Chapter 59
No. “No.” The word escapes as a gasp. I step forward. “Saipha, I didn’t mean to—”
I don’t get to say anything else.
The eyes. Then the hands, the disembodied voice of the vicar drones in my mind, narrating one of the worst moments of my life.
Saipha’s hands stop trembling and go as rigid as the rest of her.
“Saipha.” Her name is a gasp and plea. I grab her shoulders, shaking her, as if I could rattle this from her.
“Saipha, focus, please. I was wrong. You’re right, I promised.
I promised, so I will stay with you.” I can barely speak the words as emotions choke me.
“But I can’t do that if you don’t stay with me. Stay with me.”
“Isola.” Lucan approaches from behind. I’m sure he learned the signs from the Creed, too. He sees what I see.
“We can go together.” I don’t say where. It doesn’t matter. Let her imagine anywhere. “We’ll go somewhere warm and safe.”
“Isola…” she whispers. “It hurts.”
Her fingers begin to spasm, wrists bending in every possible direction.
My hands slide down her arms, trying to lace my fingers with hers to get them to stop.
They don’t, and all I get is the feeling of crunching and cracking beneath my palms. But I hold them there because I don’t want anyone to see.
And yet, right now, it feels like the entire world is staring at us.
“I don’t want it to hurt anymore,” she whispers.
“It won’t, I promise.” I will promise her the world if that’s what it takes.
“Make it stop, please.”
“I will do anything, everything in my power to make sure it stops hurting. So stay with me. Please.”
She opens her mouth to speak again, but the only thing that escapes is a low, gurgling noise.
“Isola, step back.” Lucan’s voice is severe. “Now.”
I don’t have time to object. Saipha’s arms violently spasm outward, shaking off my grasp.
She lets out a scream. Then she convulses, body thrashing against me with such force, I tumble backward.
Lucan catches me and pulls me back against his chest, wraps his arms around my shoulders to hold me still.
“Let me go,” I beg.
“You can’t help her now; she’s already dead.” The words are so cruel, even though he says them gently. They’re underscored by the toll of bells above. Never have I heard an alarm for a dragon attack from the inside.
Time has run out.
Saipha staggers backward, grabbing her head.
Screaming in a way that rakes my bones. Commotion rises in the stands.
The other supplicants get as far away as they can.
Lucan and I are pushed backward by a flood of what my senses tell me is undeniably Etherlight that spirals from her in a cold tornado. It manifests into a haze of frost.
As if pulled by invisible strings, her arms fly out to either side, as rigid as boards.
Her fingers condense into fists and then shoot outward.
Where there were once nails are now long claws that look as if they’re carved from solid ice.
Her hands are already larger, turning blue.
Her skin begins to split and jut out, forming the arcs of tiny scales.
“Clear the arena!” inquisitors shout.
“All spectators to the back.”
“Supplicants through the door!”
The doors that are set into the wall swing open. The other supplicants waste no time sprinting through them to the safety of the city beyond. Doors that Saipha was so close to going through. You were so close to being free. The thought lodges as a sob in my throat. But I still can’t move.
“We need to go.” Lucan tugs on me.
“I’m not leaving her.” My voice shakes, tears streaming down my cheeks, but I will not leave her. Even though I know what this means…what will happen next. I raise my voice. “Saipha, I’m not leaving you! I promised you. I’m sorry. You were right, and I was wrong. So please, come back to me.”
The surge of Etherlight continues to grow. It singes the ground beneath Saipha white as permafrost crackles out from her toes, and she rises several inches into the air.
The rest follows faster than you would think. The disembodied voice of the vicar finishes. And it does.
Bones snap and crack. Saipha no longer screams in agony. She doesn’t make any noise at all. Her mouth is agape as her jaw unnaturally unhinges and begins to lengthen. Too many teeth fill the space, each the same glittering cut crystal as her talons, each as jagged as the last.
Another scream fills the air, but not from her. It’s one of pain—of hurt so deep and raw that there can be no recovering from it. A figure races down the stands, leaping to the stadium floor. The moment the light hits him, I recognize Saipha’s father.
Marius stumbles, having landed hard, his expression utterly shattered in its devastation.
