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I was eight when I pulled a giant fang from a dying dragon's wing. My uncle Gareth lured me into the jungle with a lie... Gareth: "Your father, King Alaric, is in danger somewhere in the forest. Stay here. I'll bring help." And then he left me there to die... and never came back. That's when I found the dragon. Blood covered its scales. Everyone in my kingdom feared dragons. But I couldn't leave it there to die. So I pulled the fang out. Its wing healed itself. The dragon lifted its head and looked at me like it had just recognized me. Before I could understand why, my parents came running. The dragon spread its wings... and flew away. Gareth wasn't happy I'd survived. Back then, I couldn't understand why. Years later, I finally understood. He wanted my father's crown. And when Gareth's guards dragged me into the throne room by my hair... I had no idea what he'd planned for me. I didn't even know what was happening until I was already through the throne room doors. They threw me down on the marble. I looked up. My mother was on her knees in the center of the room. My father was already on the floor beside her. His hands were bound behind his back. There was blood on his face. His eyes found mine the moment I came through the doors. He shook his head. Just once. Don't. Gareth, my uncle walked out from behind the throne. He was wearing my father's crown. He looked down at me on the floor and smiled. Not the smile of a man who had done something wrong. The smile of a man who had finally done what he always intended to. He stopped behind my mother. My mother turned her head. Just enough to look at me. "Isobel. Take care of yourself. And take care of Myron." She said, the last words from her mouth. "Mother Don’t say—" She held my gaze. She didn't look away. She didn't flinch. And then Gareth drew the blade across her throat in one clean motion. “No….Mother” The word tore out of me before I could stop it. Raw. Broken. My mother dropped. She hit the marble floor face first and I watched the blood spread from her throat in a dark, widening pool. I watched. I had no choice but to watch. “No…..”I screamed at the sight of my mother’s blood dripping on the floor. The sound came from somewhere so deep in my body I didn't know it existed. I didn't even recognize it as my own voice. My mother’s body was lying in front of me. This was the woman who had sat beside my bed every single night I was sick with fever. The woman who had braided my hair and burned her fingers learning how to bake because I had once said I liked sweet bread. The woman who had sacrificed every comfort, every pleasure of her own life to make sure mine was full. I threw myself forward. Both guards yanked me back so hard my shoulders nearly tore from their sockets. I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Their hands were locked around my arms like iron clamps, crushing down to the bone. I pulled against them with everything I had — every muscle, every ounce of weight — and I didn't move a little. Not even a little bit. I was screaming at my own body to do something, anything, and my body had nothing left to give. I couldn't even fill my lungs properly. The guard on my left had his forearm pressed across my chest so hard that each breath came in shallow, useless gasps. My mother was face down on cold marble and her blood was touching my knees. I again gathered all the strength left in my body to revolt against them. I was on my feet before I knew I was moving. They hit me from both sides and took me to the floor. My face cracked against the marble so hard my vision went white. My lip split open. My teeth cut into the inside of my mouth. I tasted blood. I didn't stop screaming. From the floor I watched my uncle walk to my father. My father. The man who had fed Gareth from his own table when Gareth had nothing. The man who had given Gareth land, title, soldiers, a seat at every council meeting, a place in our family — when Gareth deserved none of it. Not one piece of it. My father looked at me from the floor. He kept his eyes on mine. His mouth moved. I couldn't hear him over my own screaming. But I knew my name on his lips. I had seen it ten thousand times. Then Gareth drew the blade across his throat too. I stopped making noise. I don't know why. The sound just — left me. Like something inside had shut off entirely. I lay on the marble with a guard's boot pressed into my back and I stared at my father's body. At the blood moving across the floor toward me in a thin, steady line. At the crown sitting on my uncle's head — my father's crown, the same crown my father had worn every day. It was on Gareth's head. The Killer of my parents. Gareth was approaching me with the knife in his hands. He crouched down in front of me. He tilted his head. He looked at my