Chapter 40 Romie
ROMIE WAS DYING. SHE COULD feel her blood turn to ash, the magic fade from her veins, the song in her soul go quiet—a silencing she knew was mirrored in the witch and the warrior at her side, for in this moment, their pain was her own, felt through whatever conduit had been opened between them by Emory. A Tidethief stealing all their magics.
And then the pain stopped. Romie watched Emory through bleary eyes, standing with the demon, the two of them entwined in darkness. As if whatever passed between them was stronger than Emory’s grasp on the ley line, strong enough to sever her connection to Romie and the others.
Romie was still trying to make sense of it when Nisha was suddenly at her side, helping her to her feet. Virgil yelled at everyone to get up and move as more draconic knights swarmed the arena.
“Where are we supposed to go?” Vera yelled in despair.
“Through there.” This from Tol, who was helping a white-faced Aspen up with one hand, the other gripping a bloodied sword. He jerked his chin to the blasted gate through which the demon and his beast had disappeared.
They made their way into the dark tunnels but quickly had to hide as the clink of armor followed closely at their heels. Tol pulled them into a shadowed alcove just as voices rang out in front of them.
“This trail of blood leads toward the city. It must be the Night Bringer’s. Both he and the ursus magnus were bleeding profusely when last seen.”
“Follow it,” the Knight Commander said. “The Night Bringer can’t have gotten very far. I want him captured—alive.”
“What about the escaped prisoners?” a man’s voice asked.
“I’ll find them myself,” said the Knight Commander. “The Night Bringer’s followers will get what’s coming for them.”
The Night Bringer’s followers. They really thought they were allied with that murderous demon after all that?
Once the sound of receding footsteps faded, Tol gestured for them to follow him.
“Wait,” Aspen said, frowning in the opposite direction. “Isn’t that the way out? The other way will lead us back to the dragon.”
Tol looked at her with a quizzical brow, no doubt wondering how this girl he’d never seen before, who was clearly not a draconic knight, knew the ins and outs of the Chasm.
He shook his head, taking an insistent step in the direction he’d started in.
“I can’t leave the dragon here to suffer more torture.
You can all stay here or head for the exit, but this is what I have to do. ”
He bounded off before any of them could protest. Aspen met Romie’s gaze, the desperation in her eyes also felt by Romie. They couldn’t lose sight of Tol—of this world’s key.
There was no debate as everyone followed Tol. But Romie stopped as she realized Emory was heading the opposite way. “Em—where are you going?”
Emory had trouble meeting her gaze, her eyes sunken with shame. “There’s something I have to do. I’ll be right back, I swear.”
Before Romie could stop her, Emory disappeared into the shadows, using Darkbearer magic to cloak herself. Romie had half a mind to pursue her, but after what happened in the arena, she wasn’t overly eager to be near Emory. Not when there was a risk of her tapping into Romie’s magic again.
With a frustrated sigh, Romie followed the others.
They found their way back to the chamber where the dragon was being kept.
The group of sages and alchemists and knights that had tortured the beast were no longer there, but the dragon was.
It appeared to be slumbering, the band around its neck connected to five massive chains tethered to the circular wall of the chamber.
“That’s a dragon,” Virgil panted. “We are standing in front of a Tides-damned dragon.”
“Yes, Virgil, we can all see that,” Romie said between her teeth. “Now lower your voice before it decides to burn us to a crisp.”
The dragon lifted its head weakly as Tol approached it. It tried to shuffle backward, no doubt scared of people after what it had endured, but the chains kept it rooted in place.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” Tol said. He sheathed his sword and held his hands up to drive his point home.
“Remember me? I was here the day they captured you. I wouldn’t fight you.
And when the guards took me, I promised you that if I survived this place, I’d find a way to get you out of here, do you not recall? ”
A low sound rumbled in the dragon’s throat. Its pale golden eyes blinked slowly as it took Tol in, as if gauging whether or not it could trust him. It inhaled deeply, and Romie felt Nisha sidling closer to her, no doubt as scared as she was that they were about to be incinerated by dragon flame.
You smell of her, a voice said in Romie’s head.
“It’s speaking to us,” Virgil muttered. “The dragon is speaking to us in our heads.”
Judging from the others’ reactions, they had all heard it too.
This dragon has a name, the voice said with a tinge of annoyance, and Romie swore she heard a huff coming from the dragon. You may address me as Gwenhael.
Its voice was lilting and soft, not at all like Romie expected from such a colossal creature.
“Gwenhael.” Tol bowed slightly at the waist, pressing a hand against his heart. “My name is Tol. I was made a draconic years ago, unbeknownst to me that this was how dragons are treated.”
Your alchemy masters guard their secrets well.
