Truth of Embers

by Caitlyn McFarland

  Juli looked up at him with pain-clouded eyes. Even through the privacy of their bond, she didn’t beg.

  Kavar exhaled. “She is my heartsworn, as well.”

  Owain looked at Kavar as if he’d just grown two heads, but he didn’t miss a beat. “Explain.”

  Kavar glared at Jiang, waiting for her to leave. For Owain to dismiss the guards.

  Neither of those things happened. Once, Owain would’ve kept this between them. Obviously that time had passed.

  So Kavar told the room about the time Juli had come with Ashem during an interrogation when he was a prisoner in Eryri. Ashem had hit him, and Juli had helped him clean up. Thinking that perhaps he could spin it, Kavar also told them how Juli had set him free. Skipping the part where he’d promised her he’d free Kai in exchange for Juli’s company six months out of each year. He made it sound like Juli had betrayed Ashem and come with him—like he’d asked her to—that she’d been in Cadarnle ever since, as his mate. On their side.

  Owain, his face dangerously blank, demanded to see the room. Kavar took him there. Owain dug around, and Kavar folded his arms and leaned against the open door, waiting for Owain to be finished. When his king had done a thorough check of the quarters, he came to Kavar with the collar and cuffs that Juli had slipped.

  With a lurch, Kavar realized that’s why she’d seduced him last night. She’d stolen the key. Again.

  He was about to die for the woman who loved his brother. Worse, the woman his brother loved. He rolled his eyes upward as if he could see the Stars, cursing them.

  “I have just lost our most important asset to a raid, and I come back to find that you are sleeping with your brother’s mate? A Wingless?” Owain made a face like someone had just tried to feed him feces. “Identical twins heartswearing to the same mate. I’ve read of such a thing before. I thought it was a myth.”

  Owain’s face darkened. “Is she the one who let my cousin’s soldiers in to take back the girl and the Seeress? Is she the reason Rhys’s Invisible and a Wingless found out what we were doing in the Taklamakan and ended my chances to finish this war as bloodlessly as possible?”

  “I—uh—” Sunder it. He hadn’t foreseen this. Of course Owain would think Juli was the traitor. His king was not merciful.

  Ashem, who had been “listening” silently, barked something about saving Juli. Kavar snapped at him to shut up. “No. She’s been with me. However the son of the usurper got in, it wasn’t because of us.”

  Kavar wondered if he had a huge sign on his forehead that flashed, Liar, liar, liar.

  “Why didn’t you tell me she was here?” Owain screamed, a vein standing out on his neck.

  Kavar flinched. In all the time he’d followed the white dragon, he’d never seen Owain lose control like this. “I thought you would kill her.”

  “I am going to kill her! I don’t know what tricks she’s played on you, but she’s a spy. She has just cost me centuries of research and potentially hundreds of dragons’ lives. We’ll have to rebuild before we can go to war against the humans. I can’t allow her to live.”

  Blood of the Ancients. “You’re right, I’ve betrayed you. I understand that you need to make an example.” Kavar took a breath. “But we are leaving for Eryri in days. If you kill her, I’ll be useless to you for weeks.”

  “Ashem would be useless, as well, and that will even the odds.” Despite his words, the angry light in Owain’s eyes dimmed. He stood there, silent, weighing his options. If Kavar knew him—and he did—Owain was trying to step back from his emotions and see the problem from every angle.

  Finally, Owain said, “You can share a cell until I decide what to do with you.”

  Sunder me.

  It struck him, then, that he could ask Owain to sunder him. Except that would also mean he couldn’t take part in the battle. Even if he wanted to cut himself free of Juli and Ashem, he wasn’t ready to face the pain of it.

  Wasn’t ready to face the loneliness.

  Though Stars knew Juliet King was going to drive him to that point sooner or later.

  Kavar followed Owain and his guards without complaint, trooping through Cadarnle. They retrieved Juli from Owain’s rooms and marched on. The few people who were out and about early in the morning scattered when they saw Owain and his guards. After a few minutes, they reached the lowest level of tunnels. Owain’s dungeon.