I want to save her. Tell me how to save her, I wish I could say, looking from him to her.
What good are you if you can’t help us? Why are you even here? Cindel’s voice is my reply, echoing within my mind. You should’ve saved her.
Save her. But I don’t know how. All this power, all these answers, and all I have is more questions. I’m as worthless as I was when I entered the monastery.
As my friend disappears, replaced scale by scale by a mindless killing machine, my heart feels like it’s being split in two, a piece of me forever ripped away. It feels like I’m the one that’s being shattered from the inside out. Twisted. I want to scream. To cry. To do something.
But I can’t. I’m helpless.
So the least I can do is not leave her side until the very end.
Saipha hardly resembles the girl she once was—the girl I’ve known since we were little kids.
The thin sheen of sweat now glistens on arched rows of scales.
Her body has become three times its size.
A tail grows from the base of her spine.
Ice and frost made real by sheer magic hide the most gruesome parts of the transformation as flesh and muscle tear, changing and elongating. Swelling.
Her skin now shimmers with a brilliant blue hue, the color hardening fully into mature scales that gleam under the arena’s light.
Arms and legs are still there, though thicker—more powerful—and ending in talon-like claws that could rend metal in two with one determined strike.
Wings so vast that they nearly touch the lights above unfurl from her back, the frosty membranes illuminated from behind, casting bony, veined shadows.
A chilling gust sweeps across the stadium as they unfurl, forcing the Mercy Knights that had been racing toward her to brace.
Lucan spins us around, shielding me with his body—daring to put his back to her. Even still, frost coats my hair and crusts my eyes. I pry them open to look over his shoulder.
“We need to get farther away,” he says.
“I can’t leave her.” I grab him by the vest and plead with him to understand. I have to save her. What good am I if I can’t? I was helpless to save the other supplicants, Cindel’s mother, Father… I can’t abandon Saipha, too. “She’s still in there. I know she is.”
He doesn’t object. That alone gives me hope that he understands, maybe even agrees.
A roar shakes the very foundations of the arena, followed by the rumbling of the beast landing on all fours. Lucan and I nearly fall over. We’re close enough that Saipha could bite us clean through if she wanted.
Crossbows fire. A scream lodges in my throat.
Every instinct tells me not to object. This is a dragon before me now.
Let the knights do what they’ve been trained for.
But all I can see is my friend. Even in that elongated face that’s both terrifying and majestic, I see her still trapped behind those all-blue eyes. Still screaming for me to do something.
The swirl of Ether around her deflects the projectiles that aim for her vital organs as she finishes her transformation.
“Close the line! Move in!” a leader shouts from somewhere. More Mercy Knights condense around the upper rim of the stadium floor.
Her father has recovered, and Marius races forward, pulling a crossbow from his hip. The arms fly out automatically as part of his draw. In one fluid motion, he’s readied a bolt with sigils etched onto it—a projectile engineered to cause the most harm to a dragon.
“Don’t!” I can’t stop myself.
He fires.
He shoots at his own daughter. The bolt is deflected by a wave of her wing that’s almost followed by a swipe of her claw.
But she halts. Saipha’s massive head turns to her father, and I can see her draconic eyes widen.
For a second, slits are pupils. Blue irises seem greener.
He must see it, too, because he stops, frozen to the spot.
Your daughter is still in there, I want to say. But Lucan speaks before I can.
“Isola, pull yourself together.” Lucan shakes me, half dragging me back. I fight him. “That’s a dragon.”
“That’s my friend.”
“You’re dead if they hear you say that.” The words are harsh. Yet, somehow, I continue to ignore them even when I know he’s absolutely right—when for my own good, I should let him pull me away.
“I can’t leave her.” I lock eyes with his, showing I’m not backing down. “I can’t. I made a promise to her—to all of Vinguard! I’m supposed to be everyone’s savior, but what good am I if I can’t even save my friend?”
“Steady. Aim. Fire!”
The knights unleash another barrage on the dragon. Saipha snarls, spinning, using her frost-covered wings to deflect the attacks. She retaliates with a roar that sprays icy breath on the upper ring of the stadium.
