Chapter 17
Seventeen
Dinner did not go well.
Despite my desire to do something, anything, to bring Rhylan out of his black mood, he remained just out of reach.
He laughed, but his heart wasn’t in it. He smiled, but the expression didn’t touch his eyes.
I was at a loss. Finally, looking down at my soup as I dragged a spoon through the thick broth, I sighed. “Don’t worry, Rhylan. Everything will go well. We’ve practiced enough.”
He nodded, lightly tapping his fingers on the tabletop. In the half an hour we’d been sitting together, he’d taken maybe three bites from his plate.
I fought to crush down a vague sense of panic. He couldn’t fall apart on me now, not so close to the First Claim. “And Loralei will be there, right? As part of the Jade Leaves delegation? We never really spoke in the Training Grounds…but having her as an intermediary almost should guarantee they join our Court. So don’t worry. It’ll all be fine in the end.”
Gods, I was babbling. I forced myself to stop talking, but there was nothing else to say, nowhere else to look.
I wished he would speak.
Rhylan’s eyes flicked to the open window, and he managed one of those smiles that seemed drawn on.
“It’s just nerves,” he told me, rising from his seat. He bent forward, pressing his lips to my forehead in a chaste kiss. “We’ve got so much banking on this. I’m going to fly them off.”
After he left, I dropped my spoon in the bowl. I’d eaten like my life depended on it, but Rhylan’s unease made me feel slightly ill.
I had rather anticipated speaking with him the night before we’d fly to the outskirts of Koressis Eyrie, but with him lost in his own head…there was no way I’d be able to sleep tonight.
I pocketed the remaining pastries and slipped through the eyrie, making my way to the library. Light crystals flickered to life overhead; the map-table lit up, but it would remain untouched until after the First Claim.
I touched the Varyamar token, then turned to the comfortably overstuffed couch where I’d done most of my studying during my midnight excursions.
Stacks of books were piled on the end table. Histories, studies of draconic Law, House lineages. They were all dry material, useful to know, but utterly unhelpful when it came to trying to distract myself.
Instead, I circled the perimeter of the library’s walls, searching for something new.
Kirana’s words—her warnings about the tonic—had not quite left my mind. I had managed to shrug off my disquiet about drinking dragon’s blood in front of her, but that knowledge had provided the fear within me a new feast, a new terror to keep me awake at night.
She had been feeding me a terribly addictive substance, and I knew that no matter how many times I told myself that the tonic was disgusting, no better than sewage…that she was right. It gave me energy I had never felt before, almost a rush in my veins.
To the degree that it no longer disgusted me as much as it should have.
“Dragon’s blood,” I muttered to myself, running a finger along the spines of the books.
There were a thousand books here, maps of the Wildlands and the Western Shores—continents I had never visited before. There was a book with a black leather spine with a slightly suspicious texture to the leather that made my fingers skip right over it, and a history on the House of Jade Leaves so thick that it had been divided into twelve volumes, each large enough to brain someone with.
I needed a bestiary if I wanted to know about dragon’s blood. And as I thought that, looking around the library, a patch of smoke drifted across the upper shelves, which were well out of reach. A black claw extended from the drifting cloud, hooked a single book and pulled it out.
It fell to the ground with a heavy thud, and something unseen bumped against my back, nudging me forward.
“Try that one,” Erebos whispered from the smoky shadows, and they melted away.
“Thank you,” I murmured to the Ascendant. At least one of them was inclined to be helpful.
The book itself was unremarkable, not too thick and bound in red cloth, and it was simply titled On Naga.
I brought it back to my reading couch, curling my legs beneath me as I flipped it open. The light crystal just overhead sparkled brighter, easily illuminating the thick vellum pages.
And over the next hour, my nerves were not soothed. I knew there would be little sleep that night. There was nothing calming about the subject of dragon’s blood in the slightest, and my fingers ached from gripping the corners of the book too tightly.
Kirana had certainly not lied about the addictive effects; I would argue that she had significantly downplayed them. Now I understood why she had been so resistant to my plan of drinking two bottles of the tonic a day.