  They tossed Kavar inside one of the cells. He groaned at the familiarity of it. Like Rhys’s cells in Eryri, they were lined in metal that kept him from using his magic on anyone outside. Unlike Rhys’s cells, they lacked chains in the walls, meaning at least he could move around freely.

  Also unlike Rhys’s cells, there was no light, and it was cold enough to chill him to the bone.

  At least he wasn’t alone.

  Juli cried softly in the corner. Anger flared in Kavar at her weakness. She had gotten him into this. “You seduced me so you could get the key. I told you not to wander. I told you this would happen.”

  Her voice was hard. “Why do you think I’m here, Kavar? Out of the goodness of my heart? I agreed to stay with you so I could spy on Owain. Why else do you think he would let you anywhere near me without killing you? Why else would I?”

  Her words shouldn’t have been a shock. Ancients, he’d caught her spying once already. He’d been so wrapped up in her and the reopened bond with Ashem that he’d let himself be blinded. They didn’t care about him. They were using him.

  Juli sniffed. He could imagine her over there, curled around her broken finger and crying. “Anyway,” she said, “You told me he would kill us both. We’re alive. That means there’s hope.”

  “There is no hope.” Kavar ran his hands along the wall until he found her corner, then crouched and groped for her in the dark. Soft hair, damp face, shoulders, arms, hand.

  He found her broken finger, discovered that it was merely dislocated and popped it back into place without warning her. He ignored her yelp of pain and went to the opposite corner, black hatred growing inside him.

  “There is hope,” Ashem said into his mind, stubbornly present. “I’ll get you out.”

  “You’re talking to the wrong person, brother. Your woman is over there.”

  Ashem’s mental voice was dry. “I mean both of you.”

  Kavar snorted.

  “You will not get us out.” Juli’s voice had a strange echo. Since Kavar was open to her and Ashem, her words came to him from both. “We’ll figure this out. You concentrate on keeping Rhys and Kai safe. We can take care of ourselves.”

  Kavar didn’t speak, only listened as the two of them comforted each other. Forgotten again. To Kavar’s surprise, Juli succeeded in convincing Ashem not to come—at least not at the moment and not with all of Eryri at his back. She claimed Owain wouldn’t hurt her much because she was Kavar’s heartsworn.

  Kavar rolled his eyes. Whatever friendship he’d had with Owain was over. Kavar hadn’t wanted to admit that it had been crumbling for a while—ever since he’d found out his “friend” had condoned Jiang’s betrayal, leading to his capture by Rhys.

  When he was young, Owain was the only person who’d seen Kavar as the dragon he could be instead of Ashem’s little brother. In recent years, Owain had changed. Slowly, but the boy who’d been an idealist, who’d wanted to set things right for himself and his mother’s memory, had become a power-hungry man with a twisted sense of justice and sacrifice.

  Still, for a thousand years, he’d been all Kavar had.

  Kavar picked at a spot of ice on the floor. Soon, he and Juli would have to huddle together for warmth. He smiled.

  Ashem would hate that.

  Chapter Twenty

  Homecoming

  They arrived back at Eryri on a day when the wind whipped the sea into foaming whitecaps and high clouds
scuttled across the sky in bunches like raw cotton. Kai clung to Rhys’s back, exhausted and aching and terrified for Juli. Ashem had told them of her capture the day before. He’d wanted to take off after her, but even he couldn’t make another trip that long so soon.

  And apparently Juli believed—even though she and Kavar were sharing a cell—that they would be safe enough for the time being. She’d overheard that Jiang was sending poison to Eryri. Kai wondered if she’d misheard. Poison wasn’t a very dragon-like way to kill. According to Rhys, it violated some unspoken moral rule. When a dragon killed, it was only ethical to do it in person.

  The sight of the archipelago scattered like white-ringed emeralds on the surface of the turquoise sea lodged a lump in her throat.

  Home.

  More than fear or pain or darkness, the all-encompassing relief at being in this place, safe with Rhys and her family, sent Kai’s control spiraling out of her grasp. She shuddered and let out a helpless sob. It had been an entire month since she’d been home.

