Truth of Embers

by Caitlyn McFarland

  She had given up and turned to leave through the huge window that overlooked the sea when the guard came back with Rhys. As soon as Seren heard their footsteps in the hall, she darted to the golden lattice. There was no time.

  Darkness sparked on the edges of her sight. A vision. Not of the future—of right then.

  Noise and wind. A flurry of rainbow feathers and emerald-green scales. Of blue and orange and silver. A flash of carnelian claws. A slice of hot pain shot down his arm, joining myriad others.

  “Cadoc.” Her whisper was strangled. Fighting. Losing.

  This was it.

  “Seren?” Rhys’s voice held alarm. “Unlock this gate!”

  “Majesty, the Lady Protector has commanded—”

  “Unlock the gate.”

  The guards jerked like puppets on strings, and the guard who had accompanied Rhys put a hand to the golden lattice.

  The gate opened with a soft click. Seren surged out and grabbed Rhys by the shoulders, her fingers like claws. She couldn’t breathe. “Cadoc. Rhys, it’s Cadoc. He’s dying. You have to save him!”

  He took her by the elbows. “When?”

  “Now. Right now. Owain’s people are here. Some of them... I don’t know. I can’t tell! Two Azhdahā. A Lung. A Quetzal...” Seren shook and panted. She was half in the audience chamber, half in the vision. Premonition had never taken her so strongly before. She never saw things at the same time as they happened in real life. At least she wasn’t convulsing on the floor.

  A crippling, crushing sensation in his right wing. An island, spiraling up to meet him. Too late. He was falling too fast. Hit the sand hard, shattering bones and driving the splinters into organs. A flash of Ashem and Kavar, flying together.

  Too late. Seren turned from Rhys and sprinted to the massive opening that looked out on the sea, skirts flying. She didn’t stop when he called her, or when the guards did. She called up the vision in her memory, looking for markers.

  The northernmost island. Only ten minutes’ flight away.

  She was vaguely aware of Rhys running behind her, and the guards. They were shouting. She didn’t care. Without stopping for breath or thought, she called the change as she leaped out over the sea.

  A burst of light, a widening of her mind, and Seren stretched her wings. She thought she caught a hint of smoke in the air as Rhys transformed behind her, but she didn’t look back.

  Each second stretched to hours, each minute to days. The sea passed slowly beneath her. Any moment now, Cadoc would take his last breath. Any moment, too late.

  The island appeared on the horizon, and dark circled again at the edges of Seren’s sight.

  Cadoc was human, but he couldn’t breathe. Each unsuccessful attempt to suck in air met with grinding agony in his chest. Blood bubbled in his lungs, and he coughed, tasting it in his mouth, on his lips. Blackness closed in. Death sang a sweet, cold melody in his ear.

  “Cadoc!” Seren screamed his name in her mind as she tore across the sky. The island was small, and she’d seen enough of the vision to know exactly where he was. Her shadow rippled across the white sand of the beach and across the canopy of the forest that took up the island’s interior. A mountain sat at its center, and there, on the northern beach, surrounded by Ashem and a vee of Unsworn, lay Cadoc.

  Seren dove to earth, her claws barely brushing the damp, sandy soil as she called the change and ran. Catching sight of her, the Unsworn cleared away, so only Ashem was left in the sand, desperately binding the horrifying wound in Cadoc’s midsection.

  Cadoc lay as he had in her vision weeks ago, blood seeping from too many places to count, amethyst eyes open to the sky.

  But he wasn’t still, not quite yet. His eyes, clouded and confused, fell on her and widened. His mouth formed her name. Then the word, “No.”

  Seren knelt beside him as Rhys and the two members of her guard landed down the beach.

  Rhys changed and fell to his knees next to Cadoc. “Sunder me,” he said, his voice rough.

  Cadoc had seconds left. Less than seconds. Her heartbeat grew loud in her ears. She could heal Cadoc, but if she saved him, she would lose the thing that had defined her. No longer the Seeress, no longer sacred.

  No longer alone.

  Rhys drew breath, as if to speak. Terror descended on Seren. What if he used the mantle? She was forced to obey as much as any dragon. What if he stopped her?