face the way a man looks at something he has just acquired and is deciding what to do with. "Don't cry, It's unbecoming of a princess." he said. I couldn't stop crying. My whole body was shaking so hard my teeth were rattling against each other. I pressed my face into the marble and I cried. I cried until there was nothing left in me and still my body kept going. Then Gareth stood up straight and clasped his hands behind his back. “You should be happy that you and your brother are alive” He said. “Myron?” I whispered to myself. "Your brother fled," he said. "Myron slipped out through the east passage." He said it casually. "Fifteen years old. No weapon. No plan. Just his little legs carrying him into the dark." He threw his head back and laughed like someone had just told him the funniest thing he had ever heard. "He thinks he can escape me. That incompetent little boy actually thinks he can hide from me." He looked back down at me, and the smile didn't leave his face. "I will find him. And when I do, I will drag his corpse back here and drop it right in front of you." "I will make sure you are watching when I do it," he added. "So you understand exactly what happens to everyone you love." He gestured to the guards. They hauled me up. My legs wouldn't hold. They didn't slow down. They dragged me out of the throne room with my feet scraping against the floor, my hands reaching back toward my parents, even though nothing I did would ever bring them back. At the doorway I turned my head one last time. My mother. My father. Both on the cold marble floor. My uncle sitting down on my father's throne with my father's crown on his head. They threw me in the dungeon that same night. “You’re lucky, that you get to live” Gareth had said to me. I knew he kept me alive for a reason. A monster like Gareth does not keep people alive out of mercy. I was useful. I just didn't know how. Not yet. I was soon going to find out. Gareth's guards could come down to dungeons multiple times. They wanted to know where Myron would go. Which of my father's allies were still loyal? Which lords might shelter the true heir of Valmere? I told them nothing. They brought a whip. I told them nothing. They used it until my back was split open in lines so deep I could feel air touching places that had never seen light. I pressed my face into the wall. They used their fists. They slammed me into the wall hard enough to crack the back of my skull against the stone. On the days they didn't beat me, they found other ways. They made me pick garbage from the dungeon floor with my bare hands. Rotting food. Bones. Things I couldn't identify and didn't want to. They threw buckets of animal waste through the bars so that the smell soaked into my skin and my hair and my clothes and never left. So that every breath I took was a reminder that this was what I was worth to them. This was what I had been reduced to. They wanted every minute of my existence to feel like punishment. As long as Myron was out there — free, the true heir of Valmere — Gareth's grip on the throne was not complete. I was the bait. The leverage. The one thing that might eventually draw my brother out of hiding. But that wasn’t it. Myron can’t be the only reason. They wanted Myron. But if that was all they wanted — why keep me fed? Why keep me alive at all when I was clearly never going to talk? I was also something else. I just didn't know it yet. Gareth had a plan for me. Something bigger than a dungeon. Something that went beyond using me as leverage against Myron. But I had decided, I was not going to be the reason he got caught. I had made my peace with the dungeon. With the rats and the darkness and the boots on the stairs. What I had not made my peace with — what I never could have prepared for — was what would happen that night. That night the boots were different. I know every sound in this dungeon. The particular rhythm of the guard who brings the water. The heavier step of the one who brings the whip. These boots I have never heard of before. Two guards. Faces blank. Moving fast. One of them grabbed my arm and hauled me upright before I could speak. My legs buckled. I hadn't stood properly in weeks. He didn't slow down. He dragged me up the stairs with my bare feet scraping against every step. "Where are you taking me?" No answer. At the top of the stairs the second guard finally spoke. "We have a good news for you, dear princess" he said flatly. “What? Have they found my brother?” I asked? “No, even better. You’re being sold” Guard replied as if announcing celebrations. “Sold? To whom?” I asked. None of them replied. I stopped walking. I was in disbelief. The guard yanked me forward and kept moving. "Keep moving," he said. "Or I'll kill you here before the king gets the chance." As soon as I entered the Throne room. The throne room hit me