Truth of Embers

by Caitlyn McFarland

  Juli woke up when he was nearly there, probably thanks to the biting, arctic wind. She struggled and squirmed until he dropped her.

  “Ow! Kavar! What is going on?” Groggy she might be, but her tone was nearly as frigidly slicing as the wind.

  He scowled. “Get up. I’m taking you home.”

  The expression of speechless shock on her face was by far the most satisfying thing he’d seen in a long, long time.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Take Your Future

  The morning after Deryn’s death, Cadoc walked into Seren’s audience chamber. He’d been with Rhys, making arrangements, and had figured Iolani could be trusted to keep Seren where she was supposed to be for a couple of hours.

  When he saw the Lady Protector sitting on the padded bench inside the golden lattice and Seren’s chair empty, he almost snarled.

  Containing his anger, he bowed to Iolani, though perhaps not as long and low as he should have. “Lady Protector, where is the Seeress?”

  Iolani raised her eyebrows, but she didn’t take her eyes from the string of tiny white shells and gold-dipped amethyst crystals she was stringing then knotting in intricate loops. Her head was tilted, as if she was listening to the storm that had blown in barely an hour ago, now raging outside. The Mo’o and the Noodinoon were always half in a trance during gales like this—the song of storm and sea was too loud not to listen, he supposed.

  Iolani sighed like the crashing of waves. “She is mourning her sister and unwell. Take the day off, awenydd.”

  Cadoc closed his eyes and exhaled. “Lady Protector, last time you told the Council that the Seeress wasn’t well she disappeared for three months and I found her in a human city several thousand miles away.”

  Iolani shrugged. “You found her in a hospital, did you not?” She sighed. “As I said, unwell.”

  “May I see her?” Cadoc asked through clenched teeth. He might be her bodyguard, but that didn’t give him unrestricted access to her private rooms.

  Iolani made a shooing motion. “A’ole. Go, go. Take the day off and chase a girl. Drink away your grief. Leave my girl alone.”

  In his frustration, Cadoc seriously considered it. He hadn’t so much as flirted with a woman since Kai in the cave, and Ancients knew he needed a release.

  His thoughts shamed him. Deryn was dead, and numbing the pain for a moment or two wouldn’t bring her back.

  Ignoring Iolani, he opened the delicate golden door into Seren’s throne area—her cage, as he’d taken to calling it in his mind—and entered the hall behind the dais that led to her private rooms.

  He just needed to make sure she was there.

  “Hey! Pupule! Get back here!” Iolani stood from the bench and came after him.

  Cadoc lengthened his stride and searched her rooms.

  Seren wasn’t in any of them.

  “Kapu, makaainana!” Iolani snapped as she finally caught up with him. “I told you to go.”

  Cadoc spun toward her. “Where is she?”

  Iolani made a “pfft” noise and went back to knotting the string of shells, stones and flowers in her hands. Not because she didn’t care, Cadoc knew. But because she wanted to make it clear that she didn’t have to listen to him.

  Fury flashed in Cadoc, but he reined it in. Shouting at Iolani would only make her less likely to speak. “Please, Lady Protector. If she’s out in the storm—”

  Iolani glared at him through narrowed eyes. “Are you crazy? She just needed a day to herself. One day.” Iolani sighed, and this time it was a sigh of defeat. “She’s in Deryn’s rooms, mourning. As I said.”

  Deryn’s name sent a pang of grief through Cadoc. Ancients, he wished he could trust Iolani. If that’s truly where Seren was, he didn’t want to intrude. Iolani, however, was more concerned with Seren’s happiness than her safety, and sunder him if he wasn’t going to make absolutely sure that Seren hadn’t run away.

  Cadoc transformed in the enormous audience chamber and flew from one of the wide openings into the buffeting winds and rain of the storm. Sticking close to the mountain, he made the short trip around the peak to the ledge outside Deryn’s chambers, where he landed and shifted back into a man. Though he was only a dozen steps from the archway and the spell that blocked rain and wind, he was soaked by the time he stepped inside.

