Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
The trees are spinning, everything is blurring, and it takes me far too long to realize that it’s because I still haven’t remembered to breathe.
“What do you mean, that was Arlo?”
Reave doesn’t answer. I don’t think he even hears me. Or sees me. His eyes are unfocused, shining with unshed tears. There are more tears staining his face, I think, though it’s hard to tell them apart from the rain.
A minute passes, then another, before he speaks in a rough, broken whisper.
“I…I can’t save him. He’s getting worse.
Worse than anyone who’s suffered from this before, and I don’t know why.
He hasn’t even done anything, and yet he still seems to be paying the price for the sins our ancestors committed against the fucking gods. ”
Several moments pass before his words sink in and my mind begins to piece together what’s actually happening.
“The sins…” I say slowly, uncertainly. “You’re talking about the things Mouren’s rulers have done to obtain the power of dragons, aren’t you? The way they stole it.”
He finally meets my gaze.
“I…I might have stumbled upon some incriminating evidence regarding that earlier today, under the Temple of the Flame, and I was looking for you, so I could—”
He laughs.
It’s a bitter, dark, horrible sound.
“So, you’ve figured out the curse of Mouren’s royal family,” he says. “Aren’t you fucking clever?”
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
He leans away from me but remains on his knees, tilting his head up toward the dark, rumbling sky.
A confusing, painful tangle of emotions has knotted itself up in my chest. But despite this, I’m still determined to ask the questions I’ve been wrestling with all day, to understand something before this night is over.
“Arlo is innocent, but what about you?” I ask. “What about Kestrel? Your parents? How long has this curse affected you all?”
The ragged, weary breath he exhales seems to shake the whole world.
Or maybe it’s just me that’s trembling.
“Generations,” he says.
“Why would you risk losing yourselves to this curse, all for the sake of power?”
I don’t think he’s going to answer at first.
When he speaks again, it’s more to the sky than me.
“Because in the beginning, there was only power. The first king and queen, and those who served them, extracted and wielded pure magic, and the dragons they collared allegedly heeded their every command without exception.” He lowers his gaze, but stares past me—at Sesca, maybe—as he continues.
“But dragons, and the magic they bring to the world, aren’t really meant to be controlled by anyone other than the divinely-chosen.
So there were consequences, eventually. A corruption that seeped into their blood.
A sickness that began to affect some members of the royal family and the other families who’d sworn their service to the crown—a curse that became hereditary.
But even then, some were inheriting magical gifts, too. ”
“And the gifts are what your ancestors focused on?” I guess.
“After they got used to having magic and power, it was difficult to let it go.”
“So they didn’t stop, despite the consequences.”
“No. They didn’t. Even when the sickness began to outweigh the gifts.”
I brace my hands against the damp ground as my balance sways. “And that sickness, it…”
“Transforms them.”
“Permanently?”
“By the end, yes. They lose all sense of humanity, and they don’t even resemble the dragons they once tried to command—nothing intelligent or divine about them.
Just mindless, ravaging beasts. Some of us who share the curse in our blood, like myself, can control them, somewhat, but even that has limitations. ”
I think of Arlo’s sweet, innocent face. His smile, his laughter, his kind eyes and little scribbled notes and all the gifts he’s always leaving me. The way those gifts were a light in the dark that kept me going even on the hardest days.
Mindless, ravaging beasts.
It can’t be true.
It’s too cruel. Too harsh of a punishment…and for what? Being born? He didn’t ask to be a part of this cursed bloodline any more than the starving children back home asked to be born in the ashes of the Burn.
My heart feels swollen and battered, and I’m not sure how much more it can endure today, but I have to keep asking questions. I have to know the full truth of what I’m facing. “The dragons who fill Mouren’s skies, the ones you said have long protected your city, are they…were they once human?”
“Only a few of them; the true dragons have killed most of them at this point.”
“And you? Have you ever transformed?”
“Not entirely. Not…” He trails off. It takes him several tries to get his next words out.