  No, please no. Not yet. They’d flown near enough to the central island that she could see the crowd of toy-sized dragons waiting for her. She couldn’t land in the middle of them sobbing like a lunatic. They already thought she was unstable by virtue of being born human. She couldn’t give them any more excuses to encourage Rhys to find a new queen.

  Kai slammed the door on her emotions shut one more time. She was so weary. For the first time, she thought she would rather cry than keep it all inside.

  “You okay, Kai?” Brendan shouted about the wind.

  Her brother had been riding behind her, his arms around her waist, for most of the trip. Though Kai had thought it would be weird to have her family in Eryri, her brother’s presence was a comfort. Her parents might not have been as accepting of everything—the dragons, the fact that their twenty-year-old daughter was basically married—but they were doing okay.

  “Yeah, just glad to be home,” she called back.

  Still, she was glad that Rhys had promised not to let them share their rooms. That would be too much togetherness. Most of the humans would be placed on a less populous southern island until Rhys could talk to the Council about what to do with them, but Kai’s family would be housed in one of the empty apartments off the rotunda where the vee lived.

  She thought she could deal with that.

  Kai rubbed her chest, gritting her teeth against the pain of the sundering, which spiked and waned so randomly that she couldn’t get used to it. Another sharp pang hit, and she inhaled through her teeth.

  She twisted in the harness to look behind her. Ashem and the others followed them closely. All of the dragons were worn almost to the breaking point, heavily loaded as they were. To make the trip in anything like normal time they’d had to ditch most of their camping gear.

  Thankfully, Rhys had also had them empty, then drop their bottles of cordial over the vastness of the sea as soon as they were over deep water. The bottles sank into the dark blue water, leaving no evidence to show they’d been destroyed instead of stolen. If things went according to plan, Owain would believe Rhys had taken the nasty stuff back to Eryri.

  To help give the lie wings, Rhys had called Deryn, and she’d started a rumor that Rhys was bringing the cordial back. That he was planning to use it against Owain.

  Even if Rhys didn’t “plan” to use it as a weapon, Kai thought Owain would do almost anything to get his hands on it. After all, they’d destroyed his ability to make more. If Owain wanted his human juice, he’d have to come to Eryri.

  They circled around and made a pit stop on the second-southernmost island, leaving Tane, Isi and Thabo in charge of the twenty humans. Then Rhys, Kai, Ashem and Morwenna—along with Kai’s family—got back into the air and headed for the central island. This time, Kai rode Rhys alone. Ashem carried her parents. Brendan rode Morwenna.

  After Brendan’s unrelenting jabs about her being a crappy queen, Kai decided that those two deserved each other.

  As tired as everyone was, they couldn’t go directly to their rooms. Instead, they headed for the valley between the two mountains. One—the mountain that held the city itself—was three times the size of the other. The valley held a massive circle of standing stones that sat between two ridges, as if it were cradled in the island’s arms. A lake stood just beyond the circle, closer to the small mountain.

  Several dozen dragons waited for them there, including Deryn and what looked to be the entire Council.

  Deryn greeted them first, swooping upward on azure wings, her slender body nearly the same color as the ocean. She and Rhys circled each other in a way that felt ceremonial, but their greeting definitely was not.

  “You wind-for-brains idiot. I can’t believe you pulled it off! Welcome home.” Deryn gave Rhys a dragon smile, showing long, silvery teeth.

  “I see the mountain still stands. Thank the Ancients.” Rhys’s voice was dry, but Kai knew him well enough to hear the amusement beneath.

  Deryn snorted, and a puff of steam curled from her nostrils. “As if I could make a bigger mess of things than you’ve done, with your Wingless mate and your insane plans.”

  They landed, the dragons below clearing the way so the king and his sister could spread their wings and bow low to each other. Ashem and Morwenna landed somewhere behind them.

  “King Rhys, Queen Kai,” Deryn said with immense gravity now that they were on the ground. “We have eagerly anticipated your homecoming. Your people are grateful that you have returned.”

  Rhys replied with equal gravity. “Princess Aderyn, we thank you for your service. We are grateful to be home.”