like a physical blow. Light. People. The smell of burning candles and expensive perfume and the particular kind of tension that fills a room when something irreversible is about to happen. I was shoved forward and I hit the stone floor on my hands and knees. I looked up. And there he was. Gareth. That evil man, whom I once called my uncle. The man I had spent every waking moment in the dungeon dreaming of destroying. He sat on my father's throne. Wearing my father's crown. Watching me with that smug, slow smile of a man who has already won and knows it. I had nothing left. No strength. No pride. Nothing but the fire that had been burning in my chest since the day I understood what he had done. I squeezed every drop of moisture I had left onto my tongue and spat at his feet. "You incompetent coward. You had no courage to win the throne so you decided to kill my parents." Gareth gave me an evil smirk. "Save your strength, niece. You are going to need it." His voice was warm. Pleased with itself. He rose from the throne and walked toward me with his hands folded behind his back. He looked down at me the way a man looks at something he has already decided the value of. "The Dragon King has agreed to spare this kingdom." He paused, letting the silence do his work for him. "In exchange for you." The words landed like a stone dropped into still water. Damon, The Dragon King of Drakovia. Every child in every kingdom knew that name. Not from bedtime stories. From warnings. From the way adults dropped their voices when they said it. King Damon of Drakovia. Famous for all the wrong reasons. They said he burned his own palace on coronation night just to show his court what he was capable of. That somewhere beneath that skin was something not entirely human. And his brides. Five princesses. Five kingdoms. Each one walked through the doors of his castle. Not one walked back out alive. No bodies returned. No letters. Just silence — and the slow understanding that marriage to the Dragon King was not a marriage at all. It was an execution with a ceremony attached. And my uncle had just sold me to a monster. Just because he wanted to save himself from someone who was worse than him. I stared up at Gareth. "Why are you doing this?" His smile widened. "You thought I kept you alive to crown you as a princess of this kingdom?" HIs laughter echoed through the entire room. “Well, I am glad we had something that could be some use to the King of Drakovia” "No." The word came out before I could stop it. "No, you cannot—" "I can. And I already have." His voice dropped. I shook my head, scrambling to my feet on shaking legs. "I will die before I go. I will slit my own throat before I let you—" His hand shot out and closed around my throat. He pulled me close. His face was inches from mine. His breath was warm and smelled of wine. "Listen to me very carefully. You are going to marry King Damon. And if you so much as breathe a word of refusal—" He tightened his grip. "I will find Myron. I will hunt him to the ends of every realm. And I will skin him alive. Piece. By. Piece." My brother's name in his mouth felt like a hand reaching into my chest and squeezing. Tears burned down my face before I could stop them. "Do you understand me?" he said again. I nodded. Nodded helplessly. He released me. And I collapsed, gasping, my hands on my knees, my whole body shaking. "Good." He stepped back. "Take her to Lilith. Clean her up. Dragon King Damon arrives at dawn." The guards dragged me away. And somewhere in the back of my mind, behind the terror and the grief and the rage, one thought burned steadier than all the rest. Myron was still out there. And as long as he was alive, I had a reason to survive whatever came next. Two hours later, they brought me down. Dressed. Cleaned. Prepared for the slaughter. My golden hair had been washed and set back into a shine I had forgotten it was capable of, pulled into a tight, elegant bun. The scars on my body were hidden in my dress. Powder covered the hollows under my eyes, the bruise on my cheekbone, the gauntness that months of near-starvation had carved into my face. I looked exactly like a ghost bride. Ghost Bride of the Dragon King Like a corpse someone had dressed up and propped against a wall. His soldiers came first. Rows of them. Dressed in black armour with an insignia that caught the early light — a serpent-like dragon coiled around a blazing sun. Drakovia. Then, A massive black carriage rolled between them, flanked on all sides. Everything stopped. My heart. My breath. Time itself. Gareth's hand clamped around my arm and dragged me forward. The carriage door swung open. And he stepped out. The one whom they called The Dragon King! I could not see his face at first. But I felt it. The shift in the air. The way every person in that courtyard — soldiers, servants, even