49. Chapter 45
Chapter 45
The Darkness is not the enemy, but neither do I call it a friend. Our alliance is the age-old unification against a stronger, mutual foe. It is not something I trust, but The Darkness’s desire for survival is stronger than its hunger. For now.
~Maeve Arden, The Future of Magic and Dragons
Maeve
We tumble out from a shadow under a snow-capped cedar tree. The unmistakable scent of its branches is a stark contrast to the scentless world we’d just left. The mid-afternoon sun is so bright that it stings my eyes, and I have to blink the light blindness away.
“Do you know what that was?” Echo asks nearly hysterically.
“No idea. I assume you do, though?” I am really getting tired of not knowing anything.
She crawls on hands and knees across the snow until she’s kneeling in front of me. “That’s the Darkness. ” She says it like it’s so obvious.
“Well, that’s what it said. It might lie, but…”
Echo rolls her eyes like a child talking to an idiot. “No, Maeve. It’s the Darkness that your Mother talked to so she could find all the hidden things. It’s how she found A History of Magic and Dragons . It’s how she came up with the plan to create Valinar. Maeve, that creature is older than the dragons. It’s… It’s older than gods or anything on Nyth. There’s a distinct possibility that it’s even older than Nyth.”
I run my hand through my hair, knocking off some of the snow that clings to it. “So we should have accepted its deal?”
“I have no idea. Brenna didn’t talk to me about any agreements. She just said that it was dangerous. More dangerous than anything you could find in Nyth or Valinar. Even more dangerous than Calyr, because Calyr was a being that could be defeated. The Darkness couldn’t.”
I blink. “How could anything kill Calyr? He’s a dragon.”
“And dragons left Nyth because they were afraid of dying. The dragons left because something was hunting them. We think of them as impossibly strong, but they’re not. They’re stronger than High Fae, but there are things out there that are far, far worse than them. And The Darkness is one of them.”
She says that last sentence like it’s an undeniable truth. “We need to talk to my mother,” I say as I stand up. An hour ago, I felt like I knew exactly where I stood in the world. I felt like I had finally become someone who could make decisions without being blindsided by something I couldn’t have ever considered before.
Now, here I am, trying to understand a creature I’ve never heard of who could have killed dragons. There’s always another secret, and all of them seem to find the worst possible time to reveal themselves.
Before I’ve had a chance to brush the cedar needles off my pants, something very heavy hits the ground behind me with a loud WOOMPH. Then another and another and another in quick succession. I barely have time to notice Echo’s eyes open wide before I whirl around, a shadow spear appearing in my hand on instinct.
Once again, I’m confronted by something I’d never expected to see, but at least I know what this is. A drakeling. Well, four drakelings, but my eyes don’t move from the largest of the four. One with blindingly silver scales whose eyes shimmer with a myriad of colors. It’s enormous. The size of a bull, it truly stands like a miniature dragon.
Long horns branch off from the glowing silver scales in twisting and splitting branches all over its body. Each one ends in a sharp spine that could impale a person. It snorts and a puff of smoke rises from its nostrils.
I hear Echo skittering backward behind me, but I don’t move. My instincts had insisted that I retreat from The Darkness, but this isn’t the same. I know how impossible it would be to hurt a drakeling, and there’s nothing I could do to stop these four if they decided to attack me.
I walk forward toward the silver one, ignoring the three behind it. Without a hesitation, I reach out and run my fingers over its forehead, my nails scratching the hard scales that have gotten far larger than I remember.
“Zephyra,” I whisper.
Maeve . My name echoes in my mind, and I smile down at the drakeling who knew exactly who I was when she landed.
“What are you doing here? And who are your friends?” I finally look at the other three. One is a deep russet brown that shimmers with a red tint. Its horns sprout from all over its body like sharp porcupine spines, covering it and making it appear even larger than it is. The next is a dark emerald green, and its scales shine like gemstones without a single horn adorning its body. It seems to preen where the others look at least slightly ferocious.
The last one is black. From the tip of its snout to the end of its tail, it’s as black as pitch without a bit of shine to it.
The last drakelings. The words are soft, but they leave nothing to the imagination. Could these four truly be the last four alive anywhere in Nyth?
“There aren’t any others?” I ask with just as much incredulity as I’m feeling. My eyes move from one to the next, taking them each in.
Zephyra shakes her massive head. All the rest have returned to the void. We are the last. Each of us found something to feed on when the rest of the drakelings starved. We survived until Maeve Arden became the Queen of Stone, and now magic is returning to the world. But then it began to fade again.
