Chapter 35
The coach trundled along the shaded streets, where the slush of old snow had turned dull gray in most places, brown in others, and lay in heaps like refuse along the lower streets.
People huddled against the chill as they walked, bent forward, toward their jobs or homes or listlessly toward nothing at all but the next place.
Each bump in the neglected roads felt like another round of punishment, reminding me that this was where I belonged.
Staring out the window, I finally broke the dense silence. “What now?”
A grunt, then, “That pompous, ridiculous, rotting corpse of a man.”
My eyes turned, amused, toward Fairfax. I was on the verge of screaming my rage for all to hear, but the nobleman’s fury for some reason felt funny to me. I tended to laugh when things got so bad I couldn’t face them. “The duke or the headmaster?”
“He did this to humiliate me. He will pay for this.” His fingers drummed against his leg. “I will go straight to the Minister of Justice. To the queen if I have to.”
“And do what? Tell them we lied?”
Fairfax’s ire was palpable, but I didn’t care anymore. When he pegged me with a glare, only barely visible in the dim light of the curtained cab, I pursed my lips and shrugged. Fairfax said nothing.
“If my bond with Myth is proven, we have nothing to fear.”
“Silly girl. If your bond is proven, we have everything to fear.”
“You said you wanted to change the world.”
His staccato laugh was like a scythe, cutting down the dream I’d been cultivating all year. “Pah. I want to watch the duke lose. If the world changes at the same time, all the better.”
I’d never seen him like this, but being under arrest with him made me less intimidated by his wealth and social standing.
I decided it was time I spoke my mind. “You want to watch the duke lose? Get me that bond test. Make sure the duke sees it. And then push Casper to let me back in school and compete in the race. Your plan is still possible, but only if I get to keep Myth.”
That was all that mattered. Right now, I didn’t care if the duke won every race for the rest of his life or if the Archivists hid magic from the world forever. I needed to save Myth. To get back to him.
Rush’s plan felt feeble now, considering neither of us had assumed I’d be carted away in a padlocked coach.
Iron bars awaited me, and the key in my pocket to the Covingtons’ townhouse would do me no good now.
I tensed as I realized they would confiscate the key upon my entrance to the jail.
Though it was unlikely they’d discover what the key unlocked, it was clearly not a key to my home, which could easily be determined, if not by looking at the key, by a quick test. That would open doors to inquiry.
I couldn’t put Rush in danger like that.
I had to dispose of the key without the policemen noticing.
As Fairfax mumbled to himself, I turned it over in my hands, recalling the interior of the townhouse, of Rush’s bedroom, which he’d offered to me as a place to hide if needed.
He’d said there was still hope as long as Myth was alive, but I couldn’t see it.
All I could see were iron bars and thick locks, the slow rot of my dreams.
I slipped the key just under the waistband of my skirt, preparing to drop it discreetly. If they never saw me drop it, they might never know it was mine. When the portly man opened the door, he offered me his hand to descend the coach. How gentlemanly of him.
“Not you, I’m afraid,” said the policeman to Fairfax as he tried to exit the coach.
“What nonsense is this?” the nobleman asked.
“I’m sorry, sir. Have a seat.” The policeman shut the door once more on a flabbergasted Fairfax, whose face was darkening from red to purple.
We hadn’t arrived at the jail. Instead, we’d pulled up to a large wooden dragon training arena I’d seen before.
The duke’s private training arena.
It was nothing more than tall wooden walls, built to the exact scale of the racing arena in the center of the city. Standing alone, near the edge of the woods, this practice arena looked like it had been built by giants, and we were nothing more than their play figurines.
The walls appeared to teeter as I entered the arena behind the policeman.
Fumbling slightly, I dug the key to the Covingtons’ townhouse from beneath the waistband of my skirt and slipped it into my pocket.
I hoped the duke didn’t plan on having the policeman pat me down.
Inside the arena, a curling wooden staircase rose beside the entrance, leading to an observation platform midway up the walls.
Ahead, Myth waited, muzzled and held down with two thick metal chains bolted to a concrete block beneath his feet.
My heart lurched.
He shot forward, rattling his chains. Steam blew from his nostrils.
The man beside me flinched backward, and I smirked at him.
