“Tavaris, no!” Elayne yelled, but he could not hear her. His face was filled with a rage that she too knew. Tavaris wasn’t thinking, he just wanted to be mad. And, boy, was he ever.
Alaion roared, and with a new vigor flung Wren’s body off of his own and into the courtyard wall with a sickening crack. Tavaris was thrown as well, the black aether flooding back into him and sending him off with a burst across the courtyard where he landed in the grass in a heap.
With a satisfied smirk, Alaion pushed himself back up though he struggled, spreading his wings and throwing back his head, his throat exposed and glowing. Again, he had grown in size, his skin stretching between the patchwork scales, pulling itself ever-taut over his features, his wings thinning between the bones. He was so much larger and more monstrous, Elayne had no idea how they would stop him, but then saw it, in the thaumat stone embedded in his throat: a crack.
She stumbled forward, toward him.
“Elly, what are you doing?” Fredrick started after her, but she threw out an arm to tell him to stop short. She knew he could see the orange glow in Alaion’s belly as well as any of the others, but she wouldn’t risk Alaion taking to the sky again and unleashing fire into the city. She had to stop him now.
Elayne strode up to Alaion just as he was about to beat his wings, and he looked down on her at his feet with surprise.
“Duchess,” he growled and dropped down onto all four feet. “A bit late to accept my offer.”
“Accept this.” She alighted both her arms in a brilliantly purple glow, her entire body engulfed in the flame. There was no pain, only warmth as it took her over, the most she had ever produced, and she was going to give it to him, just like he had wanted. All of it.
Throwing her hands forward, the flames shot out and slammed into the dragon’s chest. Alaion’s eyes widened, and he cried out with laughter. “Fool!” he squawked into the night sky. “Your aether only feeds me. I am all powerful, I am the nexus. I am everything, and everything is mine.”
Elayne cried out, holding herself steady. She could hear the others shouting behind her, and she could see the orange lighting up in his belly. She pulled one hand away to create a barrier behind her. “Stay back!” she screamed, the aether surrounding her only growing, enveloping them both.
Alaion opened his mouth above her. “And now to finally end you and your filthy crossblood line.”
The fire of the dragon’s flame cut through her own aether, but only just. She held herself steady even as searing pain shot across her face and over her shoulder. She dug her feet into the ground and closed her eyes against the brilliance, and then the fire was gone, her barrier keeping it at bay, and the orange glow in his stomach went out.
Alaion made a new sound—shock, perhaps, or maybe awe. But the pride had gone all out of his voice.
She dared to peek up. The thaumat stone was cracking.
Then Frederick was at her side, his sword once again unsheathed and plunged into the belly of the dragon. She could see him struggling to keep the blade there just on the outside of her violet barrier, the emerald flame coursing through the sword and into the beast. Alaion made another sound, worse this time.
Behind her the knights were shouting, and then around her other colors lit up as aether was streamed into the beast. One by one the dragon was lit anew with a colored flame that held him in place. His skin stretched, his body contorted, his face no longer pleased. The crack in the crystal grew.
“Just…a little…more.” Elayne was struggling to stay up. Her skin burned and her body wanted to give in, to fall, but this had to work. It was the only way.
“Okay, here goes!” Rosalind’s voice surprised her so that she nearly dropped the aether. The woman came up beside her and swiped her finger through the air creating a fissure from which a tiny dinky crawled out. Rosalind whispered to it, and it scurried back through the hole.
Before Alaion’s face, the sky opened up with an enormous, black mark. Chaotic aether poured out and around him. Hundreds of dinkies poured out and over him, their countless legs crawling down his body as he looked on in horror. The ground rumbled, Alaion howled, and the amalgam that Alaion had become lit up in a rainbow of colors.
Elayne was thrown backward away from the explosion. The air buzzed, and her ears rang, and she shielded her eyes from the brilliantly white light before her until it went out with a snap and plunged the courtyard into total darkness.
