CHAPTER THREE
SOMETIMES WHEN THE gods answer our prayers, it comes in a form we’re most likely to reject.
From Ozora’s personal journal.
The air up high was cold, and I wasn’t dressed for flying. I shivered and clung to the dragon’s harness, grateful at least my legs were warm, pressed against the leather of the saddle. Even through the thick pad and my cotton skirts, the beast’s heat was palpable and welcome.
Going from sure death to riding a dragon didn’t mean I was better off. Just not dead yet. All I could do was cling to the rigging and mutter prayers that the lashings wrapped around my waist held. The scent of smoke and burning flesh faded as we climbed toward the clouds.
I’d walked miles, but we covered that in a few heartbeats aloft.
Then Emberglen was below, and again, billowing clouds of stinging ash and smoke struck us like a slap, and made breathing difficult.
Grief and guilt that I hadn’t warned them also struck hard, but from what I could see, even if I’d escaped the elf, I wouldn’t have got there in time.
The landscape spun as the dragon circled to descend. We passed over the town in flames and another ship aground on the beach. Elves swarmed the streets, cutting down all in their path, some looked up as we flew low overhead but most kept killing.
Emberglen’s residents were not warriors, and Alurenth was a kingdom at peace with its neighbors.
A few squads of royal guards rotated between the city and families on the surrounding farms but, even if all the guards were in the town’s barracks, these deadly elvish warriors would've cleaved through them with as much ease as they cut down the shopkeepers and visitors.
I saw more than I wanted of the destruction from the dragon’s back as she swept over the town, and tears ran unchecked down my face to be dashed away by the wind.
We passed over the mayor’s mansion, through thick black smoke that billowed from wide-open windows to blind my search and burn my lungs. I bent double from coughing, and almost missed the men who battled on the wide lawn through the obscuring smoke. We were past them in a flash.
Please, no, Cedric... Fear twisted deep, sank its claws in with chilling accuracy.
With two mighty strokes of her wings, the dragon banked out toward the sea. Her shoulders dipped, and my knees tightened as she dove, then reared back, sculling the sky to hover over the ship. Her head towered above us, and it seemed she stood in mid-air, balanced on her hind legs and tail.
I leaned in, clutching the saddle and lashings with everything I had.
The wind from Cassyrra's powerful strokes swirled around me like a storm to drum in my ears and whip the hair that escaped my braid. Though blurred eyes obscured my vision, the sight of dropped jaws as that head shot forward gave me a bare moment’s warning.
The blast of light and sound forced my eyes closed. I turned my face away, involuntarily protecting myself from the carnage that burst forth from Cassyrra’s throat. Even behind my eyelids, the furnace of dragonfire blazed through, and brightened the black of night to bright pink.
I wasn’t cold anymore.
The elves on the beach tried to scatter after the first scorching attack, but another rain of fire swiftly ended them. A faster, more fitting end for the invaders than the king and his justice would’ve handed down.
My heart squeezed tight, and it hurt to breathe. In contrast, my thoughts numbed at the massacre beneath me, gone silent in a void that was anything but dark. Rather, it burned hotter than the sun.
I’d never seen such devastation, and the dragon wasn’t done.
With a thunderous rattle and snap, the creature folded her wings and dove at the ground, where more invaders were concentrated; we raced toward the beach and the burning ship. My head rocked back when pinions flared wide, backwinging to break our plunge.
I wouldn’t have thought such a colossal beast would be so maneuverable, but that dragon flipped on her tail to batter the stragglers with massive gusts of wind before she toasted them with another blast of dragonfire. For the second time, I clung to her neck as she stood nearly vertical in the sky.
They didn’t even have time to scream. Much.
The red-haired woman slapped the dragon’s neck, and the beast climbed, made two wide circuits of Emberglen and scanned for survivors. Or enemies.
Nothing moved when we passed overhead, but that might have been due to pure freezing fear by any left alive. Cassyrra angled her wings to descend, then reversed, and flapped them mightily to lower her hind legs, then forefeet to the ground in a gentle landing.
“You can untie yourself from the harness.” The woman half-turned in her seat. “Cassyrra will try not to let you fall, but lean against her shoulder as you climb down. It’ll help you balance.”
My hands jiggled with nerves as I worked to untie the knots. “Do you think anyone survived?” I asked, my voice raspy from all the smoke.
The woman shook her head.
“I don’t know, but we’re going to go look. If any Cilirians survived and have anything like a brain, they’re running. No matter how tough the emperor’s warriors are, they can’t stand against Cassyrra.”
Beneath me, the dragon rumbled, as if to reassure.
I sort of half-slid, half-walked down Cassyrra’s shoulder and forearm. Moments later, the woman landed next to me, more gracefully, and we walked to the edge of town. The dragon followed.
