Chapter 22
The water was the warmest it had been in months.
She had turned sixteen yesterday, on the longest day of the year, and Cyrus had finally let her have the afternoon to herself.
They’d returned from the continent only a week ago, stopping briefly in Glacit and then on to Velor to renew trade deals.
She didn’t know why he hadn’t just sent the ambassador; there was nothing interesting about trade talks that should require the king and her of all people.
But it was done, and they were home, and Halos had promised to swim with her today.
Her friend had been strange lately. Quiet.
As if she held a secret she couldn’t bear for the world to know.
Arla had her suspicions, but Halos was two years older than her and what she got up to in her spare time was none of Arla’s business, no matter how friendly they were.
Besides, Halos wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret for long, if what Arla suspected was true.
Her friend took her time easing into the water. The Canus River was so calm today that they would be able to see the silver fish lurking beneath them if they looked carefully.
‘Happy birthday. I missed you whilst you were gone,’ Halos said, beaming a smile as she swam towards Arla.
‘I missed you, too. You won’t believe how dull Cyrus can be when he’s discussing the price of fish.’
Her friend laughed, and any worry she had held before seemed to disappear into the water, long forgotten.
‘Maybe we could watch a play tonight? The tickets for the theatre are all sold, I believe, but…’
Arla’s heart leapt. Halos knew her so well.
They had become practised at sneaking into the theatre and hiding on the floor where the boxes reserved for nobles were. It had happened so often now that the adrenalin that had filled them the first dozen times no longer had the same effect. Now they just enjoyed watching the plays.
Of course, Arla could have fluttered her eyelashes at Cyrus and asked nicely for the royal box – the gods knew he’d never been able to say no to her – but to have this between her and Halos was too precious to ruin it with rules and propriety.
She loved Halos as if they shared the same blood.
They’d both lost families in the battle of Grey Hill seven years ago and there were still raw, aching cracks in them both that they had tried to fill for one another.
In the end, it was easier just to have someone who understood.
Who didn’t need you to speak of it to understand why some days there were tear tracks on cheeks, and the idea of getting out of bed was an impossible concept.
Halos was the reason she hadn’t stepped off her balcony the day after she’d made it into the royal guard by enduring the test of torture and strength to prove herself.
She’d let them hurt her and she’d come out of it feeling nothing.
She hadn’t jumped because she didn’t think Halos would know what to do if she lost the one remaining person in her life.
Her friend had struggled to adapt to running her mother’s shop on Main Street, and Arla wouldn’t leave her to cope alone.
She was swimming, and then she … wasn’t.
She was inside Castle Grey, inside the throne room, sitting on the throne.
Cyrus was standing before her on the steps in a reversal of their usual positions.
He was shouting, she thought. He must be.
His mouth moved, wider and wider, quicker, spittle collecting on the corners of his lips, his brow pinched and angry.
Perry lingered by the doors, panic blurring the edges of the man’s face as Cyrus edged towards the assassin on his throne.
He was close enough to touch her, close enough that when he raised his fist Arla flinched.
The blow didn’t land.
There was a splatter of something warm and wet on her cheeks, and then the King of Hadalyn sank to his knees, the tip of a sword sticking out of his throat.
‘No, no no, no no—!’
She lunged for him, her hands flapping because there was so much blood. The light left the king’s eyes, and the sight of it painted a glazed, painful picture that would haunt her for eternity.
She dared to look up then, to see who had managed to sneak in and kill him.
Halos only looked triumphant as she tore the sword out of his throat.
She woke with a sheen of sweat coating her skin.
‘Dragonhart?’
Dawn was barely peeking through the glass ceiling.
She was late.
It went against everything in her blood to untangle herself from Hark’s hold, to leave him sleeping peacefully as she donned her leather assassin’s uniform and slipped quietly out of Claret Hall.
Thara waited for her in the courtyard, her scales such a polished emerald they were almost obsidian when the first rays of sun hit the dragon.
‘You’re late,’ Thara huffed as Arla climbed aboard with an affinity that still managed to surprise her. The blood in her veins … gods, she didn’t think she would ever feel as though she deserved it.
‘I know,’ she replied out loud, the concentration needed to speak through the bond too strenuous when the fingers of her dream were still lingering on the edge of her mind.
Get a grip, Arla.
‘Has the boy upset you, Dragonhart?’
Arla laughed then, a meek, pathetic thing that made her feel better all the same.
‘No, Hark hasn’t done anything wrong, and the sooner you start accepting him the better.’
The hulking body beneath her rumbled. ‘Never.’
Arla had a heartbeat to grip the horned spikes on Thara’s back before the dragon was lifting from the ground, flapping the magnificent span of her wings as the ground swayed beneath them.
She loved it every time. Now she had it, she never wanted to give it up.
Flying offered her an escape she seemed to have been looking for her entire life. A distance from the things that plagued her. Even the terrible dream of Halos and Cyrus seemed far away now, insignificant against the sprawling mass of mountains and the ocean in the distance.
She wanted to know why the princess had sent her a letter, and indeed how she had managed to find her in the hidden kingdom of Flambriar. The trade merchants were not as trustworthy as they had promised, clearly.
