The Regent's Scar

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The ventilation shaft was exactly as narrow as it had sounded.

Lucian went first, because he knew the house. The Regent's residence, Winters Hall, was where he had spent his whole boyhood, and its bones were as familiar as his own. He knew which floorboards sang and which stairs creaked. He knew where his father had hidden the key to the wine cellar, and the passage behind the library, and the loose panel above the study desk. He had never expected to be using that knowledge to break in.

Behind him the dragon crawled in a silence so perfect it seemed unnatural.

"Commander," he whispered at one point, when the duct bent sharply and their faces came nose to nose. "Are you well?"

"I am fine." Lucian's voice was thin. "Keep going. We infiltrate tonight."

"Your heart..."

"I said I am fine."

He was not. The scanner shock had left him shaky, and every time he thought of the study, of his father's old desk, a hot, tight knot rose in his chest. But he kept moving.

They came down through the vent into the dark of the study. Heavy red curtains. Rows of leather spines. A map of the northern territories under glass. On the desk, a terminal glowed softly: the final launch key and experiment data, the last locked room of Thorne's secrets.

"It has to be in here," Lucian said. "Once we have it, we can expose him at tomorrow's rally."

He sat at the terminal. The screen demanded a password; behind it, a firewall with five layers of encryption, shifting like water. He cracked his knuckles and began to type.

"What are you doing?" Kaelen asked, very close behind him.

"I am breaking through the highest-level firewall."

"I could break it faster."

"You would melt the machine." Lucian did not look up. "Stop distracting me."

"I am not doing anything."

"You are breathing on my neck."

"I am required to breathe." A pause. A very light touch, a single fingertip drawn down the back of Lucian's collar, across the glowing gold line of the mark. Lucian's hands jerked on the keys. "Commander. You are irresistible when you work."

"Focus."

"I am focusing. On you."

"*Kaelen.*"

"My Commander." The word was a purr. "I will be good."

He was not good. He was never good. But he knew exactly how far to go, and for ten full minutes he lingered at the edge of that line: a hand on a shoulder, a lazy half-smile, a word whispered at the exact moment Lucian's concentration threatened to waver. And in the end, the firewall fell. The screen went green. A flood of files poured across it: schematics, correspondence, the names of Thorne's men. A folder labeled *Tempest*. A folder labeled *Aldric.*

A door opened down the corridor.

"Someone's coming," Lucian breathed.

Footsteps. Heavy. Unhurried.

He had perhaps three seconds. He ripped a data drive from his coat, jammed it into the port, and watched with agony as the progress bar crawled. *Forty percent. Sixty.* Kaelen had him by the sleeve and was dragging him toward the vent. *Eighty.*

The study door swung wide.

"At first light tomorrow, we launch the warhead," said Thorne's voice. "I want every last one of those reptiles exterminated."

"Yes, General."

"Have my bath prepared. And my clothes. At once."

"Yes, sir. I'll see to it."

The drive pinged. Lucian yanked it free. A shadow crossed the doorway.

There was only one place to go.

---

The Regent's bath was the grandest room in Winters Hall. Lucian remembered it from childhood: a vast tiled hall with a domed ceiling of painted glass, and a pool in the center, hexagonal, ringed in mosaic. The servants had already scattered the surface with orange blossoms. They floated in a thick golden raft, hiding the water beneath.

He and Kaelen went in without a sound. Twenty feet from the nearest door. Eight feet from the edge. Lucian dragged a breath, and the dragon's mouth closed over his, and the world went green and dark.

It was not a kiss. It was air. Kaelen's lungs, his breath, his heart. Lucian held on to his collar and his shoulders and felt the rush of it, the hot thread of life passing between their mouths, the golden threads of the mark vibrating in the water like harp strings. Above them, the flowers drifted. Through the gaps, he could see the room.

Thorne walked in.

He was in his dressing robe. The silk slid from his shoulders as a servant lifted it, and as the old man stepped down into the pool, with a long satisfied sigh, he turned, and Lucian saw his back.

Across the broad pale expanse between his shoulder blades ran a scar.

It was not an old scar. It was a raised violet web, branching like lightning, still faintly luminous in the light. Lucian had seen it before in a manual, in a diagram, in a chapter he had read at nineteen and never thought of since.

*Backlash mark of the Tempest Mind Spike.*

His father's deadliest technique. A single psychic strike, unleashed in a dying breath, that burned a signature into the flesh of whoever was on the other end.

Lucian's whole body went rigid.

*That scar*, he thought. *That is impossible.*

Kaelen's hand tightened on the back of his neck. Lucian did not need the bond to read the dragon's thoughts. *If a dragon killed your father*, those golden eyes said, *then why is Thorne carrying the scar from Father's deadliest psychic attack on his back?*

The old man slid deeper into the water. A servant hurried in with a message and bowed low. "General. The prisoners in the underground chamber are ready. We can link into the lost warhead and begin the final launch at any time."

"Excellent." A contented sigh. "I am coming at once."

He left.

For a long time, under the flowers, neither of them moved.

---

"It was him."

Lucian broke the surface with a gasp and heard his own voice come out stranger than he had ever known it. He sat on the edge of the pool, soaked to the skin, and looked at his hands.

"It was him. He really did kill my father."

"Yes."

"Dragon assassins. They ambushed him, they said, with their claws. I wanted to wipe the Reach from the face of the earth. I wanted to avenge..." He laughed, and it was an ugly sound. "I was ready to burn a whole race for a man who was sleeping three rooms away from me."

"Lucian." Kaelen's hand covered his. "We go into his vault. We dig out every piece of evidence. And then I will kill him for you."

"No." Lucian's head came up. "No, I will do it."

"Then we do it together."

They went down by the servants' stairs. Past the kitchens, past the cellars, past three locked doors that Lucian opened with a thought, and past the fourth that Kaelen opened with a shoulder. A long, cold passage, lit by blue lamps. A massive vault door with a wheel in the center.

"That sound," Kaelen said.

Lucian listened. A low, wet, scraping noise from the other side of the wall. A slow, wretched groan.

"What kind of monster is..."

The door swung open.

It was a long chamber lined with cages. Lucian's eyes took in the scene piece by piece, as if his mind refused to let it arrive all at once. The shackled shapes. The scales. The wings, hanging in tatters. A dozen dragons, young and old, hollow-eyed, bound with silver chains and wired to humming machines. At the far end, a table. And on the table, laid out in neat rows like instruments, a hundred and forty severed claws, each as long as a man's forearm, each fitted with a leather strap and a steel grip.

*This is it*, Lucian thought distantly. *This is how a dragon attack is made.*

He felt the air change.

"I will tear him limb from limb," Kaelen said, and it was not his voice. It was a low, vibrating, inhuman sound, and gold fire was running up his throat. His horns had come out. His wings were unfurling, striking the walls. "I will burn his house to ash, I will..."

"Kaelen. Stop."

"I will..."

"Kaelen, look at me." Lucian threw himself in front of him. He caught the dragon's face in both hands. The bond was a roaring river in his head, red and gold and shrieking. "I am right here. Don't let the frenzy consume you. Please."

For a terrible second, the golden eyes did not know him.

Then they did.

The fire went out, all at once. The great shape sagged. Kaelen's forehead dropped against his, and a shudder ran through the whole body, and Lucian held him up with both arms while the prisoners in the cages watched with huge, unbelieving eyes.

"We are getting out of here," Lucian said hoarsely. "All of us."

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