Gareth's hardened guards — seemed to pull back a fraction without meaning to. Like everybody in the vicinity understood instinctively that something apex had just entered the space. Gareth dropped to one knee. Every guard followed. Gareth yanked my arm. Hard. I fell to my knees on the gravel. And then I heard his footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Walking toward me. I kept my eyes down. His boots stopped directly in front of my face. "This is her?" His voice was deep. Quiet. "Yes, Your Majesty." Gareth's voice had taken on a performance I had never heard before. "Princess Isobel of Valmere. Pure-blooded daughter of the late King Alaric." A pause. "Stand." I dragged myself upright on shaking legs. And then I felt his finger. It tilted my chin up. And I looked at the Dragon King for the first time. He was young. That was the first thing that hit me. I had expected a monster. An ancient, scarred warlord with cruelty carved into every line of his face. I had built him up in the dark of the dungeon into something barely human. But this man could not have been older than thirty. Black hair. A jaw like carved stone. And eyes? Molten gold. Like the sun itself burned behind them. He studied my face with an expression I could not read. Then he looked back at Gareth. "Late King Alaric, Died by your hands, I hear." He asked in a low yet firm voice. "Yes, Your Majesty." Gareth's words tumbled out too fast. "He was a traitor to both our realms. His death brought peace." I dug my nails into my palms so hard I felt skin break. Every word out of his mouth was a lie. A carefully constructed lie spoken in front of people who had no reason to question it. My father — the man who had fed this snake from his own table, who had defended his name in court— was called a traitor by this very man whom he had trusted with his life. I wanted to lunge across the room. I wanted to grab Gareth by the collar and put his face in front of every single person standing in that throne room and scream — look at him. Look at him. This is your traitor. This man right here. Not my father.. But I kept my mouth shut. I had to. Because my brother, Myron was still out there. And every word that I spoke, would decide his fate, his life. Damon looked at me one more time. And I saw it. Behind the calculation, behind the impenetrable mask of a king who had never needed to show a single feeling to anyone — Hatred. Pure. Burning. My blood turned to ice. Why does this man look at me like I personally wronged him? Like he has been waiting for me specifically? He did not hate me the way you hate a stranger. He hated me the way you hate something that cost you something irreplaceable. "Lock it in the cage." It? The cage? Not her chambers. Not a carriage. A cage. I was not a bride, I was a prisoner being transported. I bit my tongue until I tasted blood but I did not cry. I would not give him the satisfaction of my tears in front of the entire courtyard. I lifted my chin instead. And through the bars of the cage, I watched Gareth bow and grovel and hand over chests of goods like a man completing a sale at a market. He never once looked at me. Not even to say goodbye. Then Damon walked to my cage and said, "This is not a marriage, it is your prison. You are my prisoner, little princess, and you will pay for the sins of your father, with your life." Sins of my father. What was he even talking about? My father was the kindest man I knew. What could he possibly have done to make a king look at his daughter like that? To make a king call a living human “it”. He had said “Lock It”, I was no more than an object for him. As the convoy moved out of the gates and the palace that used to be my home shrank behind me, one thing settled into my bones like the cold of a dungeon floor. Damon hated me. And I didn't even know why. I didn't know what history existed between my father and this king. What wound had been opened between Drakovia and Valmere that ran so deep it had followed me all the way here. My father had never spoken of Damon. Not once. Not even a name. Whatever had happened between them — I was about to pay for it with my life. I had escaped Gareth’s dungeons only to be burned in another hell. Drakovia announced itself before I could see it properly. I smelled the ocean first. Then I heard it — the relentless crash of waves against rock far below. And then I saw the castle. It rose from the edge of a cliff like it had grown there. Dragon shapes were carved into every railing of the bridge. Into every gate. Into every arch. This didn’t look like a palace to be built for beauty. It was built to contain secrets. Or to trap something inside. My cage door swung open and a guard's rough hand yanked me out. I stumbled. My bare feet hit cold, damp cobblestone. Around me, Damon's soldiers moved with the quiet