“Why would you do this?” Patience demands.
“He’s breeding an army.”
“There were children in that compound,” I scream. “Human children.”
“They would kill us, if they had the chance. Humans are beasts.”
“Elanor,” says Patience, voice trembling. “Shoot her.”
I take aim, but my resolve weakens. I’m not a killer. I’m not like Muuth, or Adom. I thought I could kill without flinching. It isn’t so.
Smoke billows from Leviathan’s nostrils. “You think an arrow will stop me?” She growls, crawls up, looms over us. Her wings jet out, fully healed. She spits and hisses.
Patience jumps onto her hind feet, knocking me off her back. My body tumbles backward, my fall caught by the overgrowth of ferns below. The arrow and bow fly out of my hands. I leap to my feet, but it is too late. Patience swings her tail deliberately, knocking me out of the way just as Leviathan propels another stream of smoky liquid.
Patience takes the full torrent. Her body stiffens, encased with steaming crystals. She’s frozen, trapped beneath layers of ice. “No!” I mouth, dragging myself up one more time.
Leviathan’s snout shifts toward Adom. She slithers his direction. I grab the bow, draw another arrow and climb a large rock beside Patience. If I hadn’t hesitated, she wouldn’t have been hurt. The poison-dipped arrow won’t kill Leviathan, so why did I wait?
I grit my teeth. I won’t this time around. I can’t look at Patience, too afraid she is gone, like the villagers. I take aim upward, suck in a breath, and say a quick prayer.
Zing. The arrow flies true and strikes Leviathan in her glassy blue eye. Her responding cry is fizzling with outrage and murderous promises. She cranes her neck, searching for me. Then, when she sees me, she snaps the arrow in two with a claw. Part of the arrow is embedded, a wooden shard in her orb. She tries to move forward but suddenly seems to lose focus. Her limbs wobble like blood pudding. Every step shakes the ground around me.
Adom lumbers up and stalks toward a confused Leviathan. She stares up at him, wide-eyed and frightened, and then her pupils roll up into her head. As the poison seeps into her bloodstream, Adom takes a hard swipe at her neck. Her head snaps off with a sickening crunch. It lands at Patience’s feet, tongue lolling and one half-open eye fixed unsettlingly on me.
From not far off, Cinderrider roars the sound of a hurricane screaming at the mountain of Onyx. I whip my head around to aim at it with another arrow from my quiver. Cinderrider pulls back its head and shoots forward like a deadly snake, mouth fully open, a stream of molten fire flowing directly at me. The heat wave hits me before the flame, singeing off my eyebrows. Seconds before the inferno’s barrage, another figure springs out in front of me, blocking me from the explosion. A nimble dragon colored like the bark and leaves of a tree. Rhydian.
But there’s no time for a reunion. Cinderrider is after him now, talons raised while the other dragons work to keep up. Some have already retreated to other mountains. Others are diving into the devastated village, attempting to pull out the frosty human statues, to try and revive them. Cinderrider has wounded a number of the changelings, who are resting along the sides of the mountain with broken tails, fried wings, and huge bloody gashes in their midsections and necks. They will recover, but Cinderrider is clearly an alpha. It’s bigger than any of the other dragons on the battlefield, larger than Adom and Patience combined. Almost as tall as the castle. With that molten fire blast, the others are just no match.
Adom lands with a heavy thunk at my side. He changes into a human and whirls on me. “What are you thinking?” he demands. “Why are you here? It’s not safe.” His body is burned, black scorch marks and dirt over pink, healing skin. His hair is wild, and for the first time since I’ve known him so are his eyes.
I gesture at Leviathan’s head. “I had to help. She would have killed you.”
He nods toward Patience. “You came with her. Who is she?”
I point to Cinderrider, engaged in battle with Rhydian. “The more important question is who is that dragon? And why aren’t you helping the Tree Hopper?”
“Who is he?” His mouth curves up but I can’t tell if it’s a smile or a look of disgust.
“He protected me. That’s all you need to know. Please help him.”
Adom bows. “As you wish.” Then he charges and changes in one sweeping jump.
