Silent Crown: The Masked Prince's Bride-Chapter 326: A Sliver Of Hope

And then the dragon leapt into the sky, carrying all three of them toward whatever salvation...or doom, waited on the horizon, his enormous wings cutting through the pale dawn like blades forged from light itself.

The camp stared upward in stunned silence, their cheers dying in their throats. Moments ago, they had been celebrating the birth of a prince, voices raised in triumph, drums echoing across the plains; but now, as they watched the dark silhouette streak across the heavens with their king, their queen, and the newborn heir, they whispered in confusion and growing disbelief...

The King was running away.

A ripple of panic settled over the field, quiet at first, then spreading like a sickness. No one understood. No one had been told. No one even dared to think of what it meant that the dragon himself had torn open the queen’s tent and taken the prince. Only the sound of beating wings lingered, like thunder fading into the mountains.

Aldric watched the sky for a long, tense heartbeat, watched the dragon soar higher, wings wide and furious, flying with a desperation that told him everything was more dire than anyone imagined, before he finally ran toward the remains of the queen’s tent.

The place was in ruins, scattered with torn fabric and the lingering scent of fear. Midwives knelt trembling in the trampled grund. Emma sobbed into her hands. Aralyn stood rigid, pale as bone.

Sylvia looked the most shaken of all. "She’s dying and... He... he took the prince," she whispered, still clutching the empty blanket as though she could convince herself it hadn’t happened. "Aldric... what can we do? What are we supposed to do?"

Aldric lifted his eyes again to the brightening horizon, where the dragon was already little more than a streak of fire and shadow. Something deep in his gut told him the truth, something instinctive, old as prophecy.

"We wait," he said quietly. "And we pray he knows where to take them."

Damian arrived seconds later, breathless, eyes wild with the same question tearing through the rest of the camp. "Aldric," he said, "tell me—can the curse truly be broken?" His voice cracked. "I have read everything left after the fire, every scrap, every fragment. Nothing gave hope. But Vaeronyx—he lived through the time of the Divina. If anyone knows the way..."

"We can only hope," Aldric murmured, his gaze still fixed on the vanishing dragon. Because hope was all they had. Hope that the demigod had not acted out of grief or madness. Hope that he knew of something hidden, forgotten, salvaged from the ruins of ancient prophecy.

Hope that Lorraine would survive.

Because if she did not...

Leroy would fall.

And if Leroy fell...

Veyrakar would fall with him.

-----

"Keep her awake, boy," Vaeronyx commanded, his voice vibrating through the dragon’s throat like thunder trapped in a cavern. "Even I cannot bring her back if she..." He didn’t finish the sentence, but the silence was heavier than any word he could have spoken.

"Where are we going?" Leroy asked, pulling Lorraine closer, feeling the heat of her fever through the furs. She was still bleeding—gods, how was she still bleeding? By now she should have been drained, pale as death, empty. Was his fear exaggerating the sight, or was fate truly intent on hollowing her out drop by drop? "Quicker," he urged through clenched teeth.

He pressed his lips to her forehead, her skin damp and cold and slipping from him like the tide.

"When she passed..." Vaeronyx began, but the rumble of his voice lowered, cracking around the oldest wound he carried. "...she didn’t allow me beside her. She was..."

He didn’t need to say her name. Eiralyth. The Swan Oracle. His wife.

He had centuries to replay those final days, centuries of loneliness, bitterness, and guilt hollowing him out until even a dragon’s heart felt small. His Eiralyth, who had carried more than any mortal or demigod should have.

She had lived in three times at once: past, present, and future, her mind a battlefield of consequences. While others staggered under the weight of what had already happened, she staggered beneath the weight of what would. Her perception slipped, twisted, blurred at the edges. Some mornings she needed to be reminded what day it was, whether a tragedy had happened already or was still waiting like a knife in the dark.

In the weeks before her death, she had withdrawn from him. Whispered secrets to her attendants. Locked doors. Turned her face away when he tried to meet her gaze. She had been dying, but she had also been seeing, and whatever vision she saw must have cut her deeper than any blade.

He was there when her breaths grew shallow. But she asked him to leave. To not see her body break. To not see her light dim.

And because he had once knelt to her, because he had given her the vow that bound a dragon’s pride, he obeyed. Like a fool, he stood just outside the door as she died, listening to the silence that took his world apart.

And then, under her commands, always her commands, she was buried without him even knowing where. By the time he learned, the tomb had been sealed. No closure. No farewell.

Only waiting. Only hoping. Only believing that one day, she would return free of every burden, smiling the way she only smiled for him.

Vaeronyx’s wings cut through the air harder, faster, as if trying to outrun memories older than empires. Wind screamed past them, cold and merciless, tearing at Leroy’s cloak as he held Lorraine against his chest.

Above him, Lorraine’s breath hitched thin, shallow, like the last flicker of a candle.

Leroy gathered her closer, one arm bracing her spine, one hand cradling her face, as though the sheer act of holding could chain her spirit to her body. "Breathe for me, my love..." he whispered into her ear, the words breaking, unraveling.

It was his turn to beg for the promise she had once offered him so easily.

Live for me, my beloved. Live...

"I found her tomb," Vaeronyx said abruptly, his voice booming through the air, vibrating through scale and bone. "And I might have found a way to save your wife. There’s one ritual... one forbidden rite. But I could not perform it alone. It requires her bloodline..."

Vaeronyx felt it when his wife’s tomb surfaced. And he knew what he had to do. This was against every celestial law ever carved into the fabric of the heavens. But why should a dragon king care for laws written by gods who never cared for mortals?

Once—only once—he had followed them, for the sake of the woman who tamed him. She had asked him, long ago, to be ruled by nothing but love. Love, she insisted, should be extended even to their enemies.

And so he obeyed. He remained still as stone while his descendant was cut down, betrayed, and murdered. He had watched from the shadows because she asked it of him.

But now... now he understood the truth.

His wife had regretted that promise. She had seen the future, lived inside it, choked beneath it. She had known what her mercy would cost.

She had known Lorraine would be born twisted in shadow and rage, because it was the only shape in which Lorraine could survive. And still... the Swan Oracle had loved her. Accepted her. Embraced her darkness as part of the path.

Maybe that was the regret she carried to the grave. Maybe that was why she hid. Maybe that was why her tomb vanished from the world, until the moment Lorraine needed it.

Vaeronyx’s wings beat harder, determination radiating from every scale. And he, the dragon, demigod, and king of all, no longer cared for rules, commandments, or heavenly decrees.

He would break every law ever written if it meant reaching her.

Leroy, eyes burning red from fear and fury and the unbearable weight of love, latched onto that single word. Might.

He didn’t care that the chance was as thin as a whisper. He didn’t care that he was throwing his kingdom to the wind or that this was a ritual of darkness, forbidden even to dragons.

He was a desperate man. He clung to hope the way drowning men cling to driftwood.