precision of people who had done this many times. Loading, unloading, dispersing. Each one aware of exactly where they were supposed to be. None of them looked at me. Except to look away. Damon stepped down from his own carriage. Straightened his coat. His golden eyes swept the courtyard once and then found me, with the unerring accuracy of a man who always knew exactly where the problem was standing. "Take her. Keep her in her chambers until it is time." He turned away. "Time for what?" I asked. Nobody answered. I entered the chamber with a thousand questions. I sat on the edge of the bed and I let myself feel it for exactly three seconds. The fear. The grief. The disorientation of being ripped out of one nightmare and dropped into another that I understood even less. Three seconds. Then I shut it down. If I was going to survive whatever came next, I needed to think. Not feel. I didn't get the chance. A young woman entered, holding a crimson dress carefully over both arms like something precious. "I am Lira," she said gently. "His Majesty sent me. I am to help you prepare for the Trial." I looked at her. What exactly was the Dragon King preparing me for? And why did it require a dress the color of blood? "What trial?" I asked her. Lira's face went carefully blank like someone who has been told not to say something and is fighting their own conscience about it. "Lira. Please." I kept my voice even. She glanced at the door. Stepped closer. Lowered her voice to barely above a breath. "It is called the Trial by Fire." She swallowed. "Every princess that has gone through it—" She stopped. "None of them came out." The silence that followed was the loudest thing I had heard since my parents died. "None of them?" My voice came out very quiet. Lira shook her head, her eyes glistening. "I don't want to die," I said. And it was not the plea of a girl who had given up. It was the declaration of a girl who had her brother out there somewhere, alive, waiting, needing a sister who was still breathing. "Help me. Please. There must be something—" "There is nothing I can do." Lira's hands were trembling. "The king will have my head." "What are you both doing? Move!" The guard barked at us and I stumbled to my feet, my mind racing, and found nothing. No plan. No escape. No way out. I was going to go through something called a Trial by Fire and there was not a single thing I could do about it. But as Lira helped me into the crimson dress, her fingers quick and careful, she paused and reached into her pocket and pressed something cool and thin into my palm. An old bracelet. Before I could ask, she spoke so quietly I had to strain to hear it. "Your father murdered the King's mother. In the Drakovian war. Ten years ago." The bracelet went cold in my hand. "That is why he hates you," Lira whispered. “My father?” I whispered. My gentle, kind, soft-spoken father who used to read to me before bed and save the best fruit from the harvest for my brother and me. Had killed Damon's mother? The floor felt like it was moving under my feet. "I didn't know," I whispered. "I know," Lira said. And then the guard was at the door again, his voice cracking across the room like a whip, and there was no more time for anything except putting one foot in front of the other. The throne room was vast. Rows of faces turned toward me the moment I walked in. Six councilmen in their formal robes. An elderly woman to Damon's left wearing a queen's crown and an expression of open distaste — the Queen Dowager, I realised. A broad man beside her with sharp angles and cold eyes. And to the right: a red-haired woman. Beautiful. Composed. With eyes that found mine immediately and turned to cold stone. I was looking at everyone there for the first time. Except Damon. Damon sat on the throne, a crown resting against his hair, his golden eyes already on me before I had taken three steps into the room. He watched me the way you watch something whose fate you are well aware of. I was still processing the room when she moved. The red-haired woman. She was crossing the floor before I understood what was happening, and I had no time to prepare, no time to react— And her hand came flying across my cheek! The slap landed so hard, my head snapped sideways and I tasted blood immediately. I stared at the floor, stunned. My hand went to my face. What had I done? When I pulled my hand back, there was red on my fingers. "I said. Get. On. Your. Knees." Her voice was low and vicious and absolutely certain of itself. I dropped. Not because she had broken me. Because I was in a room full of people who wanted me dead and the only survival strategy I had left was to make myself as small as possible for as long as it took to find a better one. "Enough, Selene." Damon's voice cut across the room like a blade. That red-haired woman’s name was Selene. She