Her hands were wet. She blinked down at them, trying to see through bleary eyes what the black, gloopy mess was on them. Her dress had been singed up one side, and was also splattered with a sinewy, wet mess. She picked a shard of something hard and scale-like out of her braid.
Getting up on shaky legs, her vision was slowly returning, and she looked again at her hands. They were hot, and her little finger on the left side was blackened and bleeding. The marks traveled up her arm, a patch of burnt skin on her elbow and bicep. It ached as she moved but did not stop her from running to the others. The knights were scattered around the courtyard, but slowly coming to their feet, each bruised and battered, but alive. Even Tavaris was staggering upward with the help of Bix and Wren.
Where Alaion had stood was now a crater filled with the remnants of a being that was part dragon, part elf, and wholly filled with corrupted aether. Pooled in the deepest part of the crater was a black-red ooze, and matching chunks were scattered about, every bit of what made him whole now in tattered remains across the courtyard.
A sliver of something shimmered at her feet and she picked it up. It was smooth and glassy, but the shard of thaumat stone no longer held an angry, rolling cloud or a corrupted, dark color. It no longer held anything bound to it at all. She blinked skyward and said a quick goodbye to Idris, finally free.
The sense of dread as Alaion had approached was completely wiped out but then suddenly replaced by another sense of panic. Frederick was still lying flat on the ground. Elayne ran to him and dropped down to her knees at his side. She frantically felt around his chest for blood but only pulled off a chunk of what was left of Alaion.
“Didn’t die.” He coughed, his eyes opening slowly to look up at her. “Just like I promised.”
Elayne tried to blink away the tears that were coming anyway. “Well, I did ask nicely.”
CHAPTER 39
The courtiers came out to marvel and poke at the chunks left in the courtyard, but most fled back for the comfort of the hall once they saw what was left. Many more had not come out at all—especially with full bellies and a fear that the worst had not passed, but Elayne and the others knew it had.
They helped one another up, and a group of healers swarmed them, directing the archers to keep everyone else away, fearing the dragon-elf bits might have some residual aether that would cause a whole heap of trouble later. The far end of the courtyard became a makeshift apothecary, the healers barking out commands for the knights to stay put for their injuries to be assessed. They even looked over Wren, discussing what a dragon concussion might look like.
While a healer tried to wrangle Frederick, easier in his weakened state, Elayne took a step back. Another healer came up to her and guided her back down to the ground a few paces away. Exhausted, she complied, but stared past them and out at the field.
The others were okay—really okay—Voss was excitedly telling Rosalind how impressed he’d just been with her, the twins were dizzily cajoling with Bix, and Legosen was propping up Tavaris who actually looked to be smiling despite his father being killed—twice. The corners of her mouth turned up, then she winced at the hand touching her face.
“My apologies, Duchess.” The healer, an elven woman, was biting a lip. “I’ve never…I just don’t know how much I can do.”
“It’s fine.” Elayne shook her head. The pain would subside eventually, and she wasn’t even bleeding. What was a scrape or two in the long run of things anyway?
The healer continued to work on her, and Elayne wondered why she put in so much effort, looking
as strained as Neoma had over Frederick’s dying body in the mountains. “It’s all right,”—she clasped the healer’s hands in her own—“I’m okay. Help the others. Please.”
With wide eyes, she nodded and backed away. Elayne stood and folded her hands before her but could only get out a breath before she heard Quilliam ordering the guards out of his way as he rushed toward her.
“Oh, gods.”
The prince stopped short when she turned to him. He cleared his throat, casting his eyes down, then continued up to her. “Duchess.” His voice was low, and he took her hands. “You…survived.”
“Yeah?” She looked about, confused. “I think that’s a good thing.”
“Of course!” he corrected himself with a weak grin. “I just…you faced a dragon and lived. Truly, you are the only one worthy of the title of queen.”
“Oh, Quill, listen.” Elayne slipped her hands out of his. “I think you may have been a little improperly influenced—”
“Wait!” Frederick’s voice cracked as he staggered over to them, a healer following with fire in her eyes and bloody bandages in her hands. “Don’t! I mean…I have…something to say.” He dropped his hands onto his knees and huffed, out of breath.
