Chapter 20
Twenty
“Rhylan.”
My entire body was sore from the flight; the dress representing Jenra’s highest efforts had been stuffed into one of the saddlebags, now crumpled during the long ride home. My stomach grumbled and my hair was a wind-snarled mess of knots.
But after I dismounted and my supposed mate shifted into male form, he stood staring out the windows of the eyrie at the distant mountains. His eyes were blank, empty; his body was here, but his mind wasn’t.
And I couldn’t bring myself to leave him here like that.
I reached out, hesitant at first, and touched his arm. He didn’t move, even as I stepped to his side.
“Come on, Rhylan.” I kept my voice gentle and soothing, and he moved like a marionette, still clearly far away, in another place and time. “Come downstairs.”
Without words, he let me lead him into the hall and down the spiral staircase, down to the door I had never so much as looked at before, let alone touched. I pushed it open without allowing myself to think about it.
For the first time, I laid eyes on Rhylan’s room, his territory. The first thing I noticed was the massive bed, surrounded by black heartwood posts, carved elaborately with Horde-style woodwork.
Nudging him along, I managed to get him to sit down. He sank slowly, eyes still distant, the corners of his mouth turned down…but he gripped my hand, and refused to release it.
I sat next to him, unable to free myself, and unwilling to try. He needed someone with him.
Instead I rubbed my fingertips over his knuckles, feeling the tough calluses there, tracing the lines of his fingers. I simply sat with him in silence, letting him come back from the dark place he’d gone to.
I knew as well as anyone that words would do nothing. Words did not fill the gaping pit in the heart of your being; all you could do was carefully step around it, praying you didn’t fall in, and it was better to sit with him and let him know that I was here than to try to plaster over the pit with hollow assurances.
Seeing Yura in the flesh before me had sent my mind into a screaming abyss—and I didn’t even remember exactly what she’d done to me.
I couldn’t fathom what seeing Tidas did to him.
Long moments passed in silence, and it was almost surprising when Rhylan broke it.
“I…we didn’t want to say anything. I never want to say anything. Sometimes I think if I don’t say it aloud, if I don’t think about it, it’s like it never happened. She can still be living in Sylvaene Eyrie. She can still be alive.”
I nodded, saying nothing. There were many times I had felt the same about my mother.
I knew that she was buried under cold stones on a barren shore…but if I didn’t think about that, I could pretend she was still there.
He sighed. “I thought I could do it, but Jaien…I should have known he would come. Sometimes I feel selfish, thinking of no one’s rage but my own. We both want Tidas dead, but who deserves it more? We’re Loralei’s family, we loved her first…but Jaien loved her enough to bond with her. They were two halves of the same soul. Who deserves it more?”
I swallowed past the tight knot in my throat. “There’s no right answer to that.”
“Did you see what it did to him?” Rhylan’s hand tightened convulsively over mine. “Did you see what a broken bond does to the one who’s left? It leaves nothing behind.”
Jaien had been…empty. Anyone with eyes could see it. The dragon he had been was shattered, leaving an empty, lifeless puppet in his place—he had only come alive with rage, but in the face of that emptiness, the rage couldn’t burn indefinitely.
For the first time, I understood Kirana’s choice not to bond with a dragon. Perhaps a dragon was a draga’s wings…but if he was lost, the draga would be destroyed. There would be nothing left.
But Rhylan had also seen the aftermath of a broken bond. And that must be why he had deliberately chosen me, knowing we would never form a bond of our own…like his sister, he ran from the same fate.
And I couldn’t blame him for it at all.
“I saw, Rhylan.”
“We should have told you.” He gripped my hand tightly enough to hurt, his eyes closed as he breathed in the silence I left. “I know we should have, I know I promised no more lies, but…it took two years to destroy my family. That’s all. Nerezza murdered my mother. Tidas murdered Loralei. My father was suffering badly enough from Mother’s death, but Loralei…that put him over the edge. Whatever part of him the broken mate bond didn’t shatter, Loralei’s death finished.” A bitter sound, not quite a laugh, escaped him.
