But as she turned, she saw Zak stepping out of the entrance. He was smiling at her while he hiked up his armored skin around his shoulders. She was glad to see him, of course, but a little disappointed that he was already out of bed. They really did need to go, though. They had two more to recruit, and Myrian’s desires were less important than the safety of the realm.
And yet, looking at Zak standing there in the morning light, the sun shimmering across his lean, muscular body clad in black, skin-tight scales, she felt a pull for him like the moon upon the tides.
“Good morning,” he said, walking to her and sliding his arms around her. She felt as if she could melt beneath his touch, and hoped she would never get used to that sensation. He leaned in and kissed her, long and slow.
When he pulled back from the kiss, she felt as if he had taken her breath along with him. For a moment she couldn’t speak. Then she did breathe, laughing a little and looking up into his beautiful dark eyes, his lashes long for a boy.
“Good morning to you as well,” she said, hoping every morning could begin as this one had.
“We need to go, don’t we?” Zak asked. He stretched and yawned, still smiling as he did so. He looked as she felt: still a little tired, but renewed, not just by the rest, but by their newfound feelings for one another. How could her idea of who he was have shifted so quickly? At first he had just been a simple swamp rat. Now he was a dragonlord, and hers at that.
“Yes,” she said, hearing the note of regret in her own voice. She looked down, but he put a finger under her chin and gently lifted her face up to his. He kissed her once more, not as long this time, but just as sweet.
“We will find a time to be together as we were last night,” he said. “There is much more I would like to do with you, if you would be willing.”
Gods, of course she would. And her answer to him was to lean forward and kiss for a third time.
“One more stop,” she said.
“Have you ever been to the Emerald Isle?” he asked.
“No.”
“I’m ready if you are.”
21
ZAK
They flew for hours over the mountains, the white sands to their right and the familiar misty swamplands to the left. Once they reached the western coast, they flew over the ocean, bluer than Zak could ever had imagined. His entire life, he’d associated water with mossy darkness, a place where living things crawled and slithered just beneath the surface. And some of those things could kill you if you weren’t careful.
But the ocean looked beautiful and inviting, from the rolling white foam of the shoreline to the vast blue expanse of the open sea. He thought he might like to dive in, to see if the water felt as cool and clean as it looked. But he had to remind himself he had no time for fun and games. He looked over at Myrian, another reminder of the same lesson.
The night in the mountain chamber was wonderful, but he’d been too frightened to carry it farther than he had. What he’d wanted to do more than anything was to place his hands on the insides of her thighs and spread her creamy legs apart so that he could push himself inside her. His entire body had thrummed with heat and wanting, but he was worried that he might do something wrong, that he might hurt her or make a fool of himself. Now, in the light of day, those thoughts seemed silly, especially since she had seemed as eager as him. But at the time, he had decided simply to hold her, to run his fingers across her skin, and to kiss her. And at the time that had seemed enough. Now, his body ached with regret. He just hoped he would have another chance.
They had found frozen corpses blasted with ice in Everfrost Keep and charred empty halls in the Sandstone Palace, and as Zak saw the green outline of the Emerald Isle up ahead, he wondered what they might find there. He didn’t know much about the green dragons. He thought to ask Myrian, but the open ocean wind was rushing across them, making it difficult to hear or carry on much of a conversation. He supposed he would find out when they got there.
But this time, they would be more careful. White sand ringed the shore, but every other bit of the island seemed to be pure green. The jungle rose up with a lush vibrancy that almost hurt Zak’s eyes.
No wonder they call it the Emerald Isle, he thought. What else could they?
Myrian took the lead, falling in to fly along the coastline. Before they had left the Scorched Mountains, she had told him that though she had never been here, she had been told that the palace was somewhere near the southern coast. Their plan was to fly along the water’s edge and look for signs of survivors who might lead them to Vander Tanglevine.
What they spotted first were not survivors, but clearly the aftermath of the dark day. At first, Zak’s mind couldn’t really wrap itself around what he was seeing. It just didn’t make sense.
Everywhere else along the shore, the vegetation seemed to follow a normal pattern. Tall grass grew inland near the beach, with shafts of bamboo growing even further up. Smaller trees gave rise to taller trees, their giant leaves forming the tops of the jungle canopy. But what they saw up ahead near the coast looked as if the jungle had begun to grow wildly out of control, like some brilliant malignant tumor spilling out of the side of the island. The growth was twisted mass of vegetation rising well up above the rest of the jungle and spreading all the way into the nearby ocean.
Myrian looked at him, then nodded towards the beach. She wanted to land well before they reached the giant growth, which seemed like a prudent idea. They could approach on foot, shifting back if they needed to fight or flee. Zak certainly didn’t want to fly too near that thing. For all he knew, it was alive. It might whip out at his body and wings with thick vines and pull him into it, making him a permanent addition to the living sculpture. Or maybe it would simply eat him. He had no idea, and he didn’t really want to find out. He’d had enough surprises in The Burning Sands.