“Not the way Arlo transforms. I have moments where I struggle. The more I use magic, the more control I try to exert over both the true and the cursed dragons, the worse and more frequent those moments become. But my affliction is mild, compared to others. Compared to…him.” He rakes a hand across his face, digs his fingers in so viciously that I have to fight the urge to grab his wrist and stop him from hurting himself.
“I wish it wasn’t.” His fingers claw into his hair and grip tightly as he bows his head. “I wish the worst of it would somehow take me instead.”
I don’t say anything to that.
There’s nothing to say.
I know this gut-wrenching grief and frustration far too well—what it feels like to not understand why you were spared, why your life has carried on, relatively unscathed, while the ones you love suffer and die around you.
There’s nothing anyone can say or do to make this feeling go away.
Nothing I’ve found that makes it better.
So I just keep still, and I silently endure it with him, until another horrible thought occurs to me.
“You said Arlo was getting worse, and you’ve also said the dragons in the city are getting more erratic…do you think it’s because of the same reason? That Sesca’s growing power and influence, and my bond with her, is causing the curse’s progression?”
His answer comes slowly. “Maybe.”
Sesca lifts her head, and he finally does too.
The two of them regard each other for a thoughtful moment before he sighs and says, “But I’d like to think it’s only a temporary worsening.
Like drawing poison out so you can treat the wound underneath.
I…I’ve been told a divine dragon might be the only way to fully break this curse. ”
My chest tightens. “Is that why you really brought us here?”
He doesn’t reply. The silence is answer enough—all the proof I need to tell me that I’ve gotten almost everything about this man and his motivations all wrong.
It was never about making a weapon out of me.
He wanted to make a healer out of me.
But, at least in this moment, that role seems just as daunting as being the king’s blade. Maybe even more daunting.
“Gareth used me,” he eventually continues, when I can’t find any words myself.
“He convinced me that a divine dragon and their bonded one might be able to break this curse, and that he could find you if I made him a commander in my army—if I gave him the resources to track down your dragon and lure you in. But he was just using me so he could get to you. So he could be certain of your existence, of your bond, of your potential power. Power that he wanted to take back to Dralsk, ultimately, once he’d gotten a secure enough grip on it. ”
He preyed upon Reave’s desperation.
The revelation makes me so furious that I suddenly wish it had been me who put those arrows in Gareth’s neck.
I'm also furious at the man on his knees before me—because there's so, so much more he could have shared with me before now—but it's a different kind of fury.
The kind that begins to feel more like grief the longer I look at him, and the closer I study his bright but tired eyes; his strong shoulders bent from the weight of all he's carrying; his regal appearance marred by muddy water and…
something that looks suspiciously like blood along his right side, where his coat and shirt are in tatters.
“You're injured,” I realize.
“Who fucking cares,” he growls, staggering to his feet.
“I do,” I say, before I can catch myself.
“You shouldn't.” He shakes his head as he walks away from me, bracing a hand against one of the few trees still standing in the wreckage around us.
“I didn't want to bring you here. I didn't want to tangle you up in my battles, or in the politics and escalating tensions between my kingdom and others. Tensions that I knew would only get worse if you and I got closer. A Mouren king laying any sort of claim to a Flamebound? And the first Flamebound in what seems like an eternity, at that? I knew it was going to cause problems. But I just wanted…”
“To save him.”
He swallows hard. “Yes.”
I take a deep breath. “Why would you not tell me this sooner, if you wanted my help?”
Another cold, bitter laugh tumbles out of him.
“Because what if you refused? What if you took this information about our curse and used it against us?
Mouren is on precarious ground these days, if you haven't noticed.
And I'm supposed to be the keeper of this whole godsdamned kingdom, too. Not just my brother.”
“You didn't trust me.”
“No. And I'm still not sure I do. How could I?”
I can hardly argue with him about this, because it's not as though I truly trust him, either.
