by Sarah Dalton
An expression flitted across Tinian’s face and was gone before Luca would determine what it had been. “Of course,” he said. “Commander Ingran could perhaps suggest some names from within our forces here in Reyalon.”
“You do not need to—”
“It is a favour,” Tinian said. “I will speak to him at once. Your Majesty, thank you for reconsidering. You will make a wise king.”
He left, and Luca stared after him, biting his lip. He highly doubted that the Gold Council ever did anything “as a favour,” and he did not like this decision at all. But he did not know what his other option was. Serena had said that the plague must be treated quickly, and they did not have the money to buy more medicines from Xantos.
He should find Brother Axil, but Luca was afraid to tell his Governor that he had agreed to Lord Tinian’s request. So, instead, he sat in his father’s chair in the council room and tried desperately to feel as if he belonged there.
Reva
Reva’s wings beat strongly in the darkness as she circled Nesra’s Keep. She could not see the gardens and buildings below very clearly, as the rain was driving against the stone, making even the light of the lamps and the watchmen’s lanterns barely a warm flicker in the storm.
She did not have to see it, though, to remember it. Her wings beat once, twice, and then she flattened them and banked around the All-Seeing Tower. King Davead used to come here regularly, flanked by his guards. No one knew why, and though she knew Serena and Matias would dare one another to follow him, as far as she knew, neither of them ever had.
Below, in the great hall where rain was running off the roof tiles, was the throne room. Just beyond it were the gardens through which she and Luca used to run.
Reva circled wider. There—that was where Luca had his rooms. Once, he had told her he liked the view from them, but when she went to visit him, he was too weak even to get out of bed. The doctors said he was like that when he was ill, and she understood that he had lied so she would not worry about him.
It was one of the first times she had realised she might truly love him someday. Luca had always been kind. He had always been eager to please, eager not to be a burden or a disturbance. Surely, he would be a good king. Surely, it was worth seeing him. She could land here now and go to the king’s chambers. She knew where they were.
Or would he be sleeping in his old rooms? That would be like him, she thought.
Her wings carried her lower, but still she wavered. What did she really know of Luca anymore? She had heard stories in the tavern that he was strong now, that he had fought side by side with the Xanti soldiers as they broke the gates and came ashore. Clearly, his weakness was gone. If Stefan’s rumours were true, Luca was a Menti, and he had killed Matias. Reva had dismissed the story of murder out of hand, but the fact remained that several years had passed since she had last seen her childhood friend.
She could not be sure it was safe. If she landed here tonight, she would have to tell him how she had come to be in Nesra’s Keep, and then he would know her secrets, and what would he do with them? What if he, like Davead, was committed to wiping the Menti out?
She turned and slipped away in the storm. She had to find out more before she could trust Luca with the story of who and what she was.
But how?
She landed heavily in a clearing in the forest outside the city, hitting the ground too hard, transforming too fast, and rolling over leaves, stones, and far too many brambles. For a moment, she stared up at the sky and let the rain fall on her face, and then she forced herself to sit up and retrieve her clothing. At least she had learned how to fly, even if she could not land and transform back very well yet.
She waited as long as she could for the water to dry a little on her skin. Her dress, hung over a bush beneath the densest tree she could find, was nowhere near dry yet, but there was no reason to make matters worse.
When she finally put the dress back on, she shivered at the clammy feeling of the wet fabric. She needed a fire, but she did not dare to build one with the Ulezi on her trail.
Thieves. Those had been thieves, she told herself. Or rapists. Common, run-of-the-mill, two-a-copper criminals who had seen a lone woman in an inn and seized their chance. But no ordinary girl would have jumped out that window.
Her breath caught, and the familiar fear gripped her. This was how it started. Stories got told, and the Sisters heard and they came….
She would have to enter Reyalon next time by another gate, and do as much as she could to change her appearance. She would go to Nesra’s Keep because she would have to do so. She needed Luca’s protection. She would determine whether he was Menti or not before she told him her story. Surely, if he were Menti, he would not turn her in for her powers.
She had been so absorbed in her thoughts that she did not notice the unusual snap of branches until it was too late. Before Reva even had time to look around for the source of the sound, she found herself staring into two slit-pupiled eyes. A long tongue snaked out to taste the air between them, and the Ulezi hissed as it crouched down to look at her. It was a light, airy sound, but not one she could mistake for anything kind.
Reva screamed before she could stop herself. Her fingers curled into a fist, and she came up onto her knees as she drove it forward. It hit the Ulezi in the nose, and the thing stumbled back from her with a howl of pain.
Reva pushed herself up to her feet and fled through the undergrowth, cursing herself for her stupidity. It had been Ulezi at the inn. If she had taken the warnings seriously, she would have run for her life, not flown over Nesra’s Keep in her dragon form only to return here, within easy striking distance of where they had first found her.
In her terror, she did not transform. Her mind circled around and around: clearly, they already knew she was a dragon shifter, but if they did not, she could perhaps convince them that she was not one. But they knew. Why else would they have come to her in the forest? But maybe…
She could hear them calling to one another behind her, and she felt bile rising up in her throat. They were going to kill her. They were going to rip her heart out.
