Truth of Embers

by Caitlyn McFarland

  Seren shrugged and went into the room, turning her veiled head to look at Cadoc over her shoulder. “Why not? It’s only a story of my own incompetence.”

  She said it so cheerfully that the former rogues smiled. Seren settled next to Tharah on the couch, firelight shimmering off the veil. “Where did we leave off? That’s right. Mair had drugged Princess Aderyn and me and locked us in a room. I was dead asleep, but sometimes I get...premonitions, a feeling like something is about to happen. They always wake me and this one was no different. Only, I couldn’t wake Deryn. I used my healing magic to purge the drugs from her system. She broke us out of the room and we ran outside. Cadoc was still cursed and attacking Rhys—”

  “We remember that part,” Kephas said.

  “Of course.” Backlit by the fire, he could see the shadow of Seren’s lips curve beneath the fabric. “Deryn told me to stop Mair, so I ran to her and begged her not to kill Rhys—Deryn never would’ve forgiven her, you see. She’s never wanted to be queen.

  “Mother wouldn’t listen. She struck me.” Seren’s fingers rose to the side of her face. “Her rings sliced my cheek.” A self-deprecating laugh. “I suppose I can say I’ve been injured in battle at least once. It did bleed quite a bit.

  “Mair commanded Ophelia and the others to force-feed me the vial of potion I wore that would bring on a vision. The next thing I knew, I was in Cadarnle. As you can see, it isn’t exactly a heroic tale. I was taken captive because I was silly and weak.”

  “You woke Princess Aderyn,” Kephas said. The others chimed in, as well, insisting she’d been strong.

  Cadoc was only half listening. That day was a jumble of memories, but one stood above the rest. There had been nothing. Red mist. And then warmth melted the ice of the curse. He’d been out of his mind, then he’d come back to himself. Cursed, and then not. There hadn’t been time to question it that day, and hardly any since.

  But...Throat dry, heart pounding, Cadoc stared at Seren.

  An image flashed through his head of Mair removing a sharp-edged ruby ring from a silver keeping box—a box that blocked magic. She’d hidden it inside to make Cadoc believe the curse was broken, so she could get him close to Rhys again.

  Seren’s words bounced around in his mind. Her rings sliced my cheek...it did bleed quite a bit. He’d had no idea what broke the curse. Ashem had suggested Mair’s death, but he’d come to himself before then.

  It had to be...

  Cadoc inhaled. Ancients, no.

  He clutched his bad hand in his lap. Luck may not have been fond of him, but surely even she wouldn’t be that cruel.

  “Are you all right?”

  Cadoc jumped. Rajani stood in front of him. The others were laying out blankets, getting ready for bed. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed.

  “Well enough.” His gaze darted to Seren. Maybe a stronger man could have lived with the mystery, but he had to know. He had to be sure. “Lady Seren, if I could speak to you about...ah...our travel plans for tomorrow?”

  “Of course.” She followed him back out to the tiny porch where he’d nearly knocked her down.

  Cadoc scratched the back of his neck. “Lady, I was wondering. You said Mair’s rings cut you?”

  “I did.” Her tone was unreadable. Ancients, he wished she didn’t wear that sundering veil. She probably thought he was crazier than humans on a hunt.

  “Do you remember which of Mair’s rings it was?”

  Seren’s head tilted, and she was silent for a moment. “It had to be either the ruby or the moonstone. Weren’t they the ones that looked like contorted porcupines sitting on the back of her hand? Why?”

  His throat constricted. The ruby ring had been no ring at all. It had been a blood charm. The key to ending Cadoc’s curse. And the only way to end it had been to dissolve the ring in the blood of his family—who were all dead—or the blood of the woman who would heartswear to him.

  Seren was his heartsworn.

  He couldn’t feel his feet under him. His body had gone numb. Cadoc put his good hand against the closed door, holding himself up. “Just curious. She—she wore so many.”

  Right in front of him. All those times he’d been so careful not to touch her, but he could have his future. His hand. A family.

  He could have Seren.