I glance up at Patience, and to my relief, she’s thawing out. She blinks and filmy icicles drop like scales from her eyes. She shakes her head, and her neck winds back and forth going the opposite direction of her head, scattering slushy liquid everywhere. She sees me and drapes a wing the size of a cloak over my shoulder, a gesture of assurance. “It’s fine.”
“I thought she killed you.” My eyes cloud over with tears.
“I knew she wouldn’t.” Patience withdraws her wing and steps over Leviathan’s head. She sniffs at the dead dragon’s eye. “A perfect shot,” she rumbles.
“I had a good teacher.”
“Care to try again?” she asks, nodding to Cinderrider. “She’s running out of time.”
“She?” I stare at the ferocious alpha, swiping Adom with quick loops and spinning circles around Rhydian. The female dragons of Onyx weren’t much compared to this.
“Now that we’re close, it’s obvious that she’s a female.”
“Can you tell who it is?”
“The scent is still unfamiliar. Although, I think I caught a whiff of it on Faigen.”
“Harminy said Faigen was with Siren just before he was burned.”
“But she lied, didn’t she? And how can you trust her?”
I climb onto Patience’s back. It’s a good thing we’re far enough away from the castle that no one could possibly see what’s happening here. I suppose this is one reason Adom and Siles selected this spot for the changeling camp. “If you don’t recognize the scent, it could be her.”
“Maybe,” she agrees, launching into the cloudy sky.
Cinderrider smacks Rhydian aside with her tail as easily as if he were a fly. She chomps Adom’s neck and hangs on, bones cracking beneath her jaws. Rhydian rams into her claw and her hold on Adom loosens, allowing him to retreat to the mountaintop to recover, his head drooping onto his chest at an awkward angle.
Rhydian tries to engage her with a slash to her left wing, but she ignores him and comes after us. My heart shudders and then stills. Cold washes over me. Patience lifts herself onto her hind legs and swipes at the incoming Cinderrider. But Cinderrider swoops over Patience in the last second. Her sharp claws stretch out and clasp me. Her talons puncture my shoulder.
She lifts me up and away from Patience’s neck. Bile creeps up my throat. I fumble for my bow, but the nails in my shoulders make my arms flop lifelessly, incapable of movement. I crunch my midsection, swinging my legs up over my head to kick at the dragon’s claws. She tightens her grip, ripping craters into my muscles. Excruciating pain ripples up and down my skin.
To my left, Adom is coming at me. To my right, Patience. Alongside us, Rhydian flies, hissing and swiping but not doing much damage at his angle and with his smaller size. In fact, none of them are. Where are the firestorms? The ramming heads? The swiping claws? My stomach sinks. She’s using me. She’s using me as her shield.
No. I am not a victim. I don’t need them to protect me. I will not be used ever again.
I take in a breath, crunch my midsection again, and pull up my legs. Locking my ankles around the back of her claws, I pull. Pain lances through me, but my groan is drowned out by the wind. I pull again, pressing against a pressure point I know is there. Reflexively, her talons loosen. I yank myself free and flip, then wrap my body around her talon. I’m trembling, my shoulders shredded and bleeding profusely. But as Cinderrider screams and kicks and twists to knock me loose, I hang on tight.
I still have my b
ow, draped around my shoulder, but when I open the quiver one arrow remains. The rest must have tumbled out when I flipped. I clench it with my teeth, cross my knees, and lock them around her leg. Then I begin to climb up Cinderrider’s body.
She’s clearly distracted and bothered by my presence, but Patience, Adom, and Rhydian have her cornered. She’s headed toward another mountain range, the centermost mountain steaming and rumbling. I know what kind of mountain this one is. A volcano.
As I crawl up her back, using loose and damaged scales as footholds to balance myself, I see a dragon emerge from behind the volcano, headed straight for us. Then another. And another. I recognize one of them. My heart stills. It’s Ona. And at the front, there is a dragon with great horns on its head, like antlers, and its body is black but somehow transparent so I can see glowing red every time it breathes, every time the scales split away just enough to reveal the cavern of lava within.
