The Dragon Bowed to the Servant Boy

Rowan dropped the ash bucket before the first horn finished sounding.

It struck the black stone floor with a hollow clang that rolled across the Hall of Scales, louder than it had any right to be. The bucket spun once, then tipped over, spilling gray ash in a long, ugly streak across the ritual path where only princes, priests, and noble-born riders were meant to stand.

Rowan froze with the rag in his hand.

He was supposed to be invisible.

That was the first rule Master Orrick had beaten into every servant child in the lower keep. A servant could move through a room full of kings if he kept his eyes down, his shoulders small, and his breath quiet. A servant could survive almost anything if no one remembered his face.

Rowan had been good at that.

He was ten years old, narrow-shouldered, quick with his hands, and quiet enough that the kitchen women sometimes forgot he was under the

The Hall of Scales did not care about pinched feet.

It was built for people who expected stone to remember them.

Great pillars rose like petrified trees, their sides carved with dragons twisted around crowned men. Iron braziers burned along the walls. Old banners hung from the balconies, crimson cloth heavy with dust and gold thread. At the far end of the hall, on a raised stone platform, the ancient dragon lay curled around the Dragon Stone.

It had not moved all morning.

People still bowed to it.

The dragon was called Veyr. Rowan had heard the name whispered in the kitchens, in the laundry rooms, in

Rowan had never been close enough to see its face until that day.

He had been sent into the hall before sunrise to sweep ash from the braziers and polish soot from the lower steps. He had finished before the nobles arrived. He should have left through the servant door beside the western arch.

But Master Orrick had pointed to the bronze ash bucket.

“Take it to the lower pit after the first blessing,” he had said. “Not before. The priest wants the fire marks untouched.”

So Rowan had waited in the shadow of a pillar while the court poured in.

Knights came first, armor shining under torchlight. Then the

The hall seemed to straighten for him.

Aldric was not yet king, but people already bent as if he were. He wore a crimson cloak lined with black fur, a gold crown set low over pale hair, and a sword he had never needed to draw in a room where every man hurried to obey him. He walked with his chin high and his left hand resting on the hilt, not because danger waited, but because it reminded everyone who owned danger.

Behind him came Lord Carrow, captain of the royal guard, and Lady Maerwynn, Aldric’s aunt, whose smile never showed teeth. The noble sons followed them in polished rows, each one pretending not to look at the dragon.

No one looked at Rowan.

Good.

He pulled the bucket closer to his foot and kept his back to the pillar.

The High Priest, Father Edran, raised both hands beside the Dragon Stone. He was thin and old, with a white beard that fell over his chest and fingers stained dark from years of ink and candle smoke. His voice carried without force.

“Blood may present itself,” he said. “Steel may present itself. Gold may present itself. But the dragon chooses only what the dragon knows.”

Aldric smiled.

It was a small smile, made for the front rows.

Rowan saw it because servants learned to watch the edges of things.

The Dragon Stone stood in the center of the platform, waist-high to an adult, dark as river iron. Runes crossed its surface in lines too old for most priests to read. There was a shallow mark at its center shaped like a dragon’s claw.

No rider had been chosen in three hundred years.

That was why the hall was full.

Aldric stepped forward first. Of course he did. A lesser prince might have let a knight test the stone before him, just in case. Aldric had never allowed the world to see him second.

His boots sounded clean against the steps.

He removed one glove, handed it to a page, and placed his bare palm on the Dragon Stone.

The hall held still.

A brazier spat once.

Nothing happened.

Aldric’s smile stayed in place.

Father Edran lowered his eyes to the stone, then to the prince’s hand. He did not speak.

Aldric kept his palm there.

Still nothing.

No glow. No heat. No mark. The dragon did not move.

Somewhere in the upper gallery, a woman’s bracelet clicked against the stone rail.

Aldric lifted his hand.

A pale print of dust remained on his palm.

“Again,” he said.

Father Edran looked at him for a long breath. Then he inclined his head.

The prince placed his hand down a second time. Harder.

The runes stayed dark.

Rowan stared at the floor and tried not to hear the silence forming around the crown.

The next to step forward was Sir Garran Vale, champion of the western marches, broad as a door and wrapped in ceremonial plate. He had won three tournaments and broken two men’s arms in the king’s own yard. He knelt before the stone, pressed both hands to it, and bowed his head until the silver wolf on his breastplate nearly touched the surface.

Nothing.

