2. Chapter 2 #2
The dais cut the skyline, a slab of white against the darkening sky.
White marble, polished until it caught the cold grey light and threw it back in blinding shards.
Gold filigree traced the edges. Flowers cascaded down the steps—lilies and moonblossoms and things that had no business blooming this time of year.
Raindrops beaded on their petals, sliding off like oil, as if even the storm wasn't allowed to touch them.
And at the center, raised above us all, Princess Vivienne. Four Royal Guards flanked her, straining to hold a canopy of heavy white silk on gilded poles over her head.
She looked like a painting. The kind you wanted to slash.
Her gown caught the light and shattered it into rainbows.
Her hair fell in perfect raven waves, crowned with a circlet that glittered with white sapphires.
She stood with her arms outstretched, palms turned toward the sky, lips moving around words I couldn't hear from this distance.
The crowd swayed. Some of them were weeping. Some had fallen to their knees in the mud, hands clasped, faces turned upward like flowers straining toward the sun.
We were vermin down here. That was the point, wasn't it? Make us crawl so she could shine.
Serenya gripped my arm. "Amaria."
"I see her."
"No." Her fingers dug in harder. "Look. At her feet."
I squinted against the glare of the marble and the trailing edge of that perfect gown.
Something at the base of the dais was white and shining. Too bright to look at directly, but too wrong to look away from.
"What is that?" Maxx hissed.
I shook my head and edged forward. The crowd resisted, packed too tight, but I wedged myself between bodies and kept moving.
Then the crush tightened without warning.
Someone stumbled behind us—hard enough to slam shoulder-first into Serenya and knock the dog half out of her arms with a startled yelp.
Caden moved before the sound finished.
One second he was beside me. The next, he had the male by the throat and drove him backward into the mud with enough force to rattle teeth.
The crowd gasped and recoiled in a jagged ripple around us.
Caden’s knee hit the civilian’s chest. His hand went to the knife at his hip with smooth, horrifying precision.
“Threat identified,” he said, voice flat and gone. “Proximity breach. Neutralizing—”
“No,” I commanded.
I grabbed his wrist with both hands. He didn’t even seem to feel me.
The male under him made a choked, panicked sound. Just a farmer by the look of him—thin, rain-soaked, eyes wide with terror.
“Caden.” I dropped to my knees in the mud beside him, putting myself between his blade hand and the stranger’s throat. “Look at me.”
Nothing.
His pupils had blown wide. His breathing had gone wrong—too even, too empty. Somewhere behind us, people were starting to mutter. A mother pulled her child back. An Enforcer at the perimeter turned his head.
Not here. Gods, not here.
I caught his face in both hands, forcing his gaze down to mine. “But pain too vast will crack the glass,” I whispered mother’s song to him.
He froze.
Rain ran down his temple. His fingers twitched against the knife hilt.
“And love can break the brave,” I said, the old words shaking on the way out.
For one terrible heartbeat, I thought it hadn’t worked.
Then he blinked.
Once. Hard.
The flat vacancy in his face cracked just enough for horror to get through.
“I—” His hand jerked away from the knife like it had burned him. He released the male’s throat so suddenly the stranger rolled sideways into the mud, coughing.
Serenya stepped in at once, hauling the shaken farmer back to his feet. She pulled him aside, speaking soothingly to him in low tones. Maxx slid neatly into place, all charming irritation and offended dignity.
“Honestly,” he snapped to the gathering eyes around us, loud enough to carry. “You’d think no one in this city had ever seen a panic spell before.”
A few nervous laughs. A few suspicious looks. But the moment bent, then thinned.
I kept one hand locked around Caden’s wrist.
“Stay with me,” I murmured.
His chest rose once. Fell.
“Standby revoked,” he said hoarsely.
Good enough.
I hauled him upright before anyone important looked too closely, and together we turned back toward the dais.
I kept straining toward the white thing at Vivienne’s feet, trying to make sense of it through the crush of bodies.
The crowd thickened the nearer we got, until I had to shoulder through the last packed line of bodies and stop at the edge of the crowd.
A line of Enforcers held the perimeter—midnight-blue cloaks, silver-banded helms, hands resting on sword hilts. Beyond them, the hill sloped upward. The dais gleamed at its peak, untouchable.
The crowd pressed against my back. Serenya found my elbow, Maxx at her back. Caden on my other side, breathing perfectly even.
Then the crowd shifted enough for me to see it clearly.
And I finally saw what lay at Vivienne’s feet.
Bones.
Dragon bones.
Skulls and spines and the long curved arcs of ribs, stripped clean and bleached white. Water collected in the hollows of the eye sockets, weeping grey streams down the bone.
My stomach lurched. Dreadscale. His patience. His sacrifice. The blood running from his nose as he absorbed my failures and never once flinched.
These could be his kin.
Serenya gripped my arm. "Not here," she said. Barely a whisper. "Not yet."
None of them knew what they were looking at. To them, it was just... debris. Victory's leftovers.
Vivienne raised her hands, and the crowd went silent.
"Brothers and sisters of the realm." Her voice carried down the hill, amplified by magic or sheer theatrical arrogance. "I come to you today not as your princess—but as your healer."
She turned toward the drab horizon. Toward the rot creeping at the edges of the fields.
"You have suffered." Her tone dripped with honeyed grief. "The Veil sickness has taken your crops. Your livestock. Your children."
The crowd stirred. Someone behind me was crying.
"But I have seen it," Vivienne continued. "I have walked your blighted fields. I have knelt in your corrupted soil. And I have driven it back."
Light bloomed from her palms—soft gold, gentle as a sunrise. It sizzled faintly against the falling rain, turning the droplets into drifting steam that haloed her in mist, and the crowd gasped.
"Your harvests will return. Your waters will run clean. The corruption ends—" She closed her fists, and the light vanished. "—with me."
The crowd erupted. Weeping. Cheering. Some had fallen to their knees.
Lying conniving bitch—
Vivienne let the applause wash over her. Let them worship. Then she raised one elegant hand, and silence fell over the rapturous crowd.
"But healing the land is not enough." Her voice sharpened. "We must also heal our realm."
She gestured to the pile of bones at her feet. The crowd's eyes followed.
"There were those among us who believed themselves above the laws of our kingdom. Creatures who answered to no crown. Who took justice into their own claws." Her lip curled. "Who endangered our most vulnerable families and farmers living in isolation with their... unpredictability."
She didn't say dragons and the dragonborn; the bones at her feet said it all.
"They've been given peace."
The crowd cheered again. Not as loud this time—uncertain, glancing at the bones—but cheering nonetheless. Because they had feared the dragons once. Before they knew them. Before they understood.
Unpredictable. The word slithered through my mind like poison. Dreadscale, who had calculated every sacrifice. Who had planned every move three steps ahead. Who had bled for us without complaint.
Unpredictable my ass.
My Marks stirred, begging for release.
Serenya's hand found mine. Squeezed. Not yet.
"And there are still those—" Vivienne's voice dropped, intimate and dangerous, "—who would see our healing undone."
She descended two steps. Closer to the crowd. Closer to us.
"Traitors who lurk in the shadows. Who whisper rebellion and call it righteousness." Her eyes swept the crowd in a measured sweep. "Those who would burn this realm to ash rather than see it flourish under proper rule."