by Elise Kova
There was a long pause that said more than her actual answer. “I’m not sure.”
“But you suspect.”
“I do.”
He was impressed at how well their conversation was going, though everything in him told him not to push things too far. “I’m going to do everything in my power to protect the flowers, but you need to get them sooner rather than later.”
“Understood.”
There it was: the end of their interaction, the moment when everything was going to drop. “One more thing,” he added hastily.
“What?” He was relieved to hear more curiosity than annoyance in her voice.
What was he going to say? I love you still? Cvareh knew better; she had no interest in such professions.
“Be careful.”
“You too.”
The connection ended.
Cvareh walked under the shade of the temple’s roof, proceeded to the far wall, and wedged himself in the corner behind the statue of Lord Agendi. He would wait there to discover what force was disrupting the flowers that were so special to them both.
ARIANNA
He contacted her.
She had asked him not to. She had told him that if he valued anything about them, he would not.
She had excused herself from the manufacturing line when she felt his whisper and now stood in a small side room adjacent to the floor. Arianna stared at the line through the window. It was beginning to run well. Their defect rate was almost low enough now to call it a proper line. But it would be worth nothing if they didn’t have the flowers.
Her Dragon had paid attention to that. As dense and inept as he was at a great many things, he truly understood how critical the flowers were for them. A smile crept on her lips.
She shouldn’t be smiling. It betrayed all reason. After all, he’d done what she’d explicitly asked him not to, and the flowers they needed were being destroyed. Not to mention there was still the matter of the Dragon attacks and the schematics she needed to send to Florence.
But her heart was pounding. Her mind was alert and ready. Even as Arianna the Rivet, she experienced the acute sensations normally reserved for Arianna the White Wraith—those that meant something big was coming.
“Charles!” she called, storming back toward the line. “Charles!”
“Yes, here!” A hand waved from the far end of the line and Arianna sprinted to the other master. She gripped his elbow and pulled him to the side. Over all the noise of gears churning and machines whirring, they could barely hear one another, let alone be overheard by anyone else.
“Charles, where do the Rivets keep gliders?”
“Excuse me?”
“I know you keep them here.”
“There’s a hangar, just outside of Garre proper . . .” His voice trailed off and he gave her a look likely intended to be probing. When she remained silent, he came outright with it. “What do you need it for?”
“Tell Willard I’ve gone to get him the flowers we need.”
“From Nova?”
“The same. We have enough boxes ready; we can begin stage two.” Arianna paused, thinking of the gun she’d been working on for weeks. “I’m going to leave out some gun schematics in the masters’ hall. See that they’re sent to Florence.”
“To Florence? Not the Vicar Revolver?” Charles seemed confused. The demand was unorthodox.
“Yes, to Florence—only Florence,” she affirmed without hesitation.
“When will you be back?” He glanced nervously at the line.
“When I can,” she said. “You’re fine. You understand the box.”
“The code to the hangar is red, thirty-two, five, orange.”
“Heard.” Arianna quickly stepped away, betraying the urgency of the situation.
He caught her elbow. “And be careful.”
“I—”
“Truly, Arianna, be careful.” Charles gripped her arm tightly a moment before letting go. “The world needs you alive right now.”
The words “right now” stuck in her mind as she ran up through the halls, back to Master Oliver’s room. They echoed like a quiet promise as she grabbed the gun prototype and laid out the schematics for Charles to find later. They continued to replay as she sought out one of the gliders in the far hangar with as much speed as she could manage.
Right now, the world needed her as Arianna the inventor and crafter of the Philosopher’s Box. But when the fighting was over, when the rebellion succeeded, she could retire back to obscurity. She could be whomever she wanted and answer to no one, as she’d done all her life in the years leading up to this rebellion.
But before she could slip back between the cracks of time and memory, she needed to see Loom’s victory secured. And that meant going back to Nova.
CVAREH
He had been waiting for an hour that felt like eternity when Cain arrived.
His friend and a female Rider unknown to Cvareh landed, dismounted, and started down the path toward the temple. Cvareh stood, emerging from the late hour shadow into the remaining sunlight.
“Send away your boco,” he called to them.
“What?”
“Send away your boco,” Cvareh repeated, softer now that they were near.
“Why?” Cain asked skeptically. “Aren’t we moving flowers?”
“Not yet.” Cvareh looked over the horizon for anyone approaching. “We’re going to wait to find out who is taking them.”
“Cvareh, we should try to save some first.”
It was sound advice, but the idea of leaving the island and possibly missing the perpetrators behind the flowers’ disappearance was unthinkable.
“We will wait,” Cvareh said, weighting the last word with a note of finality. To really drive the point home, he looked to the woman who had been otherwise silent, and changed the topic. “Who are you?”
“Dawyn Xin’Anh Bek,” the sapphire-skinned woman answered. She had long golden hair that cascaded in waves, not unlike Petra’s curls, but just different enough that it didn’t hurt to look on her.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“Cain told me it’s to preserve some of the Flowers of Agendi before they all go missing.” She kept her eyes down out of respect, but her voice was strong.