Its eyes are red and monstrous, and black curls of smoke pour out if its nose and mouth. His wings are coated in steel, like knives, glinting against the afternoon sun. A gold rope is tied to its hind foot, and a green satin bag swings on in, tightly secured.
Even Cinderrider stops when she sees him—maybe not just him alone, but the vast number of dragons following behind him. She flaps frantically, looking for a way out. But if she goes forward, she’ll have to battle the horned dragon and all the ones behind him. If she turns, she has Patience, Adom, and Rhydian to contend with. I glance over my shoulder. The changelings from the compound are behind us, snorting and growling and itching for a chance to swipe.
I pull myself up her neck and point the poisoned arrow at her eye. “Surrender now, and they’ll show you mercy. Fight, and they will kill you like they killed Leviathan.”
Her eye swivels, then focuses in on me. On the arrow aimed at her eye.
Slowly, we begin to lose altitude. In moments, we drop below the tree line. Then, her claws crash against the ground. Dust rises. I sneeze, nearly catching her eye with my arrow.
I slide down her neck and hop off, racing away quickly. Every movement induces pain in my shoulders, but I am used to pain and it will lessen with time. It always does.
Patience lands, and I go over to stand beside her. Adom hits the ground, then Rhydian. The others soon arrive and surround us, changelings to the south, dragons to the north. And the big horned dragon breaks free from the others and joins our inner circle. He changes first.
King Siles. He is as regal in his nakedness as he is with all the royal adornments. In moments, he reaches into then bag that had been tied around his leg when he was a dragon and withdraws a purple robe, the kind that he drops over his head and billows out like a fabric balloon around him. A gold insignia of an open-mouthed dragon is stitched into the front.
So. That was Fire Breather. I let out a small noise of appreciation. No wonder Adom listens to him.
Slayer changes into Adom next. The king hands him a similar robe, only this one is black with an orange house crest on it. Adom dresses quickly. Hunter and Chameleon, who only I know are really Patience and Rhydian, don’t change. They must still have fears about Malandre and Siles using the knowledge to their advantage.
“Show yourself,” King Siles orders Cinderrider. “You’re trapped.”
“I’d rather die,” Cinderrider snaps, flecks of spit flying from her snout.
“This could have ended differently,” Adom says, his voice sad. “We want to help changelings. To help you. But you destroyed their compound. They’ll demand blood for blood.”
“Then my debt is paid,” answers Cinderrider. Her eyes glitter. “Blood for blood.”
Adom frowns. “What debt?”
In response, Cinderrider looks to Rhydian. “You side with him? After all he’s done to us? Left your sister for dead, stolen your seat at the king’s table?” Her nails click together. “You and the king. This was how it was orchestrated. How the queen—and her lady in waiting designed it. You were meant to be so much more than the estranged son of a murderer.”
King Siles squints at the ground, puzzling it out. “My mother…?”
“Made you who you are,” Cinderrider replies. “She lived a normal life, died a normal death. Except for the day when she thought she would lose you. That’s when she called on my mother to find Jetarna. To make her perform her magic over your mother’s swollen belly so that you would live.”
“Let’s talk as humans,” Adom says.
Rhydian growls deep in the back of his throat. Something about it causes the hairs on the back of my neck to rise. He knows something. I’m sure of it.
“And when Jetarna performed her spell, she was paid well. And my mother was paid with a promise. That my family would forever be bound to yours. That her children would be protected.”
Rhydian creeps forward, head bent, tail slithering like a snake behind him. “Change.”
“I can’t,” she says, and there is a sad note to her voice. “I have lost my human.”
“If you can’t change, then you’re only a dragon,” says Adom. He nods to the stony beasts flanking King Siles. “The dragons of Onyx have come to take you.”
“There must be blood,” snarls one of the changelings. “She must be punished for the murders.”
“She will be,” answers Adom. He glances at me. “But not here. Not in this moment.”
“I won’t be taken prisoner,” she hisses, backing away. “I’ll fight.”
Patience lowers her head to my ear. “Elanor,” she breathes. “The arrow.”
“I can’t,” I whisper. “She damaged my shoulders. I don’t think I have enough strength.” Gingerly, I unhook the bow from my aching shoulder and nock my last arrow. I pull back with tentative movements, but it is not enough. Despair swirls in my gut.
