Chapter 7
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KATALENA
Faint strings floated through the air, the tinkle of delicate music as everyone waited for me. They were ready. All I had to do was wait until the bells rang. But nerves twisted in my gut, Varí pulsing hot against my skin like he could feel my reluctance.
Even the dagger on my thigh couldn’t save me from this.
It’s all right, I told myself. It’s fine. Once he realizes you’re worthless, he’ll leave you alone. You’ll be able to live a normal life.
And that traitorous piece of my mind that couldn’t do anything but speak the truth spoke back to me.
If he doesn’t kill you first.
He couldn’t kill me. Not for a while, at least. I was the key to the alliance, and if I turned up dead a month after the wedding, even my father, callous as he was, would call foul play.
Small favors. I knew there were worse fates than death, and lives that made it look peaceful. But focusing on those wouldn’t get me through today, or however long I needed to. At least I was safe against the thing I feared most.
The bell in the tower chimed, followed by the melodious echoes of all the bells in the city. I loved the music of it, every tone layering over the other until the entire city rang with sound.
I forced myself to take a step forward into the open archway. Allow people to see me. Helena stood at my back, an encouraging presence as Prince Andaros looked at me and smiled. The whole court looked at me then too. My father. His father. Everyone.
There was no smiling back.
I couldn’t.
But I managed to take a step.
The sun warmed my skin, causing the gold to glitter and shine in the sun. It truly was a beautiful day, with the warmth and clear skies. This, I could be grateful for.
My eyes skimmed over the few wispy clouds and I startled at movement.
Just like this morning when Varí had scuttled beneath my skirt, I almost missed it. But no. I hadn’t. There was something in the sky headed straight toward us.
I had stopped walking, and suddenly the rest of the court followed my gaze. Wings flared, a darker blue against the sky, and someone screamed.
Everything turned to chaos as the dragon swept down over the gardens, close enough to smell the fire on its breath and feel the powerful beat of its wings. The courtiers ran, sprinting for the cover of the palace while the soldiers surged out of it, rallying to the Prince. The dragon killer.
Arrows followed the blue dragon like arcing rain. Nothing touched it. As it banked up and around to come back toward us, I couldn’t help but notice that it was beautiful. The color of the sky lined with silver. Sparkling. Death and beauty wrapped into one. Like it had dressed up in blues to match the occasion.
“There.” Someone shouted in time for a second black dragon to sweep over us from the other direction. Fire burst from its mouth, burning a line straight in my direction. I turned and ran, diving out of the way of flame and wind, my dress tearing as I fell.
The heat from the flames had grazed me, but I wasn’t burned by some miracle.
Black wings circled, landing past the dais where the wedding was to take place, shaking the ground with every step. Fire glowed in its eyes and smoke poured from its mouth.
The gaze it swept over us was fearsome. So intelligent and calculating. Everything I’d ever heard about dragons was true and not true and holy fucking stars there were dragons. My mind caught up to my body, realizing I was still sprawled on the ground near the ruined aisle, gaping.
“Load the cannons,” King Edwan roared as soldiers in Craisos’s colors scrambled for the battlements that guarded this part of the gardens, backed up against the mountains. They’d brought their weapons with them. Of course they had. And everyone knew that Prince Andaros and his father couldn’t be touched with dragon fire. How it was done was a closely guarded secret.
Which meant?—
Andaros realized what I had at the same time and sprinted for me. There was genuine concern on his face as he hauled me to my feet. “Go,” he said. “Get somewhere else. You aren’t safe here.”
“I can?—”
“Go, Katalena.”
I tried. An earthquake shook the ground. I was thrown once more, bouquet tumbling, shedding petals as Varí clung to me for dear life. My hair started to come undone and my dress was tangled in my legs, but I tried to get up and move.
It wasn’t an earthquake. A third dragon had landed next to us. Red and molten in color. He blocked out the sun as he stared down at me and Andaros, the prince stepping between us and raising his sword.
The red dragon looked down at the prince with what looked like a smirk before those golden eyes fell on me.
“Go, Katalena. It can’t harm me. I will find you as soon as I can.”
Rage at my own cowardice flared, but these dragons didn’t know I wasn’t their enemy, and right now they wouldn’t think twice about killing me. And Varí with me.
I turned and ran.
My skirts were too large and cumbersome to do so quickly, even when I pulled them up. Turned over chairs caught at them and the plants of the garden tore at the delicate seams, leaving me running in tatters. The entrances to the gardens were too far away now. Even the archway where I’d waited was merely an alcove. To get inside the palace… I’d never make it.
Whirling, I went for the walls instead. If I found a place out of sight, maybe I could survive.
“Come on, beast.” I looked back as Andaros spat the word. “I’ll deal with you just as I have your kin.” His sword glinted in the sunlight, raised to strike. The image was that of a warrior and a hero facing off against the enemy. If he won, artists would paint that image and bards would sing of it in taverns for the rest of our lives.
Across the garden, the black dragon kept the guards distracted trying to corner it, and the blue one flew overhead. But they hadn’t used their fire again. The strip of land that had been struck still burned, turning the air to shimmering glass around it. A warning of what they could do and had not fully done. They could have burned us all in a moment, and they hadn’t.
Even now, the great black beast merely blocked arrows with his claws and tail. He didn’t retaliate.
They’re here for a reason.
The red dragon’s eyes locked on mine for a breath.
“Don’t you fucking look at her. Look at me, demon. You won’t touch her.”
Andaros moved like he’d done this a hundred times before, and I supposed he had. Charging the dragon and sweeping for an outstretched wing.
