Chapter 15 - The King in His Tower
High atop the Spire of Ravenskeep, King Ronald stood before his arched balcony, his ornate gold crown gleaming in the midday sun. Below him, the grand courtyard was filled with thousands of assembled citizens and soldiers, waiting for news of the fugitive child and the captive beast.
Ronald gripped the stone balustrade, his knuckles white. The burning horizon had told him what his messengers had not: his airborne armada had been utterly routed.
A sudden silence fell over the city below. The market chatter, the clattering of arms, the wind itself—everything ceased.
From the east, a shadow blanketed the sun.
It was not one dragon. It was two.
Leading the descent was the newly risen Zephyr, his ivory wings trailing ribbons of golden flame that cast daylight across the shadowed city. Flanking him was the scarred mother, her massive wings beating in steady, vengeful rhythm. The sheer downforce of their approach stripped the banners of the iron fist from the fortress walls, sending them fluttering down into the mud like fallen leaves.
Zephyr touched down atop the parapets of the royal palace, crushing the stone battlements beneath his massive talons. The crowd below fell into a stunned, breathless silence as Lyra stepped forward along the dragon’s neck, her tunic torn, her platinum hair whipping in the draft, her golden scales gleaming like royal armor under the open sun.
Ronald stumbled backward into his throne room, drawing his ancestral sword with shaking hands. “Treason!” he croaked, his voice thin and hollow against the vast sky. “Guards, slay the abomination!”
Not a single guard moved. The palace sentries slowly lowered their spears, looking up at the true heir of Queen Elene with eyes wide in superstitious dread.
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Lyra looked down at the usurper who had murdered her father and chained the skies. She raised her hand, and the ivory dragon’s chest began to glow with blinding, incinerating fire.
Just as Zephyr parted his jaws to deliver the final judgment, a deafening horn sounded from the northern pass—not a royal horn, but the war-horns of the forgotten Northern Clans, and with them, hundreds of wild drakes darkening the horizon."
