She was dressed in red. Leather. Steel studs. A short skirt. Bare thighs. A curved sabre in her hand. Her hair was dark. Her eyes were bright. Her face was calm.
She was smiling.
The second knight— Sir Corwin— charged. His spear was forward. His shield was up. His feet were planted. He thrust— the spear tip aimed at the woman’s chest.
She sidestepped.
Not barely. Not by inches. By a hair. The spear tip passed her ribs. Her hand went to the shaft. She grabbed. She pulled. Sir Corwin stumbled— forward, off-balance. Her sabre went up. Under the arm. Between the plates. Into the armpit. Into the flesh.
"AAAGH—!"
Sir Corwin screamed. The spear fell. His hand went to the wound— to the armpit, to the blood, to the steel that was inside him. She pulled the blade free. The blood came. She kicked his shield. He fell. On his back. On the marble. His blood on the stone.
"WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!" Sir Aldric screamed again. His voice was hoarse. His throat was raw. He did not stop running. He could not stop running. To stop was to die.
Behind him— the sounds continued. CLANG CLANG CLANG— steel on steel. Screaming. Thudding. The wet sound of blades in flesh. The dry sound of bodies on stone.
The whole palace went into a frenzy.
Bells rang. The alarm bells— the bronze bells in the watchtower, the ones that had not been rung in thirty years, the ones that meant war. The sound was deep. Resonant. It filled the air. It filled the corridors. It filled the chambers. It woke the sleeping. It startled the waking. It froze the drunk and sobered the drugged.
Knights came out.
From every door. From every corridor. From every staircase. Men in armor. Men with swords. Men who had trained their whole lives for this moment— the moment when the palace was attacked and they were the defenders.
They ran toward the sound.
They died.
The sorcerer came out.
From the eastern wing. The Tower Wing. The wing that housed the Royal College of Mages— three floors of books and crystals and potions and arrogant old men who could throw fireballs and summon lightning and who had not, in thirty years of service, ever had to throw a fireball or summon lightning at an actual enemy.
His name was Grand Magus Corvain.
He was old. Seventy. His hair was white. His beard was long. His robe was blue— the deep blue of the Royal College, the color of mana, the color of power. His staff was wooden— oak, bound with iron, the crystal at the top glowing with stored mana. His eyes were sharp. His face was lined. His hands were steady.
He was a Fourth Rank Mage.
In the kingdom of Doria, where most mages were First or Second Rank, where the Third Rank was reserved for the elite, where the Fourth Rank was the highest attainable by a human— Fourth Rank was power. Fourth Rank was respect. Fourth Rank was the kind of magical authority that could level a building, freeze a river, incinerate a regiment.
He stepped into the courtyard.
The courtyard was chaos. Knights were fighting. Dying. The women— the six women in their battle dresses— were cutting through the royal guard like scissors through paper. The dragon woman— the scaled, yellow-eyed, clawed thing that had come through the rift— was standing in the center. Not fighting. Watching. Her arms crossed. Her tail— a thick, scaled appendage that had not been visible before— swaying behind her.
Grand Magus Corvain raised his staff.
The crystal flared. Blue light. Bright. The mana gathered— from the air, from the ground, from the leylines that ran beneath the palace. The energy concentrated. The crystal hummed. The air vibrated. The heat— the mana heat, the thermal energy of concentrated magic— radiated from the staff.
He was about to cast.
A Fourth Rank spell. Dragon’s Breath. A cone of fire— white-hot, fifteen feet wide, fifty feet long. Enough to incinerate a charging cavalry unit. Enough to turn armored knights into ash. Enough to—
His heart thumped.
Not the thump of exertion. Not the thump of fear. A different thump. A mana thump. The sensation that every mage feels when they are in the presence of a mana source vastly superior to their own. The sensation of a candle standing before the sun.
He looked up.
She was hovering.
Above the courtyard. Above the palace. Above the rooftops, the towers, the watchtowers. In the air. Not flying— not with wings, not with a spell. Hovering. Suspended. As if the air itself was holding her.
Her body was covered in scales.
Dragon scales. Obsidian black. The same scales that covered the dragon woman below. But the coverage was different. More complete. More extensive. The scales covered her arms, her shoulders, her chest— not her breasts, which were bare, large, heavy, the nipples dark, the areolas wide— her stomach, her thighs, her calves. Her face was human. Old. Lined. The face of a woman who has lived seventy years. But her eyes— her eyes were yellow. Slitted. The pupils vertical. The eyes of a dragon.
Her hair was white.
Not gray. Not silver. White. The pure, brilliant white of fresh snow. Of cloud. Of bone. It fluttered— not from wind. From mana. The energy that radiated from her body was so dense, so concentrated, so vast that it moved the air. Her hair floated. Streamed. Spread behind her like a banner.
She was wearing dragon armor.
Not armor made by human hands. Not steel, not leather, not iron. The armor was— the skin. The skin of a dragon. Scales that had been shed, collected, shaped, fitted to her body. The scales were bonded to her— not worn, not strapped. Merged. The scales were part of her skin. The scales were her skin.
Her body was a conduit.
The power— the mana— flowed through her. Not from a staff. Not from a crystal. Not from a ring or a pendant or a scroll. From her. From her body. From her heart. From the thing that beat in her chest— not a human heart. A dragon heart. A heart that had been given to her. Placed in her. Merged with her. A heart that was infinite.
Not actually infinite.
But close. Near-infinite. A mana pool so vast that it had no bottom. A mana pool that refilled faster than it could be emptied. A mana pool that was not a pool— it was an ocean. A sea. A body of water so deep and so wide that the concept of "empty" did not apply.
She was Edda.
Once a muscular old woman. A grandma. A former adventurer who had retired decades ago. A woman who had spent her sixties knitting and gardening and telling stories to children. A woman whose body had been strong— the muscles of a lifetime of training— but whose power had been gone. Spent. Used up.
Until him.
Until Raven.
She remembered.
The fucking. The blessing. The moment when the man— the thing, the being, the entity that she believed to be a dragon— had taken her. Had fucked her. Had poured his mana into her. Had placed his hand on her chest and had— changed her.
Had given her a new heart. A dragon heart. Had transformed her body— not rejuvenated it, not made her young again, but enhanced it. Made it stronger. Made it denser. Made it a vessel for a power that no human body had ever contained.
She still thought he was a dragon.