Aiyolistra POV

The air in the Southern palace was thick with the scent of unwashed luxury, salt water, and decaying power. From the window of the grand bedchamber, the kingdom a dense, circular stone metropolis rising out of the deep ocean, its towering outer walls holding back the vast blue sea while crowded, tile-roofed houses descended toward a heavily fortified harbor. It was beautiful, a sprawling monument.

And yet, staring out at it, I felt absolutely hollow.

My entire life from the very second Ryophlira was dragged into this world I had been relegated to nothing more than a footnote in her grand legend. She was born early. She was small, pathetic, and frail, a coughing little stray that should have withered away in the cradle. Instead, her weakness became her greatest weapon. It drew all of our parents’ desperate love, their frantic attention, and the hyper-protective devotion of our brother, Riegthar. I was the healthy child, the strong one, the one left to grow in the shadows of her perpetual frailty.

Then, as the years crawled by, the great cosmic joke revealed itself. That small, weak infant grew into a monstrously powerful entity, her magic manifesting with such a blinding intensity that I could no longer even dare to compare myself to her. I grew to absolutely loathe the very sight of her face. Looking at her was a constant, burning reminder of my own inferiority.

I am a grown dragon. My scales are fully formed. And yet, I am still not as fundamentally powerful as Ryophlira, who hasn’t even reached her fully grown dragon stage yet. It was maddening. It defied the natural laws of our lineage. All I had ever wanted, all I had ever begged the heavens for, was just one thing that was truly mine. One victory to escape the suffocating weight of my family.

Instead, I was beaten. Again. Dismantled and humiliated by my sister on the public stage. The man I loved Yue-Senn, the towering savage of the North had been ripped from my fingers right before my eyes. Watching her stand on those palace steps with that beautifully, victorious smile, carrying the heir that was rightfully supposed to be mine... it broke the final, fragile strings of my sanity.

I had fallen so incredibly far into the dark that there was no path left for me but the one paved in ash. There would be no turning back. I would destroy Ryophlira and tear back what belonged to me, even if I had to watch the entire world burn to do it.

I sat cross-legged on the sheets of the grand canopy bed, my fingers aggressively flipping through the heavy parchment of an ancient leather-bound text on deadly botanical poisons. This was the private quarters of Cassian, the First Prince of the South. At twenty-six years old, he was 5’11", with a broad, muscularly dense build, facial hair, short dark purple hair that caught the dim light, and cold, calculating gray eyes.

The doors suddenly flew open with a resounding bang. Cassian walked in, followed closely by his father, the King of the South.

"You!" the King roared, his face flushed with a dark, furious as he pointed a trembling, ring-heavy finger straight at my face. "You told me this political play would work! You swore the West would buckle!"

"Calm down, Father," Cassian commanded, his voice a low, smooth baritone that radiated sheer boredom. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, stepping into the center of the room. "We have her here with us. Why is it so incredibly important to secure Ryophlira who has already destroyed and slaughtered so many of our people?"

"Because there needs to be an absolute balance of power, you foolish boy!" the King snarled, pacing back and forth across the floor. "If one single kingdom possesses more raw, magical power than the other three combined, they will inevitably reign supreme. We will all find ourselves serving beneath their banner, locked under one total kingdom."

"And isn’t that vastly better than all of this endless, bloody political theater?" Cassian remarked smoothly. I watched them go back and forth, their desperate bickering highly irritating to my senses. "All of our respective kingdoms have lived in relative, structured harmony for centuries before my sister. Why should that delicate peace change simply because one little stray refuses to follow the rules?"

"The scales were never truly balanced," Cassian said quietly. He let out a heavy, exhausted sigh, leaning his muscular back against the edge of his massive wooden desk.

"So you are suggesting we just throw our hands up, give up, and completely give in to the West’s terms?" the King demanded.

"I honestly don’t really care, Father," Cassian countered, his gray eyes detached. "It’s not as if this arranged marriage was ever born out of genuine love. It was a calculated bargain for resources and regional stability. This happens all the time in our history. We have her here now, which grants the South direct, unrestricted access to the vast wealth of the Western kingdom. And with Ryophlira and her brother marrying into the remaining kingdoms, it creates a web of access. It’s a logistical win."

"Foolish, shortsighted boy," I interjected, my voice dropping into a deadly, low register. I slammed the heavy leather book shut, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the quiet room. "Power is what we truly, fundamentally need."

I stood up off the bed, my pink silk gown rustling around my ankles as my gaze locked onto the King. "Exactly. Power is the only currency that matters. After all, without absolute power to back us up, those precious resources mean absolutely nothing the exact moment they decide to march across our borders and take this land back by force," The King responded. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

I took a slow step toward them, "we simply have to pivot to Plan B. The East will not answer our diplomatic call they are locked in their own silent mourning but the surrounding nations and splinter kingdoms absolutely will. My father and mother have made an immense list of enemies over the last three decades. We leverage them."

Cassian stared at me, his gray eyes narrowing as a muscle jumped in his jaw. "You can’t possibly be serious about going through with this. It is literal madness. You are talking about a continent-wide bloodbath."

"You have yet to see just what I am truly capable of when pushed, Prince," I whispered.

Cassian let out another long sigh, turning his back to his father as he walked over to the edge of his bed. "I need time to think clearly."

"What you need," I murmured, my voice shifting into a sultry, manipulative tone as I stepped into his personal space, "is something to help you relax. And I can help you with exactly that."

I cast a deliberate, sidelong glance at the King of the South. His face instantly flushed a deep, embarrassed red. He cleared his throat loudly, suddenly looking remarkably shy and uncomfortable as he adjusted his royal robes.

