Chapter 9 #2
"I think he's a myth. I think he's masked himself very carefully over the years, so no one suspects the truth. He's the key to my transformation. The power in his heart will Awaken me."
Oh, shit. Someone's insane. "You're not making any sense."
"Why don't you ask him what happened to the dragons? I've spent years tracking down old stories. They say they slumber. They say they turned to stone. All that power, and Queen Mab brought them to their knees. Have you never wondered how?"
"Not... really." If I can keep her talking, then hopefully Keir or Soraya will find me.
"Queen Mab went to the King of the Dragons and proposed a truce between their peoples, forged with a marriage. There was a child," she whispers, "born of both races."
I've never heard this story.
"A daughter who held the power of the stars in her blood, though the dragon was trapped within her.
Her father beheld what she was to become and called her abomination, but the Princess Igrainne turned all of that immense power upon him and he fell.
Together, she and Mab cut his heart from his chest, and the princess consumed it.
With his power combined with her own, she finally had the ability to become what she was meant to be.
"More powerful than a dragon. Fierce and furious and hungry. One heart was not enough. She became afflicted with the need to consume more, and when the dragon race tried to take revenge for their fallen leader, she became their worst nightmare."
"I've never heard of Princess Igrainne."
"You wouldn't," Calliope says bitterly. "The dragons turned to the gods to forge the Cauldron and use it against her.
They trapped her in her mortal form, draining the power she'd stolen and filling the cauldron with it.
Igrainne had to flee, a mere shadow of herself.
In return, the dragons were forced to honor their pact with the gods.
They could no longer walk the world as primordial beings.
They had to give up most of their power, so it would not lure the princess from the shadows, for she hungered still.
Until she drew her last breath, she would always crave a return to power.
And then they buried all talk of her name.
They choked her in nothingness, and killed those who knew the story.
Her memory is lost to the world, but her legacy lives on in the line of children she birthed.
In me. I've felt it whispering through my veins ever since I was born. "
And now she thinks consuming Prince Keir's heart will somehow transform her.
"Dragons don't exist anymore," I say. "They sleep." It's a lovely story, but if it were true, wouldn't I have heard it? No matter how hard you try, you cannot completely bury a rumor. There'd have been some mention of this Princess Igrainne in the history books.
"They don't all sleep," she hisses. "My mother told me that story at her knee. Every night, she would remind me of who I was, and what I was to become. The Cauldron—"
"The Cauldron was a gift from the Goddess."
"You lie!" Calliope lashes out with her blade, and I leap back as it cuts through the air where my abdomen was two seconds ago.
We stare at each other.
So this is the way it's to be.
"I should have killed you the first night," she says, her eyes lighting up with insane fury. "You don't understand. You are a worm. A pathetic, lying wretch of a worm. I thought we could be friends."
She lunges toward me with the dagger. I block her blow, propelling the blade past my nose and snapping a flat palm up into her elbow. Calliope screams, but then she's lashing backward with the blade, a weak blow, but a dangerous one all the same.
"Friends don't kill other friends!" I yell, slapping aside her vicious jabs. The disengage has barely hurt her, and it should have dislocated her elbow.
"My mother warned me," she continues, as if I've said nothing at all. "No one will understand my greatness. They'll seek to trap me in this skin. They'll betray me and hunt me down if they realize what I am. I have to evolve."
"I think your mother should have gotten out more."
"Don't you speak her name." Calliope drives toward me, and this time I have no recourse but to grab her wrist and slam her sideways, into one of the columns.
She screams in thwarted fury, and then her eyes glow with golden magic. "So be it!"
Something grabs hold of me from behind. I fly backwards, slamming into another column, my head cracking on the marble. An explosion of pain slams through me and white drenches my vision.
I hit the floor, momentarily winded.
Movement blurs at me.
Years of reflexes save my life. I Sift out of the way, and Calliope's dagger drives into the floor.
Up to the hilt.
The Sift disorientates me further. I stagger against the column. It's no longer pure white. Blood mars its shiny surface. My blood.