But the dragon’s wing was there for a reason. He never saw the tail coming. It whipped around so fast, knocking into Andaros’s side. The spikes impaled him through the armor and he flew. His body crashed into the stairs of the dais, and he didn’t move again. Eyes closed, legs at bad angles…
There was every chance he could be dead. And I was a monster for the part of me that was glad of the possibility. But he moved. Not much. Just a shift of his arm. So he wasn’t dead.
Edwan screamed and ran for the red dragon, aiming to avenge his son. The King of Craisos met the same fate, swept away in the other direction. I could not see where he fell or if he’d survived.
And the red dragon stared at me. Saw me.
Fuck.
I ran. Maybe I could get to the stairs of the battlements. Maybe I could take refuge in a place so small even a dragon couldn’t access it.
The wall rose in front of me too soon. I didn’t need to look behind me to know it still stalked my steps, unhurried, like it knew it had me trapped.
Arrows laced with blue-green fire flew over my head. An attack meant to harm the dragon. Too little too late. “TO THE PRINCESS.” The cry went up across the gardens and walls, echoed in a hundred places at once.
I stumbled on gravel, scraping my hands as I fell and pushed upright again, fighting gravity, my strength sapped by the excess weight of the dress. But it was there. The wall. Stairs to the battlements.
They exploded.
Bits of stone hailed down on me, the force of the blue dragon’s claws shaking the earth and walls and air so thoroughly I collapsed. Where the stairs had once been was nothing but crumbling rubble. Destroyed. Keeping me contained.
I dragged myself to my feet, pushing to the wall, running still. The stone of it slapped under my hands, breaking my speed. I crashed to a stop and turned. There was nowhere else to go. Breath heaved in my chest, burning. There was nothing but stone at my back and death in front of me.
The red dragon came closer, not flinching at the soldiers racing toward it or the attacks on it. Not fighting back or sweeping them away the way he had with the King and Prince. They were nothing to it. For the first time, I realized why they were feared. Why Craisos, and then the rest of the humans, had chosen to kill them. Because they could kill us. The three of them could burn Rensara to the ground and be done with it, and we wouldn’t be able to fight back. The cannons weren’t ready. The scalefire wasn’t ready. There had been no dragon sightings in Rensara for over a hundred years. Why would we need that kind of protection?
Lowering its head, the dragon stared at me. Large, golden eyes took in everything from my torn dress and wild hair to the smudges of gold on my skin. The necklace hanging from my arm, my sleeve gone. He saw, and there was death in his eyes.
Me.
It was me.
I was the reason they came.
To kill the half of the alliance they could.
Destroy the hope and plan which could end their existence.
But he didn’t move to strike. He didn’t open his mouth and unleash his flames. He merely looked.
Snout so close I could touch it, I smelled brimstone and felt the heat gathering. They said dragon fire burned so hot it would feel like nothing. Simply a flash and waking up in the stars.
I could close my eyes and accept it. Know that I’d done everything in my power and it hadn’t been enough. Give in to the tears and the fear welling in my chest and know that it was for the best. To keep all of dragonkind safe from the monster of a Prince behind him.
Or I could try.
Pulling one shaking hand away from where it was plastered to the wall, I reached out. In spite of the growing heat and sweat slicking my skin, I reached, knowing I might burn anyway.
Everything else seemed far away. The soldiers and the shouts and the fighting. There was nothing else in this infinite moment but an immortal dragon and me.
I touched him. Palm flat in the center of his nose. I looked at him, too, between one golden eye and the other. Something beyond anger and violence sparked there, lurking. The truth of who they were. The truth I knew.
With a shudder, I showed him all of me. No masks and no fear. Just the plain truth. I was afraid, and if I died, I would accept it. But I saw him too. Saw the truth and knew it.
Something surged between us, fire and light and nothing at all but a sense of understanding. An echo it felt like I’d been hearing my entire life and just understood what it meant. But I didn’t understand it at all.
One word was all I had. “Please.”
Brightness flashed, and a boom followed—the first cannon loaded with the fire that poisoned and burned. If the dragons were to survive, they needed to leave. Now.
But the dragon before me didn’t move. He looked and looked and looked. A low growl shuddered across the ground. The glow of flame built between his jaws, searing heat wrapping around me and singeing the edges of my dress black.
“Please,” I said again.
His wings burst open, crashing into the curve of the wall on my right, shattering it into pieces. The wind nearly knocked me to the ground. I locked my feet in place, my hand still touching the warmth of his scales.
In one movement, he raised his head and spewed fire into the sky with a wild roar. I felt the heat even from the distance, flickering along my skin like it wanted to consume me from afar.
He turned his head away, and I sagged in relief.
Wings raised to launch into the sky, he looked at me again. All the relief drained out of me. I couldn’t move in time. All I could do was scream. Claws broke the stone at my back, tearing away chunks of the wall along with me.
Dizziness crashed down on me as I spun, unable to tell which way was up and which was down. He’d thrown me? Was I about to slam into the mountain and break beyond repair?
Another roar was answered twice more, and close. My trajectory changed. Dipped. My stomach hurled itself into my throat, and I dared to open my eyes and see my own death.
But there was no doom coming to meet me.
Rensara lay beneath me like a map had been unfurled, the river glinting in the sun and the Bowl suddenly visible with every beat of the dragon’s wings as we flew higher.
I was flying.
Wewere flying.
The blue and black dragons were with us, arrowing straight away from the city I’d always known, with me in tow. Even now, all they had to do was drop me and accomplish what they’d come to do.
But I took the risk anyway, and did what I’d dreamed about since I was a child. I spread my arms like wings and pretended I was the one flying.
And for the first time today, I smiled.