It was hard to keep them from hearing each other in her mind, and even harder to keep Kavar from hearing her responses to Ashem while still appearing open to him, but she managed. “He’s upset about the sundering,” Juli countered. “We can use this. If I can drive a wedge between Kavar and Owain, you could have your brother back.”
Anger curled in Ashem’s thoughts. “Why? So you can have both of us? It was a mistake to open our connection. The only way this can end is with one of us killing the other.”
“Imagine the advantage of having two Azhdahā on Rhys’s side instead of one on each, canceling each other out.” What Ashem had said was also true—the part about having them both—but Juli would die before she’d admit it. She was so twined with each of them that their hatred of each other tore her apart. Who could blame her if she tried to stop them from killing each other?
Ashem, apparently. “That will never happen.”
“Ashem, you are an adult. The magic makes this difficult, but you have a brain and agency. None of us chose this situation. I love you, not Kavar. I’m sorry that you don’t like that I’m sworn to more than one person, but for now you’ll have to be content. If we can get him away from Owain, that makes the white dragon that much weaker.”
Silence. Then he let loose a string of curses. “They’re having another sundering pain. I have to go.”
He withdrew, clouding their connection. Juli made a noise of disgust, but her hands shook, jingling her chains. She wondered if she could have stopped it, had she been with Kai at the time. Maybe shielded them somehow. Rhys and Owain were powerful, but the mantle was torn, and each of them only had half, if that. Ashem had told her once that the power of the healed mantle would be a question of multiplication, not addition. The same way her power had grown when she’d heartsworn to Kavar.
“What does the magnificent Ashem say?” Kavar sneered.
Juli gave him a cool look. Perhaps the magic of heartswearing and the aggression it engendered for anyone but themselves touching “their” mate did make it impossible for Ashem and Kavar to reconcile. That didn’t mean she would put up with either of them acting like children. “Could you hear him?”
“No.”
“Well, then. It must not have been for your ears.” Juli sat primly on the couch.
Kavar narrowed his eyes. “How does he abide you?”
Juli smiled. “If you don’t want me here, I’ll go. I’m sure he’ll take back the six months if you don’t want them.”
“Don’t be so sure. He did give you up. Must need a holiday.”
Juli made an offended noise.
Kavar smiled. It wasn’t pleasant. “They’re alive then. If Kai or the false king had died, you’d be trying to murder me with something other than your eyes.”
Juli pressed her lips together. “Are you here for a reason?”
Something passed over Kavar’s face. Fear? Worry? Empathy? “To see if I’d be searching for bodies or living beings. You’ve given me the answer.”
Juli made sure her side of the connection to Ashem was shrouded just enough. Then she rose and stepped closer to Kavar, who stilled. “That’s not why you came. You were upset.”
Kavar scowled. It made him look like Ashem. “Why would I be upset? The son of the usurper is sundered. Rhys is no longer heartsworn nor can he ever be again. That means he can’t pass on the mantle because he can’t have children. Owain has won.”
Juli folded her arms so Kavar couldn’t see her knuckles turn white. She’d forgotten about that—that only heartsworn dragons could reproduce. It was part of the reason they took heartswearing so seriously. Part of the reason dragons who chose not to heartswear—the Unsworn—were considered expendable.
How would Kai feel about never having children? It wasn’t something they’d talked about much—they were only twenty and twenty-one, after all. But Juli was fairly certain that a family had always been in Kai’s vague plans for the future. “Rhys has a sister. If Deryn has children, Rhys’s half of the mantle can pass to them. You haven’t won anything.”
Kavar shrugged. “If she lives long enough to heartswear herself.”
Juli stepped forward again, close enough to prod a finger into Kavar’s chest. “You didn’t come here to find out if they were alive. You came here because being close to me comforts you. Because we’re heartsworn. Because when Owain sundered Rhys and Kai, you imagined the same happening to us.”
