51. Descending
DESCENDING
DAWN
It appears the fluxborn mate for life.
Dawn had been pacing the corridor for hours with nothing productive to do. Holloway wasn’t talking. She hadn’t seen Lore since the night before. Riven had gone into the library with food for Talia and hadn’t come back. She kept tapping her foot, drumming the wall. She hated fucking waiting.
She could tell Talia was worked up about something. The girl’s heartbeat picked up as the hours passed, but Dawn couldn’t do much in a room full of books. By the time the library doors cracked open, the girl’s heart sounded like a hummingbird. Something was wrong.
Shit. Talia had been digging around in those books for hours, looking for an edge against Elanwei. What had she found? What if all that reading just told her they were fucked?
Didn’t matter if it was impossible. Dawn was going to find Ehrue anyway.
A noise down the hall drew her attention, and look who decided to show up. Lore leaned against the wall like he hadn’t been missing in action all night. Jacket immaculate. Hands folded, cocky smile on his face. She’d love to break his nose.
Not just her, apparently. Riven growled and drew one of his blades. He closed the distance in no time. Dawn followed for damage control, and Lore stayed put, still smirking.
“Apologize,” Riven snarled. He had Lore by the throat with one hand, his sword in the other. His voice was low and lethal.
Lore sighed, rubbing his temple. “You’re angry I removed her shame? Fascinating.”
Riven took a swing. Lucky Dawn was there—she grabbed him by the arm and hauled him back. Lore didn’t even flinch.
His gaze slid to Talia. “Tell him, Talent. Did I force you?”
Talia’s mouth tightened. “Lore, please. This isn’t necessary.”
“You came to me.” Lore spread his hands. “You asked for lessons. You asked for power. I only gave you what you wanted, and you fucking loved it.”
“You didn’t ask what I wanted,” Talia said, pushing back for once. “You just think you know everything.”
He smirked, and Riven lunged for him again. Dawn only just pulled him back. She drew a revolver, and stars above, she didn’t know who she wanted to shoot.
Lore must know that willing partners didn’t need wine or illusions as a warm-up, right? And Riven was snarling like something rabid. Fucking men.
“Enough,” she snapped. “Why are you here, Lore?”
His smile sharpened. “Because it’s time. Ehrue is asking for you.”
Dawn’s vision tunneled to Lore’s face. The smirk that touched the edge of his lips. She heard Riven swear under his breath, but sound was doing funny things.
“Say that again.”
“I said,” Lore spoke slowly, “your mate is alive. I’ve spoken with her. She’d like to see you.”
Talia spoke up. “Stop it, Lore. Honestly, why are you being like this?”
Lore raised an eyebrow. “What, you wanted to share the news? Go ahead. Tell her the rest.”
What did he mean, the rest? What could Talia know about Ehrue? And why were they still fucking standing here? If Ehrue was alive, if she was being held, they had to get her.
Dawn swung the revolver over to Lore’s face. “No more talking. I can find her myself.”
He made a scolding click with his tongue. “You can try, but I know exactly where she is. I know how to reach her, which passages are real and which are illusions.” His smile widened. “Kill me, you may wander these halls for months. Who knows what state she’ll be in when you find her.”
Dawn’s thumb hovered. One shot could end him. But if he was telling the truth—
“Fuck,” Dawn said. “Fine.”
Talia pulled a stack of documents from her satchel, but Dawn waved them off. She couldn’t read them. “Just tell me.”
They sat on the floor, and Talia did her best to share what they’d found in the library.
“The mortals and some of the elein rose up, rebelled,” Talia explained. Her voice warbled with nerves. “They were losing, then a dragon had this idea to overload the flux conduits—”
“Ehrue,” Dawn whispered.
“Yeah,” Talia agreed. “Ehrue. There was some kind of explosion, and she was hurt. But we think she survived.”
Dawn looked to Riven. He nodded.
“The fluxborn didn’t kill her,” Riven added quietly.
The hum in the citadel’s walls. Illusions for miles. Power that hadn’t faltered when the rest of the continent went dark. It had to come from somewhere. It had to come from someone. Dawn had thought so before, but this was proof.
“And now she’s Elanwei’s power source,” Dawn said.
The words felt numb on her tongue. Rage and grief had fueled her for so long, but her chest was hollow now. Hope? No. Too many things could go wrong. She felt nothing.
Talia reached for her arm. Dawn pulled away and made for a door at the end of the hall. She couldn’t let Talia read her emotions before she figured them out herself. She didn’t want comfort. She needed space.
Out on the balcony, Dawn took a deep breath of icy air and leaned on the stone parapet. Familiar boots sounded behind her. Riven stopped a few paces away.
“May I join you?” he asked in his baritone rumble.
