Only one pearl was missing.
The final call came from the Mirror Dragon. She lifted her majestic head, the glossy crimson scales of throat and chest reflecting the blaze of gold flame from her pearl. Her throbbing call rose up like a heartbeat through my chant. She extended her huge scaled muzzle over the platform, the horselike nostrils flaring, the soft wind of her breath scented with her cinnamon power. Under the curve of heavy horns, her dark, ancient gaze held me inside the endless cycle of life and death—and the dragons’ long wait for release.
Make it right.
“Give Eona the Imperial Pearl,” Ido ordered Kygo. “Now!”
Kygo reached up, and the gem’s smooth heat rolled into my palm. The chant in my head and on my tongue stoked the fire within the heart of their egg. Its silver energy leaped into incandescence.
“Eona, you have to give the pearl to the Mirror Dragon,” Ido said.
But I already knew the ancient path to renewal: it sang in my blood and bones.
First quicken the spark of life within the luminous egg, then press its power into the gold flames of the red dragon’s pearl. Once that was done, I could release the dragon Hua caught in the black folio and send it back to the beasts so that they could die and be reborn.
But the acid words whispered another pathway, too: a way that held all the power of the world. Take the twelve dragon spirits into yourself, it hissed. Take the power waiting to create the new, and leave the old to wither and die. Take everything.
Ido’s words. The black folio’s words.
The Mirror Dragon lifted her huge chin, offering her golden wisdom to me as she had once offered it to me in the arena. The Righi’s words seared into the Imperial Pearl, igniting its silver Hua into a ball of white fire that stung my hands with sharp flicks of power. This was the start of it. And the end of it.
“Good-bye,” I whispered to my dragon.
Reaching up, I pressed the white flames against the gold at her throat. The two surfaces flared and melded together, the force thrusting my hands away. With a soft cinnamon sigh, the Mirror Dragon swung her head down, the huge glowing pearl dropping to the ground. She nosed it into place. As the circle of pearls closed, gold flame leapt from dragon pearl to dragon pearl, igniting each sphere into bright gold heat.
The Necklace of the Gods.
I felt the chant change within me, the hissing command shifting into a lilting call. The Righi was opening the way for the twelve bound spirits.
Kygo turned to me, his smile full of wonder.
I saw the blur of movement from the corner of my eye, but there was no time to cry out. Kygo’s reflexes swung his sword up, but Ido was already at the end of his leap. All of his body weight drove the long knife into Kygo’s back. Ido’s mouth was a bared snarl of effort as he twisted the blade, arching Kygo against his body into gasping shock. The chant froze in my throat. Kygo staggered sideways and landed heavily on the dais, Kinra’s sword still locked in his hand. The white pearls around my arm heaved and shivered as the Mirror Dragon screamed, her protest soaring above the roar of the male dragons.
“No!” I fell to my knees beside him. “Kygo!”
He gulped for breath, the agonized gasp bubbling with blood. I touched his cheek. Already cold with shock. Or was it my own icy horror? My other hand hovered over the knife hilt embedded in his back.
“I wouldn’t pull that out if I were you,” Ido said. “I aimed for the same place where the arrow hit me. He’s got a few minutes.”
“What are you doing?” I cried.
Ido walked up to the dais, observing Kygo’s struggle for breath.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” he said.
Weakly, Kygo gripped the hilt of the sword and tried to lift it, but it dropped from his grasp and clattered off the dais, landing at Ido’s feet. The Dragoneye kicked the blade away, then looked down at me.
“I’m going to give you a real choice now, Eona,” he said. “If you take all the power with me, you can heal him. Stop his pain and save his life. Or, if you insist on releasing the dragons, you can watch him drown in his own blood.”
“You bastard!” I went for him, my hands tensed into claws. My knees hit the edge of the dais as Ido jumped back out of range.
“I’m just making it easy for you to have what you really want,” he said.
Kygo’s fingers caught my sleeve. “Don’t do it.” Blood flecked his lips. “Don’t give it to him.”
“So much honor, just like his father,” Ido said sarcastically. “I’d say between the dragons and the amount of blood he’s spitting up, you haven’t got long to make up your mind.”
He was right. Kygo’s skin had a bluish tinge around his nose and mouth, and the Righi was building within me again, pushing past my shock to call the bound Hua of the dragons. I could not move, paralyzed by the impossibility of the choice. Kygo or the dragons. My heart or my duty. All the reasons to save the dragons raged through me: Kinra, atonement, the land, the people, the future. And only one reason to save Kygo, tolling through me over and over again.
I loved him.
“Take what you want, Eona,” Ido said. “You have done it all along, so why stop now?”
A slight smile curved his lips. He was so confident that I would agree. I had turned my back and he had struck like a snake.
