Chapter Twenty-Eight
Grand Duke Hinrick is possibly the most popular member of the Imperial Court, and when I say popular, I mean it in the most illicit way possible.
The Shapechanger can remake his features into any configuration, and often does so to the delight of his many, many, many lovers.
Just do not mistake his many dalliances for devotion—he is loyal to Grand Duchess Eirika before anyone else. Even the Emperor himself.
The Illicit Lives of the Imperial Court
Anonymous
(banned in the Empire)
Fire exploded through the morning sky, driving away the chill.
The dragon dipped low and shrieked, exhaling a torrent of flame across the docks.
Barrels, canvas sailcloth, rigging—anything not saturated with water caught and began to burn.
Naia fought to extinguish the fires that licked over the vessels without toppling any of the screaming villagers into the bay.
The beast looked nothing like the dragons that Sorin had unleashed during that horrible, bloody battle in the Empire. This one had rough, scaly skin of mottled green and black, with a red belly the same shade as the wickedly serrated spikes that jutted from its roaring head.
“How many dragons does Sorin have?” she demanded.
Gwynira slowly shook her head. “No, this one feels different. I don’t think Sorin pulled it from the Dream.” She turned a horrified gaze to Naia. “I think it is a Dreamer.”
Like any of them. Like Ash. The creature circled the shattered remains of the palace, and the next gout of fire shot out of its mouth like a pleased laugh.
“How do we fight something like that?” Isa growled.
“We bring it down.” Before Naia could say anything else, a flash of movement in her peripheral vision drew her attention. It was the petite woman from the beach, the one who had delivered their angry attacker and then winked out of existence again.
She was doing the same thing now, popping in with small groups of people. Some were heavily armored, while others were dressed with no thought to defense.
Which meant they had other, better defenses than a leather or steel cuirass.
Naia spun. “Gwynira, with me. Inga?”
The Witch’s eyes already blazed pink. “I’ll guard the village. Make sure the people don’t get caught up in this.”
“Thank you. Everyone else can greet our new arrivals. But Arktikos?”
He stepped forward wordlessly.
“Be ready to finish off the dragon.”
A hint of a smile ghosted across his lips as he backed away, giving himself room to assume his much larger, more ferocious form.
Aleksi walked toward Naia, his chest heaving. She met him halfway, straining up as he bent his head to hers.
She closed her eyes. “Einar—”
“Can take care of himself.” Aleksi touched her chin. “Look at me.”
The moment she opened her eyes, he captured her mouth in a quick, hot kiss. Naia wanted to fall into it, to huddle in his arms and escape the harsh reality of this moment.
But she could not.
Aleksi broke the kiss but lingered close and whispered against her lips. “Fight well, my love.”
Then he whirled around, the movement accompanied by the ringing sound of steel clearing a scabbard.
Only if you promise me the same.
Thrusting away the thought, Naia joined Gwynira, whose hands had already turned icy and blue. She trembled—with fear or anger or anticipation. Perhaps all three.
As Gwynira lifted her hands, so did Naia. “We’ll shred the wings,” she murmured. “If we do enough damage, it won’t be able to stay in the air. And once it’s down . . .”
Gwynira barked out a cold laugh. “Arktikos can rip out its throat.”
The dragon flew over the docks again, breathing fire on the planks and boats. Naia raised an arc of water from the bay, sending half of it skyward and crashing the rest over the burning wood.
Gwynira caught the water, flash freezing it into wickedly sharp spikes. With a flick of her fingers, they bore down on one of the dragon’s huge fully extended wings.
The dragon screamed out another gout of fire, melting the projectiles.
But to do so, it had to turn its head to its left.
As it did, Naia and Gwynira whipped another set of ice spikes toward its right wing.
The dragon jerked and roared as the spikes easily pierced the thin, membranous skin of its wing.
Naia and Gwynira worked in concert, repeating the attack, this time on the other wing. But the creature quickly adapted to their strategy, tucked its wings, and dove toward them.
