Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
Rhylan raced back to the eyrie faster than he’d ever flown before.
Heat radiated from him, a shimmer in the air as we passed over the mountains. He was a shooting star, blazing flame, breath puffing like bellows as he fought to go faster, faster.
The entire eyrie was alight, a beacon in the darkness of the mountains. My heart, already pounding to the rhythm of Rhylan’s wingbeats, sank to my stomach at the sight of it.
Erebos was awake, and his rage shook the mountain itself. Smoke trickled from crevices around the mountain, and as Rhylan crashed through the dragon door, I felt the air itself grow thicker—the Ascendant’s fury congealing into a tangible entity.
The stones of the eyrie quaked under my feet when I slid from his back.
Rhylan had shifted before I even reached the door, tearing it open. Scales covered every inch of his skin; his mouth was distended, filled with fangs.
We raced to the spiral stairs, following the sounds of raised voices and shouting.
When we reached the floor below the training rooms, we hit a solid wall of people: the Bloodless of his House, alarmed by the quivering walls of the eyrie, had packed the staircase full.
Rhylan did not spare time for politesse. “MOVE!” he bellowed, and I caught a glimpse of Nilsa’s wide eyes, the girl borne along by the flood of people trickling down and making way for the prince.
I followed on his heels, hands clammy with fear and nerves, terrified of what we would find in the wyvern’s roost.
Alriss barred the door with her own body, sweat gleaming on her brow…blood smeared across her face and hands. The wild look in her eyes gave way to relief as Rhylan pushed through his people.
“She’s in here,” she said unnecessarily, and let us through, barring the door behind us. “Three dragons brought her…they threw them in through the roost’s window. They were painted black, I have no idea which fucking House they belonged to.”
It was hard to get any closer.
Erebos filled most of the roost, a twisting, endlessly-writhing mass of coils, solid black flame dripping from his jaws. His eyes blazed with light and fury as he crouched over the…the thing on the floor.
“My blood!” The Ascendant’s scream hit my head and chest with physical force, vibrating in my bones. “My child!”
Gods…that could not be Kirana. It could not be. It was a…a sack of flesh, no muscle, no bone, only a slick of wet, red skin…
Myst cowered next to him, her silver eyes wide. She reached out a clawed hand, and drew it back, terrified of Erebos—terrified for him—and unable to touch him.
Rhylan’s movements were jerky as he sprinted to the writhing, screaming Ascendant, his face frozen like a man caught in a nightmare—
But he moved past the flesh. Past the thing that was so much meat now.
And with a flood of relief, and a smaller gush of shame over the relief, I saw that it was not Kirana.
It was Garnet, or what was left of her; the scales had been sliced away, her innards torn out, the head missing, of course. She was nothing but a suit of hollow flesh now.
But I hadn’t seen Kirana beyond the ruin of her wyvern. She was…she was…
Barely clinging to life. As bloody as her wyvern. Chest rising and falling in short, jerky gasps.
But still alive, despite…despite what had been done to her.
I gave silent thanks to Larivor that it was Garnet, and not Kirana who had died as Rhylan collapsed next to his sister. I knelt on her other side, ready to do anything to save her…but it was impossible to know where to begin.
Yura had removed everything from inside Garnet’s skin.
She had removed everything on the outside of Kirana.
My hands hovered over wet, exposed muscle, the gleam of white bone. If she hadn’t died of shock and blood loss yet, it…it would be soon.
Rhylan could not touch her. His talons were extended, hide rippling over his skin in frantic patches as he clawed his own face, trying and failing to reach for her over and over.
“She was wrapped in Garnet’s skin,” Alriss said in a low voice, hovering helplessly. “We didn’t…we wanted to…”
“I can give her something for the pain.” I blinked, looking up at Viros. I hadn’t seen him. My brain was too saturated with horror to comprehend anything around me beyond this.
The Eyrie-Master looked older than ever as he withdrew a vial from the interior of his pocket. A vial filled with clear liquid, only half full.
“All of it at once,” he said heavily. “It will make her…not feel anything.”
I looked down at Kirana. At the slick wetness of what had been her face. All I had to do was force her lipless mouth open, create a small gap between her teeth…
But she had gone for us. She had been tortured for us. For a throne she had no interest in…for a vengeance she had wanted to let release for the sake of peace.