Now she faced one fact with terrible certainty: what Aron had done to her family, he had done because he was so afraid of the Ulezi. Aron was a strong fighter and a confident man. His madness, which had grown over the years since he had massacred her family, had shown her that he was not a remorseless murderer.
He had judged the Ulezi to be so frightening that it was worth it for him to kill a family, parents and children alike, to keep his own family safe. How could Reva not have seen that before? The Ulezi must be the stuff of nightmares.
One hurtled into her path and she screamed, skidding to a stop out of instinct. It was the wrong move. It allowed them to surround her. There were five of them, all with those long tongues, all tilting their heads to stare at her through inhuman eyes. Seeing those eyes in an almost-human face was horrifying.
Reva stumbled back. Uselessly, she berated herself. If she had kept running, she might have managed to get free of the one in front of her and keep going into the forest.
To what end, however? There were five of them and one of her. She would tire eventually, and even if by some miracle she managed to escape, they would find her. They would always find her.
An iron lash, the same sort of torment that the Sisters once wielded, snaked out to catch her wrist. Reva looked down at it dully. She should have transformed. She should have kept running. She should have flown far, far away so they could not follow her.
Fury followed the numbness. How dare they try to imprison her? She was a dragon.
She roared her fury at them. It came from a human throat, from the bruised and battered body of a mother, from a tiny woman that these Ulezi did not fear at all, but Reva knew she was more than that. She was not, and had never been, just human. She had survived the death of her family, she had lived through Aron’s attempt to end her line forever, and she had freed herself from the Sisters.
/>
She would not die here, she vowed to herself. She pulled on the arm that was trapped by the whip so that the Ulezi holding it pulled back, and then she released the tension in her arm and let the momentum carry her. She lashed at his face. She did not have claws in this form, but she was a dragon. She raked down his face with her fingers and screamed again in victory when he staggered back, clutching his eyes.
The lash was made to link and catch, so it did not fall away when he let go of it. Reva knew she could not take her time to pick at it. She needed to focus on the next Ulezi, and the next after that, until all of them were gone.
There were enough, however, that she must do more than just focus on one. She darted around the next so that he stood between her and the others, and they could not mob her while she fought him. In a moment of inspiration, she flung the chained arm out and let the handle of the whip begin to swing. The teeth bit into her wrist and she cried out in pain, but the handle hit the Ulezi in the head and bought her a moment of surprise. Reva kicked out to drive him back, and then searched the space around her, desperate for any sort of weapon.
She barely heard the roar over the howl of the wind and the sound of her own panting, but what she did hear caused her to whip her head up and around. Fire came from above to catch the cluster of three Ulezi, and they screeched in pain. It was a sound from beyond the mortal world, full of fury and agony that was not merely born of this moment.
No, the Ulezi suffered. All their lives, they suffered. Despite herself, Reva found compassion for them as they died.
She was so consumed with watching the three that were killed by dragon fire that she neglected the one she was still fighting. He reared back up with a hiss and a shriek, and she understood the look in his eyes without his needing to say a word. You’ve killed my friends, and I am about to die. But I can take you with me. And she still had no weapon.
A blue-green dragon came bursting through the trees with a scream and impaled the Ulezi on one claw. Jaws snapped down to rip the creature’s head off, but instead of a gulp, the dragon gave it a look of disgust and spat the head out before transforming into Carlia. She stumbled for a moment on bare feet and looked at Reva, panting.
Both of them looked back to the clearing, and a moment later, Sam’s voice called, “I got the last one!”
Reva had fled from them. She had been furious, unable to face them after she had learned the truth of what had happened between their families. Now, however, she took two steps and flung her arms around Carlia. The other girl hugged her back, shivering both from the fight and from cold as the rain hit her naked body.
Reva gave a strangled sort of laugh. “We have to get you clothed.”
“Yes.” Carlia pulled away with a laugh of her own and went to retrieve a leather pack from the ground. “I put my ankle in this before I transform, and then I can carry clothes with me, see?”
“That’s clever.”
Reva looked away while the woman dressed. When she looked back, it was to see Sam standing with his sister. The rain had flattened his shirt against his chest and his hair to his forehead.
A memory came, unbidden, to Reva’s mind. They had transformed back in the caves, and for a moment, Reva’s body had been pressed against Sam’s. He was not her husband, the man who beat her and wanted nothing but sons from her. He was not Luca, the boy she had thought she would marry. He was only Sam, and she was only Reva.
Tears stung Reva’s eyes, and she could not have said why.
“Thank you,” she said instead. “I would have….” She bit her lip and looked down at the forest floor. “Thank you.”
There was a silence.
“We should find shelter,” Sam said finally. With Aron gone, his voice had taken on more authority. “The five here were the only Ulezi we had word of in this area, but we need to be warm and dry. We should return to—”
“No.” Reva was grateful for their intervention, but she refused absolutely to go back. “I am not continuing to play the game your parents played. I will not hide myself away.”