  All he had to do was brush his fingers across her skin.

  She tilted her head. “What does this have to do with travel?”

  “Nothing. Um. About tomorrow...” Sunder it. Get ahold of yourself, boyo. Don’t think now. Think later.

  His brain refused to comply. Seren was his heartsworn, or his potential heartsworn, and she was the Seeress. If he touched her—if she became his heartsworn in truth—she would lose the Sight and the advantage it gave Rhys.

  Cadoc remembered Rhys’s eyes, glowing like twin stars the night he’d kissed Kai. That night and every night since, Cadoc had sworn that he wouldn’t make a mess of things again.

  “What about tomorrow? Are you all right?” She sounded concerned.

  His breathing was harsh in his ears. “Just a dizzy spell. It will pass.”

  Seren raised her hands as if to touch his face. “Are you sure? You don’t look well.”

  Cadoc backed away.

  “Cadoc?”

  Cadoc straightened. “I’m well. I just wanted to say that you should get some rest. I want to make it to the way station tomorrow. It will be a long flight.”

  Seren hesitated. “You wanted me to come out here so you could tell me to get some rest?”

  Cadoc nodded. For the first time in his life, his words were gone.

  “All right. Well...thank you. I will.”

  “Good night, my lady.”

  “Good night, Cadoc.” She went inside, leaving him alone.

  Cadoc sank onto the step, his head in his good hand, eyes squeezed shut.

  Seren.

  Kind. Beautiful. Strong.

  Forbidden.

  Hardening himself against his feelings, Cadoc straightened. It didn’t matter what he’d found out. It didn’t matter what he wanted. He would not make a mess, and he would not hurt her.

  He had to keep Seren safe, even if that meant protecting her from himself.

  As for Seren, if she knew, she might—Ancients, what? Pity him? Avoid him? Or—the thought brought both hope and horror to his mind—want him. If she asked...he’d wanted her for so long, he might not be able to resist.

  That meant that she never had to know.

  Chapter Seventeen

  City of the Ancients

  Kai climbed onto Rhys’s back as the sun began to set. They flew west through the mountains until they crossed the final peaks into the desert basin. Ashem sent two of the Invisible ahead to scout, casting a barrier around them so that the sentries wouldn’t spot them. Kai waited for the scouts’ return with Rhys, Ashem and Morwenna, huddling between sand dunes a few miles outside where Ashem said the city was located.

  Rhys lay on the ground, absorbing the last of the sun’s heat from the sand, his tail impatiently flicking dust into the air. Kai lounged in the crook of his elbow, letting sand trickle through her hand and over his scales as she sang quietly to herself. She leaned back against Rhys’s bloodred scales. “Remember, before the battle over the Bering Sea, I asked if you were afraid and you said no?”

  Rhys arched his neck so he could look down at her. “Yes.”

  “You want to hear something weird?”

  “Always.”

  She ran her fingers through the sand. “I don’t think I am, either. I mean, some of the worst things that could happen to me have happened. I survived.”

  She should have been afraid, she knew. Pre-dragon Kai would have been afraid. Post-dragon Kai was ready to reclaim her family and grind
Owain’s plans into the dust. If she died...well, death was just nothing, wasn’t it? It couldn’t be worse than torture and sundering.

  Rhys blew a short, sharp burst of hot air, sending loose tendrils of hair streaming back over her shoulder. He tried to hide it, but she knew he was upset that she wouldn’t stay out of the fight.

  Kai worried her lip between her teeth. She shouldn’t have said the thing about leaving him, because she never actually would. Not as long as he wanted her.

  I have to stop pushing him away.

  “Come on, Rhys.” Kai tried to keep her tone conversational. “Griffith never tried to stop Ffion from taking part in a fight. Not even when he knew she was pregnant.”

  Rhys brought his head down and gave her a gentle nudge with his nose. “Ffion has been training for a thousand years.”

  “True.” Obviously Kai wouldn’t be as good as a dragon. Yet. But Rhys’s fire magic was some of the strongest around. Since she’d gained the same amount of power when they’d become heartsworn, that gave her a little extra something, even when it came to fighting dragons.