“You don’t have to explain yourself. I…I knew you had your reasons.” I stroked the back of his hand, tracing the black scales that had rippled down his arm. Ignoring the irritation of him accusing my family of being responsible once more…it wasn’t the time to bring up those grievances. “And now I know what they are. I don’t expect you to cut yourself open and serve up your pain just to prove something to me.”
“But the whole time you’ve been here, that’s what I’ve asked of you.” He finally opened his eyes, looking at me. The flames in his eyes had guttered, leaving a gulf of desolation in their place. “Cut yourself open. Explain everything. Stop being…what I made of you.”
“This isn’t about me.” I squeezed his hand, hard. “Not right now. I can deal with that. What I care about right now is you and Kirana and Loralei.”
“I can do nothing for Loralei,” he said harshly. “All I can do is destroy the one who destroyed her, and send him to the Nine Hells, not that she’ll ever know. She’s in the Eternal Cycle, Sunya willing. So all I’m really doing is making myself feel better. I’m starting a war for my own sake. I’m willing to tear Akalla apart for…for nothing more than my own selfish satisfaction. She will never know.”
“No.” I put a finger to his lips, my heart jumping when he kissed it without thinking, closing his eyes and bowing his head to listen. “You can’t think of it that way. It’s easy to claim vengeance is selfish, but that’s not why we’re here. We’re doing this for the living. Tidas murdered Loralei…do you think he will end with her?”
Rhylan opened his eyes, shook his head.
“And I know that Yura will never be anything other than what she is,” I said, quiet but firm. “So we’re doing this for those left. So Tidas can never destroy another sister.”
For the first time since the First Claim, the slightest smile touched Rhylan’s lips. “I’m glad you came with me, Sera.”
I leaned forward and kissed his forehead lightly. “I’ll be with you through it all. Don’t think of it as selfish, Rhylan. Just do it for those left whom you love.”
“How long will you stay?” he asked, almost a whisper.
I met his eyes, wondering if I should lie, if I should dare to be truthful.
Finally I said, “For as long as you need me.”
I wasn’tsure how Rhylan took my assurance. I only hoped that he would find a way to ease the pain, and that he knew, somehow, that I would be here for him in whatever way I could.
And I was determined not to remain stuck in my own hole of despair. Blind to others’ pain, not seeing the obvious written all around me…it shamed me to think of how I had behaved when his own House had dealt with more than their share of loss.
An insidious voice whispered to me that I was not wrong…that I had lost almost everything. I was the last of the Silvered Embers, the only dragonblood of my House. I didn’t have another sibling to lean on, not so much as a cousin.
My aunt and uncle had no love for me; I had been honest about that. Pyrae and Tashan had always looked down on my father for not producing a child with Sythera, his bonded mate, and establishing a scion of Undying Light as the undisputed heir to the throne.
But I pushed that little voice away. It was not a contest of pain, and I was no longer the sixteen-year-old draga shoved out of her life and into a nightmare. I refused to allow myself to be held back by that past version of myself.
There were plenty of things to be happy about. I had been announced before all the Houses; I no longer had to hide. We were mates, as far as anyone knew, and I could lean on Rhylan.
Nonetheless, the day after the First Claim, he did not emerge from his room that morning.
I ate alone, as usual, and when I reached for the tonic, I was disturbed by how undisturbed I was by the sewer scent.
Kirana’s warnings echoed in my head as I drank it down, knowing now that I was drinking dragon’s blood, that it would affect me in ways I couldn’t foresee…that too much blood made a monster. I remembered the face of the Naga in the book.
But as disgusting as it was, as ominous as the warnings were, I was elated by the weight coming back, by the energy coursing through me that I hadn’t realized was so depleted.
Even training was easier. Kirana had taken the night for herself after establishing Garnet back in her roost; she was a little quieter today, but she threw herself into the sparring match with the same energy I had.
