“No,” said the Elder Wyrm firmly. “You are not like the vessels. The vessels were created to be mindless, programmed to obey commands and little else. They are a perfect army, but they exist to serve a single purpose. They have no individuality, no thoughts of their own. You, however...” Her gaze roamed my body, as if seeing what lay beneath the sheets, scrutinizing it. It made my skin crawl. “You and your brother were engineered for perfection. You might have begun life in a vat, but I wanted you and Dante to develop normally. To reach your full potential. You were genetically constructed to be superior, but I needed your growth to be natural, untampered with. That was essential.”

“Why?”

For a moment, in that tiny room, the Elder Wyrm just stared at me, her eyes distant and dark. In that gaze, I felt the weight of a thousand years, someone who had watched worlds rise and fall, who had seen so much death, atrocity, chaos and evil that nothing affected her anymore.

“I am old,” the Elder Wyrm said, and her voice seemed to echo all around me. “Older than you know. Older than any living creature on this planet. I have spent the past few centuries building this empire from nothing, and it has become exactly what I envisioned. But there is still so much to do, and I haven’t much time left. Even dragons cannot live forever.”

“So, that’s why you need us,” I guessed. “You wanted an heir to take over Talon. Someone who would share your ideals and do exactly what you wanted.”

“Not...exactly.” The Elder Wyrm stepped forward, her eyes glowing green in the shadows, making me want to sink into the mattress. “That is what the rest of Talon thinks. They know I would never leave my organization in the hands of just any dragon, even one that is loyal to the organization. An older dragon would ignore my wishes and attempt to make Talon their own, to tear down my ideals and replace them with their own desires, and I have worked too hard to relinquish that control. I wanted someone of my blood, someone I could shape, and mold, who would continue my work should I fall. Dante is exactly what I need in an heir. I have no doubt he will do exactly as I wish and honor my will, if I am ever gone. But that is not why I created you.