Then came Lord Fenwick’s eldest son, who had spent six years claiming he dreamed in dragon fire.

Nothing.

Then a commander from the northern garrison.

Nothing.

Then a pale noble boy with rings on every finger.

Nothing.

One by one, they touched the stone. One by one, they stepped away with their faces arranged into shapes that almost resembled dignity.

The dragon slept.

Not deeply, Rowan thought. Not like an animal.

Like something listening with its whole body.

He should not have looked at it, but he did. Its scales were darker than coal and larger than dinner plates near the shoulder. Horns swept back from its head like old black branches. One claw rested near the Dragon Stone, each talon longer than Rowan’s arm.

Its eye remained closed.

“Bring the next bloodline,” Lady Maerwynn said from the front row.

Her voice was smooth, but Aldric heard the edge in it. Everyone did.

“There is no next bloodline,” Aldric said.

A nobleman coughed into his fist.

Father Edran turned toward the gathered court. “The rite allows all who bear noble oath to present—”

“The rite has had its chance,” Aldric cut in.

Father Edran did not move.

Aldric stepped down from the platform, red cloak brushing against the stone. His face still looked controlled, but his hand had closed around the hilt of his sword.

Rowan noticed the knuckles.

White.

That was when the bucket moved.

A guard passing too close struck it with his boot. The metal lip scraped the floor. Rowan lunged on instinct, one hand reaching, the other still gripping the rag. His fingers caught the handle, but the weight pulled away from him.

The bucket clanged.

Ash spilled.

The sound cut through the hall better than any trumpet.

Every face turned.

Rowan stayed bent over, one hand still stretched toward the fallen bucket, the rag dangling from his fist.

The ash had crossed the ritual path.

No servant was allowed to step there during the rite.

His mouth went dry.

Lord Carrow’s gaze landed on him first. Then Lady Maerwynn’s. Then Aldric’s.

The prince looked down at the ash, then at Rowan.

Not at his face.

At his clothes.

At his hands.

At the rag.

“What is that doing here?” Aldric asked.

No one answered.

Rowan pulled the bucket upright with both hands. It was too late. Ash clung to the cracks in the stone like a stain.

Master Orrick stood near the servant arch, his face already closed against Rowan. No help there. No claim. No memory.

Rowan bent and began to sweep the ash back toward the bucket with the rag.

A few people laughed.

Aldric stepped closer.

Rowan saw the red cloak enter the edge of his vision and stopped moving.

“Stand,” Aldric said.

Rowan stood.

He kept his eyes on the prince’s boots.

They were black leather, polished so bright the torchlight ran across them.

“Name,” Aldric said.

Rowan swallowed. “Rowan, Your Highness.”

“Rowan what?”

He had no second name. Not one anyone used. The orphan list in the lower keep had once called him Rowan of North Gate, because that was where a washerwoman had found him wrapped in a torn cloak after a winter storm.

No servant repeated such things in front of nobles.

“Just Rowan, Your Highness.”

Aldric’s mouth curved.

“Just Rowan.”

The front row laughed again. Smaller this time. Waiting to see how far they were allowed to go.

Aldric turned his head toward Lord Carrow. “Why is a floor rat standing inside the rite?”

Lord Carrow’s jaw tightened. “He will be removed.”

Two guards moved at once.

Rowan bent to pick up the rag before they took him. He did not know why. The ash was already spilled. The hall had already seen. Still, his hand went to the cloth because that was what his hands knew how to do.

Aldric’s boot came down on the edge of the rag.

Rowan stopped.

The prince leaned slightly forward.

“Leave it.”

Rowan’s fingers hovered over the cloth.

Aldric’s voice lowered. “Do you think the crown’s floor needs your hands now?”

Rowan pulled his hand back.

One of the guards seized his shoulder. Not hard enough to bruise in front of the court. Hard enough to remind him that bruises could wait.

“I only cleaned the ashes,” Rowan said.

The words slipped out before he could stop them.

The guard’s fingers tightened.

Aldric stared at him.

The whole hall felt closer.

“What did you say?”

Rowan’s throat worked once. He did not repeat it.

Aldric did not need him to.

The prince looked around at the nobles, as if sharing a private joke with the room. “He only cleaned the ashes.”

A ripple of laughter moved across the lower rows. Lady Maerwynn did not laugh. Father Edran watched Rowan instead.

That was worse, somehow.

Aldric lifted his hand and pointed toward the servant arch.

“Drag him out. Royal blood only.”

