sudden, raw clarity that she couldn’t kill the dragon. Eros and this alliance be damned.
She wouldn’t do it.
She held the dragon’s intense stare as she fed her sword back into its sheath, then raised her empty hands.
“I’m sorry for what they did to your children,” Haven whispered, willing her words over the distance. “No mother deserves that. But I promise you, from today forward, no citizen of Veserack will harm your children or you—as long as you do the same.”
She would make Eros keep that promise. Threaten him with whatever it took. He might not want the alliance now but he wouldn’t risk her ire over a dragon, even if the treasure inside her cavern was a powerful artifact.
He was too rational and cunning for that.
The sea orc huffed, sending sand and debris flying around Haven’s bare feet, and tilted its head. The long row of spiky fins ridging its back jerked taut, and Haven’s hand fisted as her heart rammed into her throat.
But she didn’t draw her weapon.
With a guttural screech, the dragon whipped toward the water and speared into the depths. A moment later it was clawing noisily back toward its nest, its long finned tail swiping back and forth in the air in warning.
Haven peered at the nest, watching as the sea orc and babies disappeared, before relief loosened her shoulders. But her relief was short-lived.
Now she had to face Eros and then explain to the others why she had failed.
Every step toward the shore made the pain of defeat a little more cutting. She didn’t regret sparing the mother dragon, but the price of that one life was hard to stomach. They would return to Shadoria empty handed, without the alliance that might have prevented more bloodshed and given them a chance.
The group was quiet as she approached. Eros had left to meet his family and advisors as they made the short trek down the cliffside path. He was probably trying to hide his disappointment from her.
Kelp and sand littered her hair, her pants creaking and groaning with every movement. She dared a look up to find Stolas already watching her, his eyes unreadable. And then he gave her a tender smile and something inside her nearly snapped in half.
She cleared the emotion from her throat. “I couldn’t kill her. Stolas, she had babies—I couldn’t do it.”
“I would have been disappointed if you had,” Stolas murmured, and her assumption that he was only saying that to make her feel better died when she noted the truth in his gold-rimmed eyes. “Now,” his gaze slid over her body, “are you injured?”
Her chest clenched. If she hadn’t admitted last night the true depth of her feelings for Stolas, there was no denying them now.
“I’m fine. Maybe missing some of my eyelashes”—she glanced pointedly at Bell—“but otherwise okay.”
Bell dug a boot into the sandy shore. “The books never mentioned fire.”
“Books can’t tell you everything.” Surai clapped Bell on the shoulder. “Life must be learned from experience.”
“You couldn’t soulbind it?” Xandrian asked, his gentle tone doing nothing to hide his frustration. She didn’t blame him—she felt the exact same way.
“I tried. We can all see how that turned out.”
“And you refuse to go back up there and kill it like we all know you can?”
Her teeth flashed. “No one touches her. I promised her she would be safe.” She yanked a slimy strand of kelp from her collar as a coil of disappointment formed in her gut. “Now I get to inform Eros of that promise.”
“Inform me of what?” Eros drawled behind her.
Slowly, still picking off bits of the cove’s offerings from her tunic, she turned to face the king, her shoulders tightening at what she knew she’d find in his expression. “The sea orc. I promised her that she and her babies would be safe for as long as they remain in your lands.”
Beneath the moonlight, Eros’s face was hard to read. His gaze held hers, dark and brimming with an emotion she couldn’t quite name, his mouth set into a hard line. Two marble-wide eyes blinked from beneath the king’s arm as his son peered up at Haven.
She thought she heard his childish voice whisper, thank you, into her mind.
“You can talk to dragons now?” Eros had yet to blink. To do anything but stare in that strange way.
“I don’t know if she understood my words, but she did understand my intentions. And if you or anyone here harms her or her children, I will personally return to