The Dragon Queen Selection

PROLOGUE: The Binding

Four hundred years ago.

The Hollow Mountain.

VEYRAXIS.

The chains were made of obsidian and sorrow.

I remember the way they felt, cold against my scales, heavier than any mountain, forged from magic that had no right to exist. The humans called it dragonfire steel. They believed it was the only thing strong enough to hold us.

Fools.

The only thing strong enough to hold us down was love. And they had poisoned that long ago.

"Lower her!"

The voice belonged to a king. I never bothered to learn his first name, but he was from the infamous Valemont family. The bloodline that has sought to control our kind for centuries. They all blended together after the first century, same greed, same fear, same desperate hunger for power they could never truly possess.

My wings had been bound. My claws shackled. My fire, my beautiful, terrible fire, smothered beneath layers of enchantment I could feel pressing against my lungs like drowning.

But I was not dead.

That was their mistake.

They should have killed me.

The cavern stretched beneath me, endless and dark. The Hollow Mountain, they called it. A prison built inside the bones of the earth, sealed with spells and blood and the screams of my children.

I had watched them die.

One by one.

The hatchlings first, small and moonwhite and full of power. The humans had been afraid of them. Afraid of what they would become, because they came from my line. So they killed them before they could grow.

Then the older ones. The ones who had flown beside me for centuries. The ones who had trusted me to protect them.

I could still hear my eldest daughter's voice, echoing in my skull:

Mother. Mother, help me. Mother...

Silence.

Always silence, in the end.

"Secure the chains!"

I did not struggle.

That surprised them. They had expected rage, fire, vengeance. They had expected me to burn this mountain down around us, to take them with me into the dark.

But I had learned something in my long life.

Revenge was not a fire.

It was a seed.

And seeds needed time to grow.

The last chain snapped into place. The king stepped forward, his face pale beneath his crown, his hands trembling despite his authority.

He was afraid of me.

Good.

"Veyraxis," he said, and his voice echoed off the stone walls, "by the power vested in me by the Dragon Council and the blood of the old kings, I sentence you to eternal imprisonment beneath the Hollow Mountain. You will not fly. You will not speak. You will not burn."

I lifted my head.

The chains pulled tight. The magic burned.

But I lifted my head anyway.

And I looked at him.

Not with rage.

Not with grief.

With promise. A promise I would fulfill.

"You will die," I said quietly. "Your children will die. Your children's children will die. And when your bloodline has weakened and your kingdom has crumbled and your precious dragons have forgotten why they made an oath with humans in the first place..."

I smiled.

"I will come back."

The king's face went white.

"Seal the chamber!" he shouted. "Seal it now!"

The stones rose around me.

The darkness swallowed me whole.

And I waited.

------------------

Four hundred years later.

The Valemont Palace.

CROWN PRINCE CASSIAN.

The throne room was too hot.

It was always too hot.

I stood at the base of the dais, arms folded, jaw tight, while my father's voice droned on about duty and legacy and the bloody future of the kingdom.

Beside me, my brother Prince Evander stood like a statue, perfect posture, perfect composure, perfect heir. He'd been standing like that since we were children. I'd always hated it.

"Our sources confirm that Norwyn is against us," the King said, his grey beard bristling with every word. "The northern passes are no longer safe. If war comes..."

"If war comes," I interrupted, "we have our dragons. They don't."

"Dragons are not enough. We don't have nearly as many as we used to have. Especially not enough bonded dragons," my father corrected sharply. "Taheer is bonded to you, Cassian. Not the army. Not the kingdom. You. And if you refuse to ride..."

"I don't refuse to ride."

"But you refuse to do anything else."

Silence.

My mother sat on the throne beside him, her hands folded in her lap, her expression unreadable. She had been unreadable my entire life.

"The Dragon Queen Selection begins in three weeks," the Queen said smoothly. "You will attend. You will participate. You will find a wife worthy enough to bond with a dragon. And by the end of thirteen weeks, you will be married."

I laughed.

Actually laughed.

"Thirteen weeks? You want me to choose a wife in thirteen weeks?"

"We want you to stop drinking and whoring your way through the capital," my mother replied, her voice never rising above a murmur. "The selection is a formality. You know as well as we do that the choices have already been made. You already know the ladies from the most prestigious noble houses who should be your choice."

"I haven't agreed to anything."

"You don't have to agree," my father growled. "You're the crown prince. You do what's expected of you."

"Expected." I tasted the word like poison. "And what about what I expect? What about what I want?"

"You want nothing," Evander said quietly.

I turned to look at him.

His blue eyes met mine, calm, steady, unreadable in a way that reminded me too much of our mother.

"You've spent the last few years running," he continued. "From the palace. From your duties. From the crown. From everything."

"That's not..."

"It is," Evander cut in. "And you know it. The Dragon Queen selection is a chance to move forward. To build something. To stop hiding."

My hands curled into fists.

"I am not hiding."

"Then prove it." My father rose from his throne. "Attend the selection. Choose a wife. Take your place as the heir you were always meant to be."

The room felt smaller than it had a moment ago.

The walls pressed in.

The torchlight flickered.

And somewhere deep in the mountains, I could feel Taheer stirring, ancient and patient and waiting.

Waiting for me to become the man I was supposed to be.

"What if I don't want this?" I asked. Quietly. Honestly.

My father's expression didn't change.

"Then you should have thought of that before bonding with Taheer, the most powerful dragon in the kingdom."

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