  He walked up the winding passageway. Unlike Seren’s and Rhys’s rooms, Deryn’s contained no central cavern with a pool of water. Instead, a stream ran through a long hall that twisted down through the mountain, full of mysterious doors and wide, airy rooms that opened unexpectedly around corners.

  Deryn’s scent lingered; water lilies and fresh breezes. The grief returned, and Cadoc had to stop for a moment to compose himself. Stars, why? You already had Iain and Griffith—why did you have to take Deryn? He’d never had sisters by blood, and Ffion was more like a mother than a sibling. Deryn had been as much his baby sister as she was Rhys’s. Griff and Iain had been his brothers.

  His family was dying all around him.

  Cadoc followed the hall and its stream downward. He found Seren in her sister’s bedroom, the last door at the bottom of the hall. She curled on Deryn’s bed, weeping. She’d cast her veil onto the floor, her gold-edged white skirts spread across the azure blue of Deryn’s coverlet.

  Cadoc stopped just inside the door, feeling like a scalebrain. Ancients, of course she was still in the mountain. And here he was, intruding. He clenched his good hand into a fist. If he left quietly, she would never know he’d been there.

  Seren sat up and pushed red-gold hair away from her face, blotchy with crying. Her cheeks, already pink, flushed darker. “Cadoc?”

  “Forgive me.” Cadoc took a step back. “I had to make sure you were here.”

  Seren sniffed and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her feet were bare, and she clutched Deryn’s pillow like a lost child. Fine gold scales rimmed her upper and lower lids. The red around them only emphasized their bright turquoise, so like Deryn’s.

  She wasn’t wearing the veil.

  Sunder him, she was grieving, and he was staring. He turned to go.

  “Wait.”

  He stopped. Seren might not have the mantle, but Stars help him, he wasn’t able to disobey.

  “Please don’t leave,” she said in a small voice.

  Cadoc didn’t turn around. “We can’t be alone.”

  “We were alone when you brought me back from Chicago.”

  He made his voice hard. “That was a mission.”

  Silence stretched for five heartbeats, then ten.

  He turned.

  She was sitting, now, the pillow on her lap, body slumped around it. Her fingers were curled in Deryn’s coverlet, squeezing rumpled fistfuls of the blue fabric.

  Seeing her grief magnified his, thickening the air until it stuck to his lungs.

  “I’ve lost my parents. I’ve lost my sister. All I have left is Rhys, and I’m not even supposed to have him. The Seeress is born to the people and sworn to the people.” Her face crumpled. “I’m so lonely, awenydd.”

  Her voice broke, compelling him to move toward her. He couldn’t bear her pain on top of everything else. “The people love you.”

  She nodded, her face empty.

  Another step. A few inches closer. “You have Iolani. But sunder me if she doesn’t think it’s her job to protect you from your own bodyguard.”

  One corner of Seren’s mouth tilted up.

  Closer, until he was standing next to Deryn’s bed. “No matter what tradition says, Rhys loves you. So do Ffion, Evan, Morwenna. Even Ashem. They love you as a sister, my lady, not as a Seeress. You are not alone.”

  “We’re lucky, aren’t we? We’ve built a family of friends as strong as any family of blood. A family of love.” The wo
bbly smile she’d managed faded. “That doesn’t make me miss Deryn any less.”

  Cadoc sat on the edge of the bed. Before he could stop her, Seren leaned into his side, twining her gloved fingers with his.

  He started to pull away, but she tilted her head up. Filtered light from the cloud-covered sky fell across her face, muting the redness. She was a creature of round highlight and soft shadow. Beautiful, ethereal, alive.

  Red-gold hair tumbled around her face in messy waves. Her skin, though pale, had a golden cast nearly washed out by the stormy light. Her lips were full and lush, their color like sweet summer peaches in a pool of cream.

  Cadoc became suddenly, keenly aware of how long it had been since he’d been with a woman. And why, for years, he’d hidden his sorrows by chasing so very many. Seren was a ghost in his heart, haunting it so completely that no one else could abide there long.

