Chapter Fifty-One Abel
I don’t care what you want. He’s coming with me. Our son needs to see what happens to slayers who reject the rules.
—Note left from slayer étienne Houdin for his wife, Vanessa Houdin
Chapter Fifty-One
Abel
Everyone in this auditorium is here to denounce me.
It’s deathly silent—unnervingly quieter than the whispers typical of an archive building.
The absence of archivists is an obvious tear in the fabric of the Slayers Guild, but six dozen master slayers glare at me from their seats as if I’m their next target.
The seven slayers with the highest kill tallies occupy a long oakwood table in front of everyone else’s seats, a panel set up to interrogate and poke holes in my findings.
“This is a much bigger response than I expected,” I whisper to Marshal Payen.
“Marshal Bard’s input helped. Let’s make the most of it,” she replies. “We’re ready when you are.”
She and Lyle stand as witnesses to my left. Claire stands at my right and soothes a restless Lucy. I’m not alone in this. But my allies, even the Gendarmerie, can’t compensate for allies within the Slayers Guild, and I have none.
“Fellow Guild members.” I clear my throat. “Thank you for—”
“You look familiar.”
The slayer at the center of the panel leans his elbows on the table. A suns-spotted complexion and strands of gray in his brown hair betray his age—or in slayer terms, his experience. His gaze narrows not on me but on Claire. She tenses with recognition.
étienne Houdin.
Claire swallows. “Are you talking to me?”
“Yes, you,” he replies. “That scar isn’t exactly discreet, sweetheart. Remind me where I saw you.”
“At the harbor in Port-de-Chance, last May.” Claire lifts her chin. “I watched you parade my mentor’s daughter, an innocent girl, through the street.”
“It was a dragon, not a girl. Why are you in Varsonne with the Estellio boy?”
I place a hand on her shoulder. “Let me—”
“I’m here because I was a dragon,” Claire reveals.
“Was?” he scoffs.
“Was. I am no longer.”
Murmurs fill the room. Slayers lean forward, each eager to be the one to slay Claire.
This isn’t how I planned to begin the presentation, but damned if seeing her stand up to the man who once terrified her—still terrifies her—doesn’t make me feel brave too.
I bring my journal to the table and open it to page one.
“Let’s start with my journal,” I tell the room.
With Lyle and Marshal Payen’s help, we walk them through the physical evidence: My research.
The Immortals’ masks, cloaks, and sickles.
Lyle’s map of converging flight paths. Noctu’s silver blood on the moondagger he used to cut himself when he saved me.
Marshal Payen presents the investigation reports she gathered from Marshal Bard: confirmation of the slaughter at Ravinfort, and the interrogation records that describe the Immortal’s ice-based healing powers.
étienne slaps the paperwork onto the table. “How do we know you didn’t falsify this, Monsieur Estellio? You haven’t had the most reliable track record as of late.”
Low laughter echoes through the auditorium. I struggle to maintain a neutral face.
“I was there. I witnessed everything myself,” Marshal Payen declares.
“Who’s to say he didn’t pay you off to say that?” étienne fires back.
“How dare you insinuate—”
“How dare you say the scripture is a lie! Seventeen hundred years and you think no one recognized the truth? Heathens, all of you!”
“The Immortals wrote L’Histoire des étoiles,” I retort. “They invented a ‘sacred relic’ to control Florentian culture from the bottom up.”
“Blasphemy!” a woman yells from the back. Shouts of agreement follow.
“The Gendarmerie do not speak without facts!” Marshal Payen snaps. “The scripture was a lie, whether you like it or not!”
étienne slams his hand on the table. “If we trust that boy and abandon our hunts, it’ll ruin our reputations. What if that is his intention? He’ll level the playing field. This could be an elaborate hoax to give himself less competition for work.”
“You think I’d let people die for profit?” I snap. “That’s precisely what I’m trying to end.”
“Your suspicion says more about you than it does about Abel,” Claire adds. “You aren’t as knowledgeable as people say you are. To think I almost went to you for help with my curse.”
“I’m not arrogant enough to question the Gods,” étienne retorts.
“Oh, you’re worse than arrogant. You would’ve killed me without question, whereas we made the discovery of multiple lifetimes. You, monsieur, are a fool.”
étienne rises, fury on his face. I raise a protective arm in front of Claire.
“Enough.” Marshal Payen steps forward. “My brigade arrested several Immortals before Noctu Ascended. Every one of them disintegrated.” She remains unflinching beneath the scrutinizing glares. “You might remember that you arrived to find this building unstaffed.”
The audience shifts uncomfortably. I leap at the crack in their defenses.
“You understand what that means, don’t you?” I say. “The Immortals controlled our records. They had the power to rewrite our reports in any way they wanted, then disseminate them across Florent.”
“Those records dehumanized dragons,” Lyle adds, “and reinforced the false scripture that said their only purpose was destruction. They conditioned us to discredit slayers like Abel so that we wouldn’t look for the real reason for Diu’s curse.”
Claire shifts a hand to her hip. “Congratulations, slayers. The Immortals conned you. You’ve been perpetuating a crime since the Dark Days.”
Defiant murmurs rouse the room. Lyle and I share a worried look. Shaming them wasn’t part of my plan, but the strength of their denial makes that difficult to avoid.
Noctu did mention that the Immortals acted to avoid the psychological consequences of shame. The Guild is their creation. Maybe the slayers are no different. I was no different. I only changed because Micah made it personal for me. There’s nothing I can do to make it personal for them.
Maybe changing their minds was too insurmountable a task from the start.
A boy stands up in the back row.
“Does this mean I don’t have to train anymore?” he asks.
étienne whirls around. All the slayers look at the boy, but his attention remains on me.