“Stay low!” The water Naia raised to shield them—and the village behind them—extinguished the dragon’s fiery breath. Then, as it crashed down over the monstrous creature, Gwynira froze it before it could sluice off its scaly skin.
The dragon clumsily pulled up out of the dive. Between its damaged wings and the extra weight of the ice encasing it, it wobbled and nearly fell before recovering altitude.
Enough. Naia knelt and laid her hands flat on the sandy soil. The ground rumbled beneath them, and a hunk of stone from the ruined palace shot into the air and struck the dragon in the head. Stunned silent, the beast crashed to the docks before roaring its pain and displeasure.
An answering roar pierced the chaos behind Naia and Gwynira.
Arktikos, whose maw and giant claws were already smeared with blood, thundered past them.
He easily jumped the distance between the shore and the dock and clamped his jaws shut on the dragon’s shoulder.
Together, they thrashed and rolled, teeth and claws flashing.
Though Gwynira panted from exertion, she still smiled. “We make a good team, my lady.”
“You don’t need me,” Naia countered. “If you think about it, nearly every creature is comprised mostly of water. You could certainly use that to your advantage.”
Gwynira’s eyes went wide, and she shook her head, not in denial but in shock. “That is a dark thought, coming from the Mother of Rahvekya.”
“I’m a goddess, Gwynira, not a saint.”
Arktikos and the dragon rolled off the listing dock, splashed into the harbor, and sank into its chill depths.
The water roiled madly, then went still, and Naia tensed.
After several interminable moments, a great cloud of red bubbled up out of the depths, and Arktikos surfaced, with the bloody water staining his fur.
With the dragon dispatched, Naia turned and scanned the village. Terrified people hurried through its streets, but so far the fighting seemed to be contained to its outskirts.
Aleksi and Isa fought back-to-back, their swords flashing in the bright, sharply angled sunlight. As Aleksi battled with one attacker on his left, a roaring man charged at him on his right, only to run directly into Aleksi’s sword as he switched his grip to thrust the blade behind him.
Isa blocked and parried strikes from a much larger double-edged sword with only her pair of identical short swords. Even the weight of her attacker’s weapon could not drive past the blades. One seemed to glitter in the sun, while the other was wreathed in shadow.
The man before her could not land a hit, so he closed his eyes and began to chant. As the air began to grow tight and heavy with magic, Isa cried out, crossed her swords at the man’s neck, and swung them hard. The pressure of his magic dissipated as his head thumped to the rocky sand.
Isa turned and caught sight of Naia and Gwynira. “The dragon?” she asked as she wiped the blood from her short swords on her trousers.
“Dead,” Gwynira answered.
Naia hurried toward Aleksi as he pulled his sword free of his final attacker and let the man’s body drop to the ground. Aleksi’s face and hands were streaked with blood, but if any of it was his, the wounds had long since healed.
“All right?” Naia’s words shook a little.
“All right.” Aleksi smiled down at her, then tugged at her hand. “But the fight isn’t over yet. They need us in the village.”
Before they could take so much as a step in that direction, the air shimmered again, and three figures stepped out of nowhere and into their path.
One was a dark-haired man who should have been beautiful, but the cruel, flinty amusement in his gaze made the fine hairs on Naia’s nape lift in warning.
She knew instantly that this must be the Seducer.
The blonde beside him, Naia recognized from seeing her across the battlefield—Eirika.
The Stalker. And the Betrayer stood in front of them, his pleasant smile fully at odds with the anger that darkened his gaze.
Magic slithered around them, sharp and cutting. The light of the Dream and the purity of the Void, both turned to dark, malevolent purpose.
“Sorin.” The word tore free of Aleksi’s throat in a harsh rasp.
Sorin bowed his head. “Shall we make introductions?”
“We don’t need those.” Eirika stepped forward. “Hello, Gwynira. It’s good to see you.”