When a true dragon chose to become an Ascendant and start a House in their image, they selected a Bloodless man or woman to drink their blood, and from that day forth, they would be dragonblood, along with their descendants.
It would only happen once in a House’s history. Myst had given her blood to a Bloodless ten thousand years ago, and to this very day it ran thick in my veins.
But if a dragonblood—already thick with their Ascendant’s blood—drank the undiluted blood of yet another true dragon, they would become…something more than dragonblood.
They became Naga.
I touched the word, thinking of the enormous cauldron in Kirana’s still-room, and how each batch only contained three drops of Erebos’s blood…and even that tiny quantity made her nervous.
The unnamed author had drawn a depiction of a female Naga in the book. I studied the ink sketch, picking out the obvious features: the scales from head to toe. Eyes with fine, slit pupils. Fangs and short, sharp horns swept back from the forehead.
It looked almost like Rhylan caught mid-shift, a draga on the verge of exploding into a beast.
The Naga were intermediaries between true dragons and the dragonblooded, a thing that was never meant to be.
The author also noted that they were blood-drinkers. Like the true dragons, they had no need for food nor water—but, as they were originally dragonbloods, they still required sustenance: the substance that had transformed them to begin with.
I glanced at the sketch one more time, then slammed the book shut.
So Kirana was feeding me a tonic that could, with enough time and excess, make me entirely reliant on Erebos’s blood for the rest of my life. A monstrous creature, neither one thing nor the other.
I stared at the far wall, not really seeing it, and put the book aside.
It was a necessary risk. She was an ordained healer, and she’d earned every last malachite in her bracelet; she knew what she was doing.
I would just have to trust in her judgment, and in my own. Dragon’s blood aside, whatever else was in the tonic was so disgusting I couldn’t fathom actually developing a craving for it.
But the knowledge had also ruined the peace of the library. With a small groan of annoyance, I shoved On Naga onto the pile of research and padded out of the room.
With Rhylan out flying, no sign of Kirana, and absolutely no desire to go lay under my bed in the dark and let my anxiety eat me alive, I ended up wandering the eyrie, drifting from the library to the western side of the mountain’s interior.
There were rooms I hadn’t seen before, shut behind closed doors: a room that was completely empty. One hung with weapons from floor to ceiling. Another was stuffed with crates. When I pried the lid of one open, I found Horde-work vases and linens, imports from the Wildlands.
The next room was a once-cozy sitting room, with soft couches arrayed around an unlit mantel. A board game, with pieces carved from carnelian and white jade, had been left unfinished on a table between them. Carnelian had been winning; now a layer of dust lay over it all.
A shiver crept down my spine, and I left the room quickly.
There was something about that unfinished game, languishing in the dark, that made me think of Varyamar and the teacups in the parlor, left to sit in the wake of tragedy.
At the far end of the hall was a set of elaborately carved doors; Larivor on the left, with his thousand horns, and Naimah on the right, a creature of flame.
I had found the Jhazra Eyrie shrine. Pushing both doors open, I stepped into the small, circular room, gazing about the alcoves carved into the walls.
The shrine was untended as well. A statue of the Dyad was set in the alcove directly in front of me, Larivor and Naimah intertwined. A box of incense had been forgotten at their feet.
I touched Larivor’s snout, silently begging forgiveness for our deception, our flagrant breaking of his Laws.
The Daughters were arrayed in alcoves to the right: Aurae, the guide. Nakasha, the guardian. And finally, the Daughter who had received most of my prayers in recent times: Sunya, the judge.
Flowers had been left in their alcoves at their feet, now dry and crumbling to dust.
To the left of the Dyad was an empty alcove. Nobody would ever create a physical likeness of Ustrael—the Outsider, the Unspeakable—but it was considered ill form not to leave her an empty space.
An empty space that served to remind us of what could fill it, were we to ignore Larivor’s precepts.
Staring at that empty, black hole, I thought of Kalros, and my taunts to him—that his House were cowards for refusing to engage in the war against Vhaiothez, the last Primoris to hatch.