I give Zephyra a frown. “What do you mean, it began to fade ?”
Echo shifts, looking a little less afraid as I talk to the drakelings so comfortably. She musters up a bit more courage and takes a few steps closer to Zephyra and her friends. The magic in the air is less than it was. It did not all go away, but it… it has become hard to fill ourselves. This is why we found each other and went searching for Maeve Arden. You are the reason the magic came back to the land, and when it faded, we knew you must have some part of it as well.
Zephyra gets a very un-dragonlike look on her face as she cocks her head. But there is nothing wrong with Maeve Arden. She moves her enormous snout toward me, and she sniffs loudly, those massive teeth only inches from my body. Maeve Arden is still the Queen of Stone. Why did the magic fade?
“I don’t know,” I say softly.
“It’s because you’ve been in Valinar,” Echo responds immediately. “You can’t be the Conduit for the Throne of Earth while you’re not in Nyth.”
Zephyra swivels her snakelike head to peer at Echo, and she takes the two steps toward the girl. Echo steps backward, fear filling her face, and she trips over a rotten cedar branch.
The drakeling doesn’t seem to care that Echo may have hurt herself. Her snout moves to Echo’s face, taking deep sniffs, and she whirls back toward me. The Queen of Darkness? But she is Other. She is not like you. She is like the misty place. How is this possible?
“She was born in the misty place,” I explain. “But she is like me. My mother taught her.”
The other drakelings seem agitated at that explanation. Zephyra stares at me for a few moments before moving back to the other drakelings. You will not go back to this place. You will not make us starve again. You will not kill us.
I blink. I never expected four drakelings to demand that I stay away from Valinar. “I have to go back. I’m supposed to get married. My… mate is there.”
Zephyra’s eyes close some, and extra smoke pours from her snout. You left your mate in the misty place? You will get him, and you will stay away from there. Do you understand?
She doesn’t seem to be ready to hear anything other than my agreement. “I have to stay there for another eight days so that I can bond with my mate. Then I’ll leave. None of you will starve.”
Zephyra looks at me and then at the other drakelings. They’re silent for a few moments, but I know they’re talking as their eyes flick from one to the other. It’s not Zephyra who talks to me afterward. The black one walks toward me, and for the first time, I realize what a dragon would look like if it were to stalk its prey. Its eyes shimmer with the same rainbow of colors as Zephyra while it looks down on me. Zephyra had been very animated about her frustration, but this one doesn’t let on how its feeling.
Then its head snakes down until its eye is right in front of me, just as Calyr had done. You will stay gone for eight days only. Then you will come back. If you do not, we will drag you and your mate out by your throats. Where Zephyra is soft even when she’s frustrated, this drakeling is booming, just like Calyr or The Darkness. He—there is no doubt in my mind that the drakeling is a he—seems to want to compete with them for the award for the loudest creature in the world. We will wait here for you. Do you understand, Queen of Stone?
I nod quickly at him and say, “Yes. I understand.” I don’t think he would kill me since he needs me to be the Conduit, but after the way he looked at me, I’m not entirely sure. And stay away from the one you spoke to in the void. It is far too dangerous for you to be talking to. You will not endanger my mate by speaking to things that are better off left alone.
Zephyra nods, and when the black one leaps into the air, its midnight black wings carrying it into the sky. She follows with the other two flying behind her. Echo and I watch them as they soar above us.
“This has not been the day I expected,” I mutter to myself.
I guess Echo heard me because she chuckles. “Maeve, you are a much more interesting person than I expected. You talked to a drakeling as if it were a friend.”
I shrug. “She was one of the reasons that I didn’t give up when I found out how everyone had manipulated me. I kept fighting because of the drakelings, and she told me her story when I was just a Wyrdling.”
Echo nods slowly, not really trying to say anything more than that she understands. “I really don’t want to shadow walk back to Valinar. Do you?”
I shake my head. “No. Absolutely not. It’s a beautiful day. There’s no reason we can’t go for a little afternoon walk. We’re not far from Valinar.”
“No, we’re not far at all,” she says in agreement.
Neither of says anything about The Darkness that I’m sure is waiting in the void for us. Neither of wants to admit the terror that it represents. I’m not going back into the void until I’ve talked to my mother about it. Until then, we can walk wherever we need to go. I walked everywhere until this past year, and the thought of it makes me smile a little. Sometimes it’s good to remember where I came from.
Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself while I stay very far away from a giant eyeless eel that could eat a dragon.