Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Dorian
She stood in the flames, unburnt—unreachable. The glare off them drove my hand up to shade my eyes; the heat kept me far away. Her clothes had long ago disintegrated, and her hair had crisped to ash and floated to the ground.
Beyond the flames, the dragon watched on. His clubbed tail flicked like a cat’s.
And Eury—Eury was trapped.
A dragon’s bind. A genius trap.
I had seen the understanding in her eyes as soon as Caustrix had presented the offer.
A moment inside her mind wasn’t just a moment.
Time didn’t pass inside us the way it did here in this cavern; it was subjective, contracting and expanding.
A flash of memory could be eternity. Years could be compressed into a second.
But Eury had taken the offer anyway, as I had known she would. As to whether she would escape…
If she failed, Caustrix would get a fine show. If she succeeded, I didn’t know who would emerge from those flames.
I dropped to a seat. I watched. I waited.
Caustrix’s serpentine eyes flicked to me. “It’s torture for you, isn’t it, veyre?”
I didn’t take my eyes off her. “You would know about torture.”
“Oh?”
“A thousand years stuck below the earth. I can’t imagine a more spiteful heart than yours.”
He chuckled. “And yet I do not kill you. What do you make of that, little fae?”
“It fits with the curse.”
His black-scaled head lowered, approaching halfway. “What do you know of the curse?”
Fear of the creature still tingled in my veins. Every movement felt like a predator’s evaluation. “I watched Carys cast it over this kingdom. Watched her invoke your power.” Finally, I met eyes. “She kept her promise to you, didn’t she?”
“Kept her promise?” He scoffed. “Not nearly.”
“What did Carys choose”—I nodded at Eury—“the flames, or her soul?”
“You still don’t understand, little fae.” Caustrix’s nostrils widened, shrank. “But you have time. Maybe the rest of your life. Would you like to hear a story?”
“A story of what?”
“Of a king.”
My chest tightened. “Yes.”
A pleased rumble sounded in the dragon’s chest. “A thousand years ago, you fae had become docile and weak. Naturally, your kingdom had been ravaged by humans. They plundered your land, your women, every valuable thing you possessed. They killed all dragons, though I know not how. They even stole the last dragon egg, guarded by the Sylvanwild queen. She kept it deep underground—in the mountains near Noctere, beside a lava flow—hoping it would hatch.”
So he was an Unseelie dragon. Caustrix belonged to our court. “And did it hatch?”
“Yes. After hundreds of years, the creature inside the egg felt safe enough to emerge.”
“And you came into the world.”
Two rings of smoke appeared from the dragon’s nostrils. “I came into the world, the rarest of all dragons. Do you know of the acid dragons, veyre?”
“I know of you.”
“Our blood is a solvent.” Pride laced his words. “It eats the world to make room for itself. Where acid flows, no magic but our birth court’s may survive.”
That was why Eury could stand in his flames. That was why she could call the acid rain. This was the power that had scared me from that first night, and quickened my breathing even now. “That’s why she can’t use solaire.”
“My acid drinks every drop of magic her little body tries to hold. Feralis thrives because it’s mine. The rest?” A laugh. “She’d need a straight injection of it through the center of her to make any difference, and I suspect such a thing would kill her. She does have a heart, yes?”
I didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t grace him with any reaction.
“Two days after I hatched,” Caustrix said, “the Sylvanwild queen was beheaded.”
I saw a flash of a head severed from a body. The horror in the dragon’s small, wide eyes. “By a human king.”
“Of course.”
Of course.
“The king loved me. Well, as much as humans can love. I was his greatest prize, singular in the whole world and small enough to ride on his shoulder. Yet he was covetous, fearful. And so he brought me down into the earth so I could grow in secret. He came down often, told me stories and sang songs.”
The terrible truth shimmered in the distance. I didn’t want the dragon to continue; I couldn’t bear to interrupt.
“Humans live short lives—shorter when they’re paranoid,” the dragon said.
“As most humans with power are. How did he die?”
“Oh, I imagine his heart stopped. I only know he never returned. And after years, I presumed in his paranoia he told no one about me.
“The years stretched. I grew. Did you know a dragon grows even without food? As it turns out, a dragon cannot die from starvation—not of the body, or of the mind.”
Now I stared at the wretched creature. “I didn’t know that.”
“Six hundred years passed before Carys came. By then, I had begun to think the world had ended. Or maybe I had. What’s the difference, really?
Death doesn’t mean what you think it does, little fae.
Try six hundred years of solitude and you’ll break in a dozen different ways.
” Now a plume of smoke appeared from his nostrils.
“A spiteful heart, you say. That’s pretty.
The privilege of sanity allows for prettiness. ”
Six hundred years. How had this creature held on to any semblance of truth, of self?
“Carys found me.” His head rose high on his elegant neck.
“A curious little lowborn girl from the southern district, she crept her way into the sewers. Even then she possessed the ears to hear and the determination to delve deep. Back then, humans came and went from the catacombs, stacking bones on bones on bones.”
Oh, no.
“We became friends,” he said. “I gave the girl my tooth willingly. And I did not make her choose between the flames and her soul.”
Despite the heat before me, my hands had gone cold. I pressed my eyes shut. “She also gave willingly,” I whispered.
A hum issued inside his great chest. “You are smarter than the other veyre. Yet you have a terribly expressive face. You can hide nothing.”
“The choices are the same,” I said, my voice a rasp. “They’re the same fucking thing.”
Carys had been a child when she’d given herself over. That was how she’d gained power in the trials, as a queen. She was the reason Feyreign had regained its might—had pushed back the humans.
The dragon had given her the tooth. It had given her a thread to its power.
But the cost had been great. Too great.
“You spoke of promises,” Caustrix said, low and lethal. “Carys swore to destroy this kingdom of worms. To bring down the sky. Yet what promises do any human or fae truly mean—truly keep? She brought down the sky. Acid rain. But she couldn’t destroy it.”
I opened my eyes. Before me, Eury stood motionless in the flames. She had been forged by Caustrix’s acid. Twenty years of it. A daughter of his legacy—of the scorn that had been given over to Carys. Which she in turn had carved into the fate line of that one archer.
A fate carried down. Spite given over, and power with it.
Above me, the edge of Caustrix’s shorn-off tooth gleamed from the corner of his maw. “So you see now, veyre, the truth of the world. You see why the veyre before you brought the dagger back to this place and begged me never to give it up. And do you know what I said to him?”
My eyes stung. They blurred. “You promised.”
“Yes. I promised.” The dragon gave a short, soft chuckle. “And then I ate him.”