“You’ll have everything, Eona. Including him.” Ido nudged Kygo’s foot with his own. “It is not so bad to have her control your will, boy.” Ido’s smile turned sly. “I look forward to sharing your compulsion power, Eona. And I think you will enjoy sharing my knowledge. It’s what you’ve wanted all along.”
“I just wanted to be a Dragoneye!”
“You wanted power,” he said. “This way you get it. And you get to save Kygo.”
The Mirror Dragon screeched. Her huge red head swayed from left to right above her blazing pearl. The clouds above us flickered with the light of the flames, reflecting the intense heat.
“All right,” I clenched my fists. “All right.”
“Eona, no!” Kygo lifted his head, the effort forcing a bright trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. His cold fingers touched my hand, drawing me closer until my forehead rested against his own. I felt his labored breath on my cheek, the metallic smell of his blood in every soft warm gasp. “Do what is right,” he whispered, the words costing him precious air.
I pressed my lips against his cold skin. “I don’t know what is right.”
“Yes, you do, Naiso.” He fell back, panting.
I stood, legs trembling. He wanted me to release the dragons. Yet, if I did, I would lose him and I would lose the Mirror Dragon. I would lose everything. If I took all the power with Ido, I would destroy the dragons and take Kygo’s throne and will from him. He would hate me. I would be left with only power. I would be Ido. A wave of rage swept over me. There was no way to win this battle.
“You must do it now, Eona,” Ido said.
For one despair-ridden moment, I wanted the dragons’ power to explode through the land—to destroy everything in its path, and take away this terrible choice. But I had to choose, and I could not let Kygo die.
I stepped down from the dais, every harsh clicking breath from my beloved pushing me toward the Dragoneye. Ido picked up Kinra’s sword and drew its blade along his hand, inhaling with pleasure as it sliced into his flesh.
“Your turn.” He caught my free hand and turned it over. My palm was already cut from the gold-clawed setting of the Imperial Pearl. My eyes fixed on the moonstone and jade hilt as Ido dragged the sword tip along the same wound. A faint echo of Kinra’s rage shivered through me. Was her Hua still in the folio too? My fingers curled around the stinging draw of fresh blood.
Ido sent the weapon spinning across the boards. “Dragoneye blood to break an ancient Dragoneye binding,” he said. “When the Righi releases the dragons, we must hold on to the folio to take their power.”
He grabbed my hand and pressed it across the white pearls that clamped the folio
to my arm, then slapped his own blood-sticky palm over my knuckles. I felt the pearl rope shift and shiver.
“All right. Now we take what is ours. This is our destiny, Eona.” The triumph in his eyes made them as gold as the ring of flames around us. “Call the dragons out of the folio.”
“This is not destiny,” I spat. “This is ambition made from betrayal and murder. Do not dress your atrocities in the garb of the gods.”
He tilted his head, the harsh angle showing the ruthless set of his jaw and the deep lines of brutality from nose to mouth. How could I ever have thought him handsome? His core was rotten and hollow.
“Call it what you will,” he said “But you are standing here with me in the midst of the String of Pearls, and we are about to take all the power in the world. It feels like destiny to me.” He closed his hand over mine, grinding my bones together. “Call the dragons.”
Kinra, help me, I prayed. If you are still within the folio, help me.
On a deep breath, I let the Righi rise again. The words boiled into my mind, a seething summons that rushed through my pathways. Beside me, Ido flinched as he felt the blistering force reach through our bodies to the dragon Hua caught within the folio. It was a torrent of fire through every vein and muscle, bubbling up behind my eyes and drying my mouth into a silent scream. The agony of it pressed me against the brace of Ido’s body. I felt the bindings around the dragons’ Hua blaze and burn, opening their human-made prison of blood and greed.
And I felt another spirit: the faint cool echo of an ancient warrior woman, my ancestress. Kinra.
They are free! I am free! Her joyful voice soared over the disintegrating bonds of the folio.
Free. One simple word and all of my pain crystallized into a terrible certainty. I could not take the renewal power. I could not destroy the hope of rebirth for land and dragon. This was the last chance to right a terrible wrong. The chant stopped in my throat. Time hung still in a silent, bodiless, breathless moment of truth. I had to release the dragons’ Hua. I had to give it back. And it was going to kill Kygo.
The chant burst out of me again, my scream of anguish swept up into the howling rhythm of release.
Kinra, help me, I prayed. Help me make it right.
The rope of white pearls heaved against my hand. Kinra’s cool presence rushed into me, the liberated dragon Hua following like a tornado made of fire and power. Every one of my nerves was stretched to the breaking point, my mind unraveling into the maelstrom of raw energy, throat shredding with the acid chant that pulled their Hua into the conduit that was my body. It slammed through me and into Ido, the force making us both stagger.
“Eona, hold the power,” he yelled.
“No!”
He thrust his face into mine. “What are you doing?”
The hissing song of chaos poured through me. I bared my teeth into a smile, and in my mind I saw Dillon’s death’s-head grin. The Righi was life and death. And so was I.