Like me, they’d had time to come to terms with their loss. I recognized the same contemplation I went through at times, when I considered Nerezza and how I had buried her—the cold, brutal shore where I had left her grave—and understood that although they’d reopened old wounds yesterday, they also had scar tissue in their place.
Today that scar tissue seemed harder than ever. Kirana didn’t hold back, but I was growing stronger.
I managed to pin her down by the skin of my teeth, bleeding from several scratches she’d given me, and Kirana even managed a smile.
“You’ve gotten so much faster,” she told me. “All the better, if we’re really doing this.” She sighed, wiping sweat off her forehead. “Yesterday really…it really drove home that this is going to be a war. I think I was still clinging to that last little hope that we could avoid that…”
“I was, too.” I did not want a war. It would only weaken the Houses. But if the choice was between bloodshed and Yura winning…I would fling myself into bloodshed without a second thought. “But I know her. She won’t back down until she’s dead.”
Kirana knew precisely who I was referencing, nodding absently. “If we gained the Shadowed Stars and Undying Light, we could avoid it. We’d have the right of might.”
I didn’t want to destroy her hope, but I had to be honest. “Undying Light will only choose when there’s no other choice. The only good thing to come of it is that they don’t care for Yura, either. Unless she has something on them, we’ll remain equal there.”
“As for Shadowed Stars…fucking Chantrelle,” Kirana spat, the venom in her tone startling. “Maristela’s told her for years now that she has no interest in social climbing. She met Gaelin our first year in the Training Grounds and that was it for them. But they’re a prolific House, and Chantrelle will just push another daughter forward. You know she wanted to become one of the Drakkon’s mistresses?” She snorted, and it was only because she wasn’t looking directly at me that I managed to hide my surprise. I didn’t particularly want to think of my father and his various mistresses, but…he’d been the Drakkon. Of course any unmated draga would find him appealing. “He wouldn’t have her. But Maristela told me Chantrelle very much wanted a child from him, with the aim of having you and Yura cast aside in favor of her spawn.”
“Of course she did,” I murmured. Ridiculous…and yet, it might’ve worked. He didn’t have to name his eldest child as his heir…and although I would never know why he had suddenly grown to hate me, my entire life up to the point of exile had been secure in the knowledge that I was the one he would name.
If he’d fathered a child on Chantrelle, that child would’ve had just as equal a chance as Yura after my exile.
But one thing I knew about my father: he did not like his mistresses to have social aspirations.
He had not loved my mother, but he’d found her serene and comforting. Nerezza had never angled to become his Dragonesse. As for Aerona—Yura’s mother and the unmated Lady of the Gilded Skies—if she’d had any aspirations of her own, she’d kept them very quiet.
He’d made it clear after Sythera’s death that there would never be another Dragonesse during his reign. Chantrelle, who had pursued him in her youth prior to his mate bond with Sythera, had disqualified herself as his companion long before she’d ever realized it.
“We have to try regardless,” Kirana said, drawing me out of my thoughts. “It probably won’t work, but we can’t lay a Second Claim without saying we tried.”
No. All we could do was try and pray.
Because there was no Third Claim. There was only blood beyond the Second, unless one Court was clearly the mightiest.
“Wash up, and let’s find Rhylan,” I instructed her. “We’ll come up with a plan for us, if you’re going to the Wildlands—”
I didn’t get to organize my thoughts any further than that. Nilsa bolted down the corridor towards us, her face drawn and white. She handed a hastily-sealed envelope to Kirana.
“Coldburn’s been attacked,” she said, panting for breath. She must’ve run up all the stairs from the wyvern roost. “They say it’s the Gilded Skies.”
Kirana had ripped the letter open before Nilsa finished speaking. She scanned the few, messily-scrawled lines in silence, and handed it to me. “I’ll fetch Rhylan now,” she said quietly, and sprinted off.
The words were almost impossible to read; blood and ink stained the note, and it reeked strongly of smoke. I could make out the words ‘Gilded’ and ‘send reinf—’ but the rest was illegible.