“Look at me.” Dawyn obliged. Her irises were the color of honey poured into water—yellow on the edge and blue around the iris. “How long have you been in the service of the Xin Manor?”
“All my life.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-five.” She was quite young, but not a child.
“If you are involved in these affairs, I cannot promise your safety.”
“Can you promise my safety at the manor?” Cvareh didn’t have an answer for her so he remained silent and she continued, instead. “No, you can’t really, not anymore.” Dawyn looked to Cain, then back to him. “I don’t know everything, but I know that Rok killed our Oji and is poisoning our halls as they poisoned our wine. I am not afraid to die, Cvareh’Oji.”
There was that title again, chasing him like a beast he didn’t want to admit was gaining ground behind him. This time, he didn’t outright refute the notion.
“Come, let’s talk while we sit.” Cvareh wanted to get them out of view. He didn’t want the thieves to know that anyone was waiting for them until they landed, until it was too late. The two followed him in, sitting along the back wall. “Why you?”
“Why did I ask for Dawyn’s help?” Cain sought clarification and Cvareh nodded. “Because she’s as loyal to Xin as anyone could ask, and her family owns a winery on the west coast of Ruana.”
Her mention of the poisoned wine made a lot more sense. Cvareh met the woman’s unusually colored eyes. This was loyalty to her house, and it was also personal. He didn’t need to ask if her family’s vintage was some of the wine that had been tampered with.
“There are plots of land at the vineyard where the flowers will thrive,” Dawyn explained. “My fam
ily will see to them personally with the utmost discretion.”
Cvareh hoped she was right.
The conversation kept on with relative ease until it naturally died out. Both the tension and impatience of waiting consumed their focus. Cvareh could hear and feel Cain beginning to stir. But he kept himself still. He would wait days if he had to, and they would wait with him.
When the moon was high in the sky, and wispy clouds cast the world in on-and-off twilight, boco cries cut through the stillness. Cvareh crouched forward, ready to spring into action. Cain and Dawyn did the same.
“Don’t move until I do . . . Keep your magic pulled in tight.”
Even in the pale moonlight, the approaching Riders’ red skin shone brightly, as if by their own light. Three women dismounted their boco. Two went for the flowers, but one stopped mid-step. She held out a ruby-colored hand.
“Come out.” She squinted into the temple.
Cvareh stood, and with him, Dawyn and Cain. He walked forward, stepping into the moonlight and stopping on the top stair of the temple.
“Cvareh Xin, you seem to have a habit of being where you shouldn’t be and meddling in Rok affairs.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he dead-panned. Why bother trying to mask a lie everyone already knew was false?
“Yveun’Dono will be delighted to have proof of your treachery.”
“Yveun’Dono cannot bar me from worshiping at my patron’s temple.”
“He can do whatever he pleases.” The woman narrowed her eyes. “Now, by his order, leave.”
Cvareh didn’t move. The smart thing to do was to leave. Doing so would be consistent with the role Petra had carved for him: keep his head down, acquire information, be forgotten, be underestimated. She would be the one to plan and execute the attack later. But she was gone, and he had to fight for himself. For Xin.
“By his order? Or Coletta’Ryu’s?” Cvareh didn’t expect Dawyn to speak, but now that she had, he wanted to hear the answer as well.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The woman’s lips curled back, exposing her teeth. “If you do not leave, it will be a refusal of an order from the Dono. We are permitted to kill anyone who demonstrates such impudence.”
“Are you?” Cvareh assessed them. “You have no beads, so you’re not Riders. I’ve never heard of anyone but the king’s Riders operating with enough authority to duel and kill on his behalf.”
“Go, wayward Xin, and you will live out the rest of your god’s hour.”
“You go, and leave the flowers.” Tension rippled through his muscles. “Or I will be forced to defend them on behalf of my patron.”
He didn’t know if it was excuse enough for a duel, but it was all he had, and the women before him seemed even less concerned than him with the idea of keeping things respectable.
“You, the weakest of the Xin children? Fight us with your pets . . .?” The woman laughed. “Leave, Cvareh.”
He didn’t need to endure any more disrespect.
Cvareh lunged.
The woman was ready for him and darted forward, claws out, taking the first swipe as they met halfway. Cvareh dodged widely, forced to step back and avoid a second attack from one of the other women. Cain and Dawyn weren’t far behind, however, and quickly engaged the other Rok fighters one-to-one.
“This won’t last long.” The woman before him thrust a clawed hand out. Cvareh side-stepped and quickly pushed off his other foot. A woman’s scream rang out nearby; Cvareh turned, expecting to see Dawyn in need of assistance.
“You wretched girl!” The Rok Dragon was on the ground, hand covering a shoulder pouring blood.
Dawyn spat flesh from her mouth. “Look out!”
Cvareh turned back in time to dodge the point of a hairpin slicing downward in a vicious arc.
“Don’t let it touch you!” Dawyn shouted, even though they were not very far apart. “They’re Coletta’s women. Expect poison!”
“Coletta’Ryu, Xin scum.” The woman Dawyn was fighting regained her footing and lunged.
