Chapter 66
The moment the vicar dies, the ground groans and shudders.
It’s as though the earth is revolting. Etherlight sparks and bursts, cracking stone and pocking the sculptures of the Grand Chapel.
The screams continue from beyond and from within—the Mercy Knights still howl behind me, holding their faces as gold drips away.
Most of them have collapsed to the floor. Some have gone silent.
But all I see is Vicar Darius. His crimson blood that stains the altar and the Ether around us emits a noxious haze like the scourge, as though this whole time he has been rotting from within. He was the real blight that beset our city.
A hand closes around mine, yanking me away from the vicar’s corpse. I’m swung around and find myself face-to-face with Lucan. His other hand rises, cupping my cheek.
“Isola…” he breathes.
“It’s over… It’s finally over,” I whisper, even as the world around us crumbles. Even as my knees threaten to give out.
“No.” Lucan’s eyes are wide enough to encompass all the horrors of the world. “It’s only just beginning.”
I open my mouth, but no words come. The ground continues to shudder.
“We have to go.” Without another word, he shifts to my side and wraps an arm around my waist, supporting me. I might be healed by some miracle, but I am utterly exhausted.
“Go where?” I’m in a daze. The others are waiting with equally panicked expressions.
“Far from here.” Lucan pulls me quickly through the chapel, and the others flank us. The Mercy Knights are struggling to stand and can do nothing to stop us. The one on the ground is still breathing, but they’re thin, raspy breaths. His cheeks are sunken.
“We must help them.” I tug Lucan’s hand. “We can’t leave. Vinguard needs us.”
No sooner have I said as much as than unfamiliar man shouts, “She killed the vicar!”
“She… What’s happening came from her! The vicar tried to kill her to save us.” One of the Mercy Knights is struggling to her feet.
“No. You don’t understand. Vinguard is a sigil. It was Valor who made it—who made the Font.”
“Heresy!” Another curate appears in the doorframe. They must be running from the square outside.
“I know what I’m saying is hard to believe, but—”
“Isola Thaz impersonated Valor Reborn to kill the vicar!”
The curate lunges for us. Luckily, he’s unarmed, and Lucan deflects him, pulling me away. Ember launches in, Pia not far behind. Myla and Dazni on our sides, regarding the other curates warily.
“Isola, I know you want to help,” Lucan says softly but hastily, eyes flicking around, assessing every threat closing in on us as a low rumbling shakes the ground ominously beneath us. “But I don’t think they’re going to listen.”
“We have no other choice.” We’re backed into a corner. A whole city who is going to see us as the enemy outside. “We must make them believe.”
“We have one other choice.”
Lucan’s words catch Pia’s attention. She shifts back, fists still up, and locks eyes with Lucan. “Are you sure?” Her voice is tight with worry.
“I’m not sure about anything. But we don’t have any other option.” Lucan wears an expression of sheer determination, eyes narrowed and jaw hard.
“Are we getting out how I think we are?” Myla’s eyes dart between the other ashborn. She nearly vibrates with excitement. It’s far more energy than I have left in my tired bones.
“Myla, now is not the time to sound like you’re about to get sugarcane,” Ember says dryly. Pia just shoots Myla a look.
“I have been wanting to see this for years.” Myla gestures to Lucan. “He’s the one.”
“No. Not me.” Lucan leaves no room for doubt as he looks at me. “It’s Isola. It’s always been Isola. Every credit, every praise, and every hope is her.”
I rub my stomach where the wound should be. Where there is mended flesh and not even an ache. I instinctively wielded magic I don’t even comprehend.
The ashborn carve us a path through the curates strong enough to stand outside to the courtyard in front of the Grand Chapel.
A few punches are thrown. But it’s mostly shoving and brandishing of Mercy daggers.
There’s a reason why the Creed has Mercy Knights to uphold its teachings—the curates hardly put up a fight.
It’s easier than I would’ve expected because most of the curates are on the ground, wailing in pain like the Mercy Knights inside the chapel.
They’ve crawled to the stairs, but one or two didn’t make it.
A man and a woman lie on the ground, eyes blank, skin shriveled as though all the life has been drained from them.
