"What? It wasn’t your mate’s shell?!" Riley gawked at Kael.
Who could have imagined how intense this story would get?
Kael’s expression remained calm. "Yeah," he said simply. "But it hadn’t been easy for others to believe it, as you can expect."
Riley leaned forward, still looking like his brain couldn’t quite process the information. "Was it really that impossible?"
Kael gave a quiet chuckle. "Unlike today, when you have all sorts of photographic evidence, back then no one even thought about the need for such a thing. In fact, some magical beings would’ve refused outright once they learned their likeness could be captured and left behind. Because to them, that would’ve been the perfect curse medium."
Riley blinked. "Oh. Well... that’s true."
"So yes," Kael continued, "it had been difficult to prove even to my parents that the shells we were looking at really weren’t the same."
Riley’s brows furrowed deeply, his expression a mix of disbelief and frustration. "Your parents couldn’t tell? Or was it because they didn’t know what the egg looked like due to the glamour?"
"I just find it hard to imagine Lord Karion and Lady Cirila not believing in your words..."
Kael’s thumb moved almost absently, smoothing the frown line between Riley’s brows. "Would you?" he asked softly. "Especially when that same child kept insisting that he’d fought a crazed intruder who was probably the culprit?"
"Huh? But it’s true, right?" Riley asked, his voice rising slightly.
Kael tilted his head. "During the time I was in a coma, they apparently found the culprit by tracing the source of the forbidden flames."
Riley straightened, eyes lighting up with hope. "Then the egg?"
Kael shook his head. "Not found. And they didn’t have anyone left to question either. When they reached the lair, all they found were the bodies of dragons with shattered cores."
Riley’s expression blanked. "???"
Kael smiled faintly, though his eyes were distant. "I know," he said. "That was exactly how I looked when I first heard it."
Because not only was this culprit entirely different, but of all beings, the white dragons?
Nothing made sense to the young Kael.
In all the reports, in all the stories he overheard from the adults, nowhere was there any mention of the being he saw in his room—the one with the torn wing and half a melted face.
Apparently, no such being had been found.
Instead, what everyone managed to uncover was something else entirely—a coup within the white dragon faction.
It seemed their clan’s neutrality wasn’t appreciated by everyone within.
Instead of supporting the golden dragon clan’s leadership after the fall of the black dragons, some white dragons believed their leader had been wrong to remain neutral and isolated. That as a favored clan, they should’ve fought for the right to be the next Dragon Lord.
But instead of hearing the youngsters out, their clan leader even rejected the idea of electing a white dragon elder to join the council.
Young Kael couldn’t understand what that had to do with the destruction of the dragon estate or his missing mate.
Then his father explained.
The barrier surrounding the dragon estate was ancient, and its enchantments were designed to allow dragon lords to enter freely. But that didn’t just mean the current dragon lord. It also meant past ones.
And that was how the rebels had gained access.
According to Lord Karion, the rebels had desecrated the tomb of a deceased white dragon lord, taking from it the sealed forbidden flame and a bone of the deceased.
They probably hadn’t known the price it demanded.
The forbidden flame had been sealed for a reason, after all.
In the end, what they found inside the great hall of the estate was a white dragon’s body, burned to ash right before the altar he had been trying to reach.
Kael could see why the story sounded plausible. It explained how they got in, how the wards didn’t react, and how the Forbidden flame managed to burn the estate.
But then he remembered the bodies by his room—those who had died protecting it.
However, he was told that the lacerations they could infer from those charred bodies were really from a dragon’s claw.
A dragon’s claw.
So the being he saw? Was that one a dragon too?
But everything they’d come up with remained speculation in the end.
Because in the end, there had been no one to confirm anything when none of the white dragons survived after their bloodline took on the curse of the forbidden flames.
__
"But Kael," Riley said, his voice still shaky from everything he’d heard, "you said it had been difficult to prove, but it sounds like in the end you managed to convince them?"
The dragon lord’s golden eyes flickered with amusement. "Sharp," he said with a small smirk, tilting Riley’s chin up gently, his thumb brushing along the edge of the human’s jaw in a teasingly familiar gesture.
"But yes," Kael continued, tone soft but laced with mischief, "in the end, they had no choice but to believe me."
Riley blinked. "How did you do it?"
Kael’s smirk widened slightly, lazily. Though in truth, the golden dragon seemed more embarrassed than proud. "You wouldn’t like it," he said, almost sing-song. "So just like you had me promise before, you should probably promise not to fold me into eighths, whatever that means."
Riley’s face turned red immediately. He pursed his lips, mortified that Kael still remembered that particular threat.
But the dubiously human aide had to agree because he couldn’t possibly be a hypocrite.
"Fine," he muttered after clearing his throat, trying to sound composed. "Okay. I promise."
Not that it really mattered—because realistically speaking, who could even fold the dragon lord into two? So what more eighths?
But then the bastard lizard started telling his story.
And within seconds, Riley, the glorified twig of a human aide, felt so fired up that maybe, just maybe, he could figure out a way to fold the idiot into sixteenths.
Because who on Eryndra would try to prove his mate was still alive by showing that he couldn’t possibly take on another one?!
This little shit!