  Rhys and Deryn straightened, and Deryn backed away so that some of the Council could approach Rhys. As Deryn and most of the councilmembers were still in dragon form, he retained his, as well.

  Not wanting to be an ant among lizards, Kai stayed in her place on Rhys’s back. He was just on the larger side of average for an Elemental, and that made him bigger than most of the dragons there except for a few of his own clan and the Bida.

  One of the Bida, Council Leader Kansoleh, bowed her horned head to Rhys. “Majesties. Welcome home. We grieved when we received word that you’d been sundered, but we are glad that you’ve brought your...mate...home successfully.”

  Kai frowned at the hesitation.

  Rhys dipped his head. “Diolch, Council Leader Kansoleh.”

  Powell—the Draig councilman—stood next to Kansoleh with a dragon who could have been his much younger twin. A son, maybe? Powell flicked his moss-green wings. “How can you have brought humans to the islands? It is against our laws.”

  Rhys’s wings rustled. “I had no other option. They will be given rooms on the far island, guarded and sent home at the first possible opportunity. And if the words collateral damage come out of your mouth, Councilman, I swear to the Ancients, I—”

  Rhys cut himself short. Sounding like a parent repeating instructions to a particularly dense child, he growled, “Leave the humans alone.” Rhys’s tail lashed, audibly scraping stone. “You should recall better than I that there used to be humans in the court of Eryri frequently.”

  “Used to be.” Powell scoffed. “They are not the same as they were. They can’t be trusted.”

  Behind Kai, Leila Monahan made an indignant noise.

  Powell’s eyes darted toward them. The young dragon at his side hadn’t stopped glaring at her and her family since they’d landed.

  The first time she’d come to Eryri, she’d been a secret. Now she was a sham. She wasn’t even Rhys’s heartsworn anymore. For a minute, she felt like the past four months hadn’t happened. That she was still just a mostly irresponsible college student who had no idea what she was doing. Who was so afraid of screwing up that doing nothing seemed like a better idea than trying.

  Then she shook herself. She’d just done
a huge part in taking down Owain’s supersoldier manufacturing plant, she reminded herself. She’d been tortured by Owain. She deserved to be here.

  As soon as she opened her mouth to say something, however, Powell began to speak again. “Majesty, I would like to convene an emergency meeting of the Council. I demand the reconsideration of...certain decisions.”

  Kai’s eyes narrowed. Before she’d been kidnapped by Owain, Powell had suggested locking her away as a sort of broodmare, suggesting Rhys would be happier if he chose a queen and companion from among the dragons. If he suggested that again after everything she’d been through, she was going to wait until he was human and punch him in the face.

  Rhys vibrated, and it took Kai a minute to realize he was growling. “You’re always one step ahead of me, aren’t you, Powell? The Council will meet tomorrow, and not a second before.”

  That was a relief. Kai was pretty sure one night of rest wasn’t going to cut it. Not when it came to dealing with the Council.

  Powell looked like he wanted to protest, but Deryn pushed past him. “Let’s allow their Majesties to retire and rest.”

  “Thank you,” Rhys said, his gratitude genuine this time. Kai smiled. She and Deryn had had a rocky beginning, but she really was awesome.

  Rhys took off, and Ashem and Morwenna followed.

  They landed on the ledge outside Rhys’s rooms, and Kai inhaled the smell of stone and water and dragon that was this place. Kai slid from Rhys’s back, stumbling when she hit the ground.

  It had been a long few weeks.

  A small—relatively speaking—silver dragon rose from the shadowed tunnel mouth. “Rhys! Kai! You’re back.”

  Kai grinned despite herself. “Hi, Ffion.”

  Ffion head-butted Kai gently, and Kai wrapped her arms around Ffion’s delicate head, which was about as long as Kai was tall. “It’s good to see you.”

  “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

  Kai retreated a little up the tunnel that led into Rhys’s rooms while her family dismounted and Rhys, Morwenna and Ashem changed. She leaned on Ffion as she walked, drinking in the sight of the worked stone, covered in stylized dragons. Beyond the short tunnel, she could just make out the sound of the waterfall.