  A shadow blotted out the stars. Rhys leaped to his feet, scooping Kai below him so that he was between her and the newcomer, but it was only Tane, the Mo’o’s wings waving with frills like a lionfish. He landed and transformed into a large Polynesian-looking man with a gray-streaked black ponytail and Mo’o clan tattoos on his cheeks.

  Kai scooted out from under Rhys’s scaly red belly—a few shades lighter than the rest of his crimson body—as Tane began his report. Ashem came to join them.

  “So far, all is quiet. The city is laid out like a circle. It’s about eight miles in diameter. You can’t see it from here, but you will once we go through the barrier.”

  “Barrier?” Kai interrupted. “Is Kavar here?”

  Tane shook his head. “The Ancients had their own ways of hiding things. Kohu te Moana has a barrier, as well. It’s more modern, so not as strong. Dragons and Wingless can see through it, but humans cannot.”

  “What’s Kohu te Moana?” Kai asked.

  Tane glanced at Rhys, as if he was surprised Kai didn’t know. “It’s the name of the archipelago where the Mo’o offered sanctuary to the king when his home was destroyed.”

  “Eryri?” Kai said, looking to Rhys for confirmation, unsure why the older man couldn’t just say that.

  Rhys blinked his enormous blue eyes. “Eryri is only the name of the mountain in which we live—the Mo’o were gracious enough to let us call it that when we got there. The island is Wailele. The archipelago is Kohu te Moana.”

  The information was an effective reminder of how little she knew about dragons. “So basically dragons have other ways of making barriers. Kavar isn’t here.”

  Tane looked over his shoulder toward the invisible city. “Each sentry flies patrol over approximately a mile of land around the border of the city. In addition, the sentries visually check in with each other each time they circle around. They don’t go quickly—we’ll have just under ten minutes between each check-in. If one sentry doesn’t see the other when they make their rounds, they roar. If the missing sentry doesn’t answer using a certain kind of roar within thirty seconds, the original dragon roars again, to sound the alarm. Half of the dragons guarding the perimeter head straight for the center of the city. The other half tighten their circle, moving in to cover the inner part of the city.”

  “How do you know all that?” Kai asked.

  “They do drills.” Ashem’s voice carried an overtone of “duh” that made Kai narrow her eyes.

  “You do drills,” she muttered.

  He snorted. “Of course I do.”

  Kai sighed and shook her head, wishing Juli was there. Or Cadoc. Ashem was fine if you needed a scary bodyguard. Not so much for joking with. “So what’s the plan?”

  “Their routes cover a mile,” Rhys said. “We’ll sneak past them on the ground.”

  “How many dragons are in the middle?” Kai asked.

  “Our scouts only counted ten guarding the facility itself, which lies directly at the heart of the city.” Tane pointed at what looked to Kai like empty desert. “There are too few of us to fight them, but with only ten, Ashem may be able to overwhelm the ones in key areas so that we can destroy the artifacts used to manufacture the cordial. We can also free any living humans.”

  Like her parents. Her stomach tightened. She didn’t want them to be there. Aside from the possibility that they might be dead, that would mean her two worlds had crashed irrevocably together, and she didn’t know if she could handle that.

  Forcing the thoughts away, Kai looked around at the dragons. “Well? What are you waiting for? Let’s go.”

  Aside from Rhys, Ashem, Morwenna and Tane, they were going in with two other members of the Invisible, a Native American woman named Isi and an African man named Thabo. Native American meant Noodinoon, the weather-controlling dragons with scales the color of red rock and wings feathered in the purples, grays and blacks of storm clouds. African meant Bida, the largest of the dragons.

  As dragons, the Bida were graceful in spite of their size, with scales ranging from brass to bronze and two twisting horns arching back from their heads. Because of the lessons Ffion had drilled into her head in Eryri, Kai knew they could manipulate kinetic energy, though she wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. She supposed if she kept an eye on tall, slender Thabo, she would find out.