I came to his palace to find whatever weakness I could exploit in order to tear him down.
Hell, I spent most of today looking for incriminating evidence, trying to unravel him and his kingdom's power. But this…
This was not how I expected things to unravel.
Anger and sorrow and uncertainty churn through me in equal measure. I'm still trying to separate them, to find a way to speak coherently through the mess, when Sesca suddenly leaps to her feet, her entire body bristling with alarm.
A shrill, piercing cry rises in the distance, drawing our eyes upward.
Arlo is back, his dragon form careening wildly over the treetops. I can't fully make it out through the thick tangle of branches and rain and dark, but I can see—and hear—well enough to know when he plunges to the ground and doesn’t come up again.
A strange cold rushes through the air, raising the hair on my arms and the back of my neck. It feels vaguely like magic, like the feeling I get whenever Sesca gathers and forges elemental power, but something about it is…wrong.
Another high-pitched roar rattles the forest, and the magic sensation dissipates so quickly it unbalances me.
Reave stumbles away from the tree and races in the direction of the roar.
“Wait!”
He ignores me, already disappearing into the dark.
I run after him, but my pace is slow; the forest is dense, and I find it hard to gauge the distances between the trees. Still, I press on, feeling my way through, guided further by the occasional sound of footsteps or a flash of Reave's dark coat.
When I finally catch up to him, he has a battered, unconscious Arlo in his arms, wrapped up in that coat.
The sight shouldn't stun me, after everything I've just been told. But for a moment, I freeze in place, quietly horrified—because now I can't deny that something awful is happening.
Reave doesn't say a word to me, just hurries back toward the palace.
I follow, staying close to his side, while Sesca soars silently overhead.
Back in the shadows of the palace, a crowd has gathered around the dragon Arlo killed—or what's left of it, anyway. The poison has eaten most of it away, leaving a blackened, half-dissolved pile of bones and flesh that I make a point of not looking at directly.
We sweep wider, avoiding this crowd as best we can.
I want to stay stealthy, to slip further into the shadows and find a way to sneak inside, but Reave suddenly draws to a stop.
He's looking not just at the people gathered around the dragon corpse, but at another small group of finely dressed figures who are clustered near the closest palace entrance, speaking in low, urgent voices and scanning the grounds.
“Some of our visitors,” he informs me, quietly. “I missed several of our agreed-upon meetings after I was distracted…They're wondering where I've gone, I'm sure. Especially after all the commotion.”
I frown as I realize the predicament he's in. “They're going to pounce on you the moment they spot you.”
He looks to the door behind the finely-dressed group, like he's thinking about barreling through and simply ignoring any questions or demands they might make; I can tell he cares far more about taking care of his brother than he does about his political obligations right now.
But I think we both know that ignoring those obligations is only going to make things more difficult in the long run.
“Let me take him,” I hear myself say.
He stares at me, lips parting but no words coming out.
“You don't want them asking questions about Arlo, right?” I continue in a rush.
“So I'll take him to his room and hail the doctor while you deal with the things you need to deal with.
Make something up about the dead dragon, and about where you've been and how you ended up covered in muck and blood.
Tell them you did something heroic. And if anyone asks me about it later, I'll just agree with whatever you told them.”
He says nothing, jaw tight, eyes moving between me and his brother.
“Let me,” I say again, more gently, as I step closer and open my arms to him.
The silence stretches long enough that I think he's going to refuse. But then it happens like a knot worked loose by patient hands; a bit of tension giving way, one string after another slipping free until it finally comes undone all at once.
He relinquishes his hold, transferring Arlo carefully into my arms, looking slightly dazed afterward—like he's not sure what to do without the weight of his brother anchoring him in place.
“Go on,” I say, nodding him toward the waiting dignitaries.
After a deep breath, his usual confident, stoic mask slides into place. I turn and start to hurry away before he can change his mind.
“Arowyn.”
I pause, glancing over my shoulder.
“Thank you.”
I just nod.