Ido closed his hand around my throat, trying to choke off the words, but the Hua still came. Twelve spirit tethers gathering within us with the force of a cyclone. Ido wrenched at my hand, bending my fingers away from the pearls. A thin bone snapped, but I felt no pain. Everything was subsumed by the whirling, blazing power.
Against the backdrop of gold flames and plunging dragons, I saw men scrambling onto the platform, cringing away from the inferno rising from the circle of pearls. The familiar shapes of Dela and Tozay crouched among wild-eyed soldiers and resistance fighters, everyone cowering together against the intense heat and the huge thrashing, screaming beasts.
Ido dug his fingers under the white pearls. “I will not lose my power!” The spittle spray of his rage was cool against my scorching skin. “I am the Rat Dragoneye!”
I heaved against his weight. “I am the Mirror Dragoneye— and I give the power back.”
I felt the Mirror Dragon’s howl shift into a cry of joy.
Ido slammed his fist into my jaw, the sound of bone against bone loud in my head. I felt no pain, although the heavy impact knocked me backward. We both staggered, tied together by Ido’s iron grip on the pearls. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kygo pulling himself along the dais, every tiny shift forward shuddering through his determined face.
Ido yanked at the folio. “Give it to me!”
The end of the pearl rope curled and snapped across his hand. He forced his fingers beneath it again and ripped at the tight coils, his desperate strength sliding the folio down my arm to my wrist. With a grunt of victory he wrenched the folio free, the power unraveling out of me and pouring into his body.
I reeled from the sudden loss and crashed to the ground. The pearls swung out in a snapping circle, then wrapped around Ido’s hands.
He looked down at me, his eyes black pits of Gan Hua. “I do not need you anymore. I can hold this power by myself.”
I scrabbled backward. His body was silhouetted against the flames. Energy bathed his skin, casting him into shimmering silver light. The power of the ages, the power of all twelve dragons. And Ido believed he could hold it by himself.
I drew in a deep breath, hot air scorching the cavities of my chest, and found the pathway to the energy world. The platform around me warped and shuddered into the celestial plane. I flinched under the assault of blinding light and the writhing spectrum of color that leaped from the gold flames around the dragon pearls. Ido’s energy body swarmed with silver and black Hua. His seven points of power from sacrum to crown circled at a speed that blurred them into solid spheres of bright color: red, orange, yellow—and then the stunted green heart point. Never truly changed.
A wedge of darkness in all the bright fury drew my eyes to the purple sphere in his crown, the center of enlightenment. The black gap was still there like a deep wound within its spinning purple vigor. And it was getting bigger. The silver energy in his body pulsed and swelled, again and again. Every throbbing influx of power forced the gap wider and wider. Suddenly it split apart, a white-hot bolt of dragon Hua bursting from its spinning center.
“Ido, you cannot hold it,” I screamed. “Give it back to them. Let it go!”
His silvered eyes found mine. “I have it all, Eona! I am a god!”
“Let it go, now!”
His heart point exploded first. The green sphere burst under the pressure of the dragon power, a bright emerald flare that died into a dark hole in his chest. The orange sacral point was next, its flash cascading into his yellow delta, tiny exploding suns that left darkness in their wake. He writhed in agony as the blue and indigo points heaved and vaporized.
For a long moment, the split purple sphere in his crown spun with all the power of the world. Then it erupted into a blazing torrent of Hua, streaming into the waiting dragons. The roaring power engulfed Ido’s body in gold and silver flames. I saw him reach out toward me. Then he was gone, incinerated into a glowing spiral of ash and dust, our link severed into searing loss. The black folio dropped onto the platform, the white pearls rattling around its leather binding like dry bones.
The celestial plane snapped back into the earthly platform. I stared at the charred space on the wooden boards.
Lord Ido was dead, consumed by the dragon power he had craved. All that ambition and drive, gone. I took a breath, a strangled half-sob within it. We had been bound together through power and pain. And pleasure. But he had betrayed and tortured and murdered: he did not deserve my grief. Yet there was a part of me that mourned him—the part that had smiled at his sly humor, felt the slow touch of his hand and the thrill of his power. The part of me that had once thought he could change.
Lord Ido was dead, and even in death the man divided me.
I hauled myself on to my hands and knees and crawled to the dais. My true grief was waiting for me, sprawled on his side, breath so shallow that it hardly moved his chest. His eye-lids flickered as I stroked his face, cold and clammy although his skin was reddened by the heat. He licked parched lips and opened his eyes. They were already du
lled and unfocused.
“Ido?” His voice was just a wisp of wet breath.
“Dead.”
“Good.”
I cupped his cheek, the pain of my broken bones and scorched skin suddenly sharp and full. “I have no power to heal.”
He tried to lift his hand, but got no farther than a shift of his