So it had begun. Yura had not waited a full day before going on the offensive.
Without another word to Nilsa, I dashed to my room, practically ripping off my sweaty training clothes and pulling on my leathers. I tied my hair off in a long ponytail, shoved my feet in my boots and buckled my sword at my waist as I burst back into the hall.
Kirana emerged from her room at the same time, hurrying for the staircase and the wyvern roost, and I’d barely raised my hand to knock on Rhylan’s door before he opened it.
“Good, you’re ready.” He took my fist right out of the air, lacing his fingers with mine as he pulled me up the stairs to the eyrie. “She said the letter was ruined?”
“More or less. Half burnt and covered in blood. But this is my sister’s doing.”
“No doubt,” he said grimly. “Why wait for the Second Claim when she can murder a few innocents now?”
It was our first true emergency; I regretted that Yura had done this, even as we went through the motions we’d practiced with genuine haste and an edge of panic.
Rhylan practically slithered under his harness, shifting as he went; Viros rushed to buckle it in place as I leapt up into the saddle, swiftly hooking my straps on and settling myself.
I reached out to stroke him, feeling the dragon’s tension and fury beneath me, the pounding of his massive heart beneath the black scales.
As soon as Viros was clear, Rhylan practically tore through the dragon door.
I had no idea where Coldburn was; within half an hour, it was answered for me. Coldburn was a tiny hamlet in the Obsidian Flames’ territory, now hardly more than a blackened cinder nestled in the valley of snowy hills and forests.
I squinted down at the clouds of smoke, my eyes watering beneath my third eyelids from the acrid scent of burning timbers and metal.
“She did this to send a message,” I said aloud. “That she came close enough to touch…”
I didn’t expect Rhylan to be able to hear me, but he rumbled a furious assent, diving towards the village.
Holding on tightly, I bent low over his back. I’d thought things couldn’t get much dicier than our first flight, when I clung to bare scales and ropes.
I had never before appreciated the difference between riding a dragon trying his best to ensure I felt secure, and riding a dragon quivering with rage and bloodlust.
I held my breath all the way down, until he jerked out of his freefall dive so suddenly my entire upper body smashed forward into the saddle. Pain exploded in my nose as it violently met the front ridge of the saddle.
Blood trickled over my upper lip as I held back a gasp. I wiped it away in a hurry, not wanting to distract Rhylan—not when his people, the Bloodless who relied on the protection of Obsidian Flames, were burning.
He cut through the columns of smoke, landing heavily in the middle of the village. No one came out, not even to scream for help. Ignoring the sharp, throbbing ache in my nose, I practically tore my safety straps free and jumped down, trying not to let the ice in my gut overcome me.
If no one could even ask for help…then it was too late for any of them.
Most of the modest cottages were already so much ash, the beams of the roofs collapsing in on themselves. Embers still smoldered in charred trees and gardens; a scorched spot in the village square contained several bodies, twisted beyond recognition into blackened lumps of coal.
I heard Rhylan yelling as he shifted, throwing himself towards the first collapsing house. The shadows of wyverns circled the square; Kirana had arrived.
I didn’t wait for her. Instead I did the same as Rhylan, kicking a door in and raising a hand as cinders blew back into my face.
If anyone was inside, they were long dead. I wiped more blood off my mouth, moving to the next house, vaulting a crushed fence to check the coops in the back. A single unscathed feather was all that remained of the chickens.
No one…not a single voice. Not a whisper.
How many people had lived here? I tried not to count the charred bodies, but it was impossible to restrain myself.
With the thick stink of cooked meat in my nose, I kept a tally: fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…
I had hit twenty-five when Kirana bolted past me, Wyvern-Master Alriss on her heels, heading for the smoldering houses in the lower part of the valley.
Instead of following, I continued to spread out, venturing further to the west. Rhylan’s shouts grew distant.
Thirty. Thirty-three…and in one house, the count jumped to nearly forty. An entire family, dead before they knew what was coming.
Tears joined the blood on my face. I no longer bothered to try and wipe it away.