lowered her hand. Stepped back. Returned to her seat with the composed grace of a woman who had made her point and knew it. Selene, the woman who had just split my lip open in front of a full court. Was Damon’s mistress. And it was quite evident why she hated my presence. The woman who had clearly decided, before I even opened my mouth, that I was a threat she intended to eliminate. The councilmen murmured. Damon's stepmother, The Queen Dowager tilted her chin. Beside her sat Ronan, her biological son, Damon's older half-brother, the man who believed the crown should have been his and had not yet accepted that it wasn't. He watched me with the calculating eyes of someone counting what I was worth and finding the number interesting. I had been in this kingdom for less than an hour. I had already made three enemies. Damon rose. "She is to be my wife." I stared at him. This man who looked at me like I was something he wanted to destroy. Who had locked me in a cage. Who had told me through iron bars that I would pay for my father's sins with my life. Who had called me “It” And now he was calling me “To be wife”? What kind of man takes revenge by marrying the thing he wants to destroy? What was he even planning? The room detonated. Gasps rippled through the chamber. Members of council turned to each other, whispering. Somewhere beside the King, I heard a sharp intake of breath. I watched Selene's face transform. Rage darkened her features like storm clouds rolling in before thunder. Even the Queen Dowager looked displeased, her wrinkled face tightening. Another elder rose—a fat man whose fingers were squeezed so tight with golden rings they looked ready to burst. "Why her, my lord?" His jowls shook as he spoke. "There are other princesses. Better alliances to strengthen Drakovia's power." "Every other princess," Damon said evenly, his tone almost bored, "as you know, is either dead or refused to face the trial." A fat councillor leaned forward. "Then she must pass the Trial by Fire. As tradition demands." Now it all made sense. I had to go through a trial meant to kill me. He knew that only a woman who wants to be his wife will have to go through it. He had not brought me here as a slave or for me to be his wife. He had planned his revenge through my death. And he was sure of the outcome. I still looked at Damon. For one moment, I let myself do something I had not allowed since I arrived. I begged him with my eyes. Silently. Wordlessly. Whatever you are, whatever you think of me, whatever my father did — please let me live. He met my gaze. As if he enjoyed how I was completely at his mercy. And smiled. The coldest smile I had ever seen on a human face. "Of course she will," he said softly while looking into my eyes. "At dawn." I closed my eyes and tears fell off them. This is how my fate was tied to this monster without my choice. That night, I did not sleep. What would happen to me, at the dawn? I lay on the narrow bed in my stone chamber and I stared at the ceiling and I turned the same questions over and over until they wore grooves in my mind. What actually happened in the Trial by Fire? Had any of the other princesses known what they were walking into? Had any of them fought? Had any of them — even for one moment — come close to surviving? And underneath all of it, the one question that everything else rested on: If I died tomorrow, who would protect Myron? I had only this night. To think. To plan. Or maybe one last night to dream. Maybe tomorrow after trial, after my death. I’ll finally be at peace. But the thought of leaving my brother behind alone for Gareth to hunt him dead scared me. I couldn’t be selfish to just die and let him be butchered by Gareth. So I did the only thing I could. I prayed. It’s not like God listened to me when I prayed to them for my parents. Still, I prayed. Next morning. The door burst open and Damon filled the frame. Dressed in black. Hair damp. Eyes already burning with the particular intensity of a man who had made a decision and was here to enforce it. I sat up. "You will be prepared soon. For the trial." His voice was flat. "What is the trial? Please. What am I walking into?" The question came out before I could stop it. His jaw flexed. "You are about to find out." "Please, I don't want—" He moved like lightning. His hand closed around my arm in a grip that sent pain shooting to my shoulder. He pulled me off the bed like I weighed nothing, his face inches from mine. "I thought of the easiest death to give you," he said, very softly. "Seeing as your father — my enemy — is already dead. Refuse the trial and the dragon will be the least of your worries." He dropped my arm. The dragon? I hit the floor. My hands caught me. My knees screamed. The dragon. He had said it like it was simply a fact. Like I should have already known. A dragon. There