Chapter Forty-Eight Claire
You never know how much good a few kind words can do.
—Nicolas Belgard
Chapter Forty-Eight
Claire
Teeth chattering, I startle awake, pushing upright on hard ground. A blanket made of silverwolf pelts falls from my bare shoulders. Gooseflesh spreads across my skin as my surroundings sink in. Smoke. Ash. A cavern scorched. Silence. Horrible, voiceless silence beyond the crackle of trees on fire.
“Claire!” Marshal Payen calls from her place outside, standing in blood-streaked snow. “Is Abel safe?”
The sight of her alive and well makes me release a breath, but only just. Abel. I look around the cave—then gasp. Abel is flat on his back, blistered and broken, dragon-skull helmet cast aside. Lucy licks the embers from his charred hair, as if that will help him.
“Abel?” I whimper.
I clutch the pelt against my chest, body numb as I crawl to him, not caring to question the presence of the black-haired stranger who stands over his supine form.
Heat emanates from Abel’s skin so strongly that I’m unsure where to touch without hurting him.
He’s unrecognizable. Face blistered, eyebrows gone, eyelids nearly fused together.
Traces of silver liquid line the corners of his mouth, like melted moonmetal.
“Claire,” he wheezes.
“It’s all right,” I lie. “You’re all right.”
He lifts a finger from the hand that rests on his stomach, as if that’s all the strength he can muster. I take his hand in mine. As gingerly as I can, I bring it to my cheek. He smiles weakly; then his body shudders. Lucy pants and paws at him.
“Lyle!” I scream.
Lyle abandons his horse and sprints to us. He kneels at Abel’s opposite side.
“Did I do this to him?” I cry.
“It wasn’t you.” Lyle shakes his head. “Wake up, friend. Wake up!”
“I love you, Abel. Please, don’t die.”
“He will survive.”
I look up sharply at the sound of the ethereal voice. The black-haired man still watches, waiting patiently. A strange, ancient style of garment drapes his body. Upon closer look, he has moon-white skin. His eyes glitter like a starry sky.
“How—” I begin, but then Abel’s skin crackles. Ice spreads across his cuts, burns, and puncture wounds. Inch by inch, the ice melts and leaves healthy olive skin behind. Amazed, I thumb the last droplet of silver liquid from his lips and rub it between my fingers.
“What is this?” I ask.
“Eau de vie,” the man replies with a hint of pride.
Lucy yips and hops excitedly.
Abel sits up. His arms, strong as ever, pull me into his embrace. Water drips from his chin and onto my shoulder, making me shiver. I try to pluck a coherent thought from my frazzled mind, but then the meaning of the ethereal man’s words—eau de vie—sinks into me.
Water of life.
Not for me, but for Abel.
“Look outside. The suns are still up,” Abel says, half laughing, his voice suddenly clear. “You’re cured.”
“I’m cured?”
That can’t be right. If eau de vie cured him, then what cured me? Diu’s curse can’t have vanished without a reason.
“We did it.” Abel takes my cheeks in his hands. “Diu no longer needs you.”
“Needs me?”
The strange man nods, as if Abel’s claim isn’t insanity.
Beyond my galloping heartbeat, every sound is jumbled. Lyle throws his muscled arms around us in one big hug. Lucy shoves herself into the narrow space between us to join the love.
I draw a moondagger from Abel’s tattered belt.
“Don’t!” he shouts, reaching for the dagger, but he’s too slow. I’ve already turned it on myself.
Blood blooms bright and red from the slice in my palm. Stinging pain twinges through my fingers. It hurts more than I intended. But it’s the absence of Diu’s healing steam that makes me cry.
The dragon in me has died.
Abel’s eyes turn glassy. Melted ice? Tears? Both, maybe. He recounts the events I missed while I was asleep. Noctu. The owls. Eau de vie. Diu’s true agenda. I absorb bits and pieces, but the details don’t quite sink in. I just cling to the fact that we’re both here. We both survived.
“Thank you for coming back for us,” Abel tells Noctu. “I thought you’d Ascended for good.”