Elayne flicked her eyes over him then back to Quilliam. The Prince pulled the knight up by his arm. “Fred?”
“Elly.” Frederick grabbed her hands, the effort making him stagger. “Don’t marry Quill. I mean, uh,”—he glanced sidelong at the prince—“Marry him if you want, do whatever you think is best, but I need you to know something.” He took a breath and stood up straight. “I did what I did because I was a jackass and an idiot, but I kept doing the things I did because I wanted to do those things. Not to win some bet or to make my dumbass friends think more of me. Being with you changed me. You changed me. And I can’t imagine myself without you. I love you, Elly, and I think I always have. I was just too much of a self-centered prick to say it—to say anything—before.”
Elayne’s mouth fell open. She stared back at the knight, sweat pouring down his face and his hair in his eyes. He was dirty and bloodied and beaten, but he was finally himself, the Frederick she’d always known. And while the Frederick she’d always known had made that ridiculous bet, he had also risked his life many times over, and now risked everything else, just to apologize. And that was more than enough.
“Well, that’s…a lot.” Quilliam rocked from his heels to his toes.
“Sorry,” Frederick said to the prince. “I just had to say. I did something really dumb, and I needed to make it right.”
Quilliam cocked his head. “You never do anything dumb, Fred.”
“Oh, yeah, I definitely do.”
Elayne looked down at her hands, still in Frederick’s, then turned to the prince. “Frederick made a bet with Voss, a magically bound one, that he could get you to make me into a queen.” The knight took a breath and nodded solemnly at his friend. “But,” she sighed, “he also accompanied me of his own free will across Yavarid and helped to liberate Heulux. That wasn’t part of the bet—not really—and he did it because he wanted to, not to fulfill the bind.”
“A bet?” Quilliam raised a brow. “What did you wager?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Frederick shook his head quickly. “None of that matters. I won’t stand in the way of your choice, El, but I need you to know that I am truly sorry for having made that bet, for treating you like a stepping stone to something better, but if I could do it all again, I would. The bet was stupid, but we got to be together because of it, and I got my best friend back.”
Elayne’s heart fluttered, and she smiled back at him.
“You’re willing to lose?” Voss crept up behind him. “Really?”
Frederick nodded. “If you’ll have me.” He looked at her earnestly, then swallowed. “And if Quill doesn’t have my head.”
“What were the terms?” Elayne looked to Voss.
“If he won I was going to forfeit all the land I inherited to him. And if he lost, I’d get his magic.”
“You can do that?” she blurted out.
Voss shrugged. “My wagers always work out one way or another. I really didn’t expect him to take it, though.”
“You’ll lose everything.” Elayne squeezed his hands. “Without your magic—”
“I’m just Fred,” he chuckled. “But I’d be with you.”
“In my absolute mess of a duchy. I can’t do that to you. Or to Quill.” She looked back at the prince who would soon be king.
“Uh, well, actually…” Quilliam glanced over his shoulder then back. “As you explained, it sounds like Heulux is in need of its duchess. And it sounds like it might be a bit more work than the crown can handle at the moment.” The smoke from Alaion’s breath had mostly cleared, but the smell of char and ash was still in the air. “I can release you of this proposal, if you so wish.” He seemed to be holding his breath.
“But then,”—she blinked at Frederick—“Your magic. It’s what made you.”
“No,” he told her, pulling her close. “I’m who I am regardless of all that.”
“Well.” Quilliam stepped back. “Who am I to stand in the way of…that? But,”—he sniffed—“I suppose I could sort of fix this. The duchess need only be a queen, correct? And Heulux hasn’t really been Yavarid’s for the last ten years, what’s an eternity more?”
“You’re going to give them sovereignty?” Voss coughed. “Just like that?”
“I’m the king. Or, I will be, come the morning, right?” Quilliam shrugged. “I can sort of do whatever I want. Now, can we get back to my nameday celebration or what?” He threw an arm over Voss’s shoulder. “I want to hear about that gross dragon guy exploding.” He walked the stunned man away.
