Tomas had never seen the sky.
He was born beneath Blackstone Keep, where debtors' children carried coal, scrubbed iron cages, and learned not to ask what lived behind the deepest doors. The warden called him Rat because boys without families did not deserve names.
One winter night, Tomas heard a sound from Cell Nine.
It was not a roar. It was a weak, frightened chirp.
Behind the bars crouched a blue baby dragon with a chain around one hind leg. Its scales were dull from hunger, and one wing dragged across the straw. The royal guards planned to display it at the king's victory feast as proof that the northern dragons had been conquered.
Tomas knew the punishment for touching a lock.