Chapter 37
Hundreds of black-booted feet marched onwards, ice and rock and blood marring the polished leather like an omen of something evil.
A wrongness hung in the air, too cloying and heavy as it wafted over everything in sight, corrupting the very earth and turning it grey and rotten with every footfall that passed over it.
Something slithered in her veins, a slimy, wretched thing that called to the darkness spreading over the earth like mould, and she shuddered as that thing within her leaned towards it.
Every thought was foggy, like wading through water that was slowly getting deeper, and when there were heartbeats of clarity, she knew she was not entirely herself.
There was something other within her, something that had been growing silently.
Waiting. Watching. And now with an army of dark, dark magic, the thing in her chest was stirring.
Glittering lights lay in the distance, the mountain borders surrounding the kingdom not enough to halt the leeching darkness as the soldiers bearing Kastonia’s crest marched forwards. Arrows rained down upon them, splintering through eyes and chests and torsos.
And not a single man fell.
Blood slid down their bodies, thick and black and oozing – corrupted like everything in sight. She knew then that it was a dark magic, something ancient and forbidden and powerful enough to break and remake worlds.
And it was marching on her kingdom.
She had come here with no body, no sword, and no weapon, nothing other than her consciousness, an awareness that she was witnessing the ushering in of something both new and old at once.
There was nothing she could do but scream and beg and curse the fates and the gods forever allowing the creation of something so wrong.
The men didn’t pay her one bit of notice. They continued their march, the mass of them spreading out through her mountains, surrounding that sacred kingdom she had only wanted to keep safe.
Something in her heart revolted against the wrongness.
Something in her heart leaned into it, too.
She had no strength here, no way of fighting the threat to her people.
It didn’t stop her from trying. She moved through the rows and rows of soldiers as though she were made of mist – a useless thing – but maybe it was better than watching the slaughter about to unfold.
Each of them carried heavy swords that no normal man should have been able to lift.
But they weren’t normal, were they? Because they had been created from something other.
She screamed, she thought, though no one paid her any mind. They were circling the edge of the kingdom now, drawing those long, unstoppable swords ready to storm her home.
She didn’t know how she did it, how she managed to get to the front of the army and stand before the soldier who had led them here.
There was a wrongness about him, too, a power that oozed off him and stuck in her throat and nose.
He would be the one to call this off if only she could convince him.
She would have fought him had she been corporeal.
She imagined her fingers reaching towards him, mist as they were, and to her surprise, when she imagined them digging into the armour of his shoulder, he turned to look at her.
Her blood stopped pumping when she saw the face staring back at her was her own.
The gasp that ripped Arla from sleep was so violent it made no sound at all.
She had to go. Now.
She stripped the sweat-soaked nightgown from her body, pulling on her leathers as quickly as possible, ignoring the protests of her screaming body as she dragged the material over her cut skin.
She tore through the upper levels of the palace, relying only on instinct and years spent inside royal residencies to guide her to the princess’s rooms. The guard stationed outside made no move to stop her as she barrelled through the door, crossing the room in a handful of steps to shake the princess roughly.
Hyacinth woke with swift shock, rearing away from Arla’s violent hands as she blinked away the remnants of sleep.
‘Arla!’
‘We need to leave, now. Flambriar’s in trouble.’ She began ripping open drawers and dressers, tossing the princess anything that would keep the wind from chilling her skin too dangerously on the way back to Flambriar.
Oh gods…
What if she was too late? What if they were all dead and the kingdom was nothing but ash and rubble and what if, what if, what if—
‘I am here.’
Thara didn’t try to reassure her. Didn’t promise they would make it in time. Didn’t persuade her it was just a dream.
It was somehow more soothing than if the dragon had tried to assuage her fears.
Hyacinth climbed out of the bed and began dressing, leaving her hair loose around her shoulders as she dragged a cloak around her and clasped it at her throat.
The two women were running before Arla could scrawl a note to the Queen.
‘Tell my mother I am safe. I am gone with the Queen of Flambriar,’ Hyacinth called back to the guard at the entrance to her rooms, his face frozen in shock as he watched them sprint down the hallway.
Queen of Flambriar.
There would be nothing left of it at all if they didn’t hurry.
Thara waited for them, perched on the side of the cliff inside the palace grounds. Arla hauled herself onto the dragon, careful not to stab her with the blades she had strapped to her body so inelegantly that she wondered for half a second if she looked deranged.
Hyacinth faltered then, a frustrated wariness passing across her face as she looked up at the assassin.
Arla bit down the nasty retort she wanted to hurl at her friend because she didn’t deserve it.
Hyacinth had every reason to be nervous, even though Arla was racing against a relentlessly ticking clock to get back to her kingdom.
‘You’ll be safe, I promise.’
Whether it was the sincerity in Arla’s voice or the impatient growl that came from deep within the dragon’s belly, Hyacinth reached up a hand to Arla’s outstretched one.
There was nothing graceful about the way the princess of Malarye climbed aboard the dragon, and from the way Arla felt Thara tense beneath her she doubted the dragon would tolerate such carelessness again.
‘Hold tight,’ Arla managed to call out, before Thara beat her wings and they were flying.
