Chapter 23
THE BULLET HITS KRASIMIR IN THE face, blowing off his jaw. He drops dead with a quake that knocks us both off the Speerspitze. My ears ring. I sit up, spitting out sand, and the beach is momentarily swathed in silence.
A monstrous yapping fills the air.
I blink, my eyes straining in the smoke. My gaze meets Atlas’s as he shakes his head in disbelief.
No.
More Bolgoriths emerge from across the hills.
‘How?’ Atlas croaks.
I let out a desperate sob as I try to think.
‘A back-up battalion, made up of different family groups,’ I say slowly.
‘Krasimir must have known what the wyvern echolocation can do. Wyvernmire must have found out and told him. He planned his battalions so that the Bolgoriths in the second are unbonded to those in the first.’
I shiver.
‘The wyverns took out the first battalion, family group by family group, while the second waited, unaffected.’
Which means that we’re dead.
The wyverns are gone, the rebels defeated and Atlas and I are lying beneath a fresh horde of uninjured Bolgoriths. Time slows as Atlas crawls in my direction, the blue sea at his back and a red bank of blood-soaked sand between us. His arms wrap around me and he pulls me to my feet.
‘I love you,’ he says, his hot breath in my ear.
I blink, marvelling at the irrational confidence that made me believe I might ever get to say it more than once. ‘I love you.’
My vision blurs as I scan the beach. Marquis is firing the last remaining Speerspitze, taking aim at the new Bulgarians in the sky.
He dives into the sand as a rush of fire engulfs it.
Jasper and Sophie are dragging Ruth between them towards the caves, her long hair streaked with blood.
Marquis, Serena and Freddie run after them.
Everywhere smells of burning; burning gunpowder and burning flesh, and as a Bolgorith snarls Atlas screams at me to move.
I stumble in the hot sand, my head spinning.
Britannia is going to be overrun by Bulgarian dragons. I’m never going to see my sister again.
‘I’ll go with you!’ I scream into the sky. ‘I’ll go with you to Bulgaria!’
Atlas lifts me bodily from the ground, enveloping me in the smell of sweat and dragonsmoke as he drags me across the sand. ‘Move!’
I try to breathe but the air is full of fumes, filling my lungs as I imagine Ursa growing up in the darkness with Dr Seymour, forgetting about me, about our parents.
‘Wait!’ I choke. ‘Listen.’
‘Viv, hurry!’ Marquis has turned around and is running towards us, tears rolling down his nose.
But I tear away from Atlas and turn my face to the clouds. I can hear something.
The steady beating of wings.
‘More Bolgoriths,’ Marquis breathes.
‘Have you gone insane, Featherswallow?’ Atlas snarls, grabbing my arm as Marquis wrenches me towards the caves by the other.
‘Three beats, not two,’ I mutter.
My heart quickens.
‘It’s not Bolgoriths.’
Shadows drop across the sand and the hazy light of the dragonfire is momentarily extinguished as hundreds of dragons surge from behind the cliffs. And then they’re everywhere, pouring in from Sanday, from behind Compass Hill, from across the sea.
‘That’s . . . that’s a Double-winged Sapphira, a Spanish dragon!’ Marquis shouts. ‘And an Austrian Solar-tail.’
I shake my head. That’s impossible. We don’t have those species in Britannia.
Two British Sand Dragons reach the beach and wrench a Bolgorith from the air, twisting its neck before it hits the ground. They’re followed by a dragon with a long yellow mane.
A Pyrenees Python?
I see a flash of pink and my stomach plummets, because I know what I’m seeing is impossible. The dragon soars through the torchlight and I realise that I’m not looking at Chumana, but Daria.
‘Foreign aid,’ she purrs as she lands beside me. ‘Bolgoriths really are the most hated dragons in Europe.’
I watch as a Western Drake fights beside a Vermeil Viper, and their tails lock together to protect an Italian Tortoiseshell from a lethal Bulgarian blow. They’re from different cultures, speak different languages . . . but solidarity like this doesn’t need translating.
We reach the cave as Europe’s dragons join forces with what is left of Britannia’s troops.
The moon is high, its white light bursting through the dragonsmoke.
The Bolgoriths are outnumbered, fleeing in droves, and I see Daria and Aodahn bring one down together, their scales glittering in the pearly night.
Atlas turns to me, his face creased with exhaustion. I take his hands in mine.
‘I’m not going to Bulgaria,’ I breathe.
He laughs quietly. ‘No, Featherswallow, you’re not. You’re going home.’
My shock turns to sobs as I try to hold myself together.
Atlas wipes a smear of blood from my cheek and kisses me.
