Chương 252: 47. Time Dragon 2

The footsteps beyond the door finally faded. The stone chamber sank back into silence. Not the kind you could relax into. A heavier, colder kind—as if the air itself understood exactly what had just happened here and had deliberately pressed its own volume down flat. I stood where I was, hand still resting on the hilt of my blade, knuckles pale. Mother was gone. I knew she was gone. And still I didn't let go.

As though the moment I did, the whole scene would replay itself—she would cross the room again, pin Cedric to the wall again, fix him with that look that seemed capable of crushing time itself, and ask the kind of question that made my own hand itch for the hilt. … She's always like this. She's always been like this. From the outside, she looks more like a god than anyone else in existence—nobler than anyone, colder than anyone, an ancient thing that should never be touched by anything as messy as mortal feeling.

And then the instant something actually matters to her—especially me—she turns into a complete disaster. I lowered the blade slowly and slid it back into its sheath. The sound rang out sharp and clean in the stone chamber. The frozen breath that had been hanging in the air started moving again. The dust she'd suspended drifted down, piece by piece, back toward the floor. Now that time had resumed its crawl forward, the chamber somehow felt even colder than before. I closed my eyes.

The restlessness pressing against my ribs since she'd appeared only truly surfaced now that she was gone. It wasn't because she'd put her hands on Cedric. Not only because of that. It was because—she hadn't changed at all. A thousand years ago. Two thousand. Longer than that, probably. She had always been exactly this. Always seeing through everything. Always standing above everyone.

Always able to look at you and find, with a single glance, every part of you that hadn't finished growing—every weakness, every unhealed thing—and then do nothing with that knowledge except stand there and force you to walk through it yourself. Fall down—get up. Cry—wipe it away yourself. Hate her, if you want. She allows that too. That's the kind of dragon she is. Ancient to the point of cruelty, so elevated that even her love comes out like something she doesn't bother to name.

I didn't understand it when I was small. I couldn't understand why other mothers held their children, coaxed them, wore that particular expression—the one full of understanding that made your chest ache—when their child was hurt. Mine would only watch me fall, and say: Get up. Just that. No second sentence. As if she'd never once doubted I could. As if she'd never once considered that her way of caring might leave marks. I hated her for it, once. Genuinely.

I hated that gaze she'd been born with—the gaze of something that had always stood above everyone. Hated that she knew everything and explained nothing. Hated that she was my mother and yet lived like a law placed directly in my path. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. It took me a long time to understand. She isn't indifferent. She simply never learned how to care in a way that makes things easier for you—because that isn't how anyone ever cared for her.

She is the Temporal Dragon. The Warden of Order. The one before whom even Father sometimes falls silent. She has lived too long and stood too high, and so the love in her eyes was never a soft thing. It is something closer to a ruthless, bone-deep faith. She believes you won't die. She believes that no matter how hard you fall, you'll stand back up. She believes you're capable of bearing it. And that's exactly the problem. Sometimes… I genuinely cannot stand that faith of hers. Because it's too heavy.

So heavy it stops feeling like love, and starts feeling like an obligation pressed directly into your bones. I opened my eyes and looked toward the stone passage where Cedric and Mother had disappeared. My chest pulled, very faintly, once. When I'd called her "Mother" earlier, the word had gone numb on my tongue before it even left my mouth. Not from shame. Not from embarrassment. It wasn't shame. It wasn't embarrassment. It was that the title had gone unspoken from my lips for far too long.

So long that I'd nearly forgotten what it tasted like to say it. And now that it had finally slipped out—I discovered it still hurt. Like a very old wound. The kind whose surface has long since healed over, until the moment something presses down on it, and the ache underneath proves it was never really gone. I know she heard it too. She knew I didn't want to say it.

She also knew that when I finally did, it wasn't because we'd reconciled, and it certainly wasn't because I'd suddenly decided to play the dutiful daughter. It was because Cedric was standing there. Because if I didn't hand her a name to stop on, she wouldn't stop at all. That's how the old dragon works. Give her nothing to hold onto, and she'll see a thing through to its absolute end. The thought pulled a low breath out of my chest.

"… Pathetic." I couldn't say, even to myself, whether I meant her or meant me. Of course I understood why Mother's expression had turned the instant she heard "Rosa." I'd known things were about to go wrong the moment Cedric gave his full name. Akros Rosa. To her, that name was never just an old acquaintance, never something you could wave off with "we have history." It was a wound that had never properly closed—one even Father chose not to touch most days. And Cedric had to be that man's son.

Worse still—my dragonrider. I pressed my fingers to my temple and, absurdly, almost wanted to laugh. Fate really does have a vicious sense of humor when it wants one. The one person I'd finally allowed myself to claim, and he had to carry the name Rosa. The one person I'd finally brought here, and he had to clear my mother first. I had told myself, long before today, that if I ever brought someone before her, I would be calmer than this. More composed. More like an actual princess of the Dragon Kingdom.

Instead, I drew my blade. Without a single thought. Without a moment's hesitation. I looked down at my own hand. The recoil from severing her wrist still seemed to hum faintly in my palm. Anyone else would call that insanity. To me, it was more honest than any sentence I could have constructed. Because I know her too well. If I hadn't moved, she really would have closed her hand. She might not have killed Cedric outright—not that fast, not that easily.

But she would have pushed him to the exact edge of breaking, and kept pushing until she was satisfied. And that, I would not permit. … No. I would not. Somewhere in that thought, something clarified. That strike hadn't only been anger. It hadn't only been rescue. It was because I had, somewhere along the way, already chosen my side. Not on a whim. Not the leftover warmth of last night. Not some arrangement of rank performed for an audience on a palace terrace. Something deeper. Something far harder to take back.

I stand with him. So even with my own mother on the other side of that line, I would draw the blade all the same. The chamber had gone quiet. Quiet enough that I could finally hear my own heartbeat—too loud, too fast—slowly finding its way back down. I walked to the altar and stood where Mother had appeared. The fracture she'd torn through time had already closed over, as if the whole encounter had been nothing but an unusually vivid hallucination.

Only the faintest chill remained in the air, cold as powdered starlight, proof that she had truly been here. I lowered my eyes to the empty stone.

"What is it you actually want…" Even as I said it, I couldn't tell whether I was asking her, or asking this whole tangled, unresolved thing between a mother and a daughter that had gone on for far too long. She rarely shows herself anymore. You could say she's spent these last years binding herself to the Ancestral Lands on purpose—pushing the word "Mother" as far from herself as it will go, keeping only "Gatekeeper" and "Temporal Dragon," tucked away somewhere no one could reach her.

And even retreated that far, she can still pry open everything I least want unearthed with nothing more than a single name, a single look. I hate that. … And it's exactly like her. I stood there a long time without moving. Not until a low resonance rose from somewhere deep in the chamber—some ancient mechanism stirring back to life—did I finally lift my eyes. That was the Ancestral Lands, answering. The first sign that the Dragon Soul was about to begin.

I looked into that distant dark, my fingers drifting to the hilt at my side before slowly letting go.

"Cedric." I said his name under my breath. Very quietly. Quietly enough that it felt like I was afraid of being overheard.

"…Don't you dare actually die in there."