Destiny of Dragons

Kayda stood at the threshold of her family’s castle, watching the morning light catch the golden spires and throw it back across the courtyard in long, glittering ribbons. She breathed in deep — spring air, sweet and green, carrying the distant murmur of the brook that ran past the eastern wall. Sundara was waking around her the way it always did in early spring, unhurried and certain of itself.

She envied it, that certainty.

The castle had always felt like two things at once: a home she loved fiercely, and a cage dressed up in gold leaf. Legends said golden dragons once nested in the peaks above these very hills, and sometimes, standing here, she could almost believe the stones remembered them — that something ancient still stirred beneath the moss and mortar, waiting. As the only child of the Sundaran royal line, she was meant to carry that memory forward, to be worthy of whatever had once soared over these lands. Most days, the weight of it sat somewhere just behind her ribs, quiet but never quite gone.

Today it was louder. Today was the first day of her final year at Havenwood Academy.

She tucked a stray curl of strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear and set off down the winding path on foot, waving away the royal wagon before her mother could insist. She preferred to walk. It gave her time to talk herself into courage before she needed it, and there was no version of the journey by wagon that afforded her that same slow accumulation of nerve.

The path curled gently through the hills, past hedgerows just beginning to green and orchards still holding the last stubborn blossoms of the season. A farmer lifted a hand to her from his cart and she returned the wave, grateful for the ordinariness of it. Out here, she wasn’t a princess so much as a girl on a road, and she let herself enjoy the last of that anonymity before the gates came into view.

Near the old stone bridge that marked the halfway point of her walk, she paused, as she did most mornings, to watch the brook run beneath it. She used to come here as a child with her nurse, tossing petals into the water and racing them downstream to the bend where the path curved out of sight. It felt strange now to stand in the same spot as a girl about to finish her schooling, as though the water had kept moving all this time while she’d only just noticed how far she’d come. She lingered a moment longer than she meant to, then made herself walk on. There would be time for nostalgia later. Today asked for nerve.

Havenwood sat directly on the border between Sundara and Dunmire — a school built deliberately on contested ground, meant to turn two rival peoples into something like allies. In practice, Kayda had spent six years watching that theory collapse spectacularly, usually because of one person in particular. The academy’s founders had imagined shared classrooms would breed shared understanding. What they’d actually built, as far as Kayda could tell, was a very well-funded arena.

By the time the academy’s dragon-carved gates came into view, her stomach had folded itself into a tight, familiar knot. She could feel the old stone thrumming faintly beneath her boots as she crossed into the courtyard — that same low hum of magic she felt every year, dragon-born and restless, like the school itself was holding its breath along with her.

“Kayda!”

Elira’s voice cut clean through the noise of the courtyard. She stood near the amphitheatre steps with Tobias, waving both arms like she was flagging down a ship.

Kayda felt her shoulders loosen for the first time all morning and crossed the courtyard to meet them, weaving past clusters of students trading summer stories and eyeing each other’s new uniforms with the particular scrutiny only a first day could inspire.

“Senior year,” Elira said, seizing her by both hands the moment she was close enough. Her dark hair was pulled back in a hasty braid already coming undone at the edges, and her eyes had that particular gleam that meant she’d been awake since dawn out of sheer excitement. “Can you believe it? One more year and then we’re just — out there. Doing whatever we want.”

“You mean failing to pay rent in whatever city will have us,” Tobias said, dropping an arm around Kayda’s shoulders in greeting.

“I mean thriving,” Elira said, “loudly, and possibly in a city with better weather than this one.”

“I’ve got a tournament to win first,” Tobias said, rolling his shoulders back with theatrical confidence. “This is the year I finally beat that smug Dunmire lot at something. Anything. I’m not fussy.”

“You could also study,” Kayda offered.

“Studying is what people do when they don’t have my natural gifts.”

“Your natural gifts got you a broken nose in second year.”

“Character-building,” Tobias said solemnly, tapping the bridge of his nose as though it were a badge of honour rather than the result of a spectacularly ill-advised bet.

Elira laughed, bright and easy, and for a moment the knot in Kayda’s stomach eased another degree. This was the part of Havenwood she actually loved — not the crest on her uniform or the expectations stitched into it, just this, her friends, ordinary and unbothered by anything grander than tournaments and gossip. Elira’s cleverness had smoothed over more disasters than Kayda could count, and Tobias’s easy nerve had gotten them out of at least as many. Between the two of them she’d survived six years of Havenwood mostly intact.

“How was the rest of your summer?” Elira asked. “You went quiet the last few weeks.”

“Court obligations,” Kayda said, which was true enough to pass for a full answer. “My mother had opinions about how I ought to spend my final summer as a student. Mostly the opinion that I shouldn’t be enjoying it too much.”

“Sounds thrilling,” Tobias said.

“It really wasn’t.” Kayda glanced between them, and some of the morning’s tightness eased at the familiar sight of their faces. “Honestly, I spent half of it wishing I was back here. Court dinners are unbearable when you’re the only one at the table who isn’t allowed an opinion.”

“You could always develop a sudden and dramatic illness,” Tobias suggested. “Works every time. I’ve faked at least four.”

“You fainted during a maths exam last year.”

“That was a legitimate reaction to quadratic equations.”

Elira shook her head, laughing, and reached out to straighten the collar of Kayda’s uniform with the easy familiarity of someone who’d done it a hundred times before. “Well, you’re here now, and that’s what matters. No court, no dinners, just us and a truly unreasonable amount of homework.”

