[Primus] Segundus wasn’t expecting to see me awake and sitting next to our father when he came into the hall. He thinks he hid his expression well, but I could see right through his tight smiles and his small bows. He was nervous, and on edge, a clear sign that he needed to think things through and consider the consequences of his words before continuing. I am sure he had hoped to speak to Father and the council alone about my wife before I had a chance to say anything. He was expecting it to take me longer to recover from containment and reorient myself to my surroundings. He underestimated my stamina, strength, and determination. I am a newly mated drake expecting the arrival of his first clutch. That is a powerful force. It is my nature to want to protect her, and I cannot do so if I am stuck in a catatonic state.

[Carnelia] I am awake. Fully awake. And yet, I’m staring at a nightmare. This room is full of horrors. Children suspended in fluid, connected to tubes, naked, and covered in poorly healed scars. Men and women were contained in strange silver beds, their faces visible through a small glass window, their faces in various expressions of rage, grief, or pain, frozen in time, reliving their last remembered horror. I walk deeper into the room. It is cold, colder than the first chill of dawn. My arms and legs are covered in goosebumps, my bare feet cold on the flat stone floor, the color of dried blood and feels stic

[Ona] Staring into the clear containment chamber, I can see that there is not a single scrap of flesh on Daax that a scalpel has not touched. With forty years to spend tormenting and torturing my mate, Segundus spared nothing. If anything, he was surprisingly meticulous and creative in how he carved him, making it part art and part horror show. I wonder if he was especially ruthless in his attentions because Daax is my mate, that the thought of me mating with a "lowly sun dragon" was a bad enough offense to warrant extra cruelty. Seeing him as he is now I know that even if I free him, he will never be whole again. Not just his body, but also his mind and spirit. This level of destruction goes way beyond breaking a person. This is pulverizing them, removing all traces of who they on

[Segundus] I spent my morning chasing a phantom. My brother's pet human had somehow escaped confinement and has been wandering the halls scaring others who are convinced they saw a ghost. A woman in a long flowing white dress. They even imagined that her eyes were glowing, but I'm sure that was just their fear. From what I gather, the effects of the pod were still working because she was completely unresponsive to any efforts by others to gain her attention, which just led to the mystery behind her sudden appearance. I was interrogating a stable boy about her potential location when I heard the scream. I couldn't tell who screamed, or where the scream had come from, but it was clear that whoever wa

[Maximus] [Earlier that afternoon] My eyes are heavy but I cannot sleep, even though the sun is glowing so bright that my eyes burn. I can smell them. My heirs. They are close, to the castle walls. One of my children has produced a brood, but which one? Ona didn’t smell broody the last time I saw her. Segundus, perhaps. He has been spending a lot of time with Eleanora, the lady from the borderlands. Maybe that is why he was trying to marry her off to his brother, as a way to secure that his heirs would take the throne. Clever. Maybe a bit too clever for Segundus.