Chapter 12: The new generation
The children are happy to have their grandmother. So i have more time for my husband.
Some days later, one night i was cleaning Lord Raevor's cock with my mouth after first round sex. He was thinking something. "You know, we have two sons. But other lords failed.
Raevor's words trailed off into the darkness of our chambers, the firelight casting long shadows across the bed. I pulled my mouth from him slowly, wiping my lips with the back of my hand as I looked up at my husband. His brow was furrowed, that familiar crease of worry that had become more common in the months since Draven's birth.
"Other lords have tried," he continued, his voice low. "They chose their own boys, hoping for the same miracle. But none have conceived."
I shifted on the bed, my loose shift pooling around my thighs. "None at all?"
"Cedric received word from the neighboring holds." Raevor's claws traced idle patterns on the bedsheet. "The boys are healthy, properly matched to the old records. But the children do not come."
I thought about this, about the cold chambers those boys might be kept in, the clinical examinations, the fear. I remembered my own first weeks at Castle Valdrake, how terrified I had been, how alone. What had changed for me? What had made the difference between my body accepting Raevor's seed and those other boys rejecting their lords'?
"You loved me," I said slowly. "You married me. You made me your wife, not just a vessel."
Raevor's eyes met mine, something softening in his gaze. "It was not an experiment for me. Not by the end. Perhaps that is what the ancient records failed to mention."
I crawled up the bed to sit beside him, pressing my shoulder against his. "The boys need to be loved properly. Courted. Married. Made to feel that they are precious, not just useful."
"Not every lord will agree to that."
"Then they will fail." I said it simply, without cruelty. "And their line will end."
Raevor was quiet for a long moment. Then he turned to me, pulling me into his arms, and I felt his lips press against my hair. "You are wise, my love. Wiser than the lords who think they can force a miracle. I'll talk with lords."
---
The suggestion spread. word came back to us that Lord Caspian of the neighboring hold, a stern and aging dragon who had lost both his wife and daughter to the plague, had taken a different approach. He had not confined his chosen boy to a tower. Instead, he had dressed him in silks, courted him with gifts, taken him to the high gardens and the stables and the great hall where the household could see them together.
And then, three months later, the news arrived: the boy was pregnant.
Raevor read the letter aloud at dinner, his voice carrying a note of satisfaction I had not heard in months. My mother sat across from me, her face bright with wonder, while Draven babbled about the horses he had seen and Acelor slept in my arms.
"Lord Caspian writes that his bride is healthy," Raevor said. "That the pregnancy progresses normally. He credits our advice."
"Your advice," I corrected. "You were the one who listened to me."
Raevor's lips curved. "You are the one who knew the truth." He reached across the table and took my hand, his scales warm against my skin. "Without you, I would have failed like the others."
---
The seasons turned. Draven grew taller, his wings developing a leathery sheen that caught the light. Acelor began to crawl, his small horn buds hardening into proper points. My mother found her place in the household, learning to manage the kitchens with Helena, her hands still rough but no longer cracked from lye and cold water.
And the rumors continued: more lords, more boys, more marriages. The pattern was spreading across the dragon holds, one by one. Raevor received letters almost weekly, some seeking advice, some sharing news of a successful conception. The fear that had gripped dragonkind, the cold certainty of extinction, began to ease.
But not all stories were happy ones.
Tobin's letter arrived on a gray morning, the sky heavy with clouds. I recognized his handwriting before I opened it, the careful, deliberate letters he had always used when he was nervous. I read it twice before the meaning settled into me.
His younger brother, Marten, had been chosen.
Marten had been sixteen when I left the village, a quiet boy with the same soft features that had marked me as different. Tobin had written that a neighboring lord, one of the western holds, had come to Fidera seeking a match. The village chief had shown him Marten, and the lord had seen in him what Raevor had once seen in me.
I read the letter aloud to Raevor that evening, my voice steady. When I finished, he was silent for a long moment.
"He will be afraid," I said. "Tobin writes that Marten is terrified. He does not know what will happen to him."
Raevor took my hand. "Then perhaps we should visit him. Or better yet, invite him here."
"Here?"
"To the castle. To see you, to see Draven and Acelor, to understand what his life could become." Raevor's voice was gentle. "You were shown no such kindness, my love. Perhaps we can offer it to someone else."
I wrote back to Tobin that very night, my hand steady on the parchment despite the flutter in my chest. Marten would come to us. He would see the castle, meet my sons, understand that the path before him did not have to lead to a cold tower and a distant lord. Raevor sent his own letter to the western lord, a courteous inquiry framed as an invitation for Marten to visit his brother's old friend. The lord agreed readily enough; he had heard of Lady Valdrake's wisdom and was eager to please.
Marten arrived at the end of spring, thin and pale, his eyes darting like a cornered animal. He was seventeen, with the same delicate bone structure I remembered from his childhood, the same soft mouth and slender shoulders. He wore a plain traveling cloak over a simple tunic, and he flinched when the footman offered his hand to help him down from the carriage.
I met him in the courtyard, dressed in a gown of pale lavender, Draven at my side and Acelor balanced on my hip. He stopped when he saw me, staring at the fine silk, the jewels in my hair, the softness of my figure that no amount of tailoring could hide.
