never comes and I stay empty forever?"
"We will learn to live with emptiness together, but I do not think that is your fate. You feel too deeply to remain hollow for long."
People step aside as we pass. I am the woman who killed her own sister with moonlight. I am the one who broke the prophecy, the first white dragon rider in centuries, consort to the lord of Black Dragon, and I feel like nothing at all.
Draven takes me to our chambers. The door closes behind us, sealing us in silence. He moves to stand in front of me and begins removing my armor piece by piece — methodical, careful, the way he would handle a blade that might shatter.
Each piece falls to the floor with a dull thud, and with each piece, I feel lighter and more exposed. The armor was holding me together.
When the last piece is gone, I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at my hands.
The moonlight is still there, moving and responding to emotions I can't control, flickering around my fingers like a candle flame in an unpredictable wind.
The power that killed my sister lives in my skin, and I can feel it waiting, patient and terrible, ready to erupt again if something threatens me.
"What if it happens again?" The question escapes before I can stop it. "What if someone attacks me and I can't stop it? That power erupts again and kills someone else I'm trying to protect instead of harm?"
Draven sits beside me on the bed. He reaches out and takes my hands, moonlight and all, wrapping his fingers around mine without flinching at the glow.
"The power is part of you now, Evelyn. It's not something we can remove or suppress or pretend doesn't exist."
"So what do we do? How do we make it safe?"
"I would say you should learn its patterns. We train your control and build safeguards around the moments when control isn't possible. We do whatever it takes."
"And if the power is too strong and my will is too weak to contain it?"
"Let’s face that when it comes, but I'm not going to let you carry this alone. Whatever the power does, whatever it costs, we carry it. You are not facing this as a woman alone with a burden."
Through the bond, Aspis sends warmth — damaged, grounded, but alive and present. She can't be here physically, but she's here in every way that matters, her consciousness wrapped around mine like a blanket against the cold.
Beneath the warmth, I feel a thread of ancient sadness, deep and old, as though the dragon has lived this grief before, in some other life, through some other bond.
Riders who lost what they loved, and dragons who watched their partners break under the weight of what they'd done. The ancestral memory carries more pain than I ever imagined, and Aspis shares it with me now so I know I'm not alone in this.
"You are not the first to grieve what power has taken, and you will not be the last. But you will survive this, because I will not let you fall."
I close my eyes.
In the darkness behind my lids, I feel Cassandra reaching for my hand — not as she was at the end, broken and dying, but as she might have been in another life. A sister reaching for a sister, and a hand extended in something other than violence.
Her fingers close around nothing but light.