Lucan pauses to release me, waiting to completely let go until I find my feet. “Wait here.”
“What are you going to do?” I nearly grab for him to keep him close.
With a sad smile, he gently tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. He struggles to find words, and all he manages is, “Forgive me.”
As he steps away, I reach for him. “Lucan—”
Pia blocks me with a strong arm. “Give him space.”
I glare at her, but I don’t move. Not because of her command, but because this is clearly what Lucan wanted. Still, it feels as though a part of me is drawn toward him with an invisible string that tugs from my heart to his. Something far more powerful than what flowed between the Vicar and me.
Lucan strides to the far end of the courtyard before the Grand Chapel, far from anyone else.
He looks small and almost insignificant amidst the cracking foundation of Vinguard and the glittering haze of Etherlight that seems to flow in reverse from the Font deep below.
He shifts his stance and looks back to me one last time before Etherlight collects around him, swirling like a windstorm.
My lips part in a soundless cry, my heart thundering in my chest. I know what’s about to happen before it does, because I’ve seen it before.
“Lucan!” I scream as he is engulfed by thick black smoke and raging fire.
Wings unfurl from the vortex. Small at first, then growing to massive size. The smoke and flame condense back onto his form as scales of fire orange and smoke black. Two horns curl from his head by his temples, just above his ears. His eyes are completely orange, sparking with flame at their edges.
For a second, I can still see the man, even half-coated in scales and clothed in smoke and flame.
But then he disappears completely as the fire burns away the remaining flesh.
With sparks and embers, claws grow, scales cover, bones snap, and a scream of anguish rends the air as the large form of a dragon fills the square.
The ground feels like it’s tilting beneath my feet, and I reach out to hold on to Pia.
It’s him… The dragon from all those years ago. The one who attacked me.
Horror hits the back of my throat like bile. This man attacked my city. I think of the bodies and the flames. Of the destruction.
But, then, the copper dragon lowers its massive face to us and stares right at me—right into me.
His eyes aren’t the blazing orange I remember from six years ago. His pupils are not slits. He stares at me with familiar hazel eyes.
“Lucan?” I whisper.
A dip of his chin. It’s him. These are not the vacant eyes of the dragons that attack Vinguard. It’s the man within, just in a different shape. It’s like the flash I had of Saipha in her dragon but more solid and sustaining.
Lucan said he didn’t remember anything for a long time after the day of the attack. What if there is the person and the beast? It’d be one thing the Creed got right. The dragon traps the people within when they transform. But something can bring them back, something I don’t yet understand.
One hand on my chest, over the scars against my heart, the other on his muzzle.
“It was you. It was always you.” The way he was drawn to me. The way that even when I found him insufferable, I couldn’t stop myself from staring at him. The way I was compelled to trust him over, and over, and over again.
The mark on my chest—the sigil, my father told me—he gave it to me. Etherlight flows between us like a dance. We are tied together in ways I can barely understand. I breathe, and he does the same, in tandem, as if we share one breath and one body.
“So. Amazing,” Myla whispers, breaking the moment.
Ember has dropped to her knees at her sister’s side. Tears stream down her face. “It is possible. It is possible,” she repeats over and over. “They can be changed back.”
“We need to move!” Dazni scans the walls. “A dragon is now in Vinguard.”
Pia nods in agreement and grabs my elbow. Dazni helps the twins.
Lucan lowers his belly to the ground and relaxes a wing. Dazni begins to climb the wide, scale-coated muscle and bone that connect the membrane of the wing. Pia is next, and she extends a hand back to me.
I don’t hesitate. I take it and begin crawling up the wing. I might not know everything, but I know that even though the body might be the same, this is not the dragon that attacked me six years ago. This is Lucan. My Lucan.
Dazni, Ember, and Myla have made it atop his back, and Pia is not far behind when a shift in the Etherlight has my head jerking in the direction of a tower.
“Lucan, go!” I scream. “Go now!”
His monstrous head turns, and he sees what I do. With a mighty flap of his wings, he takes to the skies right as cannon fire shoots across the city, and I am helpless to do anything but cling to him.