First Chosen by the Dragon

Chapter 31

[Evelyn’s POV]

The mark wakes me before the sun does. Heat blooms across my chest like a handprint pressed to a stove, and when my fingers find the skin above my heart, the outline is still there—Draven's palm, his fingers, seared into me during the ceremony just days ago.

I trace the edges in the dark, feeling warmth pulse under my fingertips, alive and insistent. Not painful. Worse than painful. Intimate. Like he's still touching me, even now, even with walls and corridors and all the careful distance between us.

"You're awake early," Aspis murmurs through the bond, her voice thick with drowsy warmth. "Or did you never actually sleep?"

"I slept," I lie. "A little."

"Your heartbeat says otherwise. It's been racing since midnight." Aspis counters easily, because apparently nothing gets past her.

"My heartbeat is a traitor." I swing my legs off the bed and reach for the dark clothes folded on the chair—routine now, practiced, the way everything about sneaking through service corridors has become practiced since the beach.

Since Aspis hatched and the world split open. Since Draven stood beside me in moonlight and looked at me like I was something worth looking at. "How are you feeling? Any better than last night?"

"Restless. The walls are too close. My wings keep hitting things." I think I can hear a tinge of whining there, and it twists my heart in turn.

I pull my tunic over my head and lace my boots in darkness. The compound sleeps around me. I ease my door open and slip into the service passage like a shadow returning home.

The hidden corridors smell of damp stone and old wood. I know every turn now—left at the cracked pillar, down the stairs where the third step groans, right at the broken sconce.

This path is muscle memory, worn into me by regular predawn visits, and my feet carry me through the dark while my mind stays fixed on the heat radiating from my chest.

Draven's door is unlocked. It always is, this time of morning—an agreement neither of us ever spoke aloud. I slip inside and let my eyes adjust to grey light seeping through curtained windows.

"I hear you," Aspis says, excitement spiking through the bond like a struck match. "Come."

I cross to the private alcove and pull the heavy curtain aside. Aspis lifts her head from where she's curled on stone, white scales catching dim light like scattered moonstones, amber eyes finding mine with fierce joy.

She's the size of a large hunting cat now — sleek and muscular, wings folded tight, tail curving around her haunches. Beautiful. Impossible to hide much longer.

"Hey, gorgeous," I whisper, crouching to press my forehead against her snout. She chirps—a deep, resonant sound that vibrates through my sternum—and pushes into my touch. "You've grown again. Your wing nearly reaches the window frame."

"I can't help it. Everything feels too small. The ceiling is wrong. I need sky, Evelyn."

"I know. We'll figure it out." I stroke the ridge between her eyes, feeling the bond hum steady and warm. But the energy coiled inside her trembles against my palm—restless, building, wings twitching with the need to fly. She shifts, and one wing clips the curtain rod with a metallic scrape that makes me wince.

I reach up to adjust the curtain, and that's when I hear the footsteps. Measured, deliberate, the stride of a man who owns every stone beneath his boots. I smooth the fabric into place and straighten just as the door opens.

Draven enters already dressed for the day—dark leather and steel, blade strapped to his thigh. His gaze sweeps the room, tactical and automatic, and then it finds me.

Something raw flickers across his face—unguarded, like a wound he forgot to bandage—and vanishes before I can name it. His jaw sets. Controlled. Unreadable.

"She grew again," I say, because if I don't speak first, the silence will swallow us both. "Look at her wingspan."

He crosses the room and crouches beside me to pull the curtain back. Aspis trills at him—she always does, the shameless creature—and something softens at the edges of his expression before he masks it.

We're close enough that his shoulder brushes mine, close enough that I catch the scent of salt and steel on his skin, close enough that when he speaks, his voice drops to that low register he only uses when no one else can hear.

"She's gained at least four inches since yesterday," he says, running a careful hand along her wing joint. His fingers are precise, clinical, assessing bone and muscle. "At this rate, three weeks. Maybe less before concealment becomes physically impossible."

"Three weeks isn't long. What happens then?"

"Then we find a better solution, or we face the consequences of discovery." He meets my eyes, and the proximity hits me — his jaw, the way grey light catches in his dark gaze. "You need to stop using your light abilities. Completely."

"People are asking questions." He turns toward me fully. "In the arena, the way you moved — that kind of speed doesn't go unnoticed. There are whispers. Venna lost to something she can't explain, and that makes her more dangerous than if she'd simply lost to a better blade."

"I barely use them at all anymore. I've been careful, Draven. I've been pulling every strike in training, making myself look average. I know what's at stake."

"Careful isn't enough anymore. No light. None. Not even when you think you're alone." He reaches toward me, and my breath stalls—but his fingers find my cloak collar, adjusting the fabric where it's folded wrong against my neck.

His knuckles graze bare skin, a whisper of contact that sends heat cascading down my spine. The touch is practical, impersonal, the kind of correction a commander makes without thinking. The way my breath catches is not practical at all.

"The mark is visible if this sits crooked," he says, voice dropping lower, rough at the edges. His fingers linger a fraction too long, close enough that I feel calluses on his fingertips, warmth through fabric. "Keep it covered during training."

"I will." Our eyes meet and hold — three heartbeats, four, five — and the space between us tightens until it hums with something neither of us will name. The mark on my chest burns hotter. His gaze drops to my mouth for an instant so brief I might have imagined it, and then he steps back. The distance falls between us like a blade.

"Get to training," he says. Not cold. Not warm. Something carefully, deliberately neutral that costs him more than he'll ever admit.

I turn for the service corridor and pull the hidden door open. The passage swallows me in cool stone darkness, and I walk fast — faster than necessary — while my pulse hammers against my ribs. The mark throbs in time with each heartbeat, Draven's phantom touch still burning along my collarbone.

Moonlight bends toward my fingertips unbidden, silver threads curling around my hands. I clench my fists, willing it down, but the light has a mind of its own this morning—drawn out by the racing in my blood, by the heat pooling in my chest.

Through the bond, Aspis purrs. Low, knowing, insufferably smug. "Don't," I warn her silently.

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to." Her laughter ripples through me like warm water, and I can't stop the smile tugging at my mouth as I step into grey dawn, the mark burning quietly beneath my clothes, moonlight trailing from my fingertips like a confession I can't take back.