  But Rhys only looked at her with pleading eyes. “Save him.”

  “He’s my—”

  “I know.”

  Cadoc shook his head weakly, mouthed, “No,” again. Seren knew his heart. He wouldn’t want to take the Seeress from the king. But she was not only the Seeress, and Rhys was not only the king, and both of them needed Cadoc.

  She tore off the veil and her gloves, dropping them into Rhys’s lap.

  She inhaled, calling the magic up from her core, and touched her fingers to his forehead just as Cadoc’s eyes rolled back in his head.

  For an instant, she registered the feeling of his skin. Slick with sweat and blood, surprisingly soft and smooth beneath. She channeled the magic into him, pulling bone fragments from lungs and organs, rebuilding ribs, draining blood and repairing veins and arteries. All of it in no more time than it took to blink. For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

  Then Cadoc gasped in a full breath, and magic slammed through her.

  Rhys braced her from behind when the power would have thrown her back into the sand. The world turned white, then dark. The sound of a whirlwind shrieked in her ears.

  Her mind opened, and something like a beautiful song half remembered drifted into her, twining around her, filling all the lonely places she’d carried with her. The song enclosed her heart in comfort and security and love so vast she could not begin to comprehend the depth and breadth of it.

  She’d heard some dragons describe the first moments of heartswearing as being filled with an unfamiliar presence. But there was nothing unfamiliar here. For the first time, it felt like she was home.

  Cadoc.

  But his mind was slipping away. For all she’d done, he was dying. She pushed more magic into him, more light, more strength. As she pushed, something else was being ripped from her core.

  The Sight. It was leaving her.

  Rhys called her name, but Seren ignored him. Nothing mattered, as long as she saved Cadoc. Her body shook. Her stomach turned over. Black sparks danced at the edges of her vision, but they were fading into gray and white. Her head was splitting open. Her eyes were being burned from her skull. Seren thought she cried out. She thought Cadoc stirred.

  She held on to her power, on to her sanity, fighting tooth and claw. If she’d healed him, there were others on this beach who needed her. She could still serve her people.

  Uncaring, the darkness swallowed her whole.

  * * *

  Cadoc woke in his own bed.

  He wasn’t expecting that. Ancients, the last thing he remembered, he’d been dead.

  He rubbed his face with his hands and groaned. He felt good, but different. He’d been upset, but...why?

  Then he registered the hazy extension of his mind—a mental presence that cuddled in close to his and so very unconscious that he hadn’t noticed it.

  Someone moaned and stirred in the bed next to him. Startled, Cadoc looked down. There, sleeping on top of his covers, lay a very veil-less Seren. Instead of gold, a color he’d never seen her without, she wore a turquoise shirt and simple, gray pants.

  Seren.

  Heartsworn. Mine.

  He ripped off the covers and leaped out of bed. “Blood of the Ancients!”

  The door to his room swung open and Ffion came in. “Stop bellowing,” she hissed. “You’ll wake her. It nearly killed her, healing you and heartswearing and losing
the Sight all at once. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  Cadoc backed away from the bed, though every cell in his body screamed to stop that this instant and get in there and wake his mate up in a very wicked way.

  His mate. His.

  Lost the Sight.

  Cadoc balled his hands into fists, unsure whether he should laugh or weep. “I tried. Sunder it, Ffion. I would have died to avoid this. I’ve made another mess.”

  Ffion’s face turned fierce. She strode up to him and shoved her finger into his chest, her other hand on her swollen belly. “Distewi, you wind-for-brains fool. I’ve had enough of death. Enough. Do you hear me?”

  Tears sprang into her eyes, and she looked down at her stomach. “This child will never know their father. None of you are Griffith, and so I need all of you. You, Rhys and Evan. You have to be here. To tell my child stories, to keep Griffith’s memory alive. So don’t you tell me that you would rather be dead when he is dead, and Iain and Deryn. This vee is the only family this child and I have left.”

