Lanterns burned low and golden leaving honeyed light over lacquered bowls and steaming platters.

The air inside was spice—saffron, smoked pepper, and the copper-sweet tang of roasted meat.

Outside, the city of dragons murmured and moved; inside, the single room felt like a pocket of another world, warm and intimate and utterly removed from the politics that had summoned them here.

Aric and Serina sat opposite one another at a small wooden table by the papered window.

Steam rose between them, curling into the lantern light.

Servants moved with quiet obedience, placing dishes of braised root, skewered fish glazed with a sharp honey, and a thick barley porridge dotted with roasted seeds.

Aric paused only long enough to survey the spread before he spoke, the words tasting like iron on his tongue.

"You asked about the riders," he said, taking a small mouthful and rolling the flavor over his tongue as if testing thought, not food.

"The Flame Crusaders."

Serina prodded at a roasted fig with the tip of her chopstick, eyes intent. "I know the legends: flame-gods, chosen from birth, bonded. But the reality—what is it?"

Aric set down his bowl and leaned forward, hands cupped as if holding some invisible ember.

"They are everything the songs say—and more dangerous for it. From the moment they are named, a dragon is assigned to them. The bond is sanctified by ritual and ring. That dragon becomes the axis of their life: their honor, their duty, their death."

He watched Serina closely; she listened the way a field medic listened for heartbeats.

"If a dragon refuses its rider," Aric continued, "the rider is reassigned. They become messengers, or minor officers—humiliated, but alive. If the dragon is slain in battle… the code is brutal. The crusader must chop off both hands to atone. If they survive defeat while their dragon lives, they forfeit their ring."

Serina blinked, a pale line of shock crossing her face. "Both hands? That's… ritualized mutilation." She swallowed. "And the ring—what does it truly do?"

"The dragon ring is everything," Aric said. "It binds dragon and rider: it channels the dragon's will into a form the rider can command. It is the key to the bond; with it the rider may guide, soothe, and call their mount. Lose it—or give it willingly—and the bond severs, or can be transferred. If the ring is given, the new bearer may control the dragon. But only by consent. A ring taken by force binds nothing. The magic rejects theft."

Serina set her chopsticks down, the motion deliberate. "So a non-Draken controlling a dragon… has that ever happened?"

"Not yet," Aric said quietly.

The lantern flame trembled as if stirred by the name, and in the tiny motion Serina saw no surprise. Only a calculation settling into place.

"It would be a perilous thing. The rituals, the culture—everything resists it. Still, the ring is the hinge on which everything swings."

She tilted her head. "Let me guess—your plan involves hands and rings." There was a dry amusement in her tone.

Aric's smile was thin. "You think I would take rings I could not wield? No. I will take their hands for different reasons." He let the pause hang like a small, cold blade.

"Treason. Always treason."

Serina's fork paused mid-air. "Treason?" Her face shifted to a look of disbelief that became gravity. "Explain."

He lowered his voice.

The bustle of the restaurant became a distant hum, as if the world contained only the heat between them and the words he chose.

"There are three Flame Crusaders—three riders—who fly for the Northrend. They are not just sympathetic. They're spies." He tapped the wooden table once, like a metronome keeping time with danger.

"When the war breaks, they will fly north. Their dragons will breed for Northrend."

Serina felt the words like a physical shove.

"You mean… dragons raised in Northrend hands? Northerners riding dragons?"

"Imagine it," Aric said. The food at his lips went untouched. "An army of Northrenders with wings. Dragons who owe their blood to Northrend."

Serina's laugh was a strangled thing, half humor, half horror.

"No one will stand a chance."

"Especially not Draken," Aric agreed. The smile that creased his face did not reach his eyes. "If the Draken lose their monopoly of dragonborn flight—if dragons fly in armies that do not answer their sun and their rites—they lose everything: dominion, prestige, power."

He folded his hands, fingers interlaced, and the gesture seemed to clamp down on the room. "Now imagine my position. If I present Draken with the hands of these three—ringed hands irreparably bound to treason—I save Draken from their destruction. The spies cannot fly to Northrend anymore; they cannot be ring-bearers again. I pay my debt for the information they fed me about Sylas. Perhaps Draken will see me as a savior rather than an enemy."

Serina's eyes were flat, then curious. "Earn their support? You mean choose them as allies over Northrend?"

Aric's hand lifted, a single neat motion.

"No. Use is the accurate word." He tapped his temple once. "I use Draken today to check Northrend. I use Northrend tomorrow to threaten Draken. Alliances are tools, Serina. A swing of the hammer that breaks the wall. Whoever helps me win—that's who matters. I owe nothing but triumph."

She watched him for a long moment, and when she spoke her voice was softer. "Ah yes, how could i forget everyone and everything is just a tool for your conquest."

He was not defensive; rather, he observed her thought like a scientist examining a specimen.

"Not everyone."

Serina relaxed into a small, private half-smile that was not full. She turned her gaze away, fiddling with a strand of hair.

"And the spies—do you know who they are?"

Aric nodded. "I know their names. I know where they ride. What I lack is proof." He let the word sit. "But I know how to get it. We will find their lairs and acquire evidence. We will get our hands dirty."

Serina let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "When have our hands ever been clean?" she murmured.

A waiter refilled their cups, the brief intrusion of ordinary service making the world tilt back toward normality.

Aric took a sip from his cup, eyes never leaving Serina's face.

Serina considered the plan, the glint of its practicality bright but dangerous. "What will Draken do with traitors?"

"They will purge," Aric said crisply. "Public condemnation, trials, exemplary violence."

He sipped, then added, "And the spies' information will be paid for. Sylas's web will be cut at costly joints."

Serina's face was a mask of contemplation. "So turn Flame Crusaders into martyrs for your cause, and their dragons into grounds for breed and rivalry." She almost smiled at the imagery—grim, but eerily apt. "And if Draken suspect you of using them? If they suspect you plan to flip toward Northrend later?"

"That's fine," Aric said. "being afraid keeps them pliant. Uncertainty makes them reach for anchors we can provide. I will always keep more than one anchor."

Serina set down her spoon, the motion slow. "So for our upper hand," she said. "The price is the souls of those few riders."

"It is a price," Aric admitted. "All prices are bloody." His gaze softened—not for the riders, but for the machinery of the world he moved through.

Serina's hand found the rim of her cup.

She stared at the liquid until the steam blurred the world. "You have a way of making indecency look inevitable," she said finally.

There was no mockery in it—only a tired recognition.

Aric's eyes flicked to hers. For a heartbeat, the wall he kept about himself seemed thinner, and whatever affection he felt—whatever warmth he guarded—shone like a coin in the dark.

"Not everyone is a tool," he repeated.

She returned his look and for a moment their shared histories—battles, surgeries on broken men, whispered bargains at moonrise—seemed to drape between them.

Then she smiled, small and wry. "To getting our hands dirty," Serina lifted her cup, a private toast in the warm lamplight.

"To getting them dirty," Aric answered, and the clink of their cups marked the point where intent became motion.

[You Have Been Issued: S Quest]

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