Chapter 5: The Homecoming

The door clicked shut behind him, and silence swallowed the room. Prince Leander stood motionless for a long moment, one hand still resting on the doorknob.

Outside his office, the palace had already returned to its usual rhythm, though nothing felt usual anymore. Servants hurried through the corridors, advisors spoke in low voices, and somewhere beyond the windows, cameras flashed as journalists waited for another statement about the Red Moon. The kingdom had survived the night, but Leander could not shake the feeling that something important had been taken from him in the darkness.

He crossed the room and lowered himself into the chair behind his desk. His phone rested beside a stack of untouched reports, its screen still displaying the same unanswered conversation. He picked it up and stared at the last message he had sent.

Where are you?

Sent yesterday. Not delivered.

He scrolled farther.

Ravynne... please answer.

Not delivered. Another message waited below it.

The Queen finally approved the eastern irrigation proposal. You'd better hurry back before I take all the credit.

No reply. A small smile touched his mouth despite himself. Ravynne would have rolled her eyes at that message, probably complained that he had stolen her idea and then spent the next ten minutes explaining why she deserved the credit instead.

His smile faded as quickly as it appeared.

"...Come on."

His thumb hovered over the call button. He knew it wouldn't connect, but he pressed it anyway and held the phone against his ear. One ring. Two. Then the automated voice answered, telling him the number was unavailable.

Leander lowered the phone slowly. "...Where did you go?"

The question disappeared into the empty room.

A soft knock interrupted him. "May I come in?"

Leander looked up as Lady Seraphina Voss stepped inside with effortless grace. She wore an ivory dress beneath a tailored cream blazer, every detail immaculate despite the chaos that had surrounded the palace since the Red Moon appeared. The daughter of the President, the woman newspapers had already begun calling Valdris's Future Queen, and, officially, his fiancée.

She carried two cups of coffee and offered one to him. "You missed breakfast."

Leander accepted it automatically. "...Thank you."

Seraphina crossed the room and took the chair opposite his desk. For a while, neither of them spoke. She watched him over the rim of her cup, taking in the loosened tie, the dark circles beneath his eyes, and the hair that had clearly not been touched by a comb that morning. She had seen Leander exhausted before. She had seen him frustrated, angry, even afraid.

She had never seen him like this.

"You haven't slept."

"I'm fine."

"You've said that five times today."

He looked down at the coffee in his hands. "...Have I?"

Seraphina nodded, but she didn't smile.

Leander stared at the untouched reports on his desk for several seconds before finally speaking. "I can't find Ravynne."

Her fingers paused around the cup. "What do you mean?"

"No one has seen her since before the Red Moon." He rubbed his temples, exhaustion pressing heavily behind his eyes. "I've checked every security recording and sent guards to every checkpoint. Nothing. It's as though she simply vanished."

Seraphina studied him quietly. She had expected work stress. She had expected the pressure surrounding their engagement. She had even expected the chaos caused by the Red Moon.

She had not expected another woman to be the reason he looked as though he hadn't slept in days.

"Perhaps..." she said carefully, "...she simply wanted some time away."

Leander shook his head immediately. "No."

The certainty in his voice surprised even him.

"She always tells me where she's going. If she works late, she sends me a message. If she visits the archives, she leaves a note. Even if she skips lunch, she complains about it first."

He looked toward the empty chair near the window, the one Ravynne usually occupied whenever she worked in his office. "She doesn't disappear."

Seraphina followed his gaze. There was something in his voice that made her chest tighten, something far more personal than the concern a prince might have for his missing advisor.

Still, she kept her expression composed. "I'm sure she'll come back."

Leander lowered his gaze to the cold coffee in his hands. "I hope you're right."

Before Seraphina could answer, three rapid knocks struck the door. It opened before either of them could respond, and a Royal Guard hurried inside, breathing heavily.

"Your Highness."

Leander was already standing. "What happened?"

"We've received a report from the eastern gate."

His heartbeat quickened. "Go on."

The guard swallowed. "Lady Ravynne has returned."

The coffee cup slipped from Leander's fingers and shattered against the marble floor. He didn't even look down. "...Where?"

"The eastern entrance, Your Highness."

Leander was already moving.

He barely noticed Seraphina rising behind him. He passed startled servants, ignored the ministers emerging from their meeting with the King, and pushed through the main hall while reporters shouted questions from behind the palace barriers. None of it mattered.

Ravynne was alive. That was the only thought that reached him.

Outside the eastern gate, Ravynne stood beneath the pale morning sky, staring up at the palace she had spent the entire journey trying to reach.

The journey had taken nearly everything she had left. Her wounds had closed enough for her to walk, but every step had pulled at the damage beneath her skin, and the Dragonbane poison still seemed to linger somewhere inside her body. Even breathing felt heavier than it should.

Yet she had kept walking. Because Leander was waiting.

Her hand drifted unconsciously toward her lips. The warmth was still there, faint but impossible to forget. She closed her eyes and tried to push the memory away.

'Think about Leander.'

The prince who had spent years protecting her. The man she loved. That was where her thoughts should remain. Not the hunter. Not the kiss that had changed something inside her that she didn't understand.

She opened her eyes. Running footsteps approached from the palace.

Then she heard her name. "...Ravynne!"