  She collapsed into him, weeping. Shocked, Cadoc caught her and held her, stroking her wild bronze hair. He tried to speak, to apologize, but found a lump blocking his throat. Ancients, he’d been so caught up in his own misery that he hadn’t been able to see he wasn’t the only one suffering. “I’m sorry, love. Of course I’ll be here for you and the babe.”

  Ffion straightened and wiped her eyes. “I love you, Cadoc ap Brychan. Don’t you ever do such a desperate, scalebrained thing again.”

  He grinned at her. It came more easily than it had in months, but it didn’t feel as carefree as it used to. “I don’t think the Unsworn will have me.”

  Heartsworn. He looked at Seren in the bed. In his bed. Stars, he had to be dead and this, some sort of blissful afterlife. That was the only explanation.

  “Is she—” He cleared his throat. “How is she? How long have I been asleep?”

  “You’ve both been out for a day,” Ffion said, not moving away from him. “She seems to be all right. She’s running a low-grade fever, but we think she’ll wake up soon.”

  Gazing at Seren, he felt a craving come over him. To be with her. To touch her. To never leave her side.

  This was heartswearing? This was nothing. He was connected to her, and he’d enjoy that, but compared to love, heartswearing was like being starved for a meal and stuffing yourself with candy. He liked candy, but food was better.

  Ffion sighed and leaned against Cadoc’s side. “I’ll leave you alone. I just didn’t want you to wake her. And I wanted to see you whole and alive for myself. Neither of you looked very good when Rhys and Ashem brought you in.”

  She squeezed his hands, raised herself on tiptoe, and he bent so she could place a kiss on his cheek. Then Ffion left, and he was alone with Seren. He was so busy staring that it took him a full minute to understand what Ffion had meant.

  I wanted to see you whole and alive. Whole.

  His hand.

  He lifted his right hand to his face and wiggled his fingers. The skin was pale and smooth, fingers long and agile. After months of being one-handed, of having no music, being cursed, being lonely, he was whole.

  Seren stirred, and Cadoc dropped his hand. He studied her face, instead, drinking it in. Gold still lined her eyes, a stunning contrast to the deep, ocean-like color that appeared from beneath her lids.

  He was going to resist. She was the Seeress. He’d taken her power, stripped Rhys of a valuable asset. He had been determined to wallow in his guilt. Deny himself.

  But then she looked at him, and every thought of self-denial fled.

  He crawled into bed, pulling her into his arms and tangling their legs together, fitting their bodies as tightly as he could. Her hand came to his face, and he closed his eyes, reveling in the sensation of the exquisitely soft skin of her palms as she ran her hands over his cheeks, touched her fingers to his lips.

  Wonder filled her mind, and Cadoc reveled in that, too. He wasn’t sure, at the moment, where he ended and she began, and he didn’t care. They shared a feeling of contentment, of serenity, of finally.

  “You’re alive,” she whispered.

  He became more aware of her every second. Not her body—he’d been aware of that for a while. But of her mind. Her feeling of loss. Of magical blindness.

  He’d done that. He’d hurt her.

  Her fingers tightened in the fabric of his shirt. “No, ngariad i. I saved your life, and you saved mine. Neither of us are alone.”

  He felt the sick horror, saw a flash of himself sprawled on the beach, blood leaking from one corner of his mouth and several other places. It triggered the memory in him—the agony of broken ribs, of his lungs filling with blood, drowning him from the inside...

  They tightened their arms at the same time, breathing gone shallow and ragged. Cadoc couldn’t get close enough to her, couldn’t shelter her from the terror, from the loss, couldn’t forget what it had felt like to die.

  He found her lips—oh, Stars, her lips, just as he’d imagined them—and tasted salt. She was as familiar to him as music. He slipped a hand behind her neck and tilted her face up, leashing his desperation. Forcing himself to be slow, tender. But thorough. Ancients, so thorough. He’d waited far too long to be anything less.

  Seren made a noise in her throat and slid her arms around his neck, arching against him. Want flared in her, doubling the impact of his own. Cadoc moaned, tangling his fingers in her hair, teetering on the edge of control.

  “Let go,” she whispered into his mind.

  Cadoc had imagined loving Seren more times than he could count. He’d imagined her skin, her taste, her body.

