Frostbound Dragon's heir

CHAPTER 6

The deception was a slow, agonizing poison, and I didn’t realize it yet, but was the one drinking it.

I began to craft my presence around the Repository grounds like a ghost who knew exactly where the sun hit the marble. I ensured I was pruning the bougainvillea when Liora took her mid-afternoon walks. 

I made myself useful by fetching a fallen scroll, clearing a path, or simply holding the gate so she wouldn’t have to strain. 

It was all very coldly calculated. It was everything the Vornics were taught to despise, yet I did it with a bowed head and a voice of practiced, trembling humility.

"You again," Liora said one afternoon, her smile bright enough to hurt. She was holding a stack of scrolls that looked heavier than she’s supposed to carry.

"Just doing my rounds, My Lady," I murmured, my eyes fixed on the hem of her silk gown. My left hand was screaming. The frost had moved up to my elbow now and the skin there was now a translucent, ghostly grey, and if I wasn't careful, I’d leave behind a thin layer of ice on every surface I touched.

"You seem... burdened," she said, pausing near the ivy-covered archway. "There is a scholar’s grace about you, stable-boy. You don't hold the shears like a peasant."

"My grandfather was a gardener," I lied, my voice steady. "He taught me that even the coldest stone needs a bit of care."

She looked at me for a moment too long, her gaze speculative, before she shook her head and turned toward the Repository. "Well, your care is noted. My father says the grounds have never looked so orderly."

My father.

The words were a bitter pill and it made my insides curl with rage. I watched her enter the archives, the heavy stone seal sliding shut behind her with a sound like a tomb closing.

That night, the rot deepened worse than ever. I went to the wash-basin in my room, trying to splash cold water on my face to stop the shaking. I looked into the cracked mirror hanging on the wall. 

I leaned forward, my breath hitching slightly. My reflection lagged more than once when I moved and then …it smiled.

My own face, captured in the glass, curled into a cruel, unnatural grin that I hadn't made. For a second, the reflection’s eyes turned a searing, luminous blue, the same color as the dragon spirit’s core.

My heart pounded like a drum in my chest and I suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

I ripped the mirror off the wall and smashed it against the floor, but as the shards scattered, I saw my own hand trailing frost across the wood of the table. A delicate, fern-like pattern of ice bloomed where my skin had lingered, rapidly deepening into the grain until the table was permanently scarred by the cold.

I was turning the world into an extension of myself, and I was losing the ability to tell where Evander Vornic ended and where the spirit began.

“Damn it, damn it!”

The following day, I finally found my opening. Liora was sitting on the terrace, reading. She was distracted, and the seal for the Restricted Wing—the section housing the soul-binding rites of the First Warden—was glowing faintly on the wall behind her.

"The history of the North," I said slowly, pausing near her with a basket of shears. "My grandfather used to tell stories about it. He said there were vaults in the Repository so deep that the light of the sun hadn't touched them since the founding."

Liora looked up, her expression softening. "He was a poet, your grandfather. The Restricted Wing is exactly that. It holds the oldest bindings, the ones that predate the Empire itself. It’s forbidden, of course. Too dangerous for those without the blood of the mages."

"I imagine it would take a great deal of trust to allow someone inside," I said, forcing my tone to sound disinterested.

"More than trust," she sighed, closing her book. "It takes a key of blood. My father guards the secrets of our lineage with a jealousy that borders on madness. He spends hours down there, obsessed with the old power. He says that the artifacts we reclaim are the only things that keep the Sun-King’s fire from flickering out."

"R-Reclaimed artifacts?" I stuttered slightly, my heart skipping a beat.

She leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "He's been obsessed since the northern incident at the Vornic stronghold. He claims they found a vessel—something that should have been shattered. He’s bringing the artifact here next week. He’s going to inspect it personally, right in the heart of the vault."

The world went silent around. My blood felt like it was turning to slush.

A vessel.

It had to be my father’s heart…or perhaps Alros’s own soul-tether. They hadn't just destroyed our house; they had taken the core of our legacy, the very thing that was supposed to complete the bond, and they were bringing it to the capital to dissect it like a lab rat.

"He expects a breakthrough," Liora continued, snapping me out of my worried thoughts. "He says that once he understands how the Vornics managed to bind the dragon, he will be able to replicate it. He will make the Sunfire soldiers truly immortal."

I forced a smile, though it felt like tearing open a wound. "That sounds like a grand achievement for the Empire, My Lady."

"Perhaps," she whispered, her gaze drifting toward the heavy, sealed doors of the Repository. "But I think some things were meant to stay in the ice, you know."

I walked away quickly, my heart hammering frantically as my hope began to rise just as much as my anger. The pieces were falling into place all of a sudden. The scroll I needed was in the vault. 

The artifact that could stabilize my soul—or perhaps destroy it—was arriving in seven days. And I was standing in the center of the Empire, holding a dead hand that was slowly turning the world into a graveyard.

I reached the safety of the stables and slumped against a post. I looked at the wood beneath my touch. A thick, crystalline layer of ice had already coated the post, creeping upward like a living vine.

Someone knew I was a Vornic…or at least, they were hunting for one. And now, the Empire was going to parade my family’s stolen spirit right in front of me, behind the most secure doors in the world.

The dragon spirit inside me was roaring with hunger that threatened to consume me right there and then. It didn't just want the scroll anymore, there was a sudden desire for the artifact.

And for the first time, I realized that if I wanted to survive, I wouldn't just need to infiltrate the vault.

I would have to burn the Repository to the ground.