The Primoris were ancient beings, as old as the dragons, born of a union between Larivor and Ustrael, the dark twin of Naimah. When Father Wind saw what his first children were—endlessly hungry monstrosities—he had fought a great battle against Ustrael, scarring the world itself to lock her away with their terrible spawn.
But not all of them languished in the World Scar. Ustrael had laid her deadly eggs far and wide, buried deep in the earth.
My elderly history tutor had once told me it was impossible to truly understand the Primoris through tales. They could only be experienced, in fear and agony and madness.
I’d asked him if he had ever seen one, and the ancient dragon had stared off into the distance for a long while without speaking. Then he’d gotten up and left, and my lessons had been over for the day even though we’d barely begun.
We never spoke of the Primoris again after that. He had seen things I could not fathom in that war.
No offerings were left for Ustrael; no one would even speak her name aloud if they could help it. I turned my back on the empty alcove, knowing that none of this was helping to relax me.
I was just soaking up the horror of old tales, feeding my fear of tomorrow, ensuring that I would struggle to breathe as I curled into my bed.
Growling, I left the shrine, but I didn’t slam the doors behind me like I wanted to.
With Ustrael’s empty alcove watching me like an eye, that felt like bad luck.
Sleep did not come easilythat night. I woke well before the sun rose, with the shreds of nightmares still clouding my head, and chose not to take that as an omen of how the First Claim would go.
My only regret was that I hadn’t heard Rhylan come into the eyrie. No footsteps down the hall; not so much as a shadow under the door.
I hoped he’d found some peace in the midnight hours, because I had not.
Nilsa and her army of handmaids prepared me for the flight, applying kohl from the Wildlands around my eyes, and silver leaf to my claws.
It took three pairs of hands to braid what felt like a hundred plaits in my hair, twisting them in elaborate knots and pinning them to the back of my head. Several were left loose to spill down my back in a waterfall of ink and silver.
There was no sign of Kirana as Jenra arrived, still trailing wisps of fresh chokeroot smoke. I was laced into my riding dress, and the dragon’s head brooches were pinned in place.
I went to the dragon terrace alone, grateful to be released from their suffocating hands, giving silent prayers to the Dyad and the Daughters with every step.
Please let us get through this with allies. Let us get through this without mistakes. Let us get through this alive.
Surprisingly, Kirana was on the terrace instead of Rhylan. She wore her riding leathers, and she approached me with a nervous, sickly smile.
“Think happy thoughts, Sera,” she said, striding towards me with her hand held out. I extended mine, and she dropped a little glass bottle into my palm. “Here it is. Varyamar in a bottle.”
The bottle was round, filled three-quarters full with thick, pale yellow liquid. A long, slim silver chain had been affixed to the bottle’s neck.
I pulled the cork and took a deep breath of pure, lush jasmine, with a hint of the green vines…and with the scent of home in my nose, the tattered nightmares clinging to my skull fell away like so many cobwebs. “Kirana, it’s perfect.”
Her smile became a little more true as she took it from my hands, clasping it around my neck. The chain was long enough that I could tuck it out of sight, even with the daringly low neckline of my riding dress.
“Hopefully it’s a good luck charm for today.” She patted my hair, and stepped back. “All right. I have my clothes packed, and I’m going to go saddle Garnet so we’re ready to follow. Rhylan and I will change when we arrive. Every delegation is permitted time to prepare before we’re allowed to step foot on the island.”
I nodded. We had already gone over the preparation; at noon precisely, we would meet on one of the Koressis Eyrie islands and stake claims.
She gave me that nauseated smile again and vanished down the stairs.
I was left alone with my thoughts for a brief moment, staring out at the predawn sky. The stars were fading against the gold line limning the horizon.
In only a few short hours, I would no longer have to hide.
“Are you ready?” Rhylan’s voice was soft, just behind me.
I turned, my heart pounding at the thought of what we would face. He wouldn’t dress until we landed on the shores of Koressis Lake; scales covered his body now. I was reminded, awfully enough, of the Naga.
But I did not want to feed the shadow that had lain over him for days. If he felt any fears, I would be strong, an unbreakable pillar.
