Truth of Embers

by Caitlyn McFarland

  Despite waiting nearly an hour for Owain to arrange whatever he was going to do to the dragons who’d tried to help her, there had been nothing but radio silence from Rhys since Kai had left her rooms. Was he packing up his army? Would he leave her? Would he leave them both?

  She steeled herself. She wanted him to leave her. That meant he would be safe. She felt bad for Seren, but Owain wouldn’t outright kill her.

  No matter what happened, Rhys had to be safe.

  “Come up here, Kai,” Jiang said.

  Kai hesitated, which earned her a prod from Kavar, who stood guard behind the thrones. She moved around in front of the carved stone seats and automatically dropped to her knees. Kai might have found a way not to break, but that didn’t mean she invited pain. And as much as she loathed bowing to Jiang, not bowing meant a public whipping.

  Three of those had been enough.

  “They’re coming.” Jiang’s voice was smug. “Turn around so you can see.”

  Kai turned, still on her knees, but steadily refused to look at the arena. The platform with Jiang’s and Owain’s thrones perched directly at front of the stands, about eight feet above the black sand. High enough to ensure they wouldn’t miss one second of the bloody action below.

  Owain was fond of gladiatorial competition. Not to the death or anything. Like he’d said, he wanted his soldiers to be alive for war with the humans. But he thought that violent combat nearly to the death was the best training any of them could get.

  Owain rose and pulled Kai to her feet. “Come. Let the traitors see who they’re dying for. Give them that, at least.”

  Kai couldn’t help but look. Four guards restrained a man and a woman right below the platform. The captives, an average-looking pair who would’ve been in their forties if they were human, were both struggling and pleading in Welsh, which Kai could identify, but not understand without Rhys to translate. They were white, so she assumed they were Clan Draig—Elementals. She couldn’t see their indicia well enough to tell which of the four elements they commanded.

  Owain growled something at the male captive, also in Welsh.

  Desperate to be anywhere else, Kai let her thoughts wander. For all it was endangered in the human world, Welsh was the lingua franca of dragons. Probably because both of their kings spoke it. Kai remembered Ffion telling her once that each clan of dragons had ruled throughout their history. In a detached way, she wondered if that meant the language they used changed based on who the ruling clan was.

  The man and woman cried out, derailing Kai’s determinedly distracted train of thought. Owain spoke again, cutting them off. The arena went utterly silent. Dragons sat on the edges of their seats. The looks on their faces raised the hair on the back of Kai’s neck.

  “Dod dreigiau. Lladd ein gilydd ar unwaith.” Though Kai couldn’t understand his words, they carried a power that resonated through her bones and into her head.

  He’d used the mantle.

  A collective intake of breath from the crowd. The male captive dragon went bone-white. The woman let out a horrible cry.

  Owain gestured at the guards, and they released the two captives and ran for the seating area of the amphitheater.

  That didn’t bode well. “Rhys?”

  It took him a second, but he answered. “I’m here.”

  She replayed the memory, focusing on Owain’s words. “What did he say? What can I do to help them?”

  Rhys “watched” the memory. Disgust and sorrow seeped through the bond. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “But what did he say?”

  The man and woman were staring at each other now. The woman was shaking. The man had stepped back from her, clenching and unclenching his fists. Kai could actually see sweat dripping down their faces. Whatever Owain had commanded them to do, they were resisting with all their strength.

  “He told them to become dragons...and then kill each other.”

  Kai’s hand flew to her mouth, ever-present chains around her fingers biting into her lips.

  Owain sat on his throne. “Now, Wingless, sit and watch what happens to those who try to help you.”

  Kai ignored him, frozen in place at the edge of the platform. He hadn’t bothered to use the mantle. As Wingless and not a true dragon, it had no effect on her.

  “Kai.” Rhys again. “There’s nothing you can do. They’re going to die.”