“Why do you say it was the emperor?” Obviously, I had my reasons for thinking it was the Crimson Birth, but most folks would say that was impossible. “Isn’t he as dead as his empire,” I asked.
“Where else would Cilirian elves come from but across the Sundering Sea?” Emerald eyes snapped with fury, but it was obvious the woman’s anger was for the corpses of the invaders we passed, their exquisite features twisted in death.
Long before I was born, the Wars of the Sundering were mostly regarded as tales of an older world, faded from history, half fiction, half myth from over a thousand years ago.
So much lore and so many legends arose from that time that only the academics kept accurate records, and even those were sometimes suspect.
“I didn’t think that was possible,” I told her, “the one who caught me, he looked like the Cilirians I’ve seen in paintings and sculptures, but he didn’t speak Cilirian.”
She shot me a quick, curious look.
“I like to learn. I can read and speak some.” She nodded, but my next words stopped her. “Plus, he said they were the Crimson Birth.”
She tilted her head down to fix her gaze on mine, brows raised in surprise.
“His eyes were ruby red,” I said.
Cassyrra growled, and the woman nodded, then reached out to lay her hand briefly on the ridge above the dragon’s eye. I guessed they were communicating silently but, they didn’t confirm.
We landed in a field near the beach where the streets were wide enough for the dragon to navigate. Everywhere, the story was the same. The elves killed all they found, executed everyone. None stirred; it was eerily still and silent, the only sounds the flames and wind.
From a park, we spotted the city hall and mayor’s mansion fully engulfed in flames.
A single, massive pillar of smoke rose into the sky, combined of both burning structures.
Cedric’s all-too-still form was easy enough to spot, stretched on the expanse of lawn that fronted the mansion, one hand still clenched around his sword.
“No...” It came out as a low moan, and I didn’t realize I was moving until the woman’s hand on my arm stopped me.
“I’m so sorry we couldn’t save them.” Her voice was dim, as if from very far away.
“The elves would’ve coordinated their attacks, and this can’t be their only landing.
We may still be able to help elsewhere.” Her fingers on my arm were soft but firm, and she gave a gentle tug.
“We have to keep moving. There’s nothing you or I can do for him. ”
My eyes wouldn’t move, nor would the rest of me. All I saw was him, and I was rooted by the realization I’d never hear his laugh or look into his merry gray eyes again.
“I’m so sorry.” Another tug, but there was real sorrow in her voice. She was right, of course, and my feet obeyed while my mind went blank. My heart ached and stomach churned, each fresh horror buried the shock and pain of Cedric with more layered over top.
We headed back to the field we landed in, even as questions circled in my mind.
How could the dead come back to life? The survivors of the Sundering in Athypsos'inar called the remnants of old Athypso across the sea the Dead Empire with good reason—the emperor and his kind were dead.
So said all the academics and the traders from western towns across the sea that rebuilt after the war.
I wanted to mourn and cry, but tears would have to wait. There was nothing more to do for the people of Emberglen, and they would not be the only ones at risk. To reach this resort, the Cilirians had to sail past another port.
“Hastrior,” I murmured. Barely breathed it really, but the dragonrider heard, and glanced back at her beast. Again, I would have sworn they had a brief, unheard conversation.
“Hastrior,” she agreed. “If they take that city and establish an outpost, they’ll be unstoppable. They could retake Athypsos'inar.”
“They could.” My teeth clenched and tried to stop the words. She was right, but I’d sworn never to go back, and now it looked like I was about to get flown there. Unless I wanted to stay in Emberglen among the dead.
Hastrior, the last free city on the continent of Athypsos'inar. The royal Pulcheria family reigned for centuries until the mysterious death of Prince Bartholomew Pulcheria five years ago; the alleged murder of its prince by a pirate spelled the beginning of its fall.
Yes. That pirate captain. The same Fraser Connell who tried to run the place after the Prince’s death, and the one who broke my heart.
I should’ve known better.
Except his handsome face and charming manner did things to me I’d never experienced before in all my travels. I was drawn in and paid the price.
Sounds like Hastrior has paid a price, too.
“I’m Taenya, Cassyrra is my Bondmate.” The woman released my arm as we reached the field to gesture at the dragon, who settled onto her belly and stretched out her foreleg.
“We need to stop the Cilirians before they land if we can.” The dragon stretched out her throat, loosed a trilling warble, and rustled her wings.
“Are you ready? We really need to move.”
I nodded. The dragonrider ran up her mount’s shoulder, reached one hand back toward me, and soon I was once more strapped to the dragon. Even with all that had happened, my curiosity poked at that unfamiliar word.
“Bondmate?” I asked.
“Later. I’ll explain later. Right now, we need to save Hastrior.”
Cassyrra’s muscles bunched beneath me, and once more, we launched into the star-spattered skies.
Emberglen faded behind me.
What would I find in Hastrior?