The guard pulled Rowan one step backward.

Rowan’s boot slid through the ash. It left a gray streak behind him.

Then Veyr opened one eye.

No one saw it at first except Rowan.

He was facing the dragon because the guard had turned him half around. The great head lay on the steps behind Aldric, larger than a carriage, dark against darker stone. One golden eye opened beneath a ridge of scales.

Rowan forgot to breathe.

The dragon was looking at him.

Not at the prince.

Not at the stone.

At him.

The guard tugged again.

Rowan did not move.

“Walk,” the guard said under his breath.

The dragon’s eye narrowed.

A low sound moved through the stone.

It was not a growl. It was deeper than that. A slow pressure under the floor, felt first in the feet, then in the ribs. The nearest brazier flames bent sideways.

The guard released Rowan’s shoulder.

Aldric turned.

Every head followed.

Veyr lifted its head.

Stone dust slid from its horns and fell in thin gray streams across the platform. Its neck uncoiled slowly, scale over scale, each movement heavy but smooth, as if the hall had been built around the possibility of this single motion.

A knight in the front row took one step back and struck the bench behind him.

No one laughed now.

Aldric’s hand remained in the air, still pointing toward the servant arch. The gesture looked smaller with the dragon awake behind it.

Father Edran descended one step from the altar.

“Do not move,” he said.

No one asked whom he meant.

Veyr’s head lowered from the platform, bringing its golden eye closer to the hall floor. Rowan stood with ash on his boots and the dirty rag half under Aldric’s polished heel.

The dragon breathed once.

Warm air moved across Rowan’s face, smelling of stone, smoke, and something sharp like rain on iron.

Aldric stepped between them.

It was a brave movement, or it would have looked like one from farther away. Up close, Rowan saw the prince’s hand shift on his sword hilt.

“That beast belongs to the crown,” Aldric said.

Father Edran’s eyes moved to the prince. “No beast belongs to a crown.”

Aldric did not look at him.

He looked at the dragon as if anger might work where blood had failed.

“Back,” he commanded.

Veyr did not blink.

The dragon moved one claw.

Only one.

It placed the talon on the edge of the Dragon Stone.

A sound rose from the gathered court. This time it had no shape at all.

The stone changed.

At first it was only a thread of light under the dragon’s claw, pale gold running through one carved rune. Then the next rune answered. Then the next. Light spread across the surface like fire beneath black glass.

Aldric stared at it.

His hand left his sword.

Father Edran took another step down.

Rowan did not understand what he was seeing. He knew only that the stone had stayed dark for princes and knights, and now it was waking while he stood too close to it with ash on his sleeves.

Veyr’s head lowered farther.

The dragon was not bowing yet.

Not fully.

It brought its massive face level with Rowan’s chest. The golden eye filled Rowan’s world. In the dark center of it, he saw the torches, the prince, the court, and a tiny brown figure holding a rag.

Himself.

Rowan’s knees nearly bent.

He forced them straight.

Aldric grabbed his arm.

It happened fast enough that the guard beside Rowan flinched.

The prince’s fingers closed around Rowan’s wrist, hard, dragging the boy half a step away from the dragon.

“Enough,” Aldric said.

The Dragon Stone flared.

Aldric let go.

Not by choice.

A mark had appeared under his fingers on Rowan’s wrist, burning through the ash on the boy’s skin. Three thin lines curved around each other like a dragon’s claw folded into a circle.

The prince looked at his own hand.

There was no mark there.

Only dust.

Rowan stared at his wrist.

The light did not hurt. That made it stranger. It moved beneath his skin like warm water, then settled into a gold glow that pulsed once and dimmed to the color of old brass.

Father Edran reached the floor.

His white robes brushed through the ash.

No priest was supposed to step into spilled ash during the rite.

He did anyway.

Aldric saw him and snapped, “Stay where you are.”

Father Edran did not stay.

He walked past the prince and stopped beside Rowan.

The old priest looked at the mark, then at the Dragon Stone, then at Veyr.

His face changed only slightly. His shoulders lowered, as if he had been carrying something for longer than Rowan had been alive.

Aldric’s voice sharpened. “Say nothing.”

Father Edran turned toward the court.

The nobles leaned forward without meaning to.

“Do not touch him,” the priest said.

Lord Carrow’s eyes flicked to Aldric, then to Rowan. His hand stayed near his sword, but did not close over it.

Aldric’s mouth thinned. “You forget yourself.”