Cvareh lost track of Dawyn and Cain, focusing on the fury of attacks at his front. The woman was good, better than she had any right to be. She fought as Cvareh would expect a Rider to, every attack precise and fearless. Her long claws gleamed in the moonlight as Cvareh laced his fingers with hers, gripping her hands in place.
“What do you want with the Flowers of Agendi?” he demanded.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She kicked out her feet, tumbling backward and pulling Cvareh with her. Her claws dug into his skin as they rolled, swiping at his face and neck, seeking a blow that would incapacitate him long enough to go for his heart.
He twisted, scrambling, and a claw came out of seemingly nowhere, shooting straight through his jugular.
“I will kill you,” she snarled, leaning in toward his face.
Cvareh looked at the woman over him, gurgling blood onto the earth as her knees pinned him. He sunk under her weight as though the soft, upturned ground itself was going to engulf him whole. Cvareh saw one imperfection in the moonlight’s outline of her hair as she pulled back.
“I will watch you die, just like I watched your sister die.”
Petra.
Blood spewed from his neck as he mustered a roar that gave voice, at last, to the rage he felt boiling inside. He pushed into the ground until he found something firm enough to brace against and pressed upward. She may have the advantage, but she was off-balance with his sudden movement and he had height on her. His arm, barely long enough, whipped upward.
Her hand caught his wrist, knowing what he had been going for.
Cvareh fought against her. Magic pumped through his veins and fueled his muscles with an energy he shouldn’t possess. But she had leverage still, and used it to keep the poisoned hairpin at bay.
Just when he thought the bones in his wrist were about to snap from the woman’s grip, it slackened, and her head whipped skyward.
Everything on the island seemed to still as a glider landed, and a large, strawberry-colored Dragon stepped off.
“Yveun’Dono has requested your return,” the Rider announced. There was something undeniably familiar about her accent.
“Who are you?” The woman had yet to ease off Cvareh.
“Lesona’Kin.”
“I know of no such person.”
“Perhaps you are not worthy of such information.” The Rok Rider shrugged. “Leave, now.”
Finally, the woman eased away. Her claw extracted itself from Cvareh’s jugular, but it didn’t recess entirely. He felt his tendons beginning to knit . . . but did he dare attack in the presence of another Rider? Looking around, it seemed Cain and Dawyn had the same hesitation.
“I will not be leaving, imposter!” Cvareh’s attacker lunged.
The Rider moved with a rustle of clothes she didn’t appear to be wearing. Seemingly from nowhere, a gun unlike Cvareh had ever seen materialized. The strangeness of the thing, combined with its presence in a Dragon’s hand—and on Nova nonetheless—made Cvareh’s brain stutter to find context.
“Die.”
He knew the newcomer instantly, the moment he heard the whispered word.
The gun fired, but the discharge exploded by the grip rather than the barrel. What had been a Rok Rider moments before was now a Fenthri woman, clutching the side of her face, doubling over. But she used that motion to grab for the daggers at the small of her back.
Cvareh lunged to action. He sprinted for the Rok woman and the Fenthri—no, the Perfect Chimera—in her sights. She was several steps ahead of him, but his legs had never stepped so wide, his muscles never felt so strong, as they did in when he was working to get to her.
Whoever the Rok woman was, she was not a Rider, because she made a critical error. Cvareh sprung for her, tumbling head over heels. In the process, the hairpin she’d forgotten he still held found its way into her neck.
Cvareh quickly let go, watching as the woman’s y
elp was cut short by her eyes rolling back in her head. She shuddered violently, collapsing open-mouthed and wide-eyed. Cvareh watched in horror as foam bubbled from between her lips.
He tore his eyes to the Fenthri in their midst. The earth seemed to quiet; he trusted the silence to mean that Cain and Dawyn had won their respective battles, and now stood in as much shock as Cvareh.
“Well, that rescue really blew up in my face.” Arianna rubbed her knitting skin, washed white in the pale moonlight.
Cvareh couldn’t stop his mirth and roared with laughter for the first time in what felt like forever.
ARIANNA
Her Dragon had finally snapped.
Arianna picked the remaining shrapnel out from her shoulder, flicking it to the ground. Cvareh was busy laughing like a fool and she waited until he stopped to take a breath.
“Are you quite done?” Arianna muttered. “The joke wasn’t that funny.”
“It was and you know it.” Cvareh steadily approached. She could smell him more keenly, see him more clearly, with every confident step. Arianna regarded him warily.
Half of her screamed for him, the other half against. Cvareh was exactly the same as he’d been, the same as he’d always be. He was a Dragon. A few months apart was a not-so-insignificant portion of her life as a Fenthri; for him, it was a blink.
“Cvareh, what’re you—”
He cut her short with arms around her, wrapping her up with bone-crushing force. Arianna felt every ripple of his muscles as he tensed against her. She breathed him in as his mouth covered hers. He tasted of daydreams and foolishness. He smelled of sweet nostalgia. The combination silenced the irritated voice trying to remind her that she should be cross with him.
He made her so soft.
“Enough,” she whispered across his mouth when he came up for air. Cvareh pulled his head back, noses still touching, questions in his eyes. “That’s enough, for now.”