So as Myrian descended, he drifted down beside her. Every time he flew he felt stronger and surer about his abilities. As she landed with a puff of white sand, he pulled up next to her, beating his wings just the right amount to touch down lightly. He felt a pang of anxiety as his claws sank into the warm sand. The last time that had happened, he’d gotten a nasty welcome.
But no trap snapped shut around his leg this time. There was only the warmth of the beach, the ocean breeze, and the sound of the surf rolling in. Myrian shifted and he followed suit. She was looking up at the towering green mass. From this angle, it looked even more disturbing. Then he realized it was pulsing and writhing as he watched, and suddenly, instead of moving forward to investigate, he wanted to get as far away from that thing as possible.
“It’s still growing,” Myrian said. There were hints of both horror and fascination in her voice.
“What is it?” Zak asked, not sure if she knew, or even if she did, whether he wanted to know the answer.
He watched her eyes grow wide with some disturbing realization. “The green dragons,” she said. “Their breath is a living force. My father once told me that the Tanglevines once helped to grow The One Tree, a long, long time ago.”
Zak realized what she was saying. This was the aftermath of a fight within a group of green dragons. They had unleashed the power of life itself, causing an entire section of the jungle near the beach to grow out of control. Was the Tanglevine palace buried somewhere underneath all of that pulsing vegetation? Was the king himself under there as well?
As he wondered these things, he realized Myrian was probably thinking the same. She looked at him, fear and uncertainty in her eyes. But he could also see her love for him. She was glad he was here with her, to face whatever came next.
Zak reached out and took her by the hand. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go have a look.”
He didn’t want to get any closer to the writhing green abomination, even less so now that he had some idea of where it had come from. But they had to find the rest of the alliance if they were going to have any chance of success. And that meant exploring the area for survivors.
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They walked up the beach together, and the mass loomed ever larger the closer they got. The growth seemed mostly comprised of plant matter: leaves, branches, vines, and unrecognizable bright green polyps. But Zak’s unease grew as he began to spot body parts, a huge misshapen arm near the base and the stretched grotesquery of a face, the swollen eye rotating aimlessly in its socket.
He felt a shiver run up his spine as the eye stopped moving, seeming to look down at the two of them. Zak stopped walking and squeezed Myrian’s hand. She stopped too. The eye had a vertical slit, the sclera a sick mixture of yellow and green. Did it see them? Was there a brain somewhere inside that thing, or a group of minds fused together? Zak had been repulsed by the idea that the mass was merely unchecked plant life. But the idea that it might also be able to think, that made Zak’s stomach clench painfully.
He wondered whether he should point out the eye, but Myrian had already seen it.
“It’s looking at us,” she said.
“You see the eye as well?” he asked.
“There’s more than one.”
And to his growing horror, he realized she was right. He’d been focused on that one rolling eye, but as he looked around he saw another, the bloated iris a light blue. Now that he was looking for them, he began to see them everywhere. And each and every one was staring down at them.
“We should leave,” he said. They had no reason to believe that the growth could move, and they were still relatively far from it. But he was beginning to feel less and less safe on the open beach.
“I think you’re right,” Myrian said.
They turned to head back down the beach the way they had come, and Zak felt even less comfortable with the thing at his back, looming down at them and watching them go with dozens of mismatched eyes.
Then something moved out of the corner of his eye, from the direction of the water.
This is it, he thought. That thing had sent tendrils down into the surf to run under the water where they couldn’t see them. It was going to attack them both.
But as he turned his head, he saw something rising up out of the water, but it wasn’t a tendril or a misshapen limb. It was a woman.
She was walking up out of the surf wearing skin-tight silver armor, though not scaled like a dragon’s. It looked more like silver strands fused together to hug the curves of her body. Her hair was bound up in silver netting, dripping with water and sparkling in the sun. And she carried a three-pronged spear.
Zak relaxed when he saw it. She was the woman from the prophecy.
“It’s her,” Myrian said, and he knew what she meant. The only one of their alliance who was not a dragon. What was she then? A human? As she strode out of the surf, she looked more like a goddess of the sea than anything else.
The look on her face was confident, but also curious. She was watching them closely as she strode toward them. When she reached them she stopped, planting the tip of her spear with a puff of sand.
“Hi,” she said. “We’ve been expecting you.”
22
MYRIAN
The woman who had just walked out of the ocean was not particularly tall, but her presence was powerful nonetheless. Strands of spun silver seemed to have been woven around her to form her armor. The suit started at the top of her breasts and her upper arms, coating everything below and leaving her shoulders and neck bare. Her hair was bunched and held in place with netting that looked to be made from the same silver strands as her suit. The spear she held was clearly magical, shimmering from within with its own strange light.
“Who are you?” Myrian asked. She knew that she was one of the alliance from Magda’s scroll, but beyond that she had no idea. The woman looked like a goddess.
“I’m Brynn,” she said. “And you’re the black and white dragons. From the prophecy.”
“You know about the scroll?” Zak asked.
