CHAPTER 246: THE DRAGON ASH

"Someone sets fire to this house, Leroy," she said softly. "I saw it... in my dream."

His eyes widened. He wasn’t acting, he truly looked shocked. And that, more than anything, made her heart twist. She hadn’t meant to accuse him. She only wanted to know.

Still, she couldn’t ignore the unease that rippled through her.

She knew he was planning to leave. And strangely, it was around the same time she had intended to leave too, just a little later than she had planned. Except this time, the plan wasn’t hers. It was his.

She should have been worried. About the future. About what they’d have to abandon. But she wasn’t. Oddly, she wasn’t.

What she did feel, however, was a pang at the thought of losing this place... the house she had built from the bare rocks of the hill, where nothing used to grow. The place everyone once said was haunted by dead lovers. She had filled it with light and warmth until it became a home. Her home. Their home.

She didn’t want to see it burned to ash. Not yet.

"Mouseling," Leroy murmured, his voice trembling as he cupped her face. His brows knit together. "I would never destroy anything you built. Not for any reason. I would never."

"I know," she whispered, her hands finding his cheeks. She kissed him, softly, briefly, a kiss that said she believed him. That she trusted him. That she loved him, despite the fire that seemed to hang in the air between them.

He didn’t let go of her hands. Instead, he leaned down, pressing his forehead to her shoulder. His breath came out uneven, warm against the curve of her neck. His body was tense, trembling faintly, as if he was holding back something he couldn’t afford to release.

"You’re all I have, Lorraine," he breathed. The words were quiet, desperate, almost boyish.

She wrapped her arms around him and kissed the top of his head, feeling his hair brush against her lips.

So that’s it,

she thought. That’s what he’s afraid of: losing me.

She wanted to tell him that he wasn’t alone. That he had people, loyal ones who would die for him. His mother, even, had protected him in her own way. He had roots, support, and family. He wasn’t as alone as he felt.

But she knew he wouldn’t believe it.

He had always carried love like a burden, too deep, too fierce, too consuming. Once, she had doubted it, thought it shallow or driven by duty. But now... she could feel it.

His love for her was a living thing. A furnace. Burning him from the inside out. He had contained it for so long that it was beginning to swell and strain and quake, desperate for release.

And if anything happened to her... that same love would consume everything around him.

She felt it. That fire. That dangerous, beautiful blaze. It was both his strength and his undoing.

Her hand drifted down, resting lightly over her stomach. The faintest curve beneath her palm, their secret. The one thing that tethered them both to the future.

Of course, he would be afraid. The oracle stirring within her, the whispers of prophecy, the shifting ground beneath their feet... his world was tilting. His name, his blood, his destiny... everything was changing faster than he could steady himself.

And through it all, he held on to her.

He saw her as his anchor. His only constant in a world unraveling at the seams.

Perhaps, she thought, it wasn’t wrong to let him hold on.

Perhaps she could give him that.

Maybe... she should let him do as he wished. To follow his absurd dream, to flee the court, to farm, to live a life so ordinary it might finally give them peace.

Yes, she would let him.

She would go wherever he went. Even if the world behind them burned.

Even if the dream she saw was not a warning, but a promise.

"I’ll stay by your side, no matter what. How does that sound?" she asked, her hand drawing soft, patient circles on his back. The warmth of her touch seemed to calm the storm brewing within him.

Honestly, if her husband loved her this much, if his world began and ended with her, then what did prophecies or empires matter?

Eh. No. Not at all.

Leroy lifted his gaze to her, and slowly, as if the weight on his chest loosened by degrees, a smile bloomed on his face. It wasn’t his usual guarded smirk, nor the kind of grin that masked worry behind humor. This one was fragile, genuine: sunlight after a long winter.

"Did you look at our portrait?" Lorraine asked softly. The painter had told her the work was finally complete. She hadn’t dared to see it yet, though the thought of it, of them, immortalized on canvas both thrilled and terrified her.

"Let’s," Leroy said, voice quiet but firm.

"But first..." Lorraine drew a small pouch from the folds of her robe and held it out.

He took it, sniffing faintly. The scent was strange—smoky, metallic, with a faint heat that curled in the air. The smell of something ancient. His brow furrowed. "What’s this?"

"I think this is Dragon Ash," she murmured. "Though I could be wrong."

The words made the air heavier. Dragon Ash.

She remembered how it had burned her skin when she’d first touched it, a faint searing that left her fingers tingling for hours. Sylvia couldn’t even get near it as it burned her. Yet now, as she held it, it did nothing. No sting, no warmth, just a calm weight resting in her palm.

Perhaps it was because of the life stirring inside her, the child she carried, the faint pulse of dragon blood that was half his and half hers.

"Dragon Ash..." Leroy echoed, the term reverberating in his mind.

He remembered the old tales told in hushed tones among the scholars of Vaeloria. When a dragon dies, its fire never truly goes out. It retreats into its bones, into its scales, burning quietly for centuries beneath the stone.

Miners sometimes unearthed traces of it: a pale-gray powder, still warm to the touch, found clinging to fossilized ribs or buried in caverns where no light had touched for ages.

True Dragon Ash was rare. Almost impossible to preserve. It burned away the instant it met the open air, unless cooled in moonwater, or sealed with salt from the underlake.

Ancient alchemists of Veyrakar believed it held the memory of fire, the hunger without the flame. It did not burn, but devoured what burned. The ash that smothered fire itself. A fire-repellant.

Something that came out of fire that could protect against fire.

Leroy looked at the pouch again, now with quiet awe. "Where did you find it?" he asked, his voice low, almost reverent.

If this ash survived here, in a simple pouch of leather, then it was something powerful. Something older than kingdoms.