“I’m always ready.” I smiled up at him. “And so are you.”
I rose up, pressing a kiss to the ebony scales on his cheek. Dark shadows lay under his eyes, but he closed them, and for a moment of perfect stillness it felt like everything would turn out fine.
“It’s time.” Viros’s voice seemed louder than usual, cutting through the dark silence of the terrace.
Rhylan’s eyes opened, smoldering cinders visible behind them, and he went silently to the harness. Viros did all the buckling today, as I was not permitted to ruin Jenra or Nilsa’s work.
I mounted him easily, thanks to the splits Jenra had sewn in the sides of my skirt, and put a hand on Rhylan’s back as I settled in place and hooked the straps to my leggings. The knot-like scars gleamed like the stars still visible overhead, but under my hand; a constellation against my palm.
I tried to give him my hope, my strength, anything he needed.
But it wasn’t until I raised my hand to pat him that he actually moved. He climbed carefully through the dragon door, leaping gracefully into the sky and spreading his wings to catch a warm breeze.
A screech echoed off the mountain walls, and Garnet ascended from the crevasse of the wyvern roost, flapping her rusty wings at twice the speed of Rhylan’s. She soared around him, sending Kirana’s ponytail of thick hair flying.
He grumbled low in his throat, pulling ahead of the wyvern, and that was how we descended south: Garnet fluttering wildly to race against him, and Rhylan catching up with a few long, steady wingbeats.
“She’s young,” Kirana shouted as the sun began to rise in the distance. “We’re working on the part where she actually listens to me.”
I grinned despite myself, amused by Garnet’s panting breaths as she strove to beat Rhylan again.
The hours passed quickly, driven just as much by Garnet’s race as it was by the nerves taking up residence in my stomach; as much as I wanted to reveal myself, to stake my side of the board against Yura, I was afraid of facing the Great Houses again.
You have the right, I told myself. The Drakkon’s Judgments are null. Your House is yours again.
Would they care? Or would they see my mother in my place, a draga who had left almost no good will behind her in Akalla?
But with Rhylan’s apprehension, I had no choice but to hide those fears.
And all too soon, the golden spires of Koressis Eyrie’s dragon terrace, the crowning peak of Akalla, were visible against the late morning sun. Koressis Lake shone like blue glass, and as Rhylan stooped, circling over a roofless pavilion on the shore, I caught glimpses of brilliant colors scattered along the shore: other Houses, preparing themselves for noon.
But I couldn’t focus on them now. Rhylan dipped below the scattered tree canopies and landed easily in the open roof of the pavilion, with Garnet dropping to earth like a shooting star behind him. Kirana let out a groan as she nudged the wyvern towards the pavilion.
I dismounted, unbuckling him with caution spared for the silver leaf on my claws. Rhylan stretched as Kirana dragged Garnet to a wyvern water-trough, fastening the wyvern’s reins to one of the pavilion columns.
“Here.” I unbuckled the pack containing Rhylan’s clothes, averting my eyes with a blush as I handed it to him.
Rhylan paused, touching my cheek. “You should take a moment for yourself,” he said, his voice utterly serious. “It’s been a long time since you’ve seen this place.”
“I’m not going to fall apart.”
Rhylan simply stared into my eyes, and I sighed. “I’ll take a moment while you two dress. But I promise, Rhylan, I can handle this. I’m fine.”
“I know you will be. You always are.” And with those strange words, he ducked away to dress. Kirana had done the same, using Garnet as a living wall while she shed her leathers.
I had seen the golden spires, and the lake; I remembered my father taking me on walks around these very shores when I was a child.
We had probably played in this pavilion once, if not all of them; they were dotted all around Koressis Lake, serving as resting points for dragons traveling to meet with him. All of them were built of white marble shot through with greenish streaks. I remembered tracing those jade lines as a child, my other hand tucked in the Drakkon’s.
They were all happy memories, now overlaid with thick, suffocating hatred. Hatred that I couldn’t allow to blindside me.
So I stepped to the edge of the pavilion and forced myself to look over the place I had once loved.
The place where my father had loved me.