Chapter Forty-Two
“Did you hear that?” I asked Zain.
“Hear what?”
“I think the dragon just spoke to me.”
He looked at me as if worried I was going mad.
Maybe I was. Or maybe Lia had somehow infected me by always being in my head, and now I could speak to dragons.
Or perhaps I could only hear them. “Greetings,” I said.
The dragon seemed to nod, as if acknowledging me.
“Uh, what is your name?” I tried.
Graarvin.
“His name is Graarvin,” I told Zain. It sounded like a roar.
Zain put his head in his hands. “I don’t understand what’s happening right now.”
“Neither do I. But he doesn’t look like he wants to eat us.”
The dragon made an amused snorting sound.
You are both so tiny that you aren’t worth the effort it would take to clean you from my teeth.
“Oh. Good. Thank you.” My heart began a more normal rhythm now that I knew we weren’t dinner.
The dragon looked at me expectantly. I couldn’t keep trying to make small talk with it.
“We have come for the caduceus of Eramis.”
Yes.
He lumbered over to the left. I heard a large clanking sound and saw that Graarvin had a collar around his neck, held in place by extremely large chains that were bolted in several places to the wall.
When he moved over, I saw that the cave ended abruptly in a deep chasm. But above that massive hole was a floating island. There was a shiny, white marble altar in the middle, and floating above that . . .
“The caduceus,” Zain whispered. “I didn’t think it would actually be here.”
I put my hand over my chest. I was so glad that we’d found it. “You thought that, after running through a room of death traps and killing spiders big enough to eat a chicken and getting past an acid-spitting hydra and engaging in a conversation with a giant dragon, it wouldn’t be here?”
“I thought it was a myth. That we’d been sent on a fool’s errand.”
“You sound disappointed.” It was an extremely strange reaction.
He shook his head but didn’t respond.
Graarvin had settled himself down, his head now much closer to mine. I saw on his neck that there was a lock with a key inserted.
“Can that be opened?” I asked. “Can you be freed?”
Only human hands may turn the key.
I couldn’t imagine it—to have a lock with the key inserted and not be able to do anything about it. “Did an Epirian do this to you?”
No. The goddess of discord did this.
The stories had said that an Epirian created this cave and hid the caduceus. How could the goddess of discord be involved?
I was about to ask the dragon when Zain said, “Will you give me the rope? I think I have a way to get on the island.”
“Here.” I handed it to him. “Sorry about the hydra blood all over it.”
“I’ve seen worse,” he said with a wink. He took it and trotted over to the edge and began to do something with the rope and one of his knives.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what kind of dragon are you?”
I am a war dragon, and loyal servant of Invara. Your ancestors used to ride my kind into battle.
The image that put in my head . . . I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to ride into battle on the back of a war dragon. “How have you survived in here?”
It takes an extremely long time for a dragon to starve. And I assume that magic has helped to sustain me.
We were fortunate he hadn’t gone mad, being chained up here for so long.
“Are there others like you?”
I do not know. The goddess of discord hunted my kind for a long time. I hope that there are, but I am unaware of what has been happening in the outside world.
“And you can only speak to me?”
I can only speak to Children of Invara, yes.
If Actos had succeeded in kidnapping Lia and sending her here, she wouldn’t have been able to talk to Graarvin.
Only a Thracian could.
And I could only yield the caduceus of Eramis to a Child of Invara.
That would explain why no Epirian would have ever been able to get past this point. It was a clever fail-safe, to set up a challenge that only an Epirian’s enemy could pass.
“Why didn’t Invara release you?”
She is bound.
“Bound by who?”
The goddess of discord.
Graarvin said this as if I should already know the answer.
I stepped closer to the dragon. “I am going to release you since we have already established that you won’t eat me.”
He snort laughed again.
Graarvin moved his giant claws out of the way and lifted his head slightly so that I could get to the lock and key. The end of the key was as big as my head. I attempted to turn it but it stuck. Like it had been rusted over.
“I don’t want to break it,” I said. “Let me see if Zain has something that will help lubricate the lock.”
Wait, Child of Invara. I have something for you.
The dragon lifted up and moved the scales in the middle of his chest with one paw and reached in with the other.
“What—”
He had something small in his grasp. He leaned down and opened his claw.
It was a red crystal shard that seemed to be pulsating.
This is yours.
I took it. “What is it?”
He didn’t answer my question.
I was instructed to give it to you if you released me.
“But I haven’t released you yet.”
You will.
I put the crystal into one of my bags and turned to look for Zain.
He had used the rope to get himself over on the island.
“Impressive!” I called out.
“Thank you. The caduceus, illora—would you say it belongs to you?”
“To me?” What an odd question. I looked back at Graarvin. “If anything it’s his, but I guess it is mine until we give it back to Actos. It’s my quest. Why would you ask me that?”
Zain reached into his tunic and pulled Dagger out. He set the dog on the ground next to him.
Then a moment later he undid the clasp on Dagger’s collar.
Something happened that I didn’t understand. Dagger growled and began to change his appearance. He grew in size, almost doubling. His features changed, his snout was longer, his teeth sharper, his eyes changed to a golden color.