We had forced her into this. We had taken all her cards.
I could not let her die, even if I created something else in the process.
Something she had feared to do to me.
I took the vial from Viros, and the old man knelt before her head, preparing to open her jaws. Rhylan screamed silently, the emotions twisting his face reflected in the wild agonies of the Ascendant behind him.
“No.” I tucked the vial inside my leathers, in the pocket that held the perfume of Varyamar, out of his reach. “We will give her something else.”
I stood up, feeling numb and cold and distant. “Erebos, give me your arm.”
But he did not hear me. The great dragon only saw what had been done to his blood, the agony visited on a child of his, a thousand times removed, but no less painful for that distance.
He screamed where Rhylan could not.
I dropped my gaze to my Ascendant, who still quivered with horror. “Myst. I need you.”
She shimmered through the air, coiling around my legs. “Sera…if you do this, it cannot be undone.”
“The choice is clear.” Was that me speaking? Was that my voice that was so clear, was that my mouth moving, even though I felt nothing at all? “She dies now, or she dies later. We can make that difference.”
“She will live a life reliant on true dragons.” Myst’s eyes swirled, like smoke and shadow. “On blood. Any food that passes her lips will be ashes and dust to her. She will never be the same.”
I closed my eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled.
If it were me…I would want a choice. I would want someone to extend a hand, no matter the consequences…so that I could have the choice for myself.
Even with the blood-craving that would tear at her for the rest of her life. Even with the things I had read—I would want a choice.
“Then I will hope she can bear the price of survival.”
I drew my sword, my Ascendant and I kneeling on either side of the dying draga. “Viros, open her mouth.”
The Eyrie-Master stared at me disbelievingly. “We…we must not.”
“Do it, or she will die. If you want her back, open her mouth.”
He reached for her face—and his hands fell back. He shook his head. “I can’t do this to her.”
A rough voice I didn’t expect to hear filled the room.
“I can.” Rhylan pushed him aside, and delicately took his sister’s face in his grasp. The tips of his claws slid between her teeth, and he carefully prised them open.
She made a terrible sound, and a shiver raced down my spine. “Myst.”
My Ascendant extended a thin forearm, her claws flashing like immaculate pearls against the ruin below her. I gripped them with one hand, positioning her arm over Kirana’s mouth, and dug the sword’s point beneath two scales.
A steady stream of iridescent blood dripped into the open wound that was Kirana’s face, spattering off her teeth, soaking her tongue. And despite the gore, the stomach-churning nausea, my mouth watered.
The smell of the dragon’s blood was…indescribable. If afternoon sunlight, or dew on newly-unfurled leaves, or the ripple of water had a scent, this was it.
I licked my lips, watching the blood drip into Kirana’s mouth.
And ignored the clench of hunger in my gut.
As the blood poured into her, Kirana reflexively swallowed. Again. And again. She made that awful sound once more, a sobbing gasp of pain, but Rhylan kept her mouth open.
“Drink it, Kir,” he whispered, voice ragged. “Don’t stop.”
Myst’s wound healed quickly. I had to stab her again, angling her arm, and my Ascendant watched with sad eyes, but did not breathe a word of protest.
It took a long time. My back was one large screaming ache, sweat beading over my forehead when Myst finally retracted her arm from my grasp, ever so gently.
“It’s enough,” she said, her own forked tongue lapping at the bloodied scales. “She will live.”
I let the sword fall to the floor with a clang. Rhylan leaned back, staring up at the ceiling, lips moving soundlessly.
At some point, somewhere in time that I hadn’t marked, Erebos had stopped screaming. The silence was deafening.
Kirana slept…and in this sleep, she would begin to change.
Already a fine, translucent film had begun to form over Kirana’s exposed muscles: the beginning of new growth.
“We should bring her upstairs. Somehow.” My voice rasped. I licked my dry lips, trying not to think of dragon’s blood and my terrible thirst. “And…we should prepare Garnet for the pyre. Before Kirana wakes up. She shouldn’t have to see her like this.”