Calliope looks up with murderous eyes. "Well now," she whispers. "It seems I'm not the only one with a secret. Ismena was right. You're not a pureblood."
"Merisel!"
Prince Keir is running toward us, the flaming sword in his hands. And I suddenly realize he's calling my name. Or the name he knows me by.
Calliope's teeth bare in a dangerous smile. "And here is my heart. Here is my key to transformation."
She stands and wrenches at the air with her fist.
The columns start shuddering, tearing away from where they're rooted to the floor. Tiles tear free from the roof, shattering on the marble floor. Prince Keir glances up, and flicks his hand dismissively.
Abruptly the hall re-straightens, as though nothing ever happened. I'm too dizzy to wonder if I imagined it or not.
Shadows blur. Nightmares twist themselves into reality at the wave of her hand. A Banewolf leaps at the prince, but he beheads it with a stroke, and its body splashes into an inky sludge on the floor behind him.
Calliope hisses in fury, and then she turns to me as if she knows she cannot overwhelm him.
"It's over," Prince Keir calls in a dangerously soft voice. "This is my world, and no matter your power, you will not wrest it from me."
But she's closer to me than he is.
"It's never over," she whispers, and waves her hand at me.
Something grabs me from behind. Cold stone hauls me back toward the wall, and I'm reminded of Narcissa's fate. I can't Sift. I can't escape it. I scream as my body starts sinking into stone.
The last thing I see is a blur of golden light as the prince leaps toward her.
And then marble is closing over my face. It flows into my mouth and nose, as if both liquid and solid all at once. I can't scream anymore. I can't breathe.
I'm going to die here, trapped in the walls of the fucking palace, and suddenly a riot of all the things I've never had a chance to do ripples through my mind. I've never known freedom. I've never known love. I've never had a chance to escape the misery of the life I own.
Then everything is shifting.
The wall spits me out onto the hallway floor and I gasp for breath, clinging to it for dear life. Thank the Goddess. My mouth tastes dry and my heart is hammering, and what in the Cauldron's name is wrong with my eyes?
"Merisel?" There's a knee in front of me, though floating specks of white obliterate the center of my vision. "Are you all right?"
Keir.
There's blood on his leather breeches, blood all over the tiles. I see the body, but the white lights obliterate the worst parts of it.
It's only when I turn my head that I realize he decapitated her.
And I'm shaking as he draws me to my feet. Me, who's faced the worst the wraith king can throw at me.
But not this.
Not being buried alive in a wall.
I want to vomit.
"You're all right," Keir whispers, hauling me into his arms. He cradles me against his chest, squeezing tightly, and for a second I close my eyes, breathing in his scent.
"I knew the killer would strike tonight.
The second Ismena came screaming around the corner, I knew we had her, but I didn't realize she had you in her sights.
You're lucky you're still alive." His voice roughens as he says it, and his hand is stroking through my hair.
It feels... nice.
It feels like all the things I want and can't have.
"She was mad." I cannot shake the look in her eyes. "She thought that if she ate your heart she'd... transform. She thought herself a dragon."
"A dragon?" He draws back, his hands resting on my shoulders. "Are you all right, Merisel?" A tender thumb traces the blood dripping from my temple. "You hit your head."
"She hit my head."
Smashed it right into the nearest column.
"Here," he says, sweeping me up into his arms as if I'm some sort of damsel. "There's water and cloth in my rooms. That wound looks like it needs tending."
Nobody's ever carried me in their arms before. I grab his shirt, feeling awkward and precarious. If you cannot afford to stand on your own two feet, then you're in danger.
But that's the kind of thinking I grew up with.
This is Keir. He just saved my life.
I peer over his shoulders as his guards tend to the body. I didn't even realize they were there.
Calliope's eyes stare accusingly at me, her head several feet away from the rest of her.
Fuck it. If the prince wants to carry me, then he can.
Curse the training camps.
Curse my father.
And above all, curse the Dragon's Heart. For one hour of my life, I want to pretend I know nothing about it.