It was not always this way. Once, we dragons gave our heart-fire willingly to those who were worthy of our power.
But your Fellowship of the Light has since sullied this sacred offering.
They imprison those of my kind and torture us to give up our heart-flame, all so they can create more of you.
“I know,” Tol said, dejected. “Had I been aware of this earlier… The Fellowship wanted me to seek out more of your kind. I fear things will only grow worse now that the Night Bringer has risen.”
I remember the days of the Sun Forger and the Night Bringer. They were formidable, designed as mirrors, two sides of a scale. Light and dark, night and day, creation and destruction, beginning and ending. Not better or worse, but equal.
“What happened to them?” Romie asked.
Something changed between them. Where they had once existed as peaceful allies, they became ruthless foes.
Death followed in their wake. Eldritch were pitted against dragons.
The world became a battlefield, scorched in fire and blood.
When the Night Bringer and the Sun Forger looked at the destruction they had wrought and realized they were to blame for it, all they felt was remorse.
So they forced each other to venture into the underworld, where they would slumber in exile as penance for what they had done.
The world started to heal without them in it.
But now it has started all over, an evil spreading across the world like wildfire.
They say the Night Bringer has risen. But if the Sun Forger still slumbers beneath the earth, there is an imbalance in the world, and this chaos that is unfolding can only be stopped by waking the Sun Forger. Restoring balance.
Romie and Nisha exchanged a glance. This sounded eerily like the myth about the Tides and the Shadow and how they’d been sent to the Deep.
“I’m afraid the Forger is dead,” Tol said mournfully.
Dead? Gwenhael echoed. Why do you say such a thing?
“I’m light-blessed. Touched by the Forger,” Tol explained. “I’ve always had a connection with her, and I felt the moment her heart stopped. It was right here, on the day the knights chained you and threw me in a cell for breaking an empty oath.”
Romie glanced at Aspen, wondering if he was confusing the witch’s presence in his mind for this connection to the divine. Aspen’s heart had stopped only a few days ago, when the demon tore a rib from her chest, right before Emory healed her back from the brink of death.
The Sun Forger cannot be dead, the dragon said. I feel her energy in this very room.
Confusion and hope warred on Tol’s face. “How can that be?”
She lives on in you.
“But I can’t feel her. Not like before.”
That band around your neck is like the one around mine. An old magic used on dragons and draconics and eldritch alike to sever us from our makers’ magic. That is why you cannot shift into your draconic form, and why I cannot regenerate my heart-flame and burn my way to freedom.
“If the Forger is alive,” Romie said, a suspicion forming in her mind, “can you tell us where to find her?”
I do not know where she slumbers. But there are those who might. Those who follow the old ways and uphold their vows to the dragons they serve. If you free me, I can take you to them.
“These chains are unbreakable,” Tol despaired. “Made by the alchemists out of the most solid metals.”
“Is there any water nearby?” Virgil asked. This earned him several confused looks. He rolled his eyes at them. “For bloodletting, obviously. Any metal can r—”
The sound of a sword being unsheathed had them turning to see the Knight Commander. Her armor was stained dark with eldritch blood. She looked at Tol with disappointment. “I should have known this is where I’d find you. I see you haven’t come to your senses, even after all this?”
Tol practically shook with anger. “After you proved the Fellowship to be rooted in brutal lies and dishonor, chained me up for stumbling on the truth, and sent me to my death for breaking a binding magical oath that never existed, to beasts that are supposed to be sacred but instead are tortured?”
The Knight Commander sighed. “I always feared that empathy of yours would get us here one day. But I gave you the chance to live, Anatolius. You chose to side with beasts instead of your own family. You rejected the Fellowship’s way, so its secrets must die with you.”
Tol seemed to fight back angry tears. “What kind of family treats their own like that?”
“A strong one. A family that knows their enemy well and will do anything to triumph over it.” She held up her sword. “If you don’t stand with us, Anatolius, then I’m afraid you stand against us.”
Tol’s sword remained limp in his hand. “You were like a mother to me. I don’t want to fight you.”
“Then I’ll leave you no choice.”
There was a lethal flash of gold as the Knight Commander pounced and Tol’s blade just barely lifted in time to meet hers. Movement caught Romie’s eye. Virgil was kneeling next to a puddle of water at the dragon’s foot, either because he had a death wish—
Or because he was calling on death itself.
Before their eyes, the chains holding the dragon rusted through until they became completely withered. With a deafening, bellowing roar, Gwenhael snapped its neck up, the chains breaking—dissolving—as easily as a pile of ash might disappear on a sudden wind.
And then the dragon lowered its mouth to them, white-hot flames building at the back of its throat.