Chapter 2

Elianna POV:

Four Dragon Knights drew their steel longswords with a metallic rasp, stepping forward under her frantic screams.

I didn't blink. I slowly turned my head toward them.

My pallid complexion made me look every inch the vengeful ghost come to claim their lives.

The lead knight’s boot froze in mid-air. Under the sheer, lethal weight of my stare, all four seasoned warriors broke into cold sweat. Their knuckles turned white, and their sword tips wavered, sinking lower and lower until they stood paralyzed, completely cowed by a girl without a Dragon Core.

Leaving the petrified knights in their tracks, I took a slow step forward, looking past the guards straight into Vivian’s hyperventilating face.

She pressed her back against the altar, her face as gray as ash, stammering through blue lips, "Y-You... what debts? What are you going to do? I... I don't understand..."

A razor-thin, blood-chilling sneer carved into my mouth.

I took one more stride toward the inner altar, looking at her shivering silhouette like a butcher appraising a carcass.

"You'll understand soon enough." I raised an eyebrow with a cold scoff and stepped over the inner altar threshold. "Sadie, slam the shrine doors shut."

In the corner, my personal Dragonless maid, Sadie, looked up through her tears. Shock flashed across her bruised face, quickly replaced by a fierce flame of vengeance. She threw her weight against the heavy dragon-bone doors alongside two menial servants, slamming them shut with a deafening thud.

As the iron bar dropped into place, the gawking half-blood guests and the Beaumont alchemical envoys were locked outside. The inner shrine became a sealed cage.

I strolled past the carved stone archway that opened directly into the high-walled inner courtyard—a sunless, stone-paved execution court flanked by towering battlements, where an ancient gnarled oak stood in the center like a silent sentinel. Ignoring the cold autumn gale sweeping through the open sky above, I took a seat behind a massive stone table set upon the raised dais. My expression was so cold the temperature across the flagstones seemed to plummet.

Vivian hurried out behind Deloris, grabbing Deloris's sleeve and whispering in panic, "Madam, you must protect me! Something is wrong with this little wretch!"

Deloris shot her a cold sideways glance, a flicker of disdain in her eyes. "Why? Was there truly foul play in her fall from the cliff?"

"Of course not!" Vivian denied flatly, her voice shaking. "Kristal and Beatrice saw it with their own eyes—she lost her footing reaching for wild fruit!"

Deloris let out a faint, disdainful smirk, smoothing her scale-embroidered skirts as she walked forward. Putting on the air of the lady of the castle, she spoke in a gentle, chiding tone. "Elianna, since you survived, why didn't you send word sooner? Your father and I have been sick with grief."

She moved to sit on the stone chair beside me. At the same time, Vivian tried to ease her trembling legs onto a lower stone stool nearby.

"Stand," I snapped. My gaze sliced directly into Vivian. "You are nothing more than a lowborn vassal concubine. In the presence of the legitimate eldest daughter of this house, you have no right to a seat."

Vivian froze mid-squat, her hips hovering inches above the stone stool. The blood rushed to her face, turning it a mottled purple in front of the entire household staff.

Deloris stiffened too. From the way her fingers twitched against her sash, she looked utterly stunned that the formerly half-witted, Dragonless punching bag was suddenly wielding the strict feudal law of the Dragon Court against them.

"What, can't accept that my head is clear and I'm no longer an idiot?" I pointed a bloody finger at the cold flagstones by the wall. "Get over there and stand."

Humiliated, Vivian turned to Deloris in a rage. "Madam! How can she treat me like this? I may be a concubine, but I have slaved for the Stanley Duchy for years—"

"Stand over there and shut your mouth!" I barked, cutting her off. "Once I finish reckoning the blood debt of who pushed me into the Dragonbone Ravine, you can beg for credit!"

Vivian's chest heaved. Beside her, Deloris dabbed her lips and said softly, "Sister Vivian, just stand for now so you don't upset the child."

Biting her lip until it went white, Vivian retreated to the corner in disgrace.

I picked up a tarnished silver teacup resting on the table—the cheap, Dragonless metal cold beneath my skin—and turned it slowly between my fingers.

Survived? If not for Connor Douglas, not even my scattered bones would remain in this world.

Behind my eyelids flickered the memory of that subterranean fortress carved from obsidian rock, and the man whose aura was so suffocatingly dominant that even the freezing winds seemed to halt in his presence. Features carved sharp as a razor, eyes like unyielding night. Meeting that enigmatic miracle healer at the edge of the abyss hadn't just salvaged my crushed lungs and broken limbs—it had granted me a restored vessel forged of steel, and an alliance with a man whose hands held absolute dominion over life and death.

"Aunt Deloris, don't you think you should ask how I ended up at the bottom of the ravine?"

"Wasn't it an accident?" Deloris asked, feigning innocence, though the glint in her eyes showed she was more than happy to watch me tear Vivian apart.

"An accident? Is that what Vivian told you, or what my two dear sisters said?" Murderous intent flashed in my eyes.

Meeting my gaze, Sadie caught the unspoken signal. She nodded with fierce resolve and slipped quietly through the narrow side portal, heading for the outer postern gate to signal my mother's former retainers, who were already holding the conspirators just outside the castle walls.

I turned my eyes onto the old castle steward standing rigidly by the stone pillar. "Go. Drag Third Miss Kristal and Sixth Miss Beatrice here."

The steward hesitated, his eyes darting toward Deloris, clearly frozen by her usual authority. Seeing his hesitation, Vivian let out a quiet, spiteful snort from the shadows, assuming no one in the court would truly obey an Earthbound outcast.

My eyes narrowed as I locked onto the steward's throat. "I will only say this once, steward. If those two are not kneeling before this table by the time this tea cools, you will join them in the dungeon and take twenty lashes of the dragon-hide whip for treason."

The steward turned ash-white, swallowed hard, and scrambled toward the inner courtyard as fast as his boots could carry him.

Turning my head back toward the corner, my gaze pinned Vivian where she stood. "Vivian. Get over here and pour me a cup of hot mint tea."

"I am the Dragon Lord's concubine, not your kitchen slave!" Vivian shrieked, clutching her fists.

"In this castle, aside from the Dragon Lord and the wedded Lady Wife, every concubine is a domestic servant by feudal law," I murmured, my voice dropping to a lethal, raspy whisper. "Or would you rather taste the whip before your daughters arrive?"

Under the suffocating weight of my stare, Vivian trembled uncontrollably. Biting her lower lip until dark blood welled, she dragged her feet forward, picked up the steaming silver pot with shaking fingers, and slammed a brimming cup onto the table before me.

I lifted the hot cup and took a slow, languid sip, establishing absolute, unyielding dominion over the hall.

BAM!

A deafening crash shattered the silence. The bolted side doors leading from the inner corridors shuddered violently under a massive impact, iron brackets groaning as stone dust rained from the lintel.

CRACK!

The heavy oak beam snapped in two. Both doors were kicked wide open, bouncing off the masonry with violent shrieks!

"Rebellious, unfilial trash! Barring the hall doors to play tyrant in your father's house?!"

Steward Hicks stormed through the splintered threshold, his wrinkled face contorted in vile triumph. But he hadn't returned alone to grovel—behind him marched a dozen hulking manor enforcers clutching iron truncheons, led by Matron Martha herself, wielding a barbed leather crop like a high executioner.

"How dare a coreless idiot summon the noble young ladies?!" Martha’s shrill bray echoed off the stone vault as the guards fanned out, surrounding my table with drawn weapons. "Take this mad beast down and bind her in iron chains!"