  “What of you, Cadoc?” The movement of her lips mesmerized. “Do you also love me?”

  Stars, yes. He loved Seren. He’d loved her for hundreds of years.

  She was supposed to be his heartsworn.

  Kiss her. Pretend it was an accident. Pretend you only meant to comfort. Have your family. Take your future.

  Her gaze fell to his lips, her eyes half-closed. She pressed against him. One gloved hand came to his cheek, and he leaned into her touch.

  “Cadoc.”

  His name on her lips nearly broke him. They were meant for each other.

  No one will know you did it on purpose.

  Her scent twined around him, earthy and dark and intoxicating. If he leaned down an inch, he could taste her. As often as she’d let him for the rest of their long, long lives.

  He had lost music, but if they were heartsworn, she could heal him. He had lost his family, but she could be the beginning of a new one. He could have everything.

  Rhys would forgive him.

  Rhys. The war.

  Cadoc jerked away and stood. He could not deprive the dragons of their Seeress.

  Sick, he backed up, forcing an easy grin to his face. As if it wasn’t the most difficult thing he’d ever done—as if he didn’t know it would hurt her, and he wouldn’t hate himself for it—he said, “Of course I love you, my lady. As a sister. As a friend. You’re everything to our people.”

  Seren flinched, then stood and gathered her veil off the floor. She pulled it over her head, gracefully draping the fabric so that it trailed behind her. Without a word, she glided over to a table against the wall and picked up a jeweled pin that was made to look like a cloud of gray diamonds raining drops of sapphire. It had been one of Deryn’s favorites.

  Seren pinned it to her dress beneath the veil and turned to Cadoc. “Kinsman, I’m ready to return to the audience chamber.”

  Her formality was a dagger of ice, but he was glad of it. Instead of going out into the storm, they left Deryn’s rooms and went through the rotunda that housed the apartments of the rest of the vee. They saw no one, and thank the Ancients Ashem was nowhere around, because Cadoc’s thoughts were so outside of his control that he couldn’t have hidden them from the Azhdahā if he’d tried.

  He trailed behind her all the way back to her airy chamber with its golden cage, unspeaking. He opened the latticework door and she glided inside. Iolani greeted her, standing to embrace Seren, then led her back into her rooms.

  Cadoc watched until she was out of sight. He’d left Seren once before, and it had been the right thing to do. So was this. He hated hurting her, but it was better this way. For everyone.

  He would not make a mess of things again.

  He turned and sagged against the lattice. That moment of weakness in Deryn’s room had shaken him. He was no hero. Eventually, he would lose the will to fight, and the cost of his failure would fall on every single dragon on Earth—and perhaps on the humans, as well.

  Rhys was right, though. They knew little about heartswearing. It could be that there was a woman out there, dragon or human, who could bond with him. If that happened, he could still have everything. Once he was heartsworn, Seren could heal him. He could have a family.

  The thought of having those things with someone else made him sick at heart.

  When he had been cursed, he’d thought all he needed was to come home. He’d been fine before. Happy, even. Breaking the curse, however, had shattered his veneer of contentment, revealing the emptiness beneath.

  It was time to find a way out.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Time for War

  Jiang burst into Owain’s office. “The poison worked. The princess is dead. The false king is sundered and weak. We have to strike now.”

  Owain sat up. “Aderyn is dead? Not Rhys?”

  Jiang waved him off. “Rhys is sundered. Don’t you see? This is better. No matter what they do, Rhys cannot pass on the mantle. We’ve won. All we have to do is claim it.”

  He watched Jiang pace, impatience radiating from her. “We’ve been hearing rumors for months that Rhys’s hold on the Council is slipping. If we strike hard enough, put the few vials of cordial we have left to strategic use, we might be able to take Eryri with a minimum loss of life.”

  Owain considered. “No matter how we go about it, many will die.”

  Aderyn dead. Unfortunate, but convenient. Added to Rhys’s sundering and the rumors of discontent—some whispered whole clans were thinking of leaving Eryri—it could be perfect.