Elayne watched them go, unsure what she’d just heard. She set her gaze on the ground, trying to process what Prince Quilliam had said, spying Frederick’s sword at their feet. In the blade, her reflection looked back, and she balked. Her face—she bent down to grab the hilt, shifting it so she could see the whole thing in the blade—it was horrible!
Charred and blackened, the skin along half of her face had taken the brunt of the dragon’s fire. Seeing it, the pain suddenly made sense, a throbbing from forehead to cheek, and the tip of one ear almost completely gone. This is what the elven healer had meant when she said there was nothing she could do—she had no experience with dragon fire, the magic to heal it lost. “My face,” she whispered, dropping the sword and standing on shaking legs. “It’s terrible.”
Frederick took her hands again, and she wanted to run and hide, but his eyes forced her to stay. He was looking at her—really looking at her—and she knew he saw her as much as she saw him. “It’s beautiful,” he said, and he kissed her.
CHAPTER 40
With the Heuluxian thaumat stone and its trapped essence of Idris lost, we could do nothing to learn more of its power, and my friend swore on the name of Ea’h she could no longer call up the aether she had used to destroy the monstrosity that Alaion had become, but still we needed to name what had been done, and so we called it thaumaturgy.
- from A Kobold’s Journey, Bixandrus of Breen, pub. 1428 PA
Heulux certainly did need a lot of cleaning up, and Elayne’s council made sure to tell her about it every day. That was, of course, what she put the humans and elves together for, and she was grateful for them, even when they were giving her a headache.
She walked the roads with them to learn what was needed to rebuild and cultivate the long-barren land, and what she would need to offer the people to stay as now they could easily cross the border, choosing to become Yavarindi or stay as a Heuluxian. Sometimes people recoiled from the burns on her face, though she was used to that, but she had learned to flash a smile in return, and word of the kindness of the Burned Queen traveled fast.
Yavarid sent assistance, carpenters, food, medicine, and its best knight as ambassador, and in turn Tavaris and Wren were welcomed at court to learn the ways of the r
est of Maw and to of course teach the newly coronated King Quilliam and his bride, Queen Belladonna, how to ride a dragon.
Neoma remained in Heulux, her healing prowess proving to be a major boon to the people, and she set up an apothecary all her own in the center of town for healing and training. Bix assisted, taking down the stories of those who came and went, and studying the local flora as it slowly came into bloom. The library, he had said, needed a lot of updating.
Rosalind had asked to become one of Elayne’s ladies-in-waiting. She didn’t suspect the former Queen of Yavarid, Astrid, would miss her very much, retiring with Harry down on the warm shores of Breen, and as much as she loved her sister, she didn’t like the idea of serving under her. Regardless, Elayne refused. When Rosalind almost broke into tears, Elayne stopped her. “I don’t need a lady-in-waiting. I do need a good knight, though.” Rosalind swore fealty then and there with a jumble of words that sounded better than anything the Yavarindi knights had ever repeated.
Elayne had neglected one place though: the throne room. She kept the doors shut while she made the rest of the duchy, now country, her priority, but she did eventually let herself in. It was as they had left it, fragmented skulls shattered across the ground, pieces of urns scattered amongst them, empty black cloaks and pools of dried blood.
The throne itself was gone, in its place a cracked dais. The doors to the hallowed space beyond were in splinters, but the brightness of the nexus, now gentle and light, shone out over everything. The whole place was hallowed now, she supposed, as she walked into where the nexus was.
Neoma gasped at her presence and was quick to bow her head.
“You absolutely do not have to do that,” Elayne said quickly, walking up to her. “I owe you more than I can say. But I am sorry to disturb you.”
“You’re not.” The elf smiled, but Elayne could see her eyes were red. “I was just leaving. I have to get back to the apothecary before the others try healing another corrupt squirrel. I appreciate their experiments, but,”—she grunted—“they’re just not there yet.”
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