She barely had time to turn before Leander reached her and pulled her into his arms. For one heartbeat, everything disappeared. The palace. The Red Moon. The sea. The tower.

There was only Leander's warmth around her, familiar and safe in a way nothing else had been since she awakened to the dragon inside her. She stood still in his embrace, letting herself breathe.

His voice shook beside her ear. "I thought I'd lost you."

Something inside her cracked.

"I'm sorry..." she whispered. "I worried you."

"Worried me?" He pulled back just enough to look at her. A weak laugh escaped him. "I nearly mobilized the entire army."

A faint smile appeared on her lips. "You always exaggerate."

"You disappeared."

"I know."

"I couldn't find you."

"...I'm sorry."

Leander kept both hands on her shoulders as he searched her face, as though he needed to reassure himself that she was truly standing in front of him. His thumb brushed gently against her cheek before his eyes moved over her again, checking her wrists, her hands, her shoulders, searching for injuries she was trying not to show.

"Did they hurt you?"

Ravynne blinked. "What?"

"Whoever took you." His voice became quieter, almost desperate. "Did they hurt you?"

"I... I'm okay."

"You've gotten thinner. It's only been a few days."

She managed a small laugh. "You sound like an old grandmother, my prince."

"I might become one if you disappear again."

Her laugh came more naturally this time, the first real one since the tower.

Leander smiled when he heard it. "There you are."

Ravynne frowned slightly. "...What?"

"I've been waiting for that smile."

Her heart softened. For one impossible moment, she almost believed she could leave the tower beside the sea, bury the memory of Leif beneath the waves, and return to the life she had always known.

Leander was here. He was safe. She was home.

Then something pulsed beneath her ribs. Her smile disappeared.

'No.'

The warmth came again, faint at first, then stronger.

'Not now.'

She pressed a hand against her chest.

Leander immediately noticed. "Ravynne?"

"I'm..." She forced herself to breathe. "...I'm fine."

But she knew the truth. The bond was awake. And somewhere nearby, he was close.

Across the garden, several servants bowed as King Aldros entered the eastern grounds. Beside him walked a tall man dressed entirely in black, military boots striking steadily against the stone path, a sword secured at his hip and a rifle resting across his back. He moved with the quiet confidence of someone who had spent most of his life surviving places where hesitation meant death.

Leif Morvain. The King's forgotten son. The Dragon Slayer.

Conversations faded as he passed. Servants stepped aside, knights straightened, and even veteran officers lowered their voices as they watched him.

"That's him."

"The Dragon Slayer."

"The King's son."

King Aldros spoke beside him, explaining where Leif would stay and who he would meet, but Leif barely listened. His attention remained somewhere beyond the palace walls, his thoughts still trapped between the sea and the woman he had watched disappear beneath it.

He had told himself she was dead. He had told himself it was over. Yet the emptiness inside his chest had never agreed.

Then something changed. Leif slowed. The strange emptiness he had carried since leaving Oakhaven was suddenly gone. In its place came something warm and sharp, spreading beneath his ribs with such force that his heartbeat stumbled.

His eyes narrowed. Something was close. Someone.

"Leif?" King Aldros looked toward him. "You all right?"

Leif didn't answer. He didn't know what he was feeling, only that his body had recognized something before his mind could understand it.

Without thinking, he looked across the garden—and froze. A familiar woman stood beneath the morning sun.  Alive.

For several seconds, Leif couldn't breathe. She should have drowned. The sea should have swallowed her. He had watched her fall. Yet there she stood.

Smiling—and she wasn't alone. Leif's gaze shifted to the man beside her. Leander. His stepbrother. The Crown Prince.

Leander's arms were still around her, one hand resting against the side of her face as he looked at her with unmistakable relief. Something inside Leif tightened. His jaw clenched.

He had wanted this woman dead. He had spent fourteen years hunting the creature inside her. He had shot her from the sky. He had watched her fall into the sea. He had stood on the shore until dawn searching for her body because some part of him had refused to believe she was gone.

So why did seeing Leander touch her make something violent twist beneath his ribs? His fingers curled slowly at his sides.

Across the garden, Ravynne felt the change before she understood it. She turned and saw him.

Leif stood beneath the morning sun, completely still. There was no sword raised toward her. No hatred carved across his face. Only shock. Raw and unhidden.

Her heart slammed against her ribs. The warmth beneath her chest erupted so suddenly that she nearly lost her breath.

She had spent the entire journey trying not to think about him, trying to convince herself that the sea had separated them forever. She had returned to Leander because Leander was the person she had always trusted, the person she loved, the person she believed she should return to.

And now Leif was standing there. Her body remembered him before her mind could stop it.

"Ravynne?" Leander's voice reached her, but she couldn't answer.

She couldn't look away. Leif's eyes remained fixed on hers from across the garden. For one impossible moment, the palace around them seemed to disappear. There was only the hunter. The woman. And the bond neither of them understood.

Leander followed her gaze and frowned. "...Ravynne?"

Still, she didn't answer. Because the man she had spent the entire journey trying to forget had found her again.

And this time, he wasn't standing in a tower with a sword against her heart. He was standing in the palace garden, staring at her as though he had just seen a ghost.

The dragon he had failed to kill was standing beside his brother.