Dawn didn’t look up. “You’re already here.”
He chuckled and leaned forward on his elbows, propped against the ledge. The silence between them felt familiar. They didn’t need words to understand each other. She’d lost count of the battles they’d prepared for quietly like this. This one tomorrow could be the last.
Finally, he let out a tired sigh. “I should have gone back. After I got you out.”
She still didn’t look at him. “It wouldn’t have mattered.” She wondered if the tears would ever come, or if they’d choke her to death someday. “The city was gone. Ehrue was—” Her fists clenched. “We thought she was gone.”
Riven’s voice stayed low. “Thauni, we didn’t leave her on purpose.”
Dawn let out a rough breath at hearing her true name, half laugh, half cough. “Don’t soften it, Althen. We ran.”
“Yeah, we ran,” he said, turning to look at her. “You’d been back for two days alone by the time I got here. You were bleeding everywhere, killing everything. You couldn’t shift. The city was on fire. Ehrue was gone. Ellie was raving. She would have collared you. We had to run.”
“You broke your oath for me,” Dawn admitted. She’d never thanked him. She hadn’t wanted to live, let alone for that price.
“Then you threatened to kill me in a few creative ways.” Riven was smiling.
“I probably should have. Wouldn’t be fucking bonded now. You know I swore I’d never do that.”
“Oh. I know.”
Then, quieter, she asked, “So what now? How do we fix it?”
Riven watched the horizon. “Well, if Ehrue is alive, she’s hurting. If she’s hurting, we will get her out.”
Of course, Dawn agreed, but it was good to hear him say it.
“What will you do,” he asked so gently, “if there’s nothing left of her to save?”
That was the question. She pictured Ehrue’s smile. Her laugh. Then cages. Flux channels. Four hundred years of pain.
“If the Ehrue I knew is gone,” Dawn said steady, “then I’ll take her out. We’ll go out together.”
It felt honest when she said it. That was her only goal—to live or die with Ehrue.
The whole point of putting up with Lore all these years, of coming back to this fucking place.
But it felt wrong in a way that surprised her.
She would miss Holloway’s bawdy jokes and Talia’s endless questions.
She’d miss Riven. It felt strange, having people to lose.
Riven’s jaw flexed, once, but he didn’t argue.
“I’ll stand with you” was all he said. “Whatever you choose.”
She was done waiting. When they rejoined the group, she told Lore it was time.
He led the way. Moved like he’d walked these halls before. Strange, since he’d been trying to get in for a decade at least. Holloway followed close behind him. Too close. Dawn marked it, but she had more important things to worry about.
Each level down, the temperature dropped. The flux in the walls shifted from warm blue to harsh steel to something darker, a purple-black that made her teeth ache. Both hands stayed on both revolvers.
A memory surfaced—Ehrue laughing in sunlight. Come on, little one. You’re not scared, are you? There are no collars here.
Dawn had never been scared. Not of heights or speed or falling. She was scared now.
When the stairs ended, they were at the top of a long hall. The black stone floor had channels of flux pulsing down each side of it. There were cages in the walls. The extraction chambers, empty now.
The only sound was the shuffle of their own feet. It smelled musty. When Dawn closed her eyes, she could hear the scratch and rattle of the cages in Haven. The door at the end of the hall got closer with each step. Before Dawn knew it, Lore’s hand rested on the handle.
“She’s through here,” he said. “Though I should warn you, she’s not what you might expect.”
Her heart was racing. Hot pins prickled all over her body. Would they find a dragon waiting? A person? Would she be in one piece? In a cage? Dawn flipped all her anxiety into anger. She was happy to point it at Lore.
“Open the fucking door,” she hissed.
He smiled, all teeth, and shoved the door open. Light poured into the dark hallway—blinding white, shot with gold.
They stepped into basically a giant cave. There was a dais at the far end with two thrones. Dawn didn’t notice any of the details. Her vision tunneled to the figure standing on the dais, and her knees slammed down hard on stone.
She tried to laugh, tried to scream. She just choked on air. When her voice finally tore loose, it cracked in her throat.
“Ehrue. You’re alive.”
Her mate was in her human form. As she sat there, gazing blankly at the floor, unease prickled up Dawn’s spine.
There was something wrong. Ehrue was still beautiful, but she seemed smaller.
Her shoulders curled in like a child being scolded.
Her skin was translucent, and light bled from it to pool below the throne. She wasn’t wearing chains.
When her winter-gray eyes lifted, they were strangely flat. They slid past Dawn and didn’t catch. That blank gaze hurt worse than any gut punch. Dawn’s chest burned. Her vision blurred, she felt hot tears on her cheeks. Dawn hadn’t cried in four hundred years. Grief had its claws in her now.