Hyacinth threw her arms around Arla’s middle, the slightness of the girl already making Arla question her ability to hold onto her for the duration of the journey.
Four days it had taken them to travel here.
‘We’ll attempt it in one,’ Thara said.
It wouldn’t be quick enough. If Elrod had truly sent an army to march on her kingdom, they would be too slow to stop it.
History will repeat itself.
Well, the fates certainly had a way of speeding things along.
Hyacinth was silent – was likely in shock, Arla imagined. But she had been brave, and she had not balked when Arla had shaken her awake, demanding their immediate return to Flambriar. She wondered if the princess had ever crossed the borders of Malarye.
‘Do you think we’ll make it?’ She hadn’t dared ask the question until they were off the ground and flying over the vast expanse of sea.
‘Everything will happen as it is supposed to. I will get us there as quickly as the fates allow.’
Arla fucking hated the fates.
The panic was gripping her heart like a vice, the pressure of it threatening to suffocate her.
She knew Thara felt her fear because the bond was wide open between them.
She could hardly feel the waves of peace Thara tried to send her way.
How could she feel anything other than the same dread coursing through Arla’s blood?
These were Thara’s people too, people she had sworn to protect—
‘You forget I have fought many a battle, Dragonhart. Nerves are welcome and fear is not an emotion that you can allow to drown you. Remember, you can do anything.’
You can do anything.
The same words her father had said to her when she was little. The same words she had chanted to herself as she crawled through the tunnels beneath Castle Grey to find the dragons all those months ago. Her eyes burned.
‘I have to save them…’ The words slipped through her lips and were torn away in the wind.
‘You will.’
She wondered if it was something the dragon knew or only wanted to believe was true.
Neither made her feel any better.
‘I didn’t think there would be so much …
space,’ Hyacinth announced long after the sun had come up and the sea beneath them had begun to sparkle in its reflections.
The princess had stayed silent during the hours of darkness, gripping Arla’s middle with enough strength to take down a bear.
But after hours of sitting upright and getting used to the way the dragon moved beneath her, Hyacinth had become restless.
It had started with her flexing her fingers and readjusting the position of her arms around Arla’s waist. She had gradually begun to fidget, and Arla had smirked at the ripple of annoyance that came through the bond.
It was a testament to how much stronger Arla had got, really.
She hadn’t felt the urge to move at all yet – a difference so stark from when she had travelled to Malarye the first time – and she couldn’t help but feel pleased with the level of fitness aerial training had afforded her.
This was the fittest she had been since she was under Cyrus’s employ.
‘Have you never left Malarye?’ Arla called to the princess.
Hyacinth leant in closer so that Arla could feel the princess’s breath on the shell of her ear when she spoke.
‘Never. My mother kept me close after my father… I was too young to leave before that, anyway.’
Again, curiosity rose in Arla’s mind at the mention of the late king. He hadn’t been a kind man – she had deduced that, at least. But what harm had he subjected his daughter to? And how had she stayed so soft, so gentle in the face of it?
Thara landed on a small speck of an island long after the stars had dotted the night sky and then disappeared.
Arla and the princess slid from her back onto the rocky shore, both women stretching their weary muscles.
There was silence as they ate from the meagre provisions Hyacinth had managed to pack into her satchel, and though Arla begged Thara to go and hunt, the dragon declined.
‘I spent almost a century asleep, absent of food. This journey will be nothing in comparison.’
‘You were asleep then,’ Arla shot back through the bond, averting her eyes when Hyacinth looked at her as though she might have done something strange.
‘As you should be now.’
Arla sighed as she shuffled closer to where her dragon lay against the shore. Hyacinth followed, the wariness in her eyes not enough to outweigh the exhaustion there as they huddled against Thara, glad for the shelter she provided against the wind.
The princess fell asleep quickly, and for a while Arla was jealous.
If only her mind would allow her the comfort of sleep.
Instead, every time she closed her eyes, she pictured Flambriar in flames, her sacred corner of the world reduced to nothing but ash and embers.
There was no way they’d make it in time. If what she had seen was true…
She didn’t dare think of it.
The rest was brief and they were soon back in the sky. Hyacinth gripped Arla’s waist, unable to sleep in case she let go.
‘When those closest to us are threatened, there is nothing but a longing ache to be with them. Do not seek sleep, Dragonhart. Let it come to you.’
She didn’t think it ever would.
‘Do you miss your father?’ Arla asked out loud, surprised at the strength in her voice when all she felt was a lagging weakness. Arla had met Thara’s father once – her first sighting of dragons in Hadalyn. Abredus, the first dragon whom she had ever heard in her mind.
A fleck of emotion pulsed down the bond.
‘I have slept beneath the place you call Castle Grey for longer than you could imagine. Leaving my kin behind feels like a constant strain on the bond, always there but manageable with time. I would not change it, if that is what you mean to ask. My place is at your side.’
Arla’s throat was tight then, her eyes blurring with the threat of unshed tears.
What had she done to deserve such unwavering loyalty?
‘You have shown kindness when this world has demanded you turn hard.’
She wasn’t sure which one of them had thought it.