“Reva.” Sam stepped forward. He was frustrated, his mouth a thin line. “What, then? It’s too dangerous out here. You were nearly—”
He broke off and turned away, and Reva saw with a pang of guilt that her brush with death had truly frightened him. Before she could stop herself, she stepped forward to touch his face with one hand. She was aware of Carlia looking away as Sam froze in surprise. He turned to look back at Reva.
“I know it is too dangerous to stay out here with no plan,” Reva told him. “But we nearly destroyed ourselves. There’s a chance we are the last of the dragons. We need a better plan than hiding away in the caves.”
After a moment, he nodded. “I saw an abandoned barn nearby,” he said. He was still holding himself rigidly, aware of her touch. “We will go there and…make a plan.”
Serena
Serena made her way down a side corridor and tried not to appear as if she were rushing. After the council meeting, she had gone back to her rooms to check on Carolina. Though Stefan was missing and his forces had been driven back, Serena could not shake the fear that something might happen to her sister.
In truth, she felt guilty for advising Carolina not to fight as they approached their forced marriages. Some of Carolina’s spirit had been knocked out of her, not only by her brother’s cruelty, but also by the fact that Serena had not stood by her in defiance.
Serena had thought often of how to explain why she had been so insistent that they not fight. Stefan was cruel and capricious. If even half the rumours about him were true, what might he do to them for defying him? What might Mikkel do to them? Better married and alive than dead. But when she saw Carolina’s face and the shadow in it that was now always there, all she could remember was that she had told her younger sister to go along with the marriage. That would be what Carolina remembered.
This time, as always, Serena had lingered awkwardly in the outer chamber and asked inane questions. She had tried to provoke Carolina into being her usual, irreverent self, but instead, her sister had only grown annoyed and had taken her book into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
Now Serena was late to meet Lord Tinian and Brother Raphael, a man Tinian had told her would help them with the distribution of the plague cure. Her blood heated at the thought of what she had been told at the council meeting. Many ships full of medicine had been set on fire by Stefan’s ridiculous zealots, and now Estala was being beggared to buy another shipment of medicinal herbs.
It made sense that the Xanti would need more money to produce yet more of the cure, especially when they must fear a wider outbreak in Xantos as well. Still, Serena did not like the way Lord Tinian bargained over price while people were dying.
She forced herself to smile as she approached the door. She would be gracious. Whatever problems there were between the two nations, she swore she would not add to them by being as haughty and unpleasant as Stefan had been.
“Lord Tinian,” she said with a warm smile as she entered the room. “I hope you have not been waiting—oh.”
The man by the fireplace stood and bowed respectfully. “Princess Serena.”
“Are you…Brother Raphael?” When Tinian mentioned a Brother of the Enlightened, skilled in healing, Serena had pictured someone like Brother Axil, older and more experienced in running an effective campaign against the plague.
“I am.” He smiled at her.
Serena came closer, curious. Brother Raphael, despite her earlier imaginings, looked to be no more than a year or two older than she. His brown hair lay neatly on his head, with glints of red and blond catching the light, and while his face was perfectly pleasant, it was his eyes that caught and held her. They were a dark brown, so expressive and alive that Serena almost found herself leaning toward him.
She realised she had been staring, and she flushed. “I apologise, Brother Raphael. I did not expect you to be so….”
“So…?” he echoed.
/> Serena was almost annoyed by the innocent expression on his face. He knew well what she meant, but was choosing to pretend otherwise. She took a seat by the fire and, after a moment, gestured for him to retake his. “So young. You must be a prodigy in your studies.”
“All that matters is whether I can help bring an end to the plague,” he said seriously. “Any talents I have are useless if they do not serve the Enlightened God.”
Serena tried to keep a small frown from her face. In anyone else, she would suspect that such devotion was false piety, but she had the strong sense that Raphael believed what he said.
“Then you believe that what is required of us is to use medicine,” she said after a pause. “Not to build temples to Anios.”
Raphael gave her a small smile. It was impossible to tell from his expression what he thought of any of this. “The Enlightened God gave us all the bounty of this world, and our talents. Through this, we have learned the secrets of medicine. It would be cruel to give us such an understanding of the world and expect us not to use that to alleviate the suffering of our fellows. I can see no purpose to that.”
“I agree with you.” Serena responded with a half-smile. Though she did not doubt the piety she had seen in Raphael at the start, now she could also see his pride in his talents. From the strength with which he said the words, she could see that other priests must have questioned him. She arranged her skirts as she thought. “It must have been difficult for you to say such things when my brother Stefan was on the throne.”
Raphael gave her a cool look, and she saw that she had underestimated his talents as a courtier. He was not simply going to speak, he was going to wait to see her leanings before he did so.
“Brother, before you answer, let me be frank with you. Before Stefan disappeared, he and I were not on good terms. He believed that I sought to supplant him, and I believed that he was not acting in ways that would help Estala’s citizens. I was effectively a prisoner when the Xanti fleet arrived.”