“When you put it that way it doesn’t sound like an improvement.”

“It’s an improvement,” Elira said firmly. “Trust me.”

Elira’s eyes flicked past her shoulder and her grin sharpened into something more watchful. “Ah. Speak of the devil’s least favourite topic.”

Kayda didn’t need to turn around. She felt it the way she always did — a shift in the air, a ripple moving through the crowd as it parted for someone who expected it to. Conversations dipped and reoriented themselves. Somewhere behind her, a group of girls straightened without seeming to notice they’d done it.

“Well, if it isn’t Sundara’s finest,” Drayson called, loud enough to make sure the whole courtyard heard him. “Careful, everyone — she’s had all summer to think up new material.”

A few students laughed. Kayda kept her spine straight and did not turn around, which was, she had learned, its own kind of losing.

“Ignore him,” Elira murmured.

“I am ignoring him,” Kayda said, in a tone that made it clear she was doing anything but.

Drayson closed the distance with the unhurried ease of someone who had never once doubted he’d be welcome wherever he went. Dark hair, deliberately tousled. Green eyes that missed nothing and forgave less. He had a way of walking into a space like he’d already decided how the next five minutes would go, and the maddening part was that he was usually right.

He stopped a few feet away and studied her with the particular delight of a boy who’d found his favourite toy exactly where he’d left it.

“No hello?” he said. “After a whole summer apart? I’m wounded.”

“You’ll survive,” Kayda said. “You always do.”

“High praise. I’ll add it to the collection.” He tilted his head, something sly working behind his eyes. “Did you bring the diary this year? Only asking so I know whether to bring photocopying supplies.”

Her face went hot before she could stop it — third year rising up whole and humiliating, pages of her private thoughts passed hand to hand across the courtyard like party favours, whispered about in corridors for weeks after. She hated that he could still do this. That three years later it still landed exactly where he aimed it, like he’d kept the exact coordinates filed away for future use.

“Careful,” she said, and was almost proud of how steady it came out. “Keep bringing up the diary and people might start thinking you never got over it.”

Something flickered across his face — surprise, maybe, quickly buried under a grin. “Careful yourself, Your Highness. Might start thinking you’ve grown a spine.”

“I’ve had one the whole time. You’ve just never been close enough to notice it working.”

A ripple of laughter went through the small crowd that had gathered, and for one dizzying second it was almost — good. Almost like winning. Beside her, she felt Tobias’s low chuckle of approval and Elira’s fingers brush her arm in silent solidarity.

Drayson’s grin didn’t waver, but something behind it recalculated. He took a slow step closer, close enough that the next words felt aimed only at her, low under the noise of the courtyard.

“There she is,” he said. “I always did prefer you with a bit of fight in you.”

Heat crawled up her neck, and this time it wasn’t only anger. “There’s nothing of me for you to prefer,” she said, and hated that the words came out thinner than she meant them to.

“Careful,” he said softly. “You say that like you believe it.”

She opened her mouth — for what, she wasn’t entirely sure, a comeback or a retreat, possibly both at once — and found nothing there at all. The courtyard noise rushed back in around her, and she was abruptly, painfully aware of how many people were still watching to see how this ended.

“Drayson.” One of his friends, hovering at the edge of the group, nodded toward the amphitheatre. “Orientation.”

Drayson held Kayda’s gaze another beat, something unreadable passing behind those green eyes, and then he stepped back, the moment releasing her like a held breath finally let go. “To be continued, Your Highness,” he said, already turning away, already laughing at something one of his friends said, as though the last thirty seconds hadn’t happened at all.

For him, she thought bitterly, it probably hadn’t.

She turned and walked, chin up, toward the amphitheatre before her legs could remember they wanted to shake.

“Kayda—” Elira started, jogging to catch up.

“Don’t,” Kayda said, quieter than she meant to. “Please. Just — not right now.”

Elira fell into step beside her without another word, which was, in its own way, exactly what Kayda needed. Tobias, for once, kept his commentary to himself, though she caught him glancing back over his shoulder toward Drayson’s retreating group with an expression that suggested he had opinions he was choosing not to voice.

They walked in silence for a few steps before Elira slipped an arm through hers. “For what it’s worth,” she said, quieter now, “the diary line was cruel. I know you don’t want to talk about it, and we don’t have to, but I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t.”

“Thank you,” Kayda said, and meant it, even if she couldn’t quite look at her when she said it.

“And you did get one good hit in,” Tobias offered, apparently deciding silence had run its course. “The spine comment. That landed. I saw his face.”

“Doesn’t feel like it landed.”

“That’s because he got the last word,” Elira said. “It doesn’t mean you didn’t win the middle of it.”

Kayda managed a small, unconvinced smile, grateful for the attempt even if she didn’t quite believe it yet. Behind her, she could still feel the ghost of Drayson’s eyes on her back, and she hated — more than the teasing, more than the diary, more than any of it — that some small, treacherous part of her had felt something close to alive standing in front of him.

The amphitheatre rose ahead, its stone steps already filling with students finding seats among old friends and wary rivals alike. Somewhere above the noise, the academy’s bells began to toll the hour, calling the last of the stragglers in from the courtyard.

One year, she told herself, climbing the steps toward the rest of her life.One more year, and then I never have to feel like that again.

She didn’t yet know how wrong she was.