“Bring the rifle!” It’s the vicar’s voice.
My blood turns as cold as the gusts of wind rolling off her body.
I’ve heard my father speak of this weapon—something he’s been working on ever since he had the idea for the cannon.
A smaller version that could be wielded in two hands by just one knight.
Weaker than a cannon but still much stronger than a crossbow.
A weapon that he hoped could change the tides of war and let us go fully on the offensive and push into the mountains.
I didn’t know he finished it. Is that why he’s dead? Did he outlive his usefulness?
“Saipha.” I struggle out of Lucan’s arms, stepping around him.
This time, he lets me go. His eyes are distant and filled with defeat.
I ignore them. “Saipha, I know you’re in there!
” I raise my voice, and her massive, scaled head whips around to me.
I hold out my arms in a gesture that hopefully shows I have no weapons—that I mean her no harm.
“Don’t do this. Come back to us all. We don’t want to be without you. I don’t want to be without you.”
I dare to draw Etherlight. It sparks in the air around me and her. No wonder she could see it on the rooftop… She was becoming a dragon herself.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t figure it out sooner,” I whisper.
“Clear the area!” a knight barks from up along the top of the stadium. I think he’s talking to me. But I don’t budge.
Saipha has stopped moving; she’s focused solely on me. As if acknowledging she’s listening—that my instincts are right.
“Fight this.” It’s too late. I know it is. But if I don’t try, I will regret this day even more than I already will. “You’re strong enough. If anyone can beat the curse, it’s you.”
Her head lowers, scaled chin almost touching the ground. This is the closest I’ve ever been to a dragon’s face before—even closer than the attack weeks ago. Closer than the beast that tried to carve out my heart.
But the one similarity she has with those other two encounters is her gaze. She looks at me with the same quizzical eyes that those dragons had. As if it’s the first time they’ve ever even allowed themselves to consider that, maybe, we don’t have to fight and kill each other.
I extend my palm with more confidence than I did on that night. I allow more Etherlight to collect. I don’t consciously draw it from the Font—I draw it from within myself.
“It’s all right,” I murmur. “You don’t have to do this.” I try to make my words as soothing as possible.
The dragon slowly blinks. And I blink back. Its eyes shut once more, and for a heartbeat when they open, they’re no longer blue. A familiar shade of green, a stare of recognition.
Saipha. My heart flutters. My palm nearly meets the tip of her nose. Etherlight swells within me, reaching its maximum. I feel it rising like a current. Light begins to glow. Maybe… Maybe I could reverse the curse.
There’s a flash of light, and a resounding boom follows on a second’s delay.
The beam of Etherlight is indeed smaller than a cannon’s, but it fires straight through Saipha’s neck like a lance made of pure light. Then a shock wave shoots out from it as it explodes, decapitating her.
She doesn’t even have a chance to make a dying gasp. The dragon’s head falls to the ground, followed by its body. Completely limp.
My hand hangs midair. Part of me still wants to touch her. To pry open those giant eyes just to see if I had imagined the flash of green. She was in there. My friend was in there. And they murdered her…
I stagger back, trembling. The meager contents of my stomach upturn and splatter across the ground not far from her head. I grip my knees, heaving and gasping for air.
It’s me. She told me as much last night.
That quiet confession… She knew it. She’d felt the curse overtaking her for who knows how long.
Weeks, likely. I see her paranoia in a new light, her snappishness, her exhaustion, her trembling.
What I thought was fear and the Tribunal getting the better of her was really the curse ravaging her body.
She fought it for so long.
“You were so strong,” I choke out, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
You were the strong one, believing in me until the very end, and I let you down.
I want to throw my arms around her massive face and apologize for all the ways I failed her.
To mourn for the friend that was far better than I deserved.
But there’s no time. At least not for me.
“Apprehend her!” The prelate’s voice echoes across the stadium.
Figures race toward me in my periphery. I don’t move. There’s a second where a rogue instinct tells me to run. But I continue staring at Saipha.
“I’m sorry.” My fingers finally land on the tip of her scaled nose. They linger there, only for a second, but long enough to feel nothing left within her—no power, no spark of life.
Then I’m tackled to the ground.