  Vivid as life, an image flashed through her brain. Rhys, struggling out there on the arena floor. Rhys, forced to kneel in front of Owain. Rhys, his blood seeping into the black sand as Owain killed him.

  The image knocked the wind out of her. For an instant, she let herself feel the pain of it, and knew that what she was about to do was right. “I’m glad Owain found out about the plan. It’s all right, Rhys. Go back to Eryri.”

  “What? Kai—”

  The sand around the male dragon rippled. He fought the transformation, but power collected around him in a crackling storm that usually passed too quickly to be noticed.

  Two guards stood directly below her. Each man had a dagger in a sheath at his belt. Kai wasn’t the best fighter—not compared to a dragon who had been training a thousand years or more—but she would have surprise on her side. She might be able to grab the dagger.

  Too bad she’d never be able to get to Owain with it. It would take too long to climb back to the platform. If she went for the prisoners instead...

  She couldn’t save them from death, but she could prevent the atrocity Owain had engineered with his zealotry and misuse of the mantle.

  Kai stood, ready to leap. She didn’t make it. Owain—closer than she’d realized—snatched her by the neck of her shirt and yanked her back. “What do you think—?”

  A roar ripped through the amphitheater. Without warning, the female transformed. In place of a chubby, middle-aged woman, there curled a gorgeous dragon with mirrorlike scales and transparent wings.

  An Air Elemental. Just like Ffion.

  Just like the dragon who had tortured Kai that morning.

  The man still knelt on the ground. The sand whirled around him in tiny black dust devils raised by a wind that wasn’t there. He shouted something at the female, tears in his eyes.

  She lunged, snapping jaws over unresisting flesh. Blood sprayed between her teeth. Bones crunched like breaking celery.

  Dead.

  Just like that.

  The female dragon, released from the command of the mantle, opened her jaws and made gagging sounds. She shrank back from the shredded body of her mate. With a keening wail, she lunged at Owain—and straight at Kai.

  Owain let go, and Kai leaped from the platform. The dragon’s claws whistled by her ear, and she rolled as her body hit the sand. Owain shouted, calling again on the power of the mantle.

  The dragon stopped.

  Kai stared at the scene from her position on her back. The Air Elemental had gone as still as a statue. Owain lifted his hand and blasted her with magic so soul-chillingly cold that even Kai—despite the distance and her fire magic—could feel it. The female shrieked, and Kai had to roll again as the dragon fell to one side, thrashing.

  Owain had frozen one entire side of her chest.

  “Rhys!” Kai’s internal voice shook.

  “Stay back. It will be over soon.” He encircled her again, and this time she let him, imagining the warmth was his arms. Pretending for a heartbeat that he was there. That he could truly keep her safe. It was fast becoming her new favorite fantasy.

  The female writhed on the ground. Owain was still spraying her with ice magic from the platform. Frost clouded the silver scales, unfurling like ferns up her neck and down toward her heart. A slow, cruel death.

  It wasn’t right.

  As she had the night she’d saved Rhys from being killed by Kavar, K
ai was moving before she realized it. She jumped over the wildly whipping silver tail and charged for the guards below the platform. Now that the female had become a dragon, stabbing her with a knife would be like poking her with a needle.

  Good thing the guards also held spears.

  The guard on the end didn’t see Kai until it was too late. She snatched the spear from his loosened hand and pivoted, sprinting for the dragon. Timing her jump, she landed on the female’s head, grabbing a horn to keep from being thrown. Between beatings and not eating for a few days, Kai was weak. When the adrenaline wore off, she was going to feel this.

  But as soon as the dragon caught sight of the spear in Kai’s hand, she went still. “Please,” she whispered.

  Kai had an instant of uncertainty—she had killed twice before, but only in self-defense.

  This felt more important, even than saving her own life.

  “Stop!” Owain howled, the power of the mantle blasting the arena.

  The dragons did. Every single one of them.

  But in this, Owain could not touch her.