“No,” Father Edran said. “I remember my oath.”

Lady Maerwynn stood. Her skirts whispered against the bench. “Edran.”

The warning in her voice crossed the hall like a drawn blade.

The priest reached into the sleeve of his robe and removed a small iron key.

Rowan had seen keys before. Kitchen keys, cellar keys, stable keys. This one was black iron, long and plain, tied with a strip of faded blue cloth.

Lady Maerwynn’s face went still.

Aldric noticed.

“What is that?” he asked.

Father Edran did not answer him. He moved to the Dragon Stone and inserted the key into a narrow slot Rowan had not seen before beneath the central claw mark.

The stone opened.

Not like a door. Like a wound in the rock.

A thin compartment slid out from its side, hidden so perfectly it seemed impossible it had ever been separate. Inside lay a piece of dragonhide parchment sealed with dark wax.

The court forgot to breathe again.

Father Edran lifted the parchment with both hands.

Lady Maerwynn stepped down from the front row. “That record is sealed.”

“It was sealed until the dragon woke,” Father Edran said.

Aldric stared at the parchment. “Read it.”

The priest broke the wax.

The sound was small.

It carried.

He unfolded the parchment.

His eyes moved across the lines. Once. Twice. He stopped near the bottom.

Aldric took one step closer. “Read it.”

Father Edran looked at Rowan.

For the first time that day, an adult in the hall looked at him as if he had a place in the sentence about to be spoken.

The priest turned the parchment outward.

There were names written there in brown-black ink. Rowan could not read most of them from where he stood, but he saw the shape of one word near the bottom.

Rowan.

His own name.

Not alone.

Rowan Valecrown.

The hall fractured into whispers.

Aldric reached for the parchment.

Lord Carrow moved before he could take it. Not far. Just one step. Enough to place his armored shoulder between the prince and the priest.

Aldric stopped.

The captain of the royal guard did not draw his sword.

He did not bow either.

That was the first crack.

Lady Maerwynn’s voice turned soft. “Careful, Carrow.”

Lord Carrow did not look at her.

Father Edran read aloud.

“On the winter night following the siege of North Gate, a male child of the royal bloodline was removed from the lower chapel by order of Queen Elowen, marked under the old rite, and hidden until Veyr should wake.”

The words entered the hall one by one and found every guilty face.

Rowan did not know Queen Elowen except from tapestries. She had died before he could remember anything. In the hall, her woven face hung above the north arch, pale and gold-haired, one hand on the shoulder of a child who was not Aldric.

Aldric’s voice dropped. “Lies.”

Father Edran continued.

“The child was named Rowan. He was entrusted to the keep under no house banner, no title, and no protection but the dragon’s silence.”

Rowan looked at his wrist again.

The brass-colored mark sat beneath the ash as if it had always been there, waiting under dirt, under work, under every name no one had given him.

Lady Maerwynn descended the last step.

“You old fool,” she said.

No one breathed.

There it was. Not a denial. Not confusion. Something worse.

Recognition.

Father Edran folded the parchment once, carefully, and held it against his chest.

Aldric turned on his aunt. “You knew?”

Lady Maerwynn’s lips parted.

For the first time, she did not have a smile ready.

The dragon moved.

Veyr lowered its head fully until its chin touched the stone floor in front of Rowan.

The sound of scale meeting stone passed through the hall like a bell.

Rowan stepped back on instinct.

Father Edran placed one hand lightly between his shoulders.

“Stand,” the priest said.

Rowan stood.

Veyr’s golden eye lowered beneath Rowan’s.

The ancient dragon bowed.

No horn sounded. No priest announced it. No noble gave permission.

The dragon simply lowered itself before the boy with ash on his tunic and a rag in his hand.

Across the hall, every banner seemed too heavy to move.

Then Lord Carrow knelt.

The steel of one knee touched the floor.

A second guard followed.

Then another.

The sound spread through the hall in small iron strikes. Knights who had ignored Rowan’s existence all morning lowered themselves before him, not smoothly, not together, but one by one, as if each had to fight his own pride down to the stone.

The noble families did not know what to do until Lady Maerwynn remained standing.

That told them enough.

Some knelt.

Some did not.

Aldric stood alone in the open space, his red cloak stained at the hem with ash.

“That is not what this means,” he said.

It was too quiet.

Father Edran looked at him.

“The dragon has chosen.”

