by E. A. Copen
I rubbed my aching forehead. It was all very confusing. Better to focus on the problem at hand.
Ash. I felt sick to my stomach, just thinking about what had happened. How was I going to deal with him? More importantly, how would I ensure I got the dragon’s heart and not him?
I donned a cloak and stepped out of my tent. The rain had stopped, but there were still puddles throughout the camp. There were also more people awake than I thought there would be. It was still dark out, probably about time for me to take my first shift on guard duty. Yet there were campfires still going, shadowy figures hunched over them. I frowned at the sight and reported to the command tent to sign in.
Zia was waiting. “There you are,” she said. She had dark circles under her eyes, but otherwise looked as flawless as ever.
I frowned, surprised to see her. “Where’s Foggy? I thought he was supposed to be my watch partner.”
“There’s been a change in schedule. Ash’s orders.”
Of course he’d send her to keep an eye on me.
She flipped her hood up, and we started our first walk around the perimeter. “You look terrible.”
“Must be all the sunshine,” I grumbled.
She frowned at me, brows knitted in concern. “Sunshine didn’t do that to your face.”
I stopped walking and turned to her. “Just how well do you know Ash?”
Zia blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You knew we were headed straight for a rift, didn’t you? Yet you never showed an ounce of concern. When you saw Ash close that rift in the center of camp and he made his announcement, you didn’t look surprised, either. You knew, didn’t you?”
She set her jaw and stood up straighter. “Ash’s power can reshape the world. He can fix this. All of this. When I saw what he could do, I swore I would protect him. I’d die for him.”
“But you don’t know him. What he’s capable of.”
“I know he can close the rifts,” she said and started walking again. “That’s all that matters. His survival is all that matters.”
“Did you know he could open them too?”
She halted and gave me a wary glance.
“Ash has no intention of going around, closing rifts, Zia, and you know that.”
She shrugged it off. “He just needs some time. The man was trapped in one for years. He lost everything. Once he adjusts, he’ll come around.”
“Do you really believe that?” I crossed my arms.
“I must.” Her words were as sharp as a blade. “If I don’t believe that we can fix this and heal the world, then what else is left? Am I just supposed to pretend like I’m okay with fighting through every day, watching people die? Watching the world shrink? If we can’t fix this, then things are just going to get worse. No matter how we fight and claw to hold on to every shred of civilization and humanity, it will all fall apart. Maybe not in my lifetime, but one day it will happen. Without belief, there’s only doom. I choose to believe in a world that can be saved.” She marched away.
I grasped her arm, holding her back. “Ash is no savior.”
She scowled at my hand on her wrist. I let her go.
Zia folded her hands behind her back and went back to patrolling. “You know, when he woke up, you were the first person he asked for. I used all my resources to track you down, but you didn’t exist. No matter how many people I threatened or bribed, no one had ever heard of an Ember Dixon. But then I got a very interesting message from a courier who had been in contact with the postmaster general in Chattanooga. I moved heaven and Earth to put Ash in Atlanta at the right time.”
I stepped in front of her, blocking her path. “You arranged that? How?”
She smirked. “Of course. You didn’t think it was chance that brought you back together, did you? Please. The Institute doesn’t believe in chance and neither do I. We make things happen through careful planning and contacts.”
My mind reeled at the implications. Had an Institute spy and whispers from another world had manipulated me this entire time? How many choices had been my own since I’d come to Atlanta? How much had they influenced?
But all I could get out was a single, shaky word. “Why?”
Zia shrugged one shoulder. “Because I believed seeing you would change him, soften him to the cause. If anyone could convince that lovesick idiot to do the right thing, I figured it would be you.”
“Your cause? Or the Institute’s?”
“I am not the enemy here, Ember. We want the same thing.”
“Do we?” I shook my head and took a step back. “If you had seen how he really was…”
“Well maybe he wouldn’t be that way if you weren’t so selfish.”
“Me?” My jaw fell open. “Selfish? You think I have this bruise on my face because I’m being selfish?”
She whirled around, eyes blazing, and closed on me, stopping when her nose was only inches from mine. “I sat at his bedside for months while we thought he was dying. Every day, it was the same. Every day, he would sweat and cry out for you to save him. You! I was there when he broke and wept because he thought you were dead. I held his hand while he mourned and held him back when he tried to throw himself back into the first rift he saw because he didn’t want to be in this world without you.”
I shrank back. “I… I had no idea.”
“Why would you? You never asked. You never cared. When he saw you in Atlanta, he wouldn’t stop talking about you all day. He almost forgot about the mission. I thought maybe he had changed, finally snapped out of that depressive mood that had gripped him. But then he went to your room and came back broken. Dejected. A shell of the man he’d been working so hard to become. Because you rejected him!”
“Nothing I did justifies his behavior.”
“No?” she spat. “Then tell me why he went into the rift in the first place?”
I opened my mouth, but no words would come out. She was right. Ash had pushed me out of the way. He had saved me, and in doing so doomed himself. It was my fault he’d gone into the rift in the first place, my fault whatever was in there had twisted him, my fault he’d even gotten the powers he had.
