Moments later,

Author

The chamber at the heart of Blackwood Villa was warm, lined with glowing crystal and draped in soft wool to keep out every draft. In the center, resting on a bed of moss and starlight-white velvet, sat the last egg.

It was larger than a man’s fist, its shell the color of deep midnight, threaded through with veins of silver that pulsed slow and steady, like a sleeping heart. For weeks it had sat there, silent and still, while Lycian, Fenris, and Drako came every day to sit beside it, to talk to it, to press their palms gently against its cool surface.

Tonight, something was different....