“I was made for you, King Siles,” Cinderrider says. “My love for a traitor ruined it, ruined our family.” She lurches forward, attacking Adom in his vulnerable human form.
In seconds, he changes and raises his claws to block her blow. Rhydian leaps between them, and Adom’s talons sink into his side. Rhydian throws back his head and howls.
Human hands grab the arrow and bow from my hands. I stare, astonished, as Patience nocks the arrow, draws back the bow until the shaft of the arrow touches her ear. She’s human. She risked everything—her freedom—to help me end this. Disbelief and admiration alight in my chest.
Patience lets the arrow fly. Cinderrider moves, and for a second I don’t think it will hit her. But then she moves again to push Rhydian out of the way, and the arrow lands in her pupil, sinking in all the way up to the shaft. A river of blood pours down her cheekbone.
Rhydian’s head swivels my direction. He changes and stares at me, long and hard. “It’s Siren,” he says. “And with that arrow, you’ve chosen your side.”
Patience and I exchange glances. She shot the arrow, but he was obviously talking to me. He blames me. My stomach drops, and I can’t help the tears that spring to my eyes.
Rhydian clambers up Cinderrider’s back as she thrashes and snarls. He hobbles across her neck and reaches for the shaft poking out of her eye. Inch by agonizing inch, he pulls it from her. The whole time, he coos and whispers words of comfort, rubbing his free hand along her jawline.
By the time the arrow is out, Cinderrider is on the ground, collapsed. As Rhydian slides away from her, she begins to change. Underneath the hideous form, the scales like black coals, the golden eyes and talons like swords, there is only a woman. A small, jet-haired woman with a frame so delicate I’m certain I could break her in half by accidentally stepping on her. Her hair is so long it hangs to her knees, and it shrouds her body like silk mourning garb. She lifts her head and I see now what Patience’s arrow has done—gouged out the eye of that ethereal being. Siren lets out a soft whimper.
Rhydian rotates around, staring unfocused at the dragon
s in our midst. “Clothes. She needs clothes.” To Adom he says, “Avert your eyes.”
Patience tugs on the bag I’m still carrying. “I have an extra dress she can wear.” I untangle the bag from my shoulder and we both approach the Berrel siblings cautiously.
Rhydian’s accusatory eye settles on me. “Not you.”
Patience holds out a hand. “I can help heal her eye, my lord.”
A muscle moves in his jaw. “She’s a damned dragon. She doesn’t need your help.”
At the word dragon, Siren begins ferociously scratching her skin, leaving long red marks across the pale white. She screams and beats herself with dirty fists, convulsing wildly. Her black hair collects leaves and twigs as she crawls across the ground, moving toward Siles and Adom.
“No,” she moans. “No, I’m not a human. I’m not a human. I’m not.”
My gaze shifts to Adom. I can’t help but wonder how he feels seeing Siren, the woman he loved—maybe still loves—like this. But I see nothing on his face except the same, unreadable expression.
“I’m a dragon,” she insists. “Not this weak thing. Tell me Siles. Tell me it’s true.”
When the king doesn’t answer, she wails. The dragons of Onyx close in on her. Rhydian changes, but he is no match for the entire dragon herd. It takes only a matter of moments. Then they leave, each one trailing after the other like a flock of geese. At the head, Ona flies into the dawn. In his talons, he clutches Siren’s defeated form, blowing back and forth as it surrenders to the wind. Rhydian flies limply, severely wounded, behind them.
~ * ~
After it is all over, Patience stays behind to help the changeling dragons with their injuries and assist as many human survivors as she can. Adom patches me up with stitches and splints to keep my shoulders straight. He carries me near to the castle in his claws while the King stays on to communicate a new plan with the remaining changelings. When we’re a safe distance away, Adom changes again and we walk the rest of the way back.
When we arrive at the castle, there’s a commotion at the front gates. Ryrick is there, and so is Princess Ora. The guards are standing close by, waiting. The captain of the guards takes Adom and I aside so we aren’t overheard by the others.
Slither Page 29