Movement, in the corner of my eye. Viros had remained with us. “Alriss and I will prepare the pyre. I’m…not sure you did my lady a service, Sera. I think you have cursed her.”
I shook my head weakly. “Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t. I don’t know. I don’t know godsdamned anything. We’ll find out when she wakes up.”
I felt a thousand years old. Everything hurt. I wiped my blade on my leathers, resheathed the sword carefully, and finally stood. My legs were wooden limbs attached to my body as I moved, my body piloting itself.
I silently pushed past Alriss, past the Bloodless who were slowly filtering away, whispering to themselves behind raised hands. I found one of the servant’s store rooms, and selected the first sturdy cloth I laid eyes on: a long tablecloth, made of rich brocade and silk embroidery. I returned to the roost, and laid it out on the floor next to Kirana.
“Rhylan, help me.”
My dragon stared up at me with empty eyes, but he moved. Together we moved her onto the cloth: moving a centimeter at a time, aware that each tiny sensation on Kirana’s body could be causing her agonizing pain, and we would not know it.
Not while she was locked in the slumber caused by a glut of pure, fresh-from-the-vein dragon’s blood.
But eventually she was laid on it. I took up one end, and Rhylan the other. Together we brought her up the stairs, no sound other than our panting breaths and our footsteps breaking the silence.
Kirana’s bedroom was next to her still-room. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected when we opened the door; maybe a room as cluttered as her workshop.
But it was bright, clean and clear; a bed piled with fluffy linens in pale shades of ivory and green was pushed up next to a window. A bookshelf had been sorted alphabetically, the spines all perfectly aligned.
And over the writing desk were letters. Hundreds of letters, papering the entire wall, a mosaic of words.
I saw the name Cai, signed a thousand times.
We carefully maneuvered the tablecloth onto the bed, and I decided to all Nine Hells with it; I wasn’t going to move her any more than necessary. It could stay under her until she could move without pain.
I made sure her arms and legs were straight, her head cushioned flat, and gazed down at her.
The film of new skin had already grown thicker, obscuring the striations of raw muscle…but there were pale half-moon shapes over it all, from the crown of her head to her toes. The roots of new scales.
Had I made a mistake? I had been horrified by reading of the Naga, horrified that I would become one of them.
Horrified enough to swear to never allow another drop of dragon’s blood to touch my tongue.
What if I had cursed her with this existence?
“No.” Rhylan’s voice was fierce, loud. I was too tired to startle, though I didn’t remember speaking aloud. “I can’t lose her, too. No matter what she becomes, what she looks like, what she drinks, I don’t give a damn as long as she lives.”
“It’s more than what she looks like.” I rubbed my temples. The gut-wrenching horror of this entire night made me want to close my eyes for a hundred years, and not come out until it was all over.
Because I had not had time to tell Rhylan about my sister. The things I had remembered about her, that I had repressed so deeply they had become nightmares instead of memories.
That she had taken Kirana’s skin…to eat of her flesh.
I ran for the bathroom.
When I came back, my mouth tasting of herbal rinse instead of bile, Rhylan was sitting in a chair next to Kirana’s bed. He was dead asleep, his face pillowed on the mattress next to her leg.
I draped a woolen blanket over his shoulders, pressing a hand to his forehead. He was burning hot; he had gone deep into the dragon’s primitive protectiveness, burning everything he had in him to ashes to get home in time.
Just in time to save her life.
If we had been minutes later…I wasn’t sure that even dragon’s blood could have brought her back. And Rhylan would have been irrevocably destroyed. The House of Obsidian Flame would have ended with him.
Now they both had a chance. Kirana might hate me for it…but that was a risk I was willing to take to save her.
To save him.
I didn’t care anymore if the whole world hated me, as long as I lasted long enough to burn Yura to cinders, and send her back to whatever hellhole she’d been spawned from.
I gazed down at them for a moment, wondering if I…if I had destroyed their House with my actions tonight.
But that was a question for later. For now, I could rest knowing that she still lived.
“Sera.”
Her whisper was so quiet I almost didn’t hear it. Only the slight movement of her jaw—and the eerie, nauseating movement of lips that were still reforming—brought my attention to her.