"I... I will leave you two to it," the King mumbled hurriedly, turning on his heel and scrambling out of the bedchamber, slamming the door shut behind him.

The moment the latch clicked, the games stopped.

I didn’t waste a single heartbeat. Reaching up to the shoulder straps of my pale pink dress, I untied the silk ribbons, letting the heavy fabric slip down my chest. I slowly walked toward Cassian, dropping each piece of my clothing onto the hard floor one by one. The gown, the corset, the layers of silk lace until I was standing completely bare before him.

Cassian looked up, his gray eyes darkening with a raw lust as his gaze raked over my naked body. He stood up from the bed.

"Why can’t I keep you?" he whispered hoarsely, his voice tight with an agonizing frustration. "I want you. I want your fire. Not her."

"I was never yours to begin with, Cassian," I replied coldly, my face a mask of absolute detachment.

His eyes fell to the faint, slowly healing dark marks left on my skin, his expression softening into something dangerously close to pity. He stepped forward, reaching out with his thick, muscular arms to pull my naked body into a tight, crushing hug against his chest. "Look at what you are doing to yourself," he muttered into my hair. "It’s not worth it. It’s not worth tearing your own soul apart for a man who doesn’t see you."

"Shut up," I hissed against his neck, my teeth baring as my dragon adrenaline surged. "Shut up and fuck me."

Cassian let out a low, guttural growl. He hooked his hands under my thighs, ripping me off the floor and capturing my mouth in a bruising, desperate kiss. Driven by a sudden burst of my supernatural strength, I clamped my fingers into the collar of his shirt and violently ripped the fabric down the center, sending buttons flying across the floor as his bare, muscular chest pressed flush against mine.

Our tongues clashed battle of teeth and saliva. Holding my twisting body, Cassian stumbled and tumbled backward across the room, his boots scraping against the stone until his knees hit the edge of his massive wooden desk. With one heavy sweep of his muscular arm, he carelessly threw everything onto the floor, inkwells shattered, expensive scrolls tore, and books slammed onto the floor.

He slammed me down onto the wooden surface, his large hands immediately grabbing my knees and violently spreading my legs wide open.

I reached down frantically, grabbing the waistband of his trousers, and with a surge of physical fury, I ripped the fabric apart. He was already fully hard, throbbing and thick. Without a single second of hesitation, Cassian gripped my hips and pushed violently inside of me, burying himself to the hilt in one deep, brutal thrust. I should be use to this but every time we do this it feels like the first time all over again.

A sharp, ragged moan tore out of my throat, blending with his guttural scream of release. He was incredibly rough, his movements hard and unyielding, driven by a desperate need to possess a woman who belonged to another and I loved it. He brought his thick hand up, wrapping it tightly around my throat, squeezing just enough to restrict my air. My lungs gasped for oxygen, my head spinning, but I leaned into the restriction I liked the pain. I needed the violence to drown out the rot in my mind.

Cassian leaned down, his mouth sinking into my neck, sucking and biting into the sensitive skin over my collarbone until the metallic taste of blood filled the air. He was moaning loudly against my skin, his thrusts turning frantic and punishing. I arched my back off the wooden desk, my fingers clawing desperately into the thick musculature of his bare back, digging my nails in so deep that the flesh tore, causing hot red blood to bleed down his spine.

I closed my eyes, the pain and the pleasure blurring into a singular, toxic hallucination. I didn’t see Cassian. In my mind, I imagined the massive frame of Yue-Senn pinning me down. I imagined his eyes looking down at me with that wicked hunger.

Suddenly, the air in the room grew suffocatingly dense. Cassian’s gray eyes began to glow with a brilliant, magical energy. As the magic inside him peaked, his entire muscular body began to radiate a faint, shimmering light.

My own eyes snapped open, blazing with a matching as my own body began to glow. Through our intense physical connection, he was feeding raw, energy straight into my core with every single punishing thrust and movement of his hips. We stared directly into each other’s glowing eyes, the sheer velocity of the magic surging between us. I could feel the faint scars on my skin actively tingling, healing and sealing shut under the pressure of the raw power. I felt supermixed,

supercharged, an immense, terrifying wave of physical and magical power flooding my veins until my vision swam.

Before I could process the high, Cassian sharply pulled completely out of me.

He grabbed me firmly by the back of my neck, dragging my body off the wooden table. He violently turned me around, facing me away from him, and slammed my forehead hard against the smooth wood of the desk.

With his left hand, he pinned both of my wrists securely above my head against the table, his grip like a steel handcuff. With his right hand, he gathered a thick fistful of my hair, forcing my chin down as he positioned himself behind me. He thrust back inside of me from behind, driving unstoppable momentum.

The entire bedchamber was filled with our echoing moans and breathless screams, the massive wooden desk physically moving and scraping against the marble floor with the force of his hips. He went harder and harder, his body hammering against mine in a desperate race for the finish line.

The sheer overload of the magic, the physical friction, the pain and the blinding rage finally broke the dam inside me. A shattering climax ripped through my entire body, and as Cassian let out a final, roaring release inside of me, my vision completely blacked out, plunging me into a dark, powerless darkness.

Ryophlira thought she had won. She thought she could take the man I targeted, take the throne of the North, and slip away into a blissful winter fairy tale while I rotted in the South.

She was wrong.

Enjoy your throne while it still stands, sister .

Because Aiyolistra is coming to take back everything that belongs to her. And I will start by tearing down your precious little kingdom brick by single brick.