The Godblood Bride: Mending the Cursed Dragon Lord

Anya POV:

"Put on the silk, get in the carriage, and take your sister's place in the monster's bed."

My adoptive father didn't even bother looking at me as he spoke. Lord Corbin Beaumont adjusted the gold-embroidered cuffs of his dragon-scale doublet in the gilded mirror, his voice dripping with casual cruelty.

Three days ago. My sister Isis smiled at me before shoving me down the grand marble staircase, leaving me for dead on the cold flags below.

They thought the fall shattered my spine and put an end to my pathetic existence.

They were wrong.

The agony of that near-fatal impact didn't kill me-it shattered the ancient, cursed seal binding my true core.

For eighteen years, my real power had been locked away, smothered beneath the lie of House Beaumont's diluted blood. But when my skull cracked against the stone, the seal broke.

The dormant, blazing inferno of the Primordial Dragon God roared to life in my veins, flooding my mind with centuries of forgotten combat instincts, forbidden venom-craft, and lost draconic arts.

I finally realized the House Beaumont had never cared for my feelings. I resolved to live for myself.

I renamed myself: Anya Vane.

"Did you hear me, girl?" Lord Corbin Beaumont sneered, adjusting his ornate dragon-scale doublet in the gilded mirror. He looked at my cheap white linen gown with disgust.

"The Dragon King himself ratified the alliance. Gideon Carlisle may be a crippled, soul-damaged monster whose previous brides never survived the winter, but his lands hold the southern borders. Consider this your sole duty to this house."

I looked at him through the mirror. My eyes, once dull and subservient, now held a faint, molten amber gleam deep within the irises.

"My duty?" I asked softly, my voice carrying a steady, terrifying resonance that made the room's crystal sconces hum.

I turned around slowly. The timid posture was gone; my spine was iron, my shoulders squared with the poise of an empress.

"Is it my duty, Lord Beaumont?" I tilted my head, letting a cold smile touch my lips. "Or was it the duty of your precious, high-born Isis?"

In the corner, my maid Martha gasped, dropping a silver hairbrush.

Corbin's self-satisfied smirk vanished, replaced by an ugly crimson flush.

"You ungrateful wretch! You dare speak your sister's name with that insolent tongue? Gideon Carlisle is a paralyzed savage! A beast in human flesh! You will obey the King's decree, or I will have you dragged to the Ironscale Duchy in chains!"

I took a slow, deliberate step toward him.

My awakened senses mapped his every weakness in a fraction of a heartbeat: his weight rested heavily on his right hip, his guard was wide open, and his draconic aura was a brittle, superficial spark compared to the roaring sun in my chest.

"Drag me?" I murmured, stopping inches from his chest. "There will be no need for chains. I will gladly marry Lord Carlisle."

Corbin blinked, caught completely off guard by my sudden compliance. "You... you will?"

"On one condition." I let the silence stretch until beads of sweat formed along his hairline.

"From the second my foot touches that carriage, my bloodline is severed from House Beaumont. Every debt, every humiliation, every scrap of stale bread your household threw at me is paid in full. By the ancient rite of blood-renunciation, I am no longer your daughter. If you ever attempt to claim authority over me again, I will burn your house to ash."

The air turned scorching hot for a fleeting second-a manifestation of pure dragon aura that made Corbin's knees buckle slightly. He realized the humiliation of a public blood-severing, but his desperation to pawn me off outweighed his pride.

"Done!" he spat, grinding his teeth. "Leave then, you insolent viper! Go die in Godspire Castle!"

"Consider it done," I said calmly.

I swept up my heavy traveling cloak, turned my back on the sputtering lord, and strouded out of the manor. Behind me, a crystal goblet shattered against the stone floor in impotent fury.

At the courtyard gates sat an unmarked, battered wooden carriage-a final, petty insult from House Beaumont. I climbed inside, my fingers sliding into my velvet sleeve to touch the hidden leather pouch against my forearm.

Inside rested twelve bone-silver needles I had hastily forged under the moonlight, infused with draconic herbs. They were surgical instruments-and lethal weapons.

The carriage lurched forward toward the volcanic crags of the Ironscale Duchy. Let them think they were sending a sheep to the slaughter. They had just released a dragon into the wolf's den.