“Scroll?” Brynn had a confused look on her face. She reached to the small of her back, and Myrian’s muscles tightened in response. The woman was supposed to be their ally, but they had barely met her. And after the events of the previous day and the unease she felt from the hideous mass rising up out of the jungle, she felt on edge.
But Brynn’s hand came out from behind her back with what looked like a polished piece of some kind of shell. Myrian could see figures painted on the shiny surface, along with writing. But it was in the ancient tongue, and she couldn’t make out what any of it said.
Myrian took the shell in her hands and drew it closer. Zak leaned in to look as well.
The picture was nearly identical to the one Magda had shown them. The figure of the demon sat at the center of a circle, surrounded by seven figures. The colors were even more vibrant than those on the scroll, showing blue, red, green, black, and white dragons, then another that was gold, and a woman with a spear. The figures were crude, but unmistakable.
“Where did you get this?” Myrian asked.
“There’s a library,” Brynn said. “Beneath the coral reef. Kira let me explore it. I found out what was going to happen to the sun, but only just before it happened. We didn’t have much time.”
“You knew what was going to happen?” Zak asked. “How?”
Brynn nodded down at the shell. “There are thousands of fragments like that down there,” she said. “The merfolk prophets kept themselves very busy, I guess. And I can read ancient Xandakarian.”
Myrian wanted to ask her just who she was once again. Knowing her name didn’t seem to be enough. There were so many questions, but Myrian asked the first that came to her mind.
“Is the king still alive?”
There was a look on the woman’s face when she mentioned the king, a brightness that came into her eyes.
She loves him, Myrian thought. But she can’t be the queen, can she? The last Myrian had heard, before all the madness had begun, was that Vander Tanglevine was meant to wed the Nightshadow princess. But then Zak said she had been with the demon. None of this seemed to make any sense. But she knew that look on the woman’s face.
“He’s alive,” Brynn said. “Just before the eclipse began, he headed up the coast alone. He wanted to take a group of guards with him, but I warned him that would be dangerous. He only took his owl advisor. They’re camped north, not far away.”
“Why didn’t you go with him?” Myrian asked.
“Somebody had to wait here,” she said. “Even though that thing creeps me the hell out.” She looked up at the writhing mass.
“Wait for what?” Myrian asked.
“For you,” Brynn said. “The prophecy said you would come.” Then she looked up, thinking, as if reciting. “Black and white, as day and night. They will come, two as one. That last part, I suppose that means you two are an item?”
At first Myrian didn’t understand what the woman meant. Item? Then she realized and blushed. The merfolk prophecies were that specific? They had foretold her feelings for Zak?
She turned to look at Zak and found him looking at her. He was blushing as well, the redness in his cheeks making him look downright adorable.
She looked back to Brynn and cleared her throat. “What else did the prophecy say?”
Brynn gave her a wry smile. She knew when someone was trying to change the subject, but thankfully she answered the question.
“It talked about the leader of this little coalition,” Brynn said. “With a lot of references to something called ‘the gilded line’. The gold dragon is the one that’s supposed to be the leader. You guys are the ones rounding up recruits. Have you signed up a gold dragon yet?”
“If we were or are meant to, then perhaps we are in more trouble than I thought,” Myrian said. “I was taught that gold dragons were a child’s tale. Even if they weren’t, they would be long dead by now.”
“According to what I’ve been reading through, they’re supposed to be alive,” Brynn said. “And if they aren’t, you’re right. We’re not in good shape at all. I’ve barely scratched the surface
of the library down there, but the one thing I am sure of is that we’re running out of time.”
“Shall we head north, then?” Zak asked. “To find the green king?”
“No need for that,” Brynn said. “I’ll tell him to come to us.”
Myrian wondered how she might do such a thing? Building a signal fire would take too long. Blow on a conch? And why would she waste valuable time?
But before she could ask, Brynn tilted her head back slightly and closed her eyes. Her lips began to move as if she were whispering to herself. Could she talk to him from afar somehow?
A smile crossed Brynn’s lips, then she opened her eyes. They were brighter than ever. “He’s on his way.”
“You spoke to him?” Myrian asked. “Just now?”
“It’s a long story,” Brynn said. “I’ll tell it to you sometime if you care, when the world isn’t under threat of imminent destruction.”
And I’d very much like to hear that story, Myrian thought. There were many times over the past two days when she would have longed to be able to read Zak's thoughts. But then, as she thought about it a bit more, she wondered if that might not be as much a curse as a blessing.
“Are the two of you hungry?” Brynn asked. “We can eat while we wait for Vander.”
And at the mention of food, Myrian realized she was hungry. The malignant growth had made her queasy at first, but she and Zak had eaten little during their journey, while they had transformed and flown a great deal. She nodded.
“Okay,” Brynn said. “Well lucky for you I know a great little place right along the beach.”
The place the woman in silver spoke of was a small grove of mango trees, thankfully untouched by the breath of the green dragons. Zak must have been as hungry as she was, because once he saw the trees full of ripe fruit, he ran to the nearest one and plucked a plump mango. Then he plopped down on the sand and took a huge bite, looking up at her and smiling as the juice ran down his chin.
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