  Tempting. So tempting.

  Especially if Rhys had the missing fifty bottles of cordial. He’d be too ethical to use it, Owain knew. Which was stupid. They ate deer and cow and other animals. Consuming a product made of human parts was no different. Those bottles—aside from the precious few that had been in Cadarnle—were all he had. He couldn’t replicate the artifact Rhys had destroyed in the city of the Ancients. However, if he had enough samples, he might be able to figure out how to make it some other way.

  He would need it when he went to war against the humans.

  Owain considered his options, wondering what Kavar would say. The Azhdahā had taken off a few hours before—presumably to kill Ashem—and Owain missed his council. Lately he’d been the only thing that served to balance Jiang.

  Owain ran his knuckles back and forth across his jaw. Rhys could get weaker. His people could continue to turn on him and abandon him until all Owain had to do was walk in and take his power. Or, given time, Rhys could solidify his position.

  Word among the rogues was that he had approached them, looking for alliances, offering them positions of power. The rogues’ numbers equaled Rhys’s and Owain’s followers combined. If even a handful of the larger families answered, Rhys’s people would outnumber his.

  He couldn’t allow that.

  Jiang continued to pace. “It’s time to end this. Our soldiers are in position. You keep talking about the war to come, but you can’t fight that battle until you win this one. So win.”

  Owain stroked the rhombus-shaped golden pendant at his neck, which he’d taken back from Jiang. After all these years, he had the Sunrise Dragon. Despite knowing it wouldn’t work, he’d tried every way he knew how to activate the thing with no success. Perhaps if he’d had any of Rhys’s blood left, he could have done it. But he’d used it all in the sundering.

  He’d never thought he would regret doing that.

  Owain frowned. He could attempt another assassination, but he’d tried that before. More than once. Aside from that, he was tired of waiting. Scheming. It was time to try something new.

  Battle it would be. He nodded at Jiang. “Go. Tell the vee commanders to prepare for war.”

  * * *

  Kai stood by Rhys’s side as the dragons sent Deryn to the Stars the night after her death, cremating her body and scattering her ashes in the sea. Cadoc sang again. It was the fi
rst time he’d agreed to perform in public since returning to Eryri. Every dragon on the island and many who were stationed within a day or two came to say goodbye.

  After, Seren spoke. She talked about Deryn, her life, her bravery. She spoke about how Deryn had welcomed Kai as a sister, which made several of the dragons turn to look. Kai felt her cheeks heat. It sucked that even here, Seren and Rhys had to be aware of politics, but she understood that they didn’t have the luxury of wasting opportunities. Now that Deryn was gone, her word would mean that much more.

  Death was funny that way.

  When Seren finished, silence fell over the crowd.

  Only to be broken by one shouting Henry Harrow.

  “Majesty!” The Wingless man shoved his way through the crowd and dodged through the legs of those who’d attended the funeral as dragons. “Majesty!”

  Some of the dragons growled. Murmurs went up about Wingless and lack of respect. Rhys caught Harrow by the shoulders.

  When she saw the look on his face, Kai inhaled sharply. “Henry. What happened?”

  “Owain.” Harrow panted so hard he could hardly speak. “Owain is coming. I sent the Unsworn out to do a sweep. His soldiers are already here. I mean, not here. Close. Ready to attack. He’ll be here in days.”

  Kai stared at Rhys. He looked as shocked as she felt. “Holy hell,” she whispered. “It worked.”

  Rhys pulled Kai with him onto the platform they’d erected in the center of the stone circle. She tried to stay back, thinking it might be better for the dragons to hear the news without seeing her, but he insisted.

  “How can they trust a queen who stands in the shadows? You are one of the reasons we will be prepared for this battle, if it comes. Let them see you.”

  Kai followed, but stood a little behind Rhys, intimidated by the crowd. His head turned as he took them all in, gathering them with his gaze. By the time he spoke, the silence was absolute. “Owain is on his way to attack Eryri.”