Aldric’s eyes moved from the priest to the dragon to Rowan. His mouth opened. Closed. His hand twitched toward his sword and stopped when Veyr’s eye shifted to him.

One movement.

That was all.

The prince’s fingers fell away from the hilt.

Lady Maerwynn gathered her skirts, but no one made room for her. Not even the nobles who had smiled with her before. She was still powerful. She was still dangerous. But the hall had measured something older than her.

Rowan looked down at the dragon.

He did not feel like a prince. He felt like a boy who had lost his bucket.

The ash still lay on the floor.

His rag lay beneath Aldric’s boot.

Rowan stepped forward.

The prince stiffened.

No guard stopped Rowan.

The boy bent, took hold of the dirty cloth, and pulled it free from under the prince’s polished heel.

Aldric looked at him as if the small act had struck harder than any speech.

Rowan did not know what to say.

So he said the only true thing he had.

“I have to clean this.”

The words fell into the silence.

Someone in the back made a sound. Not laughter. Not quite.

Father Edran lowered his head.

Veyr exhaled, warm and slow, and the ash lifted from the floor in a gray swirl. It rose around Rowan’s knees, around Aldric’s stained cloak, around the Dragon Stone glowing faintly on the platform.

Then it settled.

Not across the ritual path.

At Rowan’s feet.

Like a circle.

Aldric stepped back.

Only half a step.

Enough.

The court saw it.

The prince saw that they saw.

His face did not break. Men like Aldric did not break where servants could see it. But his shoulders changed. His hand dropped fully to his side. His crown sat at the same angle, his cloak still gleamed, and yet the space around him no longer obeyed.

Father Edran turned to Lord Carrow.

“Seal the doors.”

Carrow rose.

This time he did not look to Aldric for permission.

The great doors at the back of the hall closed with a heavy sound that made several nobles flinch.

Lady Maerwynn said, “You cannot hold the court here.”

Father Edran folded the parchment into his sleeve. “The court held itself here when it came to witness the rite.”

Aldric’s voice returned in pieces. “He is a servant.”

“No,” the priest said.

The old man did not raise his voice.

“He was made one.”

That line stayed.

Years later, men would claim the dragon’s bow was the moment the kingdom turned. Women would say it was the hidden parchment. Knights would say it was Lord Carrow’s knee on stone.

Rowan remembered the rag.

He remembered his fingers tightening around it because everything else in the hall was too large to hold.

Father Edran knelt before him.

That was the last thing Rowan expected, and the one that made him step back into the dragon’s warm breath.

“Please don’t,” Rowan said.

The priest stopped halfway down.

Then he changed the movement. Instead of kneeling, he lowered his head.

A smaller thing.

A kinder one.

“Rowan Valecrown,” Father Edran said, “the old rite recognizes you.”

Rowan looked at the glowing mark on his wrist.

“Do I have to be that?”

The question was meant for the priest. It reached farther.

A few nobles shifted. Aldric stared at him with something close to hatred, but not clean enough to name.

Father Edran answered carefully.

“No child should have to be anything in one morning.”

Veyr’s eye closed halfway, slow and calm.

Rowan nodded, though he did not understand.

The doors stayed sealed until dusk.

Inside the Hall of Scales, every oath had to be spoken again. Not to a new king. Not yet. Father Edran would not allow a crown placed on a child’s head before the sun set on the truth. But the old parchment was copied under witness. Lord Carrow signed first. Three priests signed after him. Seven knights added their names before Lady Maerwynn’s allies began searching for reasons to stand on the correct side of history.

Lady Maerwynn did not sign.

Aldric did not either.

No one asked them twice.

Rowan sat on the lowest step near the Dragon Stone with a cup of water in both hands. Someone had given him bread, but he had not eaten it. His boots left ash marks on the stone. No servant came to wipe them away.

Master Orrick stood near the servant arch with both hands clasped so tightly his fingers had turned red.

Rowan saw him once.

Orrick looked away first.

That felt strange.

Veyr remained awake behind the stone, head lowered near the platform edge. Every time someone stepped too close to Rowan, the dragon’s eye opened a little wider. It did not growl. It did not need to.

Aldric was escorted from the hall before sunset.

Not dragged.

The court was not ready for that image.

He walked between two guards with his cloak cleaned as much as possible and his crown still on his head. At the door, he turned back once.

Rowan expected him to look at the dragon.

He looked at the ash bucket.

It still lay where it had fallen.

Then the doors closed behind him.