  Kai plunged the spear through the female’s eye. There was a nauseating pop. The silver dragon drew breath, as if to scream again. Then the spear sank deep, deep into the soft tissue of the brain.

  She went limp, as dead as her mate.

  Kai’s hands shook. Her feet were damp with the fluid that oozed from the dragon’s eye socket. She fell from the huge silver head and landed on her butt in the sand.

  A blow knocked her sprawling onto her side. Stars burst in front of her eyes. Owain had jumped down from the platform and loomed over her, breathing heavily. Kai could hear Rhys in her head and realized he’d been shouting at her the whole time, telling her not to do it, to keep herself safe.

  She didn’t care. She’d done the right thing.

  Besides, what was Owain going to do? Kill her?

  Owain kicked her in the ribs. Kai heard a crack and yelped like a whipped dog. She held up a hand toward Owain. She wanted to tell him to stop, but she couldn’t breathe. One of her ribs was broken. By now, she knew the feeling well enough.

  It will pass. It will pass, she chanted to herself as her vision went black around the edges. The door closed over her fear shuddered, all drowning emotions threatening to escape. Here was pain again. Always pain.

  Owain drew back his foot again, and Kai closed her eyes, bracing herself. This was the first time Owain himself had struck her—usually, he left the dirty work to others—but even if she could run, that would only make it worse.

  The expected kick never came. Kai opened her eyes. Owain stood over her, clenching his fists, nostrils flaring. After a long moment, his neutral mask snapped back into place. He reached down and hauled Kai to her feet. Her broken ribs shifted and she cried out, but bit off the sound. Maybe too literally, because her tongue started to bleed.

  “When I am punishing someone, you do not interfere,” Owain hissed.

  Kai gasped out, “After tomorrow it won’t be a problem.”

  Owain nodded, as if that was just so. He shouted something in Welsh to the dragons in the audience—dragons who were staring, every single one of them, at Kai. Then he dragged her toward the stairs that led out of the amphitheater.

  Kai nearly passed out from the agony of the forced march, but pride burned hot inside her.

  The white dragon might kill her tomorrow, but at least she hadn’t gone down without a fight.

  Chapter Five

  The Price

  Ashem scowled at the snow that covered everything in a cold, wet blanket: the tents, the ground, the trees. Even from the sky it stretched as far as he could see, from the valley where Rhys’s army was camped all the way to the low mountain peaks nearly invisible against the star-flecked horizon.

  He landed just outside the camp and called the change, diminishing into his human form. The fog of darkness around him dissipated, leaving him ankle-deep in melting white fluff. Not for the first time, he was grateful that that the clothes he’d been wearing as a human reappeared when he shifted forms. There weren’t many things that could make his mood worse, but being naked in the snow would have been one of them.

  “Ashem?” Juliet prodded his mind, the feel of her sending a spider’s web of cracks through the careful avoidance he’d been attempting to cultivate. She’d arrived with Morwenna while he’d been gone scouting the best route for the army to take. Once Owain had revealed that he knew about the army, Ashem’s mission had become to locate Owain’s scouts. It had taken him longer than it should have.

  Rhys had filled him in on the new plan—Juliet’s plan—when Ashem had stopped to rest. He hadn’t been surprised to find out she suggested it. Only his own mate could come up with a plot made entirely of all his worst fears made real.

  Juliet brushed his mind again, but Ashem didn’t respond, only slogged into the camp, which was as busy as a kicked anthill, and toward his tent. They hadn’t seen each other since Ashem had left Eryri two weeks before to investigate whatever Owain was doing in the Taklamakan Desert, but he’d see her soon enough. Sunder him if he knew what he was going to say. Do. He’d forgiven her for kissing Kavar. What she’d done after that...he didn’t know if he could.

  Not that he would have done any differently, had the situation been reversed.

  Love made him a hypocrite.