"Avery?" His voice cracked.
"I'm here, Marten." I smiled, crossing the distance between us. "Welcome to Castle Valdrake."
"Tobin said..." He swallowed, his cheeks flushing. "He said you would understand. That you'd been through it. But I didn't think—" He broke off, gesturing helplessly at me, at my gown, at the children. "You're really happy."
"I am." I took his hand, feeling how cold it was despite the warmth of the day. "And you will be too. Come inside. Let me show you what your life can look like."
---
Marten learned slowly at first, the way I had learned, uncertain in the gowns the maids dressed him in, awkward in the corset that shaped his waist. But he had me, and he had Lily, and he had my mother, who had a knack for soothing frightened creatures with her quiet presence.
He wrote to Tobin every week. He explored the library with Draven, who adored him immediately, following him like a shadow with his small wings fluttering. He learned to ride, to dance, to speak with the lords and ladies who visited the castle. And when the western lord came to call, when he knelt before Marten in the great hall and presented him with a necklace of pearls, I watched Marten's face soften into something I recognized.
Love. It had taken me months to name it in myself, but Marten found it faster. He was younger than I had been, more willing to trust.
He returned to the western hold at summer's end, engaged to be wed. And five months later, the letter arrived: he was pregnant.
Raevor held the parchment with trembling hands, reading it twice, three times. Then he laughed, a deep, rolling sound that I had rarely heard from him, and swept me into his arms, crushing me against his chest.
"The line continues," he said, his voice rough. "Our kind will not die. Because of you."
I pressed my face to his chest, feeling his heartbeat against my cheek. "Because we loved them. That's all it took."
---
The years that followed were full of such letters. Lord after lord, hold after hold, the news spread until it became a flood. The boys were no longer taken in secret, no longer kept in towers and examined like specimens. They were courted, wed, cherished. The ancient records had been incomplete; they had documented the method but missed the heart of it.
I gave birth to our third son on a winter morning, the fire crackling in the birthing chamber, Raevor's hand steady in mine. We named him Emrys, after the scholar who had written the first treatise on dragonkind's survival. He had Raevor's eyes and my face, and he wailed with a voice that shook the rafters.
My mother held him first after me, her weathered hands cradling his small body with infinite tenderness. "A third grandson," she murmured. "I never imagined. I never dreamed."
"You are their grandmother," I said weakly, exhausted but content. "You will not run out of grandchildren to love."
She laughed, and it was the happiest sound I had heard from her in years.
---
Draven was twelve when I woke in the darkness of our chambers, my belly heavy with our fourth child, the weight both familiar and strange. The pregnancy had been easier this time, my body having long since adapted to its purpose, but the late months always brought sleeplessness.
Raevor lay beside me, one arm draped across my swollen middle, his face relaxed in sleep. The scales along his jaw caught the moonlight, shimmering faintly with each slow breath. He still held me the same way he had on our wedding night, possessive and tender, as if I might vanish if he let go.
I traced the curve of his brow with my fingertips, careful not to wake him. He looked younger in sleep, some of the weight of his duty easing from his features. The plague, the extinction, the desperation that had driven him to a peasant village seeking a miracle; all of that felt like another life now.
My hand moved to my belly, feeling the faint flutter of movement within. Our fourth son, kicking gently against my palm as if to remind me he was there.
Draven would be of age soon.
The thought came unbidden, and I let it settle, turning it over in my mind. Twelve years old, already tall and strong, his wings fully developed, his horns curving like his father's. He was dragonkind's future, the eldest of a new generation. And someday soon, he would need a bride of his own.
A boy, soft and gentle, with wide eyes and a delicate frame. A boy who might be frightened, who might be mocked in his village, who might think he was broken until someone told him otherwise.
I would search for him myself. I knew the signs now, the features that the ancient records had documented, the temperament that allowed a human male to carry dragonkind's hope. I would find him, as Raevor had found me, and I would welcome him into our family.
I remembered my own fear, my own confusion, the cold stone of Castle Valdrake closing around me like a cage. I would make sure no boy felt that way again. Not while I drew breath.
Raevor stirred, his arm tightening around my belly. His eyes opened, heavy with sleep, and he looked at me with that familiar warmth.
"Can't sleep?" His voice was rough.
"Just thinking." I took his hand, pressing it more firmly against our child. "About Draven. About what he'll need."
Raevor was quiet for a moment, understanding in his gaze. "It is not long now. He will be of age before we know it."
"I will find him," I said. "The right boy. The one who needs us."
Raevor pressed his lips to my forehead, slow and reverent. "You found me," he murmured. "Or I found you. Either way, we found each other. He will be lucky to have a mother who understands."
I closed my eyes, letting his warmth surround me, feeling our child shift against us both. Outside the window, the first light of dawn was beginning to touch the sky, pale gold and soft through the glass. Another day. Another beginning.
The dragon race had stepped back from the brink. My sons would grow up in a world of hope, not desperation. And I would make sure that the boys who followed in my footsteps found love instead of fear.
THE END