One thing was clear though, the kingdoms were still suffering, and the gods were still upset with them. But how was she supposed to unite them?
It was a stupid prophecy, one that the fates had made to mess with her, she imagined.
As if the fates hadn’t done an excellent job of pissing her off already.
‘Careful, Dragonhart, your thoughts are obnoxiously loud.’
‘Stay out of them, then,’ she called over the wind, flexing her fingers.
‘What’s scalded your scales this morning? I preferred you bleeding out compared to this incessant sulking.’
Thara was right, she was sulking.
Arla made the effort to pull at the bond and speak to her dragon, a closeness she knew Thara would appreciate despite her dreadful mood.
‘I’m nervous, I think. It’s not a feeling I am well versed in.’
A flurry of warmth was sent through the bond, and it calmed something in her mind.
‘It is good to be nervous, Dragonhart. It means what you are about to do is important. It means you care. You may be nervous, but you will not be afraid.’
Sometimes she wished Thara had been with her nine years ago. The ancient wisdom that the dragon possessed often brought her to the brink of emotion and offered a clarity that felt like clouds parting after a storm.
‘Malarye can be violent, Kase warned. Though it is known for its priestesses, I don’t think they are as godly as they would have us believe.’
Thara huffed, the amusement evident in the bond. ‘Well, I didn’t pick you for your meekness, did I?’
Arla laughed, properly this time. What was wrong with her? Of course she could take on Malarye. She was an assassin. The assassin. If Malarye wished for violence, she would deliver it to them on a silver platter.
‘Better,’ her dragon rumbled.
By the end of her fourth day flying, Arla thought her muscles might give out on her entirely.
Thara had taken the strain well, though Arla didn’t miss the way her dragon slept deeply when they landed on rocky outcrops in the ocean each evening. Now, with the distant view of land finally gracing the landscape, Arla could feel the fatigue her dragon tried to hide.
‘Not long now,’ Arla murmured, the dark bruise of a kingdom appearing closer and closer.
Thara didn’t answer her, and that was enough for Arla to know the dragon was tired.
She had denied it vehemently the entire way, sending a flick of irritation down the bond each time Arla accused her of needing rest.
Arla could almost make out the structures of buildings and the mass of people waiting on a rocky beach when the first arrow struck Thara’s hide.
The world halted, and then a swooping feeling fell through Arla’s stomach as Thara faltered, her wings beating furiously to right them.
The dragon rumbled, and then, when a second arrow struck her shoulder, she roared loudly enough to break the sky.
Arrows and crossbolts rained down around them, long silver tips shooting by her as Thara tried to dodge them.
Fear was a foreign thing, but when Arla felt them drop another foot, it seemed to claw up her throat and swallow her. They’d die, then.
Archers on the beach continued to fire at them, and through her exertion Thara let slip the pain and anger and it rushed through the bond, devouring Arla in a blinding white rage of pain and wrath.
She screamed then, and it was like a summoning, a calling for everything to stop.
It made no difference – arrows showered them, another sticking in the spot behind where Arla sat. Thara barely managed to dodge the ones that came blazing with flames.
The dragon roared again, that pain so all-consuming it threatened to swallow Arla whole through the bond. Her head was on fire, her arms and legs and everything screamed.
And they had to keep moving forward. Had to keep going towards that beach because Thara was beyond exhausted, and there was nowhere else to land.
‘Keep going,’ she managed to choke out, her tears burning her skin as she gripped tighter. She couldn’t fall here.
And yet Thara fell another foot, the thrashing waves of the sea even closer than they had seemed before. Arla could see the people on the rocks now, dressed in white, firing and firing and firing from crossbows that shouldn’t have been able to reach them so far away.
More bolts left those crossbows, and as Thara dropped again, she let out another roar, dousing the air in front of them with fire that burnt the arrows to ash.
Thara really did struggle then, the fatigue washing over Arla through the bond enough for her to contemplate letting go and falling to a watery death.
She choked a sob through clenched teeth, gripping tighter and tighter with hands that were cramping. ‘Keep going, we’re nearly there.’
‘They will burn for what they have done.’
Arla didn’t doubt it, not when another crossbolt landed in Thara’s chest. Arla looked down, saw the tip of the bolt dangerously close to the dragon’s heart, and she was filled with a centuries-old rage.
It bloomed within her, from ashes into a roaring flame, burning, burning, burning through her blood, filling her with something old and dangerous.
Thara was there too, somewhere in the bond, watching, still beating her wings through the pain as that power filled Arla’s blood.
Her mind was faraway, her body not hers either as she felt her fingers fumble around the Dragonhart brooch pinned to her cloak.
At the touch of her fingers on the metal the entire sea erupted.
Waves as tall as palaces rose from the ocean and devoured the round of arrows coming right at them.
There was a roaring in her head, and she wasn’t sure if it was her or the dragon that made the sound, only that her blood felt alive, and when her fingers fell from the brooch, the waves fell back into the sea…
Leaving a smiling priestess on the shore of a wet beach, archers arranged around her as Thara crashed onto the sand and sent Arla sprawling.