Fifteen Winters

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The snow had come early that year, and it had come hard.

Lucian was twelve. He had slipped away from his father's hunting party because he was bored, and because the lords of the north did not look for a boy who knew the forest better than they did. He wore a white fox collar that was too big for him. His breath smoked. He followed a thread of red across the drifts, and at the end of it he found a creature lying in the snow.

It was a boy, or nearly. Dark curls crusted with blood. Two small horns, new and unpolished, curving from his temples. One wing, folded wrong, trailing across the white like a torn black flag. His eyes opened as Lucian knelt, and they were gold, and they were terrified.

"Don't," the boy rasped. "Human. Go."

"You're dying."

"I know."

Lucian looked at the wing. He looked at the blood. He had been told all his life that dragons were monsters, that they came over the mountains to burn villages, and what he saw was a child with a broken wing who was trying very hard not to cry.

So he did the only thing he knew how to do. He took off his glove, put his bare palm against the boy's forehead, and let his gift flow. It was not a weapon then. It was only warmth, a slow blue calm that poured from his fingers into the small shaking body. The boy's breathing eased. A cut on Lucian's hand, picked up in the brambles, welled red. The dragon boy caught the drop with his tongue before either of them knew what was happening.

Gold eyes widened.

"What's your name?" the boy whispered.

"Lucian."

"Lu... cian." As though it were a spell. "I will find you."

Then there had been horns in the trees, and his father's voice, and the boy was gone, and Lucian had woken three days later in a fever with a bandage on his hand and a hole in his memory the exact shape of a dragon.

Fifteen winters. He had never once asked why.

---

"Commander."

The word dragged him back. Lucian's eyes snapped open on the steel ceiling of the cell, on the amber light, on the dragon's shoulders blocking half the room.

"Get off me," he said.

"As you wish." Kaelen rose in one fluid motion and held out a hand. Lucian ignored it, rolled to his feet, and had the revolver level at the prince's heart before the echo of the table's ring had faded. His hand did not shake. That, at least, he had not lost.

"If you want to live," he said, "you will shut up."

"I would love to." Kaelen spread his empty hands. "But your radio is about to ring."

It rang.

Lucian let the sound fill three full seconds before he answered, because he wanted to know whether his voice would hold. "Winters."

"Commander." Static, then the clipped voice of the duty officer. "Urgent report from the territory. The dragon army is massing at the Ashfall passes. It's an emergency, sir. And there's something else."

"Say it."

"The coordinates of the Heartstone Nexus have been leaked."

Behind him, Kaelen stopped smiling.

The Heartstone Nexus was the buried reactor that lit every window in Winterhold, and every wall that kept the dragons out. Its location was known to exactly nine people, and the nine were the highest members of House Winters. If it fell, the entire territory could lose power in a heartbeat, and with it the shield grid, the border guns, the ice-wall that had held the Frostline for three hundred years.

"Seal the building," Lucian said. "No one enters without my order."

"Sir, the order is already..." The officer faltered. "Acting Lord Thorne is on his way down. He said to tell you he's bringing tea."

Lucian closed his eyes.

---

Uncle Thorne arrived in a coat the color of a bruise, carrying a tray. He set it down on the very table where Kaelen had pinned Lucian a minute before, poured two cups with steady hands, and looked at his nephew over the steam with an expression of deep, patient sorrow.

"You look terrible, my boy."

"The Nexus coordinates," Lucian said.

"I know. Only the highest members of the House knew them." Thorne turned the cup in its saucer. He was fifty-four, broad and silver-haired, with the heavy gentle face of a man who had spent his life being underestimated. "Which means there is a traitor among us. I have been over it a hundred times. Your father is dead. The elders have no reason. That leaves you, Lucian, and me."

"Are you accusing me?"

"I'm accusing no one." Thorne's voice cracked, just slightly. "Do you think I could bear it? Aldric was my brother. And you are all I have left of him."

For a moment, Lucian wavered. The old man looked so tired. The cell was so cold.

"We should execute the dragon," Thorne went on. "Take his core, use its power to restore the Nexus, and answer the Ember Conclave with a lesson. Quickly."

"No."

"Lucian."

"If Kaelen dies we lose the only lead we have on Father's death. And I won't kill a prisoner who hasn't spoken."

The silence stretched. Then Thorne nodded slowly, as if he had expected nothing else, and reached inside his coat.

The vial was the size of a finger. The liquid inside was the black of deep water, shot through with veins of crimson.

"The Abyss Serum," Thorne said. "Newly developed. It throws a dragon's rut into chaos, and a dragon in chaos has no walls. Combine that with your mind spike, and he will give up everything. Including the truth about your father's death." He pressed the vial into Lucian's gloved palm and folded the fingers closed. "You have three hours. After that, I am afraid the Council will take the matter out of our hands."

Lucian stared at the vial. His shield was fluctuating; he could feel it, a stutter in the cold blue wall around his thoughts, left over from the dragon's invasion. He was tired. He wanted the truth more than he had ever wanted anything.

"You're our house's only hope," Thorne murmured. "Do not let him break you."

He left. The door sealed behind him with a long hydraulic sigh.

Lucian turned. Kaelen had not moved from the corner where he stood. He had watched the whole exchange without comment, arms folded, eyes half-lidded. Now his nostrils flared.

"Rot," he said softly.

"What?"

"Nothing." The golden gaze lifted. "Go on, Commander. Whatever is in that bottle, I am sure you know best."

Lucian uncapped the vial and told himself it was for the truth.

---

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