I knelt next to the bed, leaning in close to whisper. I couldn’t stand to wake Rhylan now. “I’m so sorry, Kirana.”
Her eyes remained closed—the black nubs of new lashes just now peeking through translucent, pale skin—but her mouth moved again. “Make…me…a promise.”
The words were soft and mushy, garbled by her injuries, but I could just make them out. “I’ll promise you anything.”
I owed her, after this. I owed her more than I could ever repay, because she had been given new life, but at what cost?
“If…I die…” She sipped in a shallow, pained breath.
“You won’t die. You’re going to be…to be all right, Kirana.” It was a lie. Perhaps death would be preferable to what was to come.
“If I die,” she insisted. Several gasps, her chest just rising and falling. “Tell Cai. I…wish I...hadn’t…run.”
I brushed the back of her hand, no more than the touch of a butterfly’s wing. “I swear it. I’ll tell him.”
She would be able to tell him herself soon enough…and I could only hope that if she had changed her mind, if the cold brush of Aurae’s wings had made her want to stop running, that Cai would be able to accept what she’d become.
But my promise settled her. She exhaled, her breathing becoming slow but regular, and I left, quietly closing the door.
Myst waited for me, curled on my bed. Her white forearm was unmarked; it was like I had never cut her at all.
I slumped to the floor, my back against the bed, and drew up my knees to rest my forehead against them.
“She will be Naga,” Myst said quietly, resting her chin on my shoulder. “More than you…less than me. A creature between worlds, one not seen for millennia.”
“I know. Will she hate me?”
“I’m no mystic, child. I cannot see the future any more than you can.”
My eyes burned, but no tears came. “But will she be…the way she was? Or will she seem…different?”
The word I wanted was dangerous, but to speak of Kirana in such a way felt disloyal. Like I was condemning her changes before they had begun.
Myst rubbed her snout with one claw. “That depends on her. She could be as she was…or she could have a mind closer to ours. I have never created a Naga before. It is not encouraged among my kind.”
“I imagine not,” I whispered.
What I had read of the Naga…they did not sound like something I would ever wish to become myself. It had been enough to convince me to swear off the tonic forever.
But perhaps I would feel differently if I were dying. When it came to survival, it was impossible to overcome the body’s brute-force will to live.
And if someone had offered me that choice on Mistward, in the days where every second was a fine line between life and death…I might have chosen it.
Just to survive. For another chance to live.
My eyes burned, but no tears came. “Myst…why did you help, then? If the true dragons are against it…”
My Ascendant curled her warm, coiled body around my shoulder, rumbling deep in her chest. It felt like a cat”s purr, soothing me despite her answer. “There is a scent on the wind I do not like. It is—it is an old smell. An ancient smell. It has been so long, I can’t recall what it is…but it fills me with fear, Serafina. A terrible fear.”
A shudder ran through me.
There was one thing that could cause an Ascendant—the greatest of us, the children of Larivor and Naimah—to feel fear.
“Her children.” My voice cracked.
Ustrael’s spawn. The devourers. The Primoris.
“Just so.” Myst’s claws dug into my shoulders. “But the age of the Ascendants is coming to an end, slowly but surely. I have seen the signs. For every Ascendant born, for every House created, another five fall…and if my nose is correct, we will need all of us to make it through the coming days. Even if it means taking terrible risks.” Her voice dropped even lower. “Even if we must anger Father Wind and Mother Flame with our choices.”
“You can’t mean that…that one of them is awake.”
This was a war between us. Between dragonbloods and their Houses.
It was not a feeding ground for Ustrael’s spawn.
Myst snorted, but she laid her head against mine, cheek to cheek. “I think we’d all notice if one was awake, child! No, but the warning signs are there. Only a fool would choose not to heed them.”
“I don’t want to heed them.” I remembered my words to Kalros, not much more than a month ago…calling his House cowards for refusing to face a newborn Primoris.
How easy it had been to call someone else a coward—when there had been nothing demanding bravery from me.
“Then you are a fool.”
“But I will.” I sighed. “Of course I will heed them, however much I’d rather hide.”
Myst preened her flawless scales. “I knew you would. You are my blood, after all.” She tapped her sharp claws on the crown of my head. “And so is Erebos’s daughter, now. When she has become fully Naga, she will belong more to my line than to his.”