“I am not finished with your realm,” Noctu replies, then looks to me. “I still wish to speak with Claire Belgard.”
After a bit of reassurance from me, Abel steps outside to help Marshal Payen take stock of the damage. Lyle remains, but only to bandage my palm with a strip of linen. The tight knot makes me wince, but the bleeding stops. I hide it beneath the folds of my silverwolf pelt.
“That should hold for now,” he says. “I’ll bring you some spare clothes. The sooner you dress, the sooner we get you home.”
While he’s gone, I join Noctu in the deepest recess of the cave, taking in the remains of his prison with my human eyes. The icy floor bites into my bare knees as I kneel, then run my fingertips along the melted ore. It doesn’t glow anymore, but the surface is still warm.
“Are you certain you do not want eau de vie to heal your hand?” Noctu asks. “The magic will not linger after I am gone.”
I shake my head. “I’ve had enough magic for a lifetime.”
In the sunslight outside, Abel directs Lucy to devour the last flickers of fire.
Lyle and Marshal Payen sort through the supplies.
The surviving gendarmes—freshly healed, after lining up in the cave to accept Noctu’s offer for treatment—search between the trees, collecting evidence.
Cloaks, masks, sickles…and the bodies of their gendarme allies.
They wrap the latter with the canvas of their tents.
“You wanted to talk to me?” I say.
“I assume you have questions. I owe you answers.”
I clench my injured hand against my chest, pressing my fingernails into the fresh bandage on my palm until I wince. Wet spots well beneath my fingertips. Only then do I take a deep, steadying breath.
“Why did Diu choose me?” I ask.
“Diu chose his dragons,” Noctu says, “for their courage.”
“Courage?” Of all the reasons to set me on such a painful path, that’s the last answer I expected. “Why?”
“Diu believed that courage was necessary to dismantle the lies written in The Tale of Stars.” He gestures to me. “He was correct.”
My mind gallops, aimless and confused. I wasn’t a uniquely courageous person before I turned. Quite the opposite. I was kind and compliant, shaped by sermons. Not bad, but hardly courageous.
“But I obeyed the scripture. I only questioned it after my first Ignition,” I protest. “Besides, I’ve met people much braver than me who were never cursed.”
Like Abel, who defied the Slayers Guild. Lyle, who told the truth in the face of extortion. Anne-Sophie, who smiled in étienne’s face while he dragged her daughter off in chains.
“The purest form of courage is not reactive to one’s circumstances,” Noctu explains. “It is proactive. It lies in the unprompted recognition that change is good.”
“What did I do that was so proactive?”
“You prayed to me.”
The stars in Noctu’s black eyes transport me back to Sellecastel, under the light of the full moon, where sparks from our bonfire mingled with the constellation in the sky.
The owl watched while Papa and I, with our neighbors and friends, spoke our gratitude to the vengeful War-Torn God of the Moon.
Tears edge my lashes. “You heard us?” I whisper.
“No mortal had spoken kindly to me in centuries until your father started his stargazing tradition,” he explains.
“I looked forward to those hours of quiet, where I listened to the stories from your life and the small things you were grateful for.” He dips his head.
“Thank you for trusting I was still worth talking to.”
My chin wobbles. “But that was Papa’s idea. He was the courageous one.”
“He was. But it was you who normalized it. You who drew the crowd. You who had the courage to try something different and share it with others, not because you felt it was necessary, but simply because you could.”
When he phrases it like that, it starts to make sense.
Every dragon I know about proactively stood up to societal expectations in some way.
Micah Estellio denied the family legacy.
Leah Travers, despite her young age, stood tall as a Dame Blanche.
Even Gérard Dupont—in defiance of his pampered upbringing—had taken his sister fishing for her birthday when he turned.
Such simple acts. But enough to reshape their perception of the world.
“I am sorry for your town’s suffering, Claire Belgard,” Noctu says, “but of all the dragons Diu could have sent to rescue me, I am glad that it was you.”
The surge of validation drops me to my knees. My tears finally spill over, but then comes a burst of the purest, most cathartic laughter I’ve ever felt.