Just inside the arena, the duke waited with a half-dozen other men. There was a small table set up, and on it were the tools of a draconarian. The same tools I’d seen laid out in Enplencourt’s history class.
A man with spectacles scrutinized a pair of long pliers. Dragon scale pliers.
“Miss Mireaux,” said the duke, not offering me a bow or a head nod at all. “A bond test has been ordered.” He sounded like he was reporting on a disgusting piece of news. “You may sit over there.”
A single wooden chair sat to the side of the table.
My skin prickled.
I took a seat, eyes scanning the row of metal instruments displayed beside me. The duke had said he’d only allow a bond test if I turned out to be godborn. Which I wasn’t. Unless Fairfax had somehow come up with something more convincing than our forged documents.
“Begin,” said the duke, stepping backward. He and the other men filed up the wooden stairs at the entrance, their faces barely visible from my seat when they congregated on the viewing platform.
The spectacled draconarian lifted the pliers and marched toward Myth.
“What are you going to do to him?” I shouted.
The man ignored me. As he approached Myth, my dragon yanked on his chains. Only then did I realize his tail was also bound in an iron ring on the ground.
Myth’s nostrils flared, but I jerked forward, standing. No, don’t, I urged him, silently. Whatever happens, you can’t use your flame.
If we passed this test, which we would, we still had a chance.
But not if he revealed his flame.
Myth’s chest shrank, and he angled his face away as the man circled around to where Myth’s tail was shackled to the concrete. He lunged in and dug the pliers into Myth’s flesh.
The pain I felt knocked me straight to the ground.
Searing in my chest, my blood, my breath, was his pain.
I clutched at my throat. Couldn’t breathe. The sounds of his agony filled the arena. The man pulled on the pliers until a scale was bent upward, out of place, and iridescent blood poured onto the ground.
“Stop!” I shouted, getting to my feet. My knees were stained with the dirt of the arena.
Myth growled but did not fight.
The man stepped away from Myth, his tail still bleeding, scale bent to a sharp angle. Myth tried to turn around, to sniff at his wound, but his movement jerked against the chains.
The man sauntered back to the table, set down the bloodied pliers, and picked up a syringe. His gaze flicked to me, and in his eyes was a disturbing emptiness, like he was a husk of a man, a puppet.
When the syringe pierced Myth’s skin where the scale had been bent, I almost blacked out.
There was confusion, pain, disorientation.
Horrifying mental images swam before my open eyes.
I tried to pick my feet up, afraid the ghostly hands reaching up from the ground would swallow me, but the wooden chair was unstable, and I ended up toppling backward.
Myth howled.
His screams were going to break my bones.
In my mind, I now saw stretches and stretches of ocean. Then people, dozens of them, faces I didn’t know but thought looked familiar. These people raced past me, as if I didn’t exist. The hallucinations shifted, and I saw the walls of Cardan Lott.
The forest.
Flowers in rapid bloom.
Blood.
And my face.
When I saw myself, I stopped rocking on the ground and scrambled to grasp the back of the toppled chair.
My eyes turned to Myth. He was panting, breathing so fast his chains rattled, but he was otherwise entirely still.
Then I could see the arena, and me, lying in the dirt, clutching the back of a fallen wooden chair.
“Myth,” I wept. “I’m right here.”
A snort escaped his nose that blasted dirt across the arena floor.
“I’m right here.”
The man with the syringe had returned to his table. When he moved, this time, he came toward me.
With a clammy hand, he pulled me up by my arm. He looked into my eyes, tugging at my eyebrows and twisting my face back and forth. Then, with a jerk, he grabbed my hand and bent one finger back until it hurt. I yelped.
Myth surged against his chains so violently I thought they might break.
Though he didn’t flinch, the man beside me looked at my dragon. He released my finger.
Whatever they do to me, don’t flame, I commanded Myth. We will pass this; it will end.
The man then took another syringe and jammed it in my arm.
When I collapsed, he was ready to ease me to the ground. But as soon as my body was lying motionless on the dirt, he turned toward Myth, eyes expectant.
My dragon shrieked, and his claws cracked the concrete beneath his feet.
Don’t…flame… My mind was slipping.
I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
Then sleep came.