Small silver horns sprouted out of his head, and that same color created stripes on his body.
My heart beat so hard in my chest that for a moment I couldn’t speak. “What just happened to Dagger?”
Zain didn’t answer.
I looked up at him and he stared back at me. I glanced to his right, and my stomach dropped when I saw the altar was empty.
The words he’d once said to me echoed in my head.
Sleight of hand. I get everyone to look one way while I’m doing something else.
Dagger had been his sleight of hand, taking all my focus while he stole the caduceus.
Before I could say anything, Zain took off one of his rings, sticking it into his pocket.
Black lines began to form all over his skin, twisting and turning, climbing like vines as they settled in.
My mouth dropped open and I nearly fell to my knees.
“You’re . . . you’re Epirian!” I said in shock, unable to believe what I was seeing.
Zain was an Epirian. How was that even possible? My mind raced, unable to comprehend what I was witnessing.
He pulled the god-weapon from the back of his belt, confirming that he had stolen it.
“This doesn’t belong to Actos. There is someone else who wants it more and is willing to pay,” he said.
All the air left my lungs. It had all been a job for him. He had spent so much time telling me how often people hired him to steal things and I had disregarded it. How long had he been planning this?
My nerves frayed, my stomach turned over. People were going to die if he took the god-weapon and gave it to someone who had hired him.
“I can’t save the concubines without that.” The only thing I could think of was to try and appeal to his conscience.
“They’ll be fine.”
It was as if he’d slapped me across the face. I didn’t know who this person was. It was not the man I had spent the last two weeks with.
He touched another ring, and there was a swirling motion behind him that settled into what looked like a window. I saw buildings behind him.
I realized he was about to leave.
I had given him another chance when I was not in the habit of giving people second chances. I’d allowed him the opportunity to redeem himself, and it had all been one massive lie. He had meant to betray me from the beginning.
I had been open and honest with him, vulnerable, and this was how he repaid my trust?
By betraying me?
Again?
I felt like such a fool. A deadly anger rumbled in my gut and continued to build and build until all my limbs were shaking.
“I am going to find you, Epirian. Even if it takes the rest of my life, I will find you and I will take back the caduceus, and then I am going to make you regret this.”
He grinned at me. “Good luck.”
Then he touched his topaz ring and it turned him invisible. Dagger jumped through the portal and a moment later it closed.
They were gone.
For a moment I just stood there, my body numb, not able to move or think.
Child of Invara.
That was something I could do. I went over to Graarvin, trying to keep my thoughts straight.
My mind wouldn’t calm down. How long had he been planning this? Had he lied about everything? What kind of man traded money for lives?
The worst, most abhorrent kind.
Something he had never hidden from me.
He had told me what he was, over and over again. I was the fool who had decided to pretend that he could be something more.
That we had something special between us.
A giant lump settled in my aching throat and my eyes shimmered. I shouldn’t have trusted him. I should have stayed angry with him and not let him in.
How could I have let him betray me again? I knew better and I still let him trick me.
He had used me to get through the caves.
Zain had stolen the diviner stone from me, the caduceus, my trust, and my confidence in myself.
Worst of all?
He had somehow managed to steal my heart.
Bile bubbled up in my esophagus as my throat constricted. How could I have allowed that to happen? I was always alert. Vigilant.
Ready.
But he had snuck past my guard and my defenses.
Such a fool, such a fool, echoed repeatedly in my head as my chest ached with pain. I felt tears burning at the back of my eyes, and that served to push me toward anger.
I would not cry over that thief.
He didn’t deserve my tears.
Just my wrath.
The red-hot fury I felt fueled me and I was able to turn the key, listening as the lock groaned. I started imagining all the ways I was going to torture Zain. How I would make him beg for his life and apologize to me over and over again until his throat stopped working and—
The mechanism gave way and the lock came loose. I pulled it out of the collar, and then Graarvin yanked the collar off himself.
Thank you.
I nodded. I didn’t have it in me to be polite at the moment. Instead I asked him, “What will you do now?”
As if that would help guide my decision on what to do right in this moment.
Because my thoughts were whirling and scattered.
I couldn’t force them to settle into place, couldn’t get my heart to stop pumping so furiously.
Zain’s betrayal and the rage I felt over it overwhelmed nearly everything else.
With one lone exception.
The sharp, throbbing, miserable pain that pierced my chest cut through the anger no matter how hard I tried to ignore it.
I had been hurt before. I had experienced loss. Betrayal. Heartbreak.
And I didn’t understand why this pain was so much worse than any that had come before it.
Graarvin’s voice rang through my head as he answered my inquiry. I am going to attempt to return to my goddess. Child of Invara, what will you do?
My mind came into sharp focus as my fury turned cold, settling into my veins, freezing me from the inside out. I didn’t have to mull over my response, didn’t have to consider options. There was only one path in front of me, clear and undeniable.
Only one way to stop this pain.
There was no question what I was going to do.
“I’m going to hunt down the king of thieves, and then I’m going to kill him.”