  The dragons all became human and huddled close to Ashem. He cast a barrier around them, though Kai couldn’t sense any difference. The entrance to the city was marked by a tree on a pile of rocky, solid ground. It stood like an island among the shifting sands. Sands that were finding their way into every nook and cranny of Kai’s clothing, hair and eyes.

  She took Rhys’s hand as they walked, but didn’t make eye contact. She didn’t want to see the “I wish you’d stayed behind but I can’t say anything because I don’t want you to hate me” look again. She might not be sworn to him, but she could see the pain in his eyes. She’d asked him to make one of the hardest decisions he’d ever made. He’d chosen right, but didn’t mean it had been easy.

  Kai saw the sentry first, a shadow flying low, wide figure eights through the sky. Then the air shimmered and magic poured over her like a cold shower. The barrier around the city. Between one blink and the next, they were through.

  The dusty desert fell away to reveal the magnificent remains of a vast, ruined city that glowed in the light of the stars. The air was heavy with age and emptiness. Tumbled towers and fallen columns engraved with intricate geometric patterns were scattered among half-toppled conical buildings. Entire walls had fallen away, leaving empty rooms open to sand and sky. The stone the ancient dragons had used was like nothing Kai had ever seen, shining with a cool, pale light. Like someone had captured the full moon and carved it into a city.

  No one spoke as they crept beneath the sentry flying overhead and in between the buildings.

  Kai had visited a few cities in her life. Denver, Chicago, LA, Seattle—but she’d never seen buildings like this. Dragon-sized skyscrapers. She gaped and didn’t feel bad about it—Rhys was gaping, too. Maybe he’d never seen a city built by his own people before. Kai tried to imagine seeing Denver or Chicago for the first time. Or, more accurately, the ruins of Denver or Chicago after humans had lost the ability to create anything but villages.

  “Ancients, we’ve lost so much,” he murmured.

  The roads were laid out in a curves that flowed back and forth, wide enough for several dragons to walk side by side. Once they’d gone about a mile into the city itself, Ashem motioned them into one of the few buildings still standing. They walked through a stone archway and entered a space large enough for at least twenty dragons to mingle comfortably.

  “We’ll transform back into dragons here. If we stay human, it will take an hour
of walking to reach our destination. Once there, we’ll have to become human again to sneak into the building where Owain has his operation.” Ashem glanced out of one of the enormous windows at the moon. “Once you’ve changed, stay low, between buildings. We don’t want Owain’s soldiers to see us coming.”

  “Where are they?” Kai whispered.

  Thabo answered in a voice as smooth as Cadoc’s, though several notes lower and flavored with a pleasant accent Kai couldn’t place. “The city was set up to channel magic into its center. Whatever Owain is using is likely to be the most powerful thing here—a tower at the center of the city—so that’s where his people will be, also.”

  Thabo folded his long, thin body into a crouch and picked up a broken bit of white stone. It was almost translucent, like white smoke made solid, and it shone against the darkness of his hands.

  Kai crouched beside him. “Is it marble?”

  Thabo shrugged. “Perhaps. The Ancients had ways beyond what dragons today can dream. For all we know, they magicked it into being without a second thought.”

  Isi picked up her own bit of stone. She was younger than any of the other dragons Kai had seen, hardly more than a teenager. “If ancient dragons were so powerful, why aren’t they still around?”

  Thabo gave her a flat look. “What is that human phrase? The larger they are, the greater their collapse.”

  “The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” Kai corrected.

  “Yes.” Thabo chafed his arms. The temperature had plummeted with the sunset, which didn’t bother Kai as much as the fact that it was so dry it sucked the moisture right out of her mouth.

  Rhys broke off his conference with Ashem and Tane and approached them. “Thabo, Isi, would you stay with her?”

  Kai spun on him. He was going to try to keep her out of the action after all. But she needed this. Already she could feel the thrill in her blood pushing away the emptiness. “I don’t want babysitters.”

  Rhys’s face was impassive as stone. “I told you that you could fight. I didn’t say I was going to leave you unprotected.”