Gwynira had pressed her lips together so tightly they had gone pale. “Fuck you.”
Eirika tossed her head back and laughed, as if the words had been a hilarious joke. “And here is Isa.” She pulled her brows together in a frown and tilted her head. “I thought you were dead.”
“I was.”
“Chatty as ever.” Eirika’s gaze flitted dismissively over Naia and landed on Aleksi. “It was you, wasn’t it? You killed Hinrick.”
“Was that his name?” Aleksi matched the woman’s tone—not quite bored, not quite interested.
An eager, dreadful tension coiled tight in the space between their two groups, dampening even the sounds of clashing weapons and cries of pain and triumph.
Naia shivered, because she knew why she and Aleksi and Gwynira were hesitating.
They all appreciated the collateral damage that would likely come as a result of this fight. But Sorin?
He was simply relishing the moment.
“Where are my brothers and sisters?” He glanced around, both eyebrows raised.
“I just assumed you would call the rest of the High Court to your aid. Ash, Elevia . . . Hellfire, even Ulric might have been useful.” His gaze sharpened as it returned to Aleksi’s stoic face.
“Or does the god of drunken revelries and lazy poets think he can defeat me?”
The air behind Sorin and his companions wavered again, and several more people appeared in a haze of magic.
There was a tall woman with sandy hair who pulsed with brittle, stabbing bits of the Dream.
A second woman’s hair and clothing rippled in the currents of magic that swirled around her, grasping and hungry.
Then the man from the palace fight appeared, the one whose touch spread corruption and destruction.
Sorin glanced at Eirika. “When I’m finished with him—”
Naia stepped forward without thinking, placing herself between Aleksi and Eirika’s avid, vengeful gaze.
“Adorable,” Sorin proclaimed. “Tell me—Naia, is it? However did you convince that glorious ball of magic up in the mountains to attach itself to you?”
And that was the crux of everything, wasn’t it? In between the moments of joy that Naia had experienced, rediscovering her island and her history, she had wondered why. Why had Sorin invaded Rahvekya? Why had he stolen it from her people and tried to subjugate them?
But this was what Sorin was: a colonizer. He considered the world, with its people and places and even its magic, only in terms of possession. Everything he encountered was merely something which did not belong to him yet.
Even before he had become the Betrayer, as the Builder, he had blithely bent the world to his will. And he’d felt free to do it because all he knew how to do was take.
“The island chooses who it will,” she told him, “and it would never, ever choose you.”
The blow landed. Sorin’s jaw tightened, and he scoffed before waving a hand dismissively. “It matters not. I thought perhaps you could be of use to me, but it seems as though I’ll have to destroy you. And your precious island.”
Aleksi shot past Naia in a blur and slammed into Sorin. They went skidding across the ground before smashing into it, and Sorin laughed with delight.
Eirika was less amused. She growled and ran after them, only to strike an invisible barrier that nearly toppled her. With disbelief twisting her features, she tried again, then shrieked with rage as she pounded her fists against nothing.
No, not nothing. Naia could just see it, little bits of the Dream flashing in a dome that surrounded Aleksi and Sorin. She stepped forward and pressed her hand to the curving, barely perceptible surface. It felt like protection and sacrifice and love.
It felt like Aleksi.
She tried to whisper his name, but what came out was “Don’t do this.”
He pressed his hand to hers through the barrier of his magic. “I’m sorry, little nymph,” he told her. “But it has to be me.”
Pain surged through Naia, and she leaned heavily against the barrier and closed her eyes.
A moment later, warning prickled over her, and she moved just as Eirika swung a flail with another enraged scream.
The flail hit the barrier and stopped still, then fell limp in Eirika’s hand, as if its momentum had been absorbed by the magic.
Naia backed away, already reaching for the power of the stone and water beneath her feet. She had to carry on, because Aleksi was right.
The fight was not over yet.