was a dragon beneath this castle. Were they going to let it devour me? Why did he mention the dragon? The guards came for me an hour later. Two guards with dragon-crested helmets and expressions carved from rock. No Lira. No warning. Just hands on my arms and movement. We went down. A spiral staircase that descended into the castle's bones. Deeper than I knew buildings could go. The walls changed as we went — from dressed stone to raw rock, from cold and damp to warm, then hot, then sweltering. The air thickened. My lungs started working harder just to pull in enough. And the walls began to glow. Faint at first. Then unmistakable. Veins of molten light pulsed through cracks in the rock like a heartbeat. Red and gold. I stumbled on the stairs. One guard yanked me upright without breaking stride. "She's too weak," the first guard muttered. "Look at her. This is the princess of Valmere. Some princess." He laughed. "Heard she was locked in a dungeon for a year, Eating rats probably." the second said. They both laughed at that. "Just pray it kills you quick," the first one said, yanking me forward. "The others at least had some fight in them. You can barely walk." I wanted to tell them I had survived a year of Gareth's dungeons and his whips and his boots and his filth. I wanted to tell them that I was still here when stronger people would have broken. But my legs were shaking and I could barely breathe in the heat and they were probably right. I wanted to ask what some of the others got. But I was too afraid of the answer. We were finally here. The most dreaded place in all of Drakovia. The place five women had walked into and never walked out of. The place that had a name spoken only in whispers. The Crucible. The cavern was enormous. The ceiling rose somewhere far above into shadow and smoke. Torches burned along the walls. Their flames bent and flickered in the heat rising from the ground like the earth itself was breathing. And at the far end stood an iron gate. Three times the height of a man. Bars thick as tree trunks. Covered in runes that glowed faintly in the dark like they were alive. The council was already assembled. Six men in crimson robes, standing in a semicircle before the gate. The Queen Dowager behind them. Selene to one side, her face bright with something that was not quite happiness but was close enough to make my skin crawl. And Damon. Standing apart from everyone. Near the edge of the gate. His arms at his sides. His golden eyes finding mine the moment I entered. I searched his face one last time for anything human. There was nothing. The eldest councillor stepped forward,, his voice booming through the cavern like it had been designed for exactly this space. "Step forward, Princess of Valmere. Do you accept the Trial by Fire to prove your worth before the gods and before Drakovia?" I looked at Damon. He looked back. Still in the hope that he will pull me back. He will have mercy on me. That his human side was still alive. But I was wrong HIs eyes were stone. Gold. Nothing. I looked at Selene. She was smiling. I looked at the gate. I thought of Myron. Alive somewhere. Still breathing. Still needing a sister who was doing the same. And Gareth who would kill him, If I refused this. I finally opened my mouth to accept my death and said "I accept." The gate moved. Inch by inch. Slow and grinding and inevitable. The heat that poured through the gap hit me so hard I staggered backward. The smell hit me before anything else. Sulfur. Smoke. Burning stone. It coated the inside of my throat and refused to leave. "All you have to do, is bring back a golden scale. Just one." the eldest councillor said, almost pleasantly. I turned to him. "What is a golden scale? Where—" "When you see it, you will know." he said. "Ofcourse, If you make it out alive," Selene added from behind me. I didn't have to turn around to know she was smiling. A guard's hand shoved me hard between the shoulder blades and I stumbled through. Before I could even turn around the gate slammed shut behind me. The lock turned with a sound so final it felt personal. I grabbed the bars anyway. Pulled. They didn't move. The sound of the lock. It was the sound of the dungeon door all over again. The sound of every door that had ever been closed on me. The sound of the world deciding I was not worth keeping on the right side of things. I was alone. The air inside was a living thing. It pressed against my skin. It filled my lungs with every breath and made me struggle for my breath. The walls pulsed with lava light. Red. Gold. The shadows moved with it, twisting across the cave floor. I took one step forward. Then another. My thin red dress was already soaked through with sweat. My golden hair clung to my neck and face. "I don't even know what I am looking for," I whispered. My voice died immediately, swallowed