My fault.
“If he is broken, then it is you who broke him,” Zia spat. “Ash is the only one who can do what must be done. It’s my job to keep him alive, and your job to undo what’s been done. I don’t care what that takes. If he hits you, take it. And if he wants you, then you give yourself. Whatever it takes to fix the world, Ember.”
I felt sick. My knees were weak and the air suddenly colder. I hugged myself and shook my head, fighting back tears. “How can you say that?”
“I didn’t say it was right,” Zia said, her tone softening slightly. “Or fair, or even good. But this isn’t about good and evil. It’s about survival, the future of the world. Ash was given a gift that cannot be denied, not even if he tries to. We weren’t chosen. He was. That means he leads. We either bow or we break. There are no other options.”
“Listen to what you’re saying. Just because he has power, it doesn’t mean we should submit to whatever he wants of us.”
“When that power pertains to the survival of our species, then that’s exactly what it means.” She sighed and shook her head. “The rifts are growing. More appear all over the world every day. Even with the guilds, DEMO, the Institute… Monsters and magic are gaining ground. How long before we must abandon the cities to huddle in caves, waiting to die like they do out west? How long before this experiment at rebuilding fails just like the Coalition and the United States before that? I would suffer a thousand tyrants if it meant I served the greater good.”
“Then you’re as insane as he is.”
“There is a difference between pragmatism and insanity. Insanity is doing the same thing we’ve been doing as a species for years and expecting different results.”
I shook my head and turned to march away. There was no reasoning with a fanatic, and that was exactly what Zia had become. Ash was dangerous, and I ha
d to stop him myself because no one else was going to help me.
If you want something done right…
Chapter Twenty
In the morning, there were no songs, no speeches, no jokes. Fog clung to the valley where we had made camp and rain glistened on every surface. In hushed whispers, everyone packed their belongings in, looking more weary than rested.
Ash marched through the camp in all black embroidered with gold thread, two guards at his side at all times. His movements drew heated looks from everyone but the few he had brought with him. Something boiled beneath the surface of our group of dragon hunters, and the pressure built with every passing minute.
Just as I finished packing in my tent, two of Ash’s guards arrived. One tugged back the side of his coat to reveal he had a gun, a rare weapon. Bullets were scarce. “You’re to come with us.”
I stood up straight and put my hands on my hips. “And if I refuse? Will you waste a bullet on me?”
“Our orders are not to harm you,” said the other guard, his hand moving toward the sword at his hip. “Everyone else in camp is expendable.”
“You wouldn’t want to make a scene, would you?” said the first guard.
I glanced over at where Dex had been working to load the wagon. He’d stopped, watching the scene unfold with sharp eyes. The tight coiled muscles, set jaw… He’d do something stupid soon if I stuck around much longer.
I lifted my chin and lowered my arms to my side. “Wouldn’t want that,” I said and went with the guards.
Ash and Zia waited at the front of the convoy, already on their horses. One of Ash’s guards brought Scorch out for me.
“Good of you to join us,” Zia said, a proud smirk on her lips.
“Sorry. Some of us have to tear down our own tents.” I pulled myself up into the saddle.
“This will be the last time you do that,” Ash said. “I’ve also removed you from the watch roster. There’s no reason for you to be in the rotation. We have plenty of other able-bodied people for the work.”
“Are you insinuating I’m not able-bodied?” Scorch shook her mane as I took up the reins.
He frowned down at the sword at my side.
I felt him looking at it as if something were clawing at my thigh and moved a protective hand over the hilt. “Problem?”
“No problem,” he replied with a strained smile. “You will ride at the front with us to the base camp.”
“I suppose I don’t have any choice in the matter?”
“No.” He gestured in a circle and gave a whistle before we started off on our horses.
I rode for a few minutes, stewing in my anger. A part of me wanted to draw that sword and hit him with something other than the pommel. But Ash didn’t deserve to die. I didn’t know how else to stop him, though. With Zia egging him on, he was beyond reason.
At length, I asked, “So am I your prisoner? I assume this means I’m not getting paid for the job.”
Ash chuckled darkly. “I don’t allow my prisoners to ride with me at the front, armed to the teeth. I see no cage, no chains. If you turned your horse and rode off, there would be little I could do to stop you.”
I turned my head toward him. “Except I can’t, not if I don’t want you hurting more people.”
He kept his gaze forward. “Is that why you remain? Tell me what it is about that half-elf mongrel that makes you care?”
I didn’t answer.
“I’m not blind, Ember. I see the way he looks at you, and you at him. Do you really think the half-breed son of a whore gives a damn about you? If your roles were reversed, he wouldn’t hesitate to save himself. You’re nothing to him, and he should be nothing to you.”
“You don’t know him,” I snapped. “You don’t know the first thing about anyone, and you don’t care about anyone but yourself.”
“I care about you. About us.” His tone was cold, distant.
“There is no us. There never will be.”
Ash laughed as if it were a joke. “We’ll see how you feel about that after I have the dragon’s heart.”
After that, we rode in silence.