Lady Maerwynn left an hour later under guard of her own household knights. Her rooms were sealed that night. The blue-cloth key led to three more records hidden in the chapel wall, two letters in Queen Elowen’s hand, and a list of servants paid to forget a storm, a baby, and a cloak left at North Gate.

Some had died.

Some had vanished.

One was found in the lower kitchens, old and bent, with burn scars across one palm. She wept when she saw Rowan’s wrist, but she did not touch him until he held out his hand.

Her name was Mara.

She had wrapped him in the torn cloak.

That night, Father Edran did not take Rowan to the royal nursery or the prince’s rooms. Rowan refused both without knowing how to refuse royalty properly.

So they gave him a narrow chamber beside the old chapel, with a plain bed, a washbasin, and a window looking down over the courtyard where servants crossed with baskets at dawn.

Mara brought him soup.

She knocked first.

No one had ever knocked before entering a room where Rowan slept.

He sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the bowl until the steam thinned.

“Will they send me back?” he asked.

Mara set the spoon beside the bowl. “No.”

“Will they send me away?”

Her hands folded in her apron.

“No.”

He touched the mark on his wrist. In the dim light, it looked almost ordinary.

Almost.

“Then where do I go?”

Mara looked toward the small window.

Below, in the dark courtyard, servants moved with lanterns. Their shoulders were bent against the evening cold. Rowan knew the shape of every task they carried. Laundry. Ash. Water. Scraps. More ash.

“You sleep tonight,” she said.

It was not an answer.

It was enough for one night.

The kingdom did not accept him gently.

No kingdom gives back what it stole without counting the cost first.

By morning, half the court called him the hidden heir. The other half called him the dragon’s mistake. Aldric’s supporters demanded a council. Lady Maerwynn’s allies demanded blood records, witness oaths, trial rites, anything that might turn a marked child back into a servant.

Veyr answered none of them.

The dragon slept across the Hall of Scales with one eye open.

That ended most debates.

Aldric was not imprisoned in the tower, though many whispered he should have been. He was sent to the eastern keep under guard while the council investigated the concealment of Rowan’s birth. His crown was removed before he left the capital. Not in public. That mercy came from Father Edran, and Aldric hated him for it.

Lady Maerwynn was stripped of her seat after the chapel records proved she had ordered the servants’ registers burned the year Rowan was found. Her household banner came down from the west gallery. The empty place it left on the wall looked larger than the banner ever had.

Rowan did not watch either punishment.

He was in the lower courtyard with a brush, cleaning mud from his old boots.

Mara found him there.

“You do not have to do that anymore,” she said.

Rowan kept scrubbing.

“I know.”

The brush moved over cracked leather. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Mara sat beside him on the low wall and did not take it away.

That was why he stayed.

Weeks passed before Rowan entered the Hall of Scales again for anything more than council witness. This time, no bucket rolled. No nobles laughed. No one told him where servants could stand.

The ash path had been cleaned.

A new rug covered part of the floor, blue and silver, brought from the royal stores. Rowan stopped at the edge of it.

Father Edran waited near the Dragon Stone.

Veyr’s head lifted slightly.

Rowan stepped around the rug and walked on the bare stone instead.

The priest noticed.

So did the dragon.

No one commented.

A small wooden stool had been placed beside the Dragon Stone so Rowan could reach the surface. When he saw it, he almost smiled.

Almost.

He climbed onto the stool and set his hand where Aldric had placed his weeks before.

The stone warmed beneath his palm.

Not bright this time. Not a spectacle.

Just warm.

Veyr lowered its head until its eye was level with the boy’s shoulder.

Father Edran spoke the old words. Rowan repeated only the ones he understood. For the rest, he listened. When the priest asked if he accepted the protection of the dragon, Rowan looked at Veyr.

The creature blinked once.

Slowly.

Rowan placed his marked wrist against the stone.

“Yes,” he said.

Outside, bells began to ring. Not all at once. One tower first. Then another. Then the city caught the sound and carried it through streets where servants, merchants, smiths, and stable hands paused over their work and looked toward the keep.

Inside the hall, Rowan stepped down from the stool.

He picked it up himself and carried it away from the stone.

Father Edran started to reach for it, then stopped.

Rowan set the stool beside the wall, neatly, where no one would trip over it.

Veyr watched.

The boy looked back at the dragon.

“I can still clean some things,” Rowan said.

The dragon’s breath warmed the floor.

No one laughed.

Not anymore.