“Because the blood is fresher?”
“Pure and undiluted.” Myst tilted her head as she thought, the silver of her eyes burning bright. “Perhaps she possessed…oh, let us say a few drops of his blood. He is far removed from his descendants, as old as I am. Now she will be as close to me as you are, my child.”
If not more so. Kirana would become something…intermediary, a step between dragon and dragonblood.
“Will he blame you for stealing one of his kin?” I fiddled with one of Myst’s rings as I spoke, rotating a band set with amethysts around her claw. “Considering your larcenous tendencies…”
She was silent for a long moment, and I thought I might have offended her. But she was thinking, her eyes half-lidded, tail twitching lazily.
“No,” she finally said. “No, he has always been rather attached to his descendants, far more so than is healthy for a dragon. He would rather she belong to me and live, than die in his House.”
“At least when she wakes, she’ll have choices.” I spun the ring until the amethyst faced upwards, catching the light. “Varyamar is as much hers as it is mine, now.”
But it would be a shallow consolation. Jhazra was her home; she would never feel the same bone-deep ache for the lakes, the jasmine and the wide open forests that I would feel.
If she were even able to care about those things…if the blood-craving didn’t consume her whole, body and mind.
“Yes. You are now sisters, I suppose, in a convoluted, roundabout sort of way.” Myst waggled her claws. “But it all comes down to the same thing. We need dragonbloods, and we need them awake and aware. Watching the winds for something that isn’t quite right. Whatever I smell is worse than war, Serafina—it is the smell of death.”
“War is death.” I thought of poor Garnet…and remembered that I had left her head on the shore of the tarn. I must retrieve it for her pyre.
A good, loyal wyvern deserved to be sent whole into the embers.
“No. This is worse than the death that comes on the battlefield. It is the death that eats one alive, and never ends.” My Ascendant’s claws tightened on my shoulder. “I hope I am wrong about it.”
We fell into silence. I watched the flames still crackling in the hearth across the room, the pop and crackle of the wood sending up sparks.
Myst could hope all she wanted, but I would pray. Tomorrow, I would get on my knees before the Dyad and beg them not to allow this.
War that we could handle. We were already committed to our course.
Yura, I had personally vowed to destroy with my own hands, and I would hold to that vow with my life.
But dire omens and warnings…a whisper of a scent in an Ascendant’s nose…that made me want to run screaming.
To curl into a ball under my bed and close my eyes tight and hold back sobs.
Because bravery, like survival, came with a heavy price. Anyone could sit in comfort and claim that they were brave. That they alone would stand eye to eye with the darkness, and refuse to blink.
But when the darkness came calling, that bravery was not free. It took everything in them…sometimes everything they had.
And when that cost mounted too high, they blinked. If only for a second, but they would blink, thinking that they could not bear the burden of loss…and then the darkness would win.
When I had called Kalros a coward, I’d had nothing but my own miserable life to my name. Nothing left to lose.
I had too many things now that I couldn’t stand to lose. The cost would be more than I could live with.
Myst ran her claws through my hair. “I smell your fear, Serafina. Let it go. They are not here now.” She nuzzled my cheek. “I could always be wrong, and then all this woe would be for nothing, now wouldn’t it?”
“But you’re afraid, too.” I put my hand over the claws on my shoulder, but nothing would stop the racing of my heart. The bands of iron had tightened around my chest, each breath hard-won.
“Only of things that may not come to pass. Do as I say.” Myst exhaled an iridescent flame, which danced before me like a marsh-spirit. “Breathe this in. Sleep and dream sweet dreams. Tomorrow is another day, and you cannot afford to let fear break you now.”
She was right. I was weary in body and spirit, my mind having seen and absorbed too many horrors for one night. It was too much.
If I closed my eyes now, I would only dream of Yura. Of hungry things slithering from the shadows.
So I obeyed Myst, inhaling the flicker of flame. It didn’t burn me; it was warm, swirling like smoke into my mouth and nose, tickling my throat.
The dragonfire wrapped me in a warm, soft cocoon of white mist, of absolute nothingness.
And I slipped into the peace of the Dreamlands.