Wyverns and dragons soar along the silvery coastline as the Bolgoriths retreat.
The sea shimmers in the moonlight. I think of Clawtail’s last description of the island, an ode to his home before he was killed.
Such a heavenly rock is Canna.
I scan the cave, lit by the fires flickering outside.
My eyes linger on each bleeding rebel and I’m unable to stop myself from counting, from searching for missing faces.
I can’t see Hollingsworth anywhere. Wyvernmire is sitting against a wall, her head in her hands.
The noise outside is deafening as I sink down beside her, dizzy with exhaustion.
I glance at Atlas and Marquis, watching the last of the battle from the mouth of the cave, then at the Prime Minister.
‘How did you know what the wyvern echolocation could do?’ I ask her.
She looks up. ‘My nephew worked it out. We knew you were looking for wyverns, and when Atlas refused to give him the loquisonus machine in Canna House, he put two and two together.’
‘He knew before I did, then,’ I mutter. ‘But why did he tell you?’
‘He thought that if I gave the information to Krasimir, he might keep me alive. He was right about the Bolgoriths turning against me. I should have listened.’
I glare at her. ‘Ralph tried to save you, then. You always underestimated him. If you hadn’t, perhaps he wouldn’t have become who he was. Perhaps he wouldn’t have killed Chumana.’
Wyvernmire stands up, brushing the dust from her trousers. ‘Perhaps. And perhaps I underestimated you, too. Rita Hollingsworth certainly did.’
I shake my head. ‘She knew exactly who I was.’ I get to my feet. ‘But I’m going to rebuild myself, Prime Minister. I don’t want to be a brasstongue. I think I’ll give the languages up for now. Without them, I can be someone new.’
Wyvernmire gives me a look of surprise. Then she jolts forward, her eyes widening in shock.
‘Prime Minister?’
Wyvernmire staggers sideways, a small flint knife sticking out of her lower back. I pale as Ruth steps out from behind her.
‘Help!’ I shout as Wyvernmire collapses.
I drop down beside her, reaching for the knife. She shakes her head at me, her eyes huge, her hair unkempt. I watch her pupils dilate.
‘Help me lift her, quickly,’ I hear Marquis say to Atlas.
Wyvernmire lets out a small gasp, then shudders.
‘Shit,’ Marquis whispers.
Ruth eyes meet mine in a long, hard stare.
‘Told you I’d make her pay.’
She steps back into the shadows.
Rebels crowd the blood-soaked beach, warming cold hands by the dragon-lit fires in the dawn.
A chilled mist gathers around them, purging the air of the smoke.
The smell of fried pigeon makes my mouth water.
I keep walking, Atlas by my side. I can’t bring myself to sit still, to rest. Not until I’ve found what I’m looking for.
A sign that the Bulgarian Bolgoriths are really gone.
We walk hand in hand, past Jasper and Philippa, past Freddie draping a blanket over Serena’s shoulders and Ruth’s girls who are sipping something hot from bowls that Sophie and George are handing out.
Edward is being hoisted into a small rowing boat by two medics, and as more reach the shore I see Marquis leap up from the sand and stumble towards them, his arms outstretched.
Karim steps out of one of them, looking ten years older, and they fall into each other’s embrace.
‘Reports coming from the Inner Hebrides, home to the Human-Dragon Coalition Headquarters, tell us that the war is over.’ A voice crackles through Serena’s radio. ‘Indeed, as we look out of our window now, we can see the foreign allies landing in London. It took them long enough, didn’t it, Drake?’
‘Look, there are the Bulgarian oafs, rising above the city, fleeing as the mothership calls them home. Britannia has won the war, Sandy! I repeat, the war is officially over.’
‘Is it, do you think?’ I say quietly to Atlas. ‘Is it really over?’
Dragons are dragging dead Bolgoriths towards a great fire between two cliffs, an honour they don’t deserve.
As their scales crack and bend I see the grim finality of it, of this war we very nearly lost. So what now?
Above us a group of Western Drakes keep watch, as sceptical as I am.
Atlas squeezes my hand and we keep walking.
There is a line of bodies, surrounded by flowers and seashells that more of the Sanday girls are quietly arranging. Among them I see Cormac Mackenzie and Roy. Atlas releases a heavy breath. The sea rises up to kiss the body of a Sand Dragon who could merely be sleeping.
‘His sister is over there,’ I hear Gideon saying. ‘Burn them together.’
We watch as a dragon drags Addax towards Soresten, several Guardians holding her tail. My heart wrenches.
‘Viv!’ Gideon shouts when he sees me. ‘Where’s Chumana?’
The mention of her name is like a punch in the stomach.
‘She died,’ Atlas says softly.