  His imagination was terrible. Maybe he wouldn’t have felt that way if he hadn’t been able to feel her reaction to each touch, every kiss. Maybe, if he hadn’t been inside her mind, so closely melded that he could feel her pleasure, her tenderness, her desire, her love.

  Her skin was a blessing. Her voice, when she called his name, was the sweetest song he’d ever heard. Her pleasure was light, a golden glow that made him want to give her more, then more, until they both sublimated in the brightness.

  When it was over, they curled together, warm and heavy. Her head was on his chest, his fingers in her glorious red-gold hair. He couldn’t stop touching her miraculous skin. She shivered, and he sensed that it worried her how much she liked what his hands could do.

  He smiled and stroked his fingers over the curve of her waist and hip. “You’ve a lifetime to make up for. I intend to make it my personal project.”

  She burrowed in closer to him, needing him in a way not at all physical. Just wanting to be. “Not today, surely.”

  Cadoc made an exaggerated thoughtful face. “We could make a decent start.”

  She raised her head and pressed a kiss to his cheek, then his forehead, then his mouth. “I think we have.”

  “Dw i’n di garu di, Seren. I have loved you since I was a boy.”

  “I love you, too. For just as long.” She lifted her hand, then hesitated. Sensing her intention and her fear, Cadoc took her wrist and moved her fingers to push dark strands of hair from his forehead. “Never be afraid to touch me. I am yours.”

  Her smile went straight to his heart, and despite the looming battle and worry over how other dragons would react to him stealing their Seeress, Cadoc was at peace.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  At the End of Things

  They gathered in Rhys’s rooms the night before Owain was due to arrive on the archipelago. Kai sat on the arm of the couch next to Rhys. Seren and Cadoc, still in the throes of a brand-new heartswearing, couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Ashem and Juli were more reserved, but that didn’t stop Ashem from pulling Juli firmly onto his lap and holding her there.

  The couples were a sharp contr
ast to the rest of the vee. Morwenna and Ffion had both lost their heartsworn, and Evan had lost the woman he loved. Kai and Rhys, she supposed, were somewhere in between. They had each other, but they lacked the unconscious synchronicity heartswearing had given them for those too-brief weeks.

  They were doing okay, but even with Rhys right next to her, she missed him. She’d thought that she might get over it, given time, but she hadn’t. Love didn’t need magic to make it real, but even with all its embarrassments, inconveniences and privacy issues, she’d rather be heartsworn than not.

  No one talked about the battle. Instead, they played cards and laughed and spoke of other things. Memories of childhood, Griffith and Deryn. For the first time since Kai had known her, Morwenna talked about Iain, breaking down into tears. Cadoc put a hand on her shoulder and Ffion wrapped her arm around the taller woman’s waist. No one said what was on all of their minds—their lives, which had centered on the war for so long, were going to change. No matter whether Rhys won or Owain did, nothing would be the same.

  This night was an ending.

  Juli came and sat next to Kai, reaching over to clasp her hand. Kai took it in both of hers and squeezed. “I don’t know if I ever thanked you, Jules. For getting me out of Cadarnle.”

  Juli had given herself to Kavar for Kai. If it came down to it, Kai would have done the same. And, it seemed, Kavar was willing to sacrifice himself for Juli. That was a twist Kai hadn’t seen coming. She wasn’t thrilled that Ashem’s evil twin was in his spare bedroom instead of a cell, but she supposed if the others could accept it, so could she.

  Juli glanced at her. “Go ahead, then. Keep it brief.”

  Kai laughed. “Thank you. Seriously. Can you believe this is happening? Us, sitting around waiting for an epic battle?”

  “It’s surreal,” Juli said.

  “My mom freaked out when she found out I wasn’t staying on the south island with them.” They would be safe there, Kai told herself. The entire Invisible had been tasked with protecting the humans. Once the battle started, Owain’s soldiers wouldn’t surround the archipelago anymore. They’d be able to get out. Her family, the elderly, the children. Ffion, too, would join them in the morning. Pregnant dragons were too valuable to risk.