My sister had done this to send a message…and I wanted her to understand that her message had been received.
That it would be repaid in kind.
It was my first taste of war, of violence and bloodshed done in the name of power. I was used to the violence of Mistward Isle; of petty thievery, of desperation, of tension finally breaking between two dragons.
But this…this wholesale destruction of Bloodless, who never would’ve stood a chance against a dragon…this was what we called war.
Picking away at the innocent, just to send a message.
I had never believed my hatred for her could burn any hotter, but I’d been wrong.
By the time I reached the last house on the row, I knew it was hopeless. It still stood—just barely.
I opened the door as the ceiling creaked, threatening to collapse, but the house was empty. Which of the forty corpses behind me had lived here?
And then I heard something. A sound so tiny a mouse might’ve made it…but someone coughed.
I spun around, listening desperately, trying to still my ragged breathing. There—I followed the sound, ducking behind the remains of the cottage and into a copse of the surrounding forest.
There was a pond, the water rippling in the breeze, as though none of the violence had touched here. No birds; Yura and Tidas had driven away all the wildlife.
But the cough came again, quieter, and I strode into the knee-high grass to find…a woman.
She lay half in, half out of the water; her face was no longer recognizable. The hands curled to her chest had been burned black, the fingers twisted into twig-like sticks.
I knelt next to her, knowing that not even Kirana could help now. This woman already belonged to Aurae.
“I’m here,” I said, throat tight, trying to find one place to touch, to bring her comfort, and finding nothing. “I’m with you.”
She coughed again, and the ruins of her mouth tried to make a word. I leaned in close, listening, then scooped up the cool water and gently trickled it into her mouth. The hiss of water meeting ember-hot skin made me wince, but the woman’s coughs quieted.
I couldn’t touch her, but I could give her water. I would sit here, unmoving, until the very last. Her coughing came back, harsher than ever, and I gave her more water.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard Rhylan shouting. I heard Kirana crying my name.
I paid them no mind. Not for these last few minutes; they would find me soon enough, and I wouldn’t interrupt what peace this woman had to scream back.
When the end came, it was mercifully quick.
She convulsed once, flinging a burned hand out. I took it without thinking, feeling the heat still emanating from it, the fragility of her ruined fingers. I held her hand like a baby bird, listening as she rasped in a breath, rasped out, in, out, in…out…out…
Several seconds passed before I realized it was over. There would never be another breath.
I looked at her face, the few strands of auburn hair that had survived dragonfire, and gently laid her hand back on her chest.
“May Aurae take you gently, may Nakasha guide you safely, may Sunya weigh you lightly.”
Footsteps, crushing burned grass underfoot. I didn’t give a damn for the tears pouring down my cheeks, the taste of blood in my mouth.
I said nothing as Rhylan crouched beside me, slipping an arm around my shoulders and guiding me upright.
There was nothing to say. I pressed my face against his chest, my tears smearing against him. Rhylan stroked me, from the crown of my head to the small of my back, letting me cry.
Gods only knew how long I stayed there, hiding in the circle of his arms. But I eventually looked up. “Please, tell me…at least one…”
Rhylan hesitated, but shook his head. There was fresh pain written on his features. He had promised these people his protection…and he had failed them.
Because of my blood-kin.
I had no more tears left in me. I drew in a ragged breath, my throat sore, eyes gritty, and released it.
“We’ll burn them tonight,” he said, his voice low. “Send them to Nakasha with respect.”
Aurae would have already collected their souls; Nakasha would want to see things done right. They had died by dragonfire, and they deserved proper pyres.
I started as Rhylan delicately touched my upper lip, wiping away the drying blood from my nose. His brow clenched in concern, but I took his hand, pulling it away.
“No, Rhylan. It’s nothing.” I looked at the woman, then towards the village, feeling dazed by the sheer scale of death. “It’s…not worth it now.”
From the look on his face, I knew he disagreed.
But it was only a little blood. Compared to all this…
It was nothing at all.