Merlin releases me to the ground, freeing both hands to gather aether around him, whipping up a storm of it that churns so quickly it clears the smoke away. “Your mark says otherwise.”

There is no time to explain further before Merlin cuts me down. There is no escape.

My bloodmark pulses in time with my racing heartbeat. Instead of dimming, as it has in the past, here it is alive and bright, shining through my clothes, winding up my throat and down my arms and elbows.

Merlin is right. The Shadow King did mark me.… and waking his mark up brought my root back. Not just back but… more. I realize suddenly that for the first time since my root first rose, it doesn’t feel like Vera’s power.

Here in this world, somehow, the red flames are mine to wield.

They belong to me.

I won’t fall to the mercy of these figments, these ghosts, of people long dead. This may be Arthur’s dream, but I will burn it down myself before I die in it. I will make it a nightmare on my own terms if I must.

“I won’t go without a fight,” I say, scuttling backward.

Lancelot reaches Merlin’s side, brandishing two glowing swords. “I was hoping she’d say that.”

I press both palms into the earth, calling my root to the surface just long enough to send it roaring over the ground toward their feet. Merlin leaps backward before my flames reach him, and Lancelot speeds away until we are facing each other, two on one.

The surprise in Merlin’s eyes delights me. He has fought demons, but he’s never fought me. He and Lancelot exchange glances, shifting their weapons as they assess me.

I don’t wait for them to form a strategy. Instead, I draw my root up and out of my chest to my arms and ask it to do what I never could with Arthur’s power—become solid.

And here, it responds.

Root flows over my chest and down my legs, hardening as it goes until I am covered with flat, iridescent rubies layered on top of one another that look like—

“Scales,” Lancelot hisses.

Merlin shakes his head. “It cannot be. They are extinct—”

“Dragons never die,” I whisper, and rush them both, moving like a blade through liquid—and pivot at the last second to lash out at Lancelot with a clawed gauntlet, cleaving the mail in two. My claws bite into his shoulder down to the muscle, then I dart back.

With eyes wide he recasts the chain mail, melding the split pieces together.

A spear whistles—I duck, twist, and push off from the ground toward Merlin.

The sorcerer calls up a wall of aether just as he did before, this time circling me tighter, closing me in. His voice is chanting overhead, casting a harder and harder construct.

A prison meant to hold me.