Chapter 71: Deal
Silver braziers lining the Dragon Guardian Palace’s vast dining hall cast ripples of heat‑shimmer across polished dragon‑bone platters, making every dish gleam like treasure newly pried from a hoard.
On the ironwood table rested a spread fit for legends—slices of ember‑kissed wyvern flank lacquered in sweet crimson blaze‑honey, coils of obsidian‑scaled crackling that snapped beneath fork tines, and a bowl of ruby‑mist gizzard stew whose steam carried faint sparks that fizzled out of existence.
Jett carved a strip of the flank, juice beading along the knife’s edge before he slid the meat past eager lips. Fire and sugar clashed, then melded into a smoky caramel that set his senses humming. Damn, that’s perfect.
He chased the bite with a shard of crackling; the scale’s brittle shell fractured into shards that melted like buttery charcoal, leaving behind a whisper of volcanic salt. The stew followed, velvety and peppered with micro‑ember seeds that popped like distant fireworks down his throat, warming his chest in slow, delightful waves.
Leaning back, Jett savored the lingering ember‑sweet tang coating his tongue while the hall’s air filled with the hush of awed onlookers. Satisfaction unfurled through him like wings in flight, and for a heartbeat he felt almost draconic himself—fierce, sated, and gloriously alive.
After a grand breakfast where Jett sampled more of rich dragon cuisine, he was asked to speak with the Dragon Empress in her temporary chamber.
He entered the chamber alone, his maids and Skytianeus remaining in the dining hall. Inside, the Dragon Empress curtly fixed him with her customary cold stare before shooing away imperial healers.
The draconic doctors and nurses scurried away as though they had seen a ghost. Now, only Jett and Lamellia still remained in the room.
Looking at her now, Jett couldn’t spot any wounds or lingering gashes from their battle, yet the sickness clung to her human guise.
Her normally sun‑warm complexion had faded to moonlit porcelain, violet shadows pooled beneath her eyes, and a faint tremor rippled through the fingers resting lightly on the bedsheet—as though even that slight touch taxed her ebbing strength.