Papa’s prayers were worth it. More than worth it. They earned me the fiery power to liberate the mortal realm from centuries of manipulation—the likes of which convinced so many people that they didn’t deserve a place in it, myself included. But I’m here. I’m staying. And I belong.
I clutch my stomach. Goodness, this hurts. But it feels so much better than the burning that tried so hard to destroy me from the inside out. Those flames were never mine to carry. They were a beacon for everyone to follow to a kinder realm. A light in the dark. A guiding fire from the stars.
“Thank you, Papa,” I whisper, smiling as I wipe my eyes with the pelt. “Thank you.”
Noctu lingers patiently while I collect myself. Lyle returns with an armful of spare clothes. I take them and sort through the thick layers, finding a Gendarmerie uniform at the bottom, with boots to match.
“Me? Dressed like a gendarme?” I laugh.
He grins. “It truly is the apocalypse.”
He holds the blanket like a curtain while I get dressed. The boots are a bit too big, and the uniform hangs baggy. The thick hunter’s coat warms me plenty, but something about the pelt makes me feel protected. I drape it over myself like a cloak.
Once I’m finished, Lyle’s mood shifts. He stands awkwardly in place, swallowing hard as if working up the will to say something.
“You have questions about your mother,” Noctu presumes.
Lyle nods stiffly, now offering his map of the mountain. “I’d like to ask where the rest of her body is. Assuming you ‘saw’ what they did with it?”
Noctu considers the topography for a while longer than I expect. He must need to piece together the fragments of what he’s seen by memory. Eventually, he points to a ridge not far off our path of descent.
“Here,” he says. “You should find her ashes buried in the snow.”
Lyle exhales with a shudder, nodding as if he’s forcing himself to accept her death all over again.
“I’m sorry, Lyle,” I whisper. “She deserved better.”
He rubs his eyes. “At least now I can bury all of her remains next to Pa. It’s what she would have wanted.”
“If it is any consolation, your mother’s final moments were swift,” Noctu says. “She did not suffer. She spat in their faces and told them they had picked the wrong boy to extort.”
Lyle chokes on a laugh. “Sounds like Ma.”
I squeeze his shoulder, like when we commiserated together in the church. “Our parents didn’t die in vain. They’re more than stardust now. They’ve become the foundation for a better future.”
“Thank you, Claire.” He faces Noctu. “I must confess that if I had Diu’s power, I would have been tempted to unleash a star’s worth of fire upon the realm to rescue you sooner.” He swallows. “Was it our worship that spared us?”
Noctu’s brow arches into something akin to sympathy. “We never wanted to exist as your superiors. That is not why we created you.”
“What did you want from us?” I ask.
“What you gave each other.” Noctu gestures to the activity outside. “Community.”
Sunslight burns high in the sky. Smears of red and black stain the clearing, but they can’t erase the blinding sparkle in the snow.
“Your species has made many mistakes, but neither one of us would ever wish for your demise,” Noctu continues.
“It has been mundane for Diu and me to live a forever life. We have each other, yes, but there is no newness. No complexity. We had created human beings in our image, with our magic, so that our purpose might grow beyond each other. We merely wish it had unfolded differently.”
A strange vulnerability softens his stare as he watches Abel, Marshal Payen, and the gendarmes work. It’s the sort of longing that my isolation as a dragon taught me all too well.
“Would you like to go outside with us?” I ask. “It’s a beautiful day.”
“Yes,” Noctu says distantly. “I think I would.”
Lyle and I step into the sunslight first. Noctu hesitates at the threshold, but it takes only a moment for him to sink his bare foot into the snow.
The scent of pine wafts through the clearing, strong and fresh. I turn my attention to the treetops, inhaling deeply. The sharp winter breeze carries the smoke away. Lucy bounds in circles around Abel while he helps ready the horses for our descent. Her coat shines as golden as the suns.
“My brother wants to start over in a new realm,” Noctu says quietly, “but I do appreciate the way this one turned out.”
The briefest gust rustles my clothes. Dazed, I turn to Noctu. To thank him, I think. To ask what I’m supposed to do with my life now that his brother is done with me. A celestial being must know the answer.
But he’s already gone.