He’s a boy of twelve, maybe thirteen. Shaggy brown hair in need of a cut.
Shoulders too narrow for his dragon-scale uniform.
Training has not been kind to him. His eye is swollen, arm in a sling, fingers splinted, and hand bandaged to the fingertips.
Emotion swims in his good eye—a flash of something akin to hope.
“Sit down, Richelieu,” étienne hisses at the boy.
“Do I get to stop training?” Richelieu asks again.
“That’s correct,” I say, almost in disbelief at his interruption. “There’s nothing left to fight.”
“Satisfied?” Claire lifts her chin at étienne. “Your days of hunting us are over.”
“No. I am not satisfied.” étienne nods at Claire. “What of her, Marshal? Did you verify her dragon identity before this charade?”
“Before and after. I watched her transform,” Marshal Payen replies. “Claire Belgard was undoubtedly under the influence of Diu’s magic.”
“Cut her.”
“She’s already wounded,” I protest.
Claire tears off her bandage, then offers her hand to étienne.
With a moondagger of his own, he slices a fresh line parallel to her scabbed cut.
She worries her lip, suppressing the obvious pain that makes me flinch, but doesn’t pull away.
The audience leans forward and watches with few blinks as blood overflows and drips onto the table in soft pats.
The absence of healing steam bowls over the silence like post-Ignition bells.
One slayer blurts, “What are we supposed to do now?”
“This is our livelihood!” another yells.
“How are we supposed to support our families?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “Earn coin like everyone else, I suppose.”
“That’s not good enough,” étienne growls.
“What you want doesn’t matter,” Lyle tells them, laying a letter on the table—stamped with the wax royal seal. At me, he winks. “Received this in the post this morning.”
étienne frowns and unfolds the parchment. “ ‘By the order of King Philippe and Queen Danielle, no further harm is to come to previously identified dragons unless the presence of healing magic is confirmed through physical cut…’ ”
He drops the letter, face red.
“The Gendarmerie are already receiving reports of mass panic regarding the spontaneous disintegration of the Immortals,” Marshal Payen announces.
“The king and queen want a full investigation into the extent of the conspiracy to give the people answers. Starting today, we will be conducting a search of every church and archive building for hidden records. We expect you to hand over all Old Tongue documentation in your possession.”
A slayer stands in the middle of the audience. “I can translate records,” she says. “I’ll sell you my services.”
Surprise lifts Marshal Payen’s eyebrow. “I’m planning to put out a summons once we—”
“I can translate too!” another shouts.
“I’ll give you a discount!” a third offers.
The room erupts with offers for services. It drowns out the angry scrape of étienne’s chair as he rises and gestures to me.
“This is the Estellio boy we’re talking to! He’s full of it!” he shouts. But they don’t listen. He turns to me with a sneer. “I knew you were trouble. You’ve doomed us all.”
“Dragons are gone. There’s no changing that,” I tell him. “We’re done. Throw away your slayer’s handbook. Florent doesn’t need us anymore.”
In reality, this is just the start. It will take time to fully unravel the consequences of the Immortals’ entrenchment in Florentian society.
The wealth they hoarded. The power they wielded.
The records they falsified. Their familiars too—those silverwolves.
Now that they’ve lost their masters, who knows what they’ll do to survive?
For now, it is enough to know that I wasn’t alone in my willingness to change.
All it took was one young boy to ask the right question—to stand up in the face of scrutiny—to start a tidal wave.
All that’s left is to write one last journal entry and leave the evidence behind.
Claire roams the archives with Lucy while I sit and open my journal to an empty page.
I pen my final discoveries—an addendum to be transcribed with the rest of my journal, duplicated, and scattered across Florent.
I include everything: The signs I missed with Micah.
The clues I found with Claire. The compassion and teamwork it took to recognize the truth.
An updated version of the dragon-hunting rules, too—if only for the benefit of the last few targets.
It takes some time to find the proper words, but when I finish, I close my journal for the last time.
Now that the Gendarmerie have taken possession of the archives, I know it’s safe to leave my records behind.
A gendarme clears a glass cabinet for me to store the evidence, one that will be brass plated with my name and the date of Noctu’s Ascension.
I place everything we presented to the Guild, including my journal, inside.
I hesitate with the last item—Micah’s skull.
It stares back at me, its ridges as familiar to me as my own hands.
He’s been my companion on every leg of my journey.
In a way, looking through his maw felt like I was giving him life.
But I took that life. These are his bones.
I was his older brother, and I was supposed to protect him.
All this time, he protected me.
“Let him go, Abel,” Claire says softly beside me.
I clutch the skull tighter.
“It’s time,” she says. “You need to take back your life, too.”
I place Micah’s skull on the shelf.
It’s then that I notice my hands are shaking. Tears drip from my chin. I’m a child again as I fall to my knees and grip the edge of the case that will forever separate me from my last physical connection to my brother.
“I chained him up like an animal,” I choke out.
“I know,” she replies.
“I lost his trust.”
“I know.”
“I gave up on a cure too soon.”
She wraps her arms around my shoulders. “We all did.”
As devastating as that truth is, something larger wells inside me. I twist the fabric of my tunic over my chest, as if I can somehow reach inside myself and give shape to this emotion—this overwhelming gratitude.
I don’t have the first clue as to who deserves the most credit for leading me to the end of the dragon curse, but Micah is the one who started it all, so I give my thanks to him.
His death was the stepping stone that allowed me to save Claire’s life.
Once I let everything out, she places a hand on Micah’s skull and whispers her appreciation too.
“Ready to go?” Claire asks, her hand offered to me. I take it without hesitation.
This new life of ours demands to be lived.