Chapter 488: • A Cage of Good Intentions Part Two
Alister didn’t speak.
Couldn’t.
The silence between them now felt like the space between lightning and thunder—charged, inevitable.
He looked at Miyu, really looked at her, and not just as the little sister he used to visit. Not as the fragile girl whose blood had once nearly drowned her from the inside out, lying beneath layers of silk and wires in a sterile bed.
Not even as the girl who had clung to life like a flickering candle.
She wasn’t that girl anymore.
She was a dragon.
A truth he hadn’t fully accepted until now—because doing so ant admitting sothing far harder: she could bleed again. She could die again. And this ti… it might not be fate’s mistake. It might be his.
“…You really an that, didn’t you,” he murmured, the question not for her but for himself. His voice was quieter now, like the wind after a storm.
Miyu didn’t answer. Her silence was the answer.
Alister’s eyes drifted to the fracture in the wall. The shattered stone reminded him of another ti, another mont—when he first awakened to the emotion that summoned his first dragon: resolve. The burning resolve, It had saved him then. Made him stronger. But maybe that sa resolve was a chain he had now shackled to Miyu’s feet.
‘Wasn’t that technically what Father did?’
Galisk had chased vengeance so blindly, he never saw the trap closing around him.
And now, he’d left behind that sa burning need—to make whoever did this suffer sothing far worse.
It made sense.
It was even justified.
But it was a chain nonetheless.
“You said… all you ever had was ,” he said finally, almost to himself. “But I never stopped to think what that really ant.”
He thought back to every ti he’d left her side. To join the White Cot Guild. To hunt monsters. To throw himself into missions that made headlines. All the while telling himself he was fighting for her future.
But maybe she didn’t need a future handed to her. Maybe she just needed a brother who asked what she wanted first.
He turned his face away slightly, ashad.
“Miyu…” He took in a breath, steadying his heart. “I’ve seen thousands of lives in those sword-burnt visions. Millions of decisions, spiraling out into endless threads of pain or salvation. I thought I had to carry it all. To take every blow before it reached you.”
He looked at her again. Not as a protector. Not even as a twin.
But as soone… equal.
“But maybe,” he said, “I forgot sothing important. You’re not the helpless girl I used to visit. You’re not sothing to be protected.”
He hesitated—then forced himself to admit it.
“You’re a dragon too.”
Miyu’s breath caught. Just slightly.
“And if you want to fight for your piece of this reality,” he said slowly, smiling weakly, “then I won’t stop you.”
Her lips parted in shock. But she didn’t speak.
Not right away.
Alister’s eyes dropped. “But please… just… promise you’ll be smart about it. That you won’t throw yourself into death just to prove you’re not weak.”
“I’m not trying to prove anything,” she whispered. “I just want to live, Alister. Not just as your sister. Not just as so dragon princess. But as Miyu.”
Then her hand gently, hesitantly, reached out—resting on his chest where her finger had jabbed so harshly before.
“And I want you to be my brother, not my warden.”
He swallowed thickly.
There it was. The core of it all. He had blurred those lines with her for so long that he’d started thinking love looked like control.
“I could do that,” he said. “It would be hard… but will certainly try.”
She gave him a small, bittersweet smile.
They stood there a mont longer—two young dragons, born of the sa fire, scarred by the sa world—finally seeing each other not through fear or mory of what they were, but the truth of there current reality.
And though the corridor still echoed with their shouting, the silence now felt… lighter.
The war was still coming.
Their father was still dying.
But for the first ti in years, they were no longer facing it alone in separate corners of their pain.
They were together.
At last.
Miyu’s hand lingered on his chest for just a second longer before she pulled it back. Her gaze, sharp and searching, didn’t falter.
“You know… You still haven’t taught how to take on this cool dragon form,” she said, voice light—almost teasing—but with that quiet undercurrent of hurt that Alister had learned to recognize far too late.
“You know… the one where your eyes glow and your body looks like you’ve swallowed a star and scales pop out all over the place. The one everyone bows to.”
She stepped back, folding her arms and glancing down at herself.
“I’m walking around like a human in a city of dragons. Everyone treats like royalty, but I’m not even sure I deserve it.” Her voice dipped, thoughtful. “They call young miss, princess, mistress. So even kneel. But they’re not bowing to . They’re bowing to the idea of . To your sister. The bloodline. Not… Miyu.”
Alister stayed quiet.
Because she was right.
To the dragons, identity was power—and appearances were currency. Miyu may have had the blood of a royal dragon burning in her veins, but without mastering the external expression of that power, she would always be seen as less. A delicate thing wrapped in myths and politics, never quite real.
He’d delayed showing her how.
Not because he didn’t want to—but because, deep down, he feared what it might an when she could. When she finally shed the last vestiges of the sick, fragile girl he’d spent his life trying to protect.
Because then she wouldn’t need him anymore.
He sat with that thought for a mont. Let it burn a little. Like it should.
“You deserve more than form,” he said eventually. “But… you’re right. I should’ve taught you long ago.”
Miyu raised a brow. “So why didn’t you?”
He didn’t dodge.
“Because I was afraid,” he admitted. “Afraid that if you learned to stand without , you’d stop looking back. That the little sister who once held my hand wouldn’t need to anymore.”
He gave her a sad smile. “But that was selfish of . You’ve never stopped looking back. You just wanted to look forward with you.”
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