  Despite that, he had missed her. They wouldn’t have been reunited so soon, but his investigation in the desert had been placed on hold when Deryn and the Seeress had gone missing. At first, they’d all thought Rhys’s sisters had been taken by Owain. As it turned out, Deryn had gone on her own, trying to bring her estranged mother into the war on Rhys’s side. Seren had followed.

  It had been a bad decision for both. Mair had wanted to help her child win the throne, but not Rhys. The woman had tried to trick Owain and Rhys into killing each other so that the mantle would go to Deryn. In the end, all Mair had achieved had been her own demise and the current steaming pile of dung in which they found themselves.

  He couldn’t say he was sorry she was dead.

  Ashem kicked up bursts of powdery snow as he approached his tent, trying to force his thoughts in line, focus on the tasks he needed to finish before—

  “Ashem?” A chill breeze wafted past, bringing with it the scent of chamomile.

  He went rigid. Reminded himself he hadn’t forgiven her. He lifted his gaze, a steely voice prepared. He would be curt. Cold. If she saw the anger, she would not see the hurt. The fear.

  Juliet stood just inside his tent—one of the only ones still standing—and held open the flap. She was bundled in pink and blue, her short, pale hair poking out from beneath her sensible hat.

  So herself. Familiar. Beloved.

  Despite his intention to be hard, his voice came out a choked whisper. “Juliet.”

  He closed his mouth and mind over the word that tried to follow. Why?

  He knew why.

  She’d been so desperate to help Kai. That, he could understand. Kai was Rhys’s heartsworn—she was necessary both so Rhys could function and for the continuation of his bloodline. More importantly, he reminded himself, Kai was Juliet’s best friend.

  Owain trusted Kavar. His brother was in a unique position to help her bring Kai home. Freeing him should have been enough to guarantee his cooperation. But nothing was ever enough for Kavar—he’d had a price.

  Juliet.

  She’d agreed to live with Kavar for six months of each year. When Rhys had seen Seren’s vision of their army winning the battle, Ashem had been relieved beyond words. He’d assumed that meant they’d never pay Kavar’s price.

  Now they would have to.

  An uncertain smile crooked one corner of her mouth and her gloved hands were clasped tightly in front of her. He was surprised she still wore them,
since magic provided by Fire Elementals kept the air inside the tents comfortably warm. “I missed you.”

  Ashem was unable to fight a surge of bitterness. They were pledged. He belonged to her completely, but she no longer belonged only to him.

  Juliet made a disgusted sound. “Really? This is what we’re going to do? I haven’t seen you for weeks and you’re giving me the silent treatment?”

  Though the speech had begun indignant, Juli’s voice wavered toward tears at the end. She marched up and stood so close he couldn’t move without touching her. “I told you I was sorry.”

  “Apologies change nothing.” He inhaled her scent on the frozen air. Ancients, he wanted to hold her and forget. He’d resolved not to break them the way he and Kavar had broken. Why could he not just take her in his arms? Tell her he loved her? He was paralyzed.

  She made a frustrated sound. “What do you want from me, Ashem?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but could not find the right words. What was it about love and the pain of losing it—or thinking he might—that twisted him up until the only thing that could comfort was the thing that had hurt him to begin with? He’d vowed never to feel that way again, after Kavar.

  And yet, here he was.

  Juliet’s soft mouth—Ancients, that mouth—turned down in a frown. “I know you’re angry, but Kavar is Kai’s only hope.”

  “Don’t think for one second you’ll get him to betray Owain for far more than you’ve agreed to give him.” At his tone, the dragons nearest them suddenly decided they had somewhere else to be.

  “That’s what you’re worried about?” Arms went around his middle, and he tensed. Juliet had closed the distance between them. When she leaned her head against his shoulder, his arms pulled her close without his brain’s consent. Closer, until she was tight against him and his cheek rested against the top of her head and his heart was trying to wing its way out of his chest.

  “I’m not going to sleep with Kavar. Even he isn’t awful enough to expect that.”

  “You don’t know my brother.”