by the heat. And then I heard it. A growl! I froze. It came from the darkness ahead. A low, rumbling sound that was less like a noise and more like the cave itself shifting. Like the earth deciding to turn over in its sleep. I looked up. Higher. And higher. And higher still. And finally. It emerged. From the darkness the way a storm emerges from a horizon — not all at once, but in pieces, each piece large enough to be a creature on its own. A claw. Each talon, the length of a man. A leg. Scaled and vast and radiating heat like a furnace door. A neck. Arching down from somewhere in the darkness above, impossibly long. And a head. The size of a carriage. Emerald green scales, each one the size of a shield. Eyes that burned with molten gold — the same exact colour as Damon's. As if the same fire lived behind both pairs. I was finally witnessing A dragon. Not a story. Not a legend whispered in frightened voices at the edges of ballrooms. A dragon. Alive. Real. In the same enclosed space as me, with no gate between us, with no council watching, with no one to call to and nowhere to run. It lowered its massive head. Slowly. The shadows crawled across the cave floor. Its nostrils flared as it breathed me in. Tasting the air around me. Reading something in my scent that I could not understand. The heat of its breath alone was enough to dry the sweat on my skin in an instant. I fell to my knees. Not from weakness. From the simple impossibility of standing in the presence of something this enormous and this utterly indifferent to my survival. The glow started in its chest. A deep, pulsing white that turned orange, then gold. Fire was building in its throat. I could see it. A furnace behind its teeth. Growing. "Please." The word tore out of me before I could stop it. "Please." I don't know who I was saying it to. The dragon. The Moon Goddess. Whatever force in the universe had decided that a girl who only wanted to protect her brother deserved this particular end. I scrambled backward. My hands hit the gate. I pounded on it with both fists until my skin tore. "Let me out! Please! I don't want to—" No one answered. The dragon's tail swept out. It hit me like a wall of solid rock. The force of it lifted me completely off the ground and threw me across the cavern. I hit the cave wall back first and the impact drove every particle of air from my lungs in one brutal instant. The world went white with pain. I hit the ground and couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Just lay there, my whole left side screaming, the cave spinning above me. My hand landed on something sharp. I looked down. A shard of something black and gleaming was embedded in my palm. I stared at it for one disoriented second before I understood. A dragon scale. Green I yanked it out. Blood poured immediately, hot and fast, dripping from my fingers onto the cave floor. The dragon's shadow fell over me. I looked up at it. At those enormous gold eyes bearing down on me. At the fire building in its throat. I was going to die here. In a cave beneath a castle in a kingdom that was not mine, for a crime that was not mine, with my brother still somewhere out there not knowing where I was or what had happened to me. Something broke open in my chest. Not fear. Rage. At Damon standing somewhere beyond the gate. At the council in their crimson robes. At my uncle Gareth sitting on my father's stolen throne. "If you are going to kill me, then do it!" I screamed at the dragon. "Just do it! Get it over with!" I yelled. The silence that followed was so absolute it pressed against my eardrums. The dragon had stopped. It stood completely still, its enormous head tilted at an angle, its gold eyes fixed on me with an expression I had no framework to read. Blood poured from my palm onto the cave floor. The dragon stopped. I thought for one stupid, desperate second that it was over. That something had reached it. That even a creature like this had a limit. I was wrong. The pause wasn't mercy. It wasn't hesitation. It was a predator taking one last look before it finished the job. The fire in its throat changed colour. From white-hot. To gold. It opened its jaws wide enough to swallow me whole. I closed my eyes and thought of the only person I loved, my brother Myron. The next second, I heard a terrifying roar and the world disappeared into fire and light. The dragon breathed fire directly at her. And then—- Will Isobel make it out of the Crucible tonight? — or is this where her story ends? The moment the dragon saw her — when it smelled her blood — what did it sense that made it pause for a while? Five princesses walked in before her. None came out. What fate would Isobel face in this deadly Trial by Fire? To know what happens next, listen to the story, Bride of a Dragon. Available only on Pocket FM app. Download now.