Kavar caught her hand and pulled her against his body. He tilted her chin up with one hand and pressed a bruising kiss to her mouth. Juli struggled, but his grip was hard as stone and the kiss was...
If she was her own person, she would never be in danger from Kavar’s dubious charms. But the magic...the part of her that was bound to him wanted him—to let him carry on kissing her and see where it led.
Oh, no. None of that. She forced herself to picture Ashem’s face. Remember his hands.
Juli bit him. Hard.
Kavar grunted and released her. He wiped blood from his bottom lip with the back of his hand and smiled again. “Comfort, indeed.” He reached a hand out and tenderly brushed a strand of white-blond hair behind Juli’s ear.
She stiffened. “Clearly, someone failed to teach you boundaries. Let’s start with this one: don’t touch me.”
He leaned down, his lips brushing against her ear as he whispered, “Be good while I’m gone, little viper.” He pressed his lips to the side of her neck. Before she could jerk away, he straightened and mussed the hair he’d just smoothed. Then he was gone.
Juli shivered. She would be here only six months. She could ignore those treacherous feelings. They were only magic. Besides, she and Ashem had expected this. She allowed Kavar to think she was playing his game because it kept him occupied, distracted.
Juli settled on the couch and glanced around absently giving it a few minutes to make sure he wasn’t coming back. Kavar had surprised her. Sometime in the past few weeks, he’d prepared rooms for her. And he’d done a good job. Unlike Ashem’s Spartan quarters, the furniture was comfortable and the stone walls were covered in hangings depicting ancient gardens and dragons flying over a mountainous desert. Kavar had even provided her with cooling shelves—the dragon equivalent of a refrigerator—full of food. A small stack of books rested on a table next to the reclining couch, which was delicate and curving with lions’ heads for armrests.
Juli narrowed her eyes. Apparently she and Ashem weren’t the only ones who had been planning for her to stay after she’d rescued Kai. “Trading” for Seren had been an excuse.
She shrugged. They were using each other, then. Very healthy way to start a relationship.
Almost as healthy as moving in with your husband’s brother whom you were secretly attracted to.
She shook off the final thought. Time to focus on the real reason she’d agreed to stay in Cadarnle.
Juli leaned her head back against the cushions that covered the couch’s wooden frame and closed her eyes. She still hadn’t fully recharged from earlier—even she didn’t know how many minds she’d taken and held in sleep—but she didn’t need much power to listen. But even if she’d wanted to, the collar and cuffs had made it impossible.
Thank goodness for Kavar’s arrogance.
Taking the key she’d lifted from his pocket when he’d kissed her, she pressed it to the indented areas on the collar, then the cuffs, then shucked the hateful things off so they clattered to the ground.
She closed her eyes and exhaled, releasing the locks on the layers of shields she’d learned to create, lifting one at a time until she touched the eddy and swirl of the nearest minds. Kavar had done well, putting her as far from the populated areas as he could manage. Even with all her shields flung open, she could only touch a few people as they whispered through nearby halls. The stone did nothing to dampen what she could hear,
but distance did.
Luckily, Kavar hadn’t gone that far, yet.
With the heartswearing bond, Juli could only see what he chose to show her. With Azhdahā magic—they were two separate paths into his head—there was always the risk that Kavar would be able to sense her if she dug through his head. Now, however, he’d met with someone. Another vee commander. And he was distracted.
“—almost out. Can you ask Owain?”
“Ask him yourself,” Kavar growled.
The unknown dragon tasted like fear. “He’s not in any state for anyone but you or Jiang to speak with him at the moment.”
Resignation from Kavar. “If we’re out of raw material, send the order to capture more humans. In fact, tell them to double or triple cordial production from now until further notice—quadruple it, if they can. Owain has sundered the false king and his Wingless mate. Whether he knows it yet or not, we’re going to war.”
“War? But...we’ve had no warning. It isn’t easy to find descendants of the bloodlines, let alone kidnap anyone from them and transport them all the way to the desert without raising suspicion.”
