Chapter 19: _ Everyone Else Found Her Too

Remus Dravaryn [Heir to the Dragon Throne]

Ever since catching that scent at the Concourse yesterday, I had been unable to think clearly.

Eight years.

Eight years of searching for a scent I had convinced myself I would never find again. Then, in the middle of hundreds of initiates, it returned.

Wild lilies. Pine.

Her.

I had forced Vaelor lower before I could stop myself. I only needed one glimpse. One confirmation that my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me.

And then my eyes had collided with hers.

She was standing in the middle of the crowded Concourse, standing beside... RAICE?

I had spent years wondering what the little girl beneath the stone arch would become. The woman standing below was both familiar and completely unknown.

That terrified me more than if I had never found her at all.

I’d recoiled so fast I almost lost my grip on Vaelor’s reins, forcing my dragon into an immediate ascent back into the overcast sky to hide behind the cloud cover before she could catch me staring.

My pulse had pounded against my ribs like a war drum ever since.

Was she the same girl? The small, dirty commoner in the torn dress who had sat beside me while I wept for my mother?

The girl I had foolishly declared would one day become my wife when I was twelve years old?

The memory should have been childish. A promise made by a grieving boy. Except I had carried it with me every day since.

She was the unspoken reason I had turned down dozens of noble court ladies, cold-shouldered every high-born dragon heiress my father paraded through the palace, and remained entirely untouched.

I had sworn I would remember her scent. And I had.

But things weren’t that simple. Not anymore.

Because Elira wasn’t just a ghost from my childhood. She was also an impossibility.

When I’d activated my power yesterday to read her emotional signature, I’d hit a dead, impenetrable wall.

And then there was the rumor that Raice Ignis-Dominus had actually stopped to speak to her.

I wouldn’t have believed had I not seen it with my own two eyes.

That was the biggest anomaly of all.

I didn’t know whether Elira was the girl I had spent eight years searching for. I didn’t know whether she was the anomaly from my father’s prophecy.

But I knew one thing... She was impossible.

A dragonless initiate whose emotions I could not read. A girl who had somehow caught Raice Ignis-Dominus’s attention. A girl whose scent had remained unchanged for eight years.

Impossible was the only conclusion I had.

I had written her name down right beside the three other high-risk targets.

Her name was Elira. And I needed answers.

By late afternoon on the second day, I had managed to pull off a miracle: I escaped my stepsisters.

Veyra and Vaela were usually attached to my hip like leeches, but I’d managed to slip out of the high tower while Vaela was distracted writing her secret book and Veyra was busy styling her hair.

I hated stalking.

It felt cheap, dirty, and utterly beneath a Dragon Prince. Yet here I was, mounted on Vaelor three thousand feet in the air, using the heavy fog as cover while I tracked a first-year commoner across the Bastion’s lower thoroughfares.

I’m doing my job, I told myself, tightening my hand on the reins. Father sent me to monitor potential threats. She is a threat until proven otherwise.

’She is very small to be a threat,’ Vaelor sent through our mental bond. ’And she smells like the quiet woods.’

’Stay focused,’ I muttered back.

Below us, Elira finally stepped out of the West Annex dorms, flanked by her two roommates.

I narrowed my eyes, letting my pupils contract into crimson slits as my power flared to life. Immediately, emotional signatures bloomed across the thoroughfares.

I scanned Elira’s companions. The tall, broad-shouldered one radiated suspicion and deep uncertainty. The overly decorated one was bathing in fear.

Then I checked Elira. She was blank, as usual.

I was about to adjust my position when a strange, secondary signature caught my attention.

It was trailing directly behind the three girls, keeping a five-step distance. I leaned over Vaelor’s saddle, staring intently at the empty cobblestone thoroughfare behind them.

There was no one there. The space was completely empty. But the emotional aura of malice was creeping through the air right behind Elira’s left shoulder.

Someone was following them under a shroud of invisibility.

My jaw tightened. Is Veyra trailing her?

It made no sense. Why would my silver-haired stepsister give a damn about a dragonless initiate from the trenches? Veyra was lazy, self-absorbed, and cared about nothing unless it involved stealing shiny objects or tormenting other shifters.

I focused my empathy, trying to pierce the spell masking the stalker. The emotional signature was dense and maddeningly difficult to read.

In the entire Bastion, there were only four males whose emotional signatures were that dense: Ivar, Zev, Ajax, and Raice.

Surely none of those pompous bastards could be so perverted as to stalk a first-year with invisibility, I thought, a surge of irritation spiking in my chest.

Besides, none of them possessed invisibility magic. In the entire Dragon Academy, Veyra was the only one with that specific gift. No student from another Academy would dare cross into a different Academy without a warden’s pass—unless it was one of those arrogant royal shifters who thought the rules didn’t apply to them.

Wait.

Ivar.

My stomach turned sickeningly. Ivar Wulfram—the Wolf Prince with a notorious reputation for acquiring illegal, stolen abilities from other shifters.

Did that bastard sleep with my stepsister?

The thought made my blood run cold, my knuckles turning white against Vaelor’s leather saddle. If Ivar had seduced Veyra just to steal from her invisibility powers, I was going to tear his head off his broad shoulders and feed him to my dragon.

I kept Vaelor hovering silently as the invisible stalker followed Elira and her friends

They were walking straight toward the Sunken Arch.

"Idiots," I gritted out under my breath. "She’s going to get herself killed."

The invisible stalker closed in, hovering directly behind Elira and I couldn’t control the way my temper sparked.

Until I was sure she wasn’t mine, no one dared get that close to her. I’d split them in half without a second thought.

Suddenly, the invisibility spell collapsed.

And lo and behold, Ivar Wulfram tumbled out of thin air.

"I knew it," I growled, baring my teeth. "That piece of wolf trash used Veyra."

I watched the scene unfold from three hundred feet up. I saw the confrontation and the way the hell-head flew away like a scared little cat.

My brow furrowed in absolute confusion.

Why would Ivar Wulfram—the second most arrogant, self-absorbed male in Last Bastion, rivaled only by Ajax—risk his reputation to secretly trail a first-year commoner?

Were he and Zev up to yet, another mischief? Did it have something to do with Raice confronting her yesterday?

And then, the hypocritical reality hit me like a slap to the face.

I’m trailing her too.

What was it about this girl?

Why were Raice, Ivar, and now me drawn toward a dragonless commoner like we were all puppets strung by the same master?

I had spent years searching for the anomaly my father feared.

I never expected that when I found her...

the greatest mystery would be why everyone else had found her too.