The sun never really rose. Light hung in the sky, out of reach, filtered through heavy gray clouds. Slowly, that light became less bright and more green. Our path curved around the bottom of a mountain where the trees were sparse. Jagged rock formations protruded from the walls. Moss and vines grew up over old telephone poles, breaking them down, feasting on the remains of the past.
As we went on, the vegetation thinned out and rocks became more prominent. The space between the people on horseback and the carriages increased enough that we had to slow our pace to prevent them from falling too far behind.
At mid-day, we crested the small peak and got our first glimpse of the valley where we would make camp, and of Black Mountain.
The valley was a rocky wasteland, barren of trees and bushes. At the far edges of the valley, large green crystal formations grew out of the rock and reached for the hole in the sky. Despite the hour, it felt like twilight. The green rift spun above, a halo on the mountain, bathing the battlements of an old fort in a sickly green light.
“It’s almost beautiful,” Zia whispered, watching the rift spin.
A high-pitched roar tore open the air and made my skin prickle. The horses spooked, some rearing to throw their riders. Others simply shifted and shook their heads, stamping their hooves, eager to be elsewhere. The air chilled and everyone in the convoy held their breaths as a massive black shadow passed over us.
I lifted my eyes to the sky.
The dragon of Black Mountain had a wingspan wide enough to block out the light of the rift. Onyx and ruby scales colored the beast’s underside while the tougher outer scales were the color of an angry sea at midnight. Strange glowing green horns protruded from the tops of the dragon’s head, its chin, and its back.
Magicite. The dragon had magicite crystals growing out of its skin, just like the heretics.
Curved talons raked at a peak on the other side of the valley, pulling down rocks. The dragon’s talons were large enough to pick up a horse and rider with ease. The dragon’s teeth must have been as large as me. Another roar shook the valley, and the dragon circled the rift before touching down and disappearing into a cave.
“The dragon’s lair,” Ash remarked. “What luck.”
Zia shook her head. “There’s no direct path that I can see from here.”
Ash smiled and took up the reins he had dropped in awe of the beast. “Well then, we’ll just have to find one.”
We made camp in the rift's light. I should say everyone else was allowed to make camp. I was escorted from my horse straight to where they were erecting the command tent and told to sit in an uncomfortable wooden chair that looked suspiciously like a throne. Ash’s people offered me water, wine, food, everything they thought I wanted. Everything except freedom. I declined it all. They kept me in the chair while the tent walls went up around me, while they set up the table and placed models of the terrain on it, while the day waned and night came.
By the time Ash made an appearance, it was dark enough that someone lit some lamps. The guards outside had made sure I stayed in the tent, but at least I could get up to pace, which was what I was doing when he walked in. I stopped mid-step to glare at him. “Am I expected to curtsey to my future lord and savior?”
“No,” he answered matter-of-factly and went straight to the table to study the terrain.
I didn’t want to look at him, and I couldn’t pace without getting close to him, so I gave up and plopped down into the chair, arms crossed.
“This sullen child act is beneath you, Ember,” he remarked, adjusting some items on the table.
“Apparently, a lot of things are suddenly beneath me. Why am I here?”
He finished making the adjustments to the terrain map and stepped back to admire his work. “That sword, where did you get it?”
“Does it matter?”
Ash finally looked away from
the table to me. He looked me up and down, rolling his tongue over the inside of his cheek in thought. “I suppose not.”
I swallowed and fought to sit up straighter under the intensity of his gaze. “You didn’t answer my question. Why am I here?”
“There is to be a meeting shortly. The guild leaders and I will discuss our strategy for how we’ll proceed. Before they arrive, we need to discuss this thing between you and Dex.”
I turned my head away. “You’re paranoid. There is no thing between me and Dex.”
He slammed his fist down on the table so hard I jumped. The violent explosion of temper made several pieces fall over, and his hair fell out of place. He pushed it back, breathing deeply. “I am trying to make you see reason without losing my temper, but you are not making it easy! Nothing is easy with you, is it? Even before.” He put his hands flat on the table, fingers slowly curling in.
For a moment, he looked like his old self, lost and afraid of being alone. Zia’s words echoed through my mind. She was harsh and rude, but maybe she had a point. Maybe all Ash needed was a little compassion and guidance. Maybe he wasn’t completely unreachable. I owed it to our friendship to try.
I rose out of the chair and went to his side. Slowly, I slid my hand over his.
He looked at our hands, together but apart. “I have loved you since we were children, Ember. Ever since that day at the fort where Old Jim took us in. And it was with such a fierceness that, it hurt. Loving you is like looking at the sun. You always knew the right thing to do, to say. You were always there to protect me.”
I took his face in my hands and turned him to face me. “So let me protect you now. Let me protect you from yourself. I don’t know what happened to you, but we can fix it together. Without all of this. No vampires. No institute. No power. Leave with me right now, Ash, and you can have me.”
He closed his eyes and leaned into my hands. For a moment, I thought he would do it, but when he opened his eyes again, I knew. Ash would never come back to me.
He swallowed, lips parting to answer.
Before he could speak, Zia ducked into the tent. She saw us standing together and stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you two were…”