Kavar was unsympathetic. “Jiang has a man in Eryri. I’ll have him send you a list of their Wingless. Many of them are young. It will be easy enough to find their families.”
The other dragon chuckled. “I think we all know which Wingless’s bloodline will be at the top of Owain’s list.”
The room spun around her, and she clutched the couch for support.
The bloodline at the top of Owain’s list. Kai’s family. They were talking about Stephen and Leila Monahan, Brendan and Colm. Juli pressed a hand to her mouth. Colm, Kai’s oldest brother, had two young children. Would the dragons take them?
She ran to the door, trying to shave off some of the distance, and stretched her magic farther. Not into Kavar, who would know what was happening if she pushed any deeper, but the other dragon.
Searching through a mind wasn’t easy. It presented her with what it wanted more or less at random. But because the dragon was thinking about his conversation, it was easy enough for her to find the information she needed.
The bloodlines... The dragons had identified about a hundred human families that carried heartswearing potential in their genes. The ability to become Wingless ran in human families. Uncommon, but not exceedingly rare.
She knew that. She and Kai were distantly related, which had explained why both of them had heartsworn when the odds should have been abysmally low.
The connection weakened as the dragon moved farther away. With a growing sense of urgency, Juli dug for more information. At the same time, she planted a suggestion in the dragon’s brain that he needed to stop, or at least slow down. Just for a moment.
He did. Juli felt him rub the nape of his neck, uncomfortable. She should be careful, but she had to know.
More knowledge drifted to the surface of her victim’s mind. Wingless—humans who had been heartsworn—gained the same type of magic as their dragon mates and matched them exactly in amount of power. However, they also gained their own magic: the ability to give dragons or other Wingless a power boost. The boost nearly doubled the magic the recipient could use for a limited amount of time.
Potential Wingless—unheartsworn humans of those bloodlines—also had that power, but it stayed dormant unless unlocked by the touch of a compatible, unheartsworn dragon.
She sifted through another layer of thoughts and came across...horror. A flash of bloody flesh and bone, writhing bodies, echoing screams.
Sickened, she backed away from that memory and turned it into a fact that she could catalog. Owain, through several gruesome experiments, had found a way not only to awaken that dormant Wingless potential, but to bottle it and give it to his soldiers. This was the cordial.
Owain was making dragon steroids out of people.
She inhaled, trying to process it. Precious milliseconds ticked away.
Deeper. She needed more. She needed to know how to stop them.
She sensed the dragon rubbing his temples. The pressure of her magic was giving him a headache.
How sad.
She snatched at another cluster of thoughts, gritting her teeth at the strain of extending her still-exhausted magic so far.
To get to the dormant power, Owain had to kill the humans who held it, capturing it with magic as it drained from them with their blood.
The cordial-making facility was located...
The dragon walked out of range. If Juli believed in swearing, she would have cussed a blue streak that would make Ashem blush.
Owain was using people to make dragon steroids. He was killing the families of Wingless. Kai’s family, whom Juli loved like her own. Even Juli’s boozy mother, whom she usually didn’t care to think about, was at risk.
Juli closed down her Azhdahā powers and opened herself to Ashem. She explained what she’d heard, tripping over the words. At first, Ashem was silent. Not even a curse.
That was never a good sign.
“You’ve done well.” His voice was carefully neutral, but she could feel the tense worry behind them. “I think I might know where. The Taklamakan.”
Taklamakan. For weeks, dead humans from all over the world had been turning up there with no clue why or how. Panic seized her. “Kai’s family. How soon could he have them?”
Ashem pushed a tendril of comfort toward her. “Owain has soldiers positioned in Canada. If he sends someone now, they can have Kai’s family in hours.”
“So you send someone!”
Resignation. He already thought it was too late. “I will, but it will be a race. I can’t make any promises.”
“That is my family, too, Ashem! They aren’t perfect, but they’re good people!”
“I know.” Anger. “That cordial must be why they were so strong when they attacked us over the Bering Sea. Why Kavar was strong enough to resist questioning in Eryri. If they have enough for their entire army, we’re all dead.”
Juli walked back over to the couch and sank down onto the blue upholstery. “Do something. Please.”
Ashem was silent for a moment. Then, “Rhys and Kai are settled, but we’ll be stuck here for a few days. I’ll make some calls.”
He withdrew.
Sick, Juli stood and paced. She thought about reaching out to Kavar and begging him to protect the Monahans, but she was afraid that if he knew how much she loved Kai’s family he would only be more likely to hurt them.
He’d made it very clear whose side he was on.
Chapter Eleven
The Warrior
Deryn curled her fingers around the arms of her heavy wooden chair and reminded herself that murder was never a good idea.
The Council—the lackadaisical, archaic bunch of lizards—would not respond well to being shouted at, either. Rhys had proved that often enough, especially in the last few meetings before his departure. Deryn would not shout. Well, she’d try not to. Instead, she spoke softly, so that the faint song of the waves outside the arching stone windows nearly drowned her out. So softly that her words never reached the high, mosaic-encircled ceiling of the Council chamber. Softly enough that the twenty other people gathered around the doughnut-shaped mahogany table had to lean forward to hear.
“Gethin. I swear, if you bring up human casualties again, the next person to die will be you.”
The wiry, brown-haired young man sat back, eyes wide in overwrought false surprise. “I was simply suggesting—”
“You were rehashing what my brother and your father have discussed literally hundreds of times.” Deryn’s lip curled. “If you bring it up again, I’ll have you thrown out.”
Gethin gave a tch of disbelief. “You aren’t the queen. You don’t have the authority to throw out a member of the Council—”
&nbs
p; “Aha.” Deryn held up one finger, the morning sun flashing off her sapphire rings. “But you are not a member of this Council. Your father is. We’ve agreed to put up with you until Powell returns, but that doesn’t mean you get to bring up issues that have been settled several times over. In any case, human casualties have nothing to do with the original issue, which was dispatching envoys to the rogues.”
Several councilmembers snorted or made other uncomplimentary sounds.
Gethin the Buffoon, as Deryn had decided she would call him, opened his stupid mouth again. “But if the envoys didn’t have to worry about hiding—”
Deryn ignored him, flashing a wry smile at the members of the Council who’d made angry noises. “All right, then. The final battle is coming. Owain’s numbers are equal to—if not greater than—ours. If you don’t want to go to the rogues, let’s hear your ideas for ensuring we aren’t all massacred.”
She sat back and waited, scanning the dragons seated around the table. A salt breeze slithered in through the windows, reminding Deryn of how much she would rather be outside, flying. Or with her brother, freeing Kai. Fighting.
The distraction worked. The army was on its way home. She hadn’t heard from Rhys or anyone who had gone into Cadarnle since the small hours of the morning, though. Ancients, she hoped they were on their way home.
The silence that had filled the room was broken only by the awkward clearing of a throat or the rustle of fabric. So. They didn’t have any better ideas. What a surprise.
Deryn stifled the urge to sigh. Rhys was the diplomat of the family—well, truth be told, Rhys only did well as a diplomat until his temper got the better of him. Seren, now there was a diplomat—but either of them were a better choice than Deryn. She had zero patience for the blatantly asinine tedium that was government. She hated Owain, but she couldn’t help but think that he’d been right never to have a Council. They moved slower than slugs.
And there was no time.
She’d arrived back in Eryri nearly two weeks ago and only stayed because Rhys—the bastard—had used the mantle on her to prevent her from turning around and flying right back to him. Very carefully worded this time, too. After Jiang had taken Kai to her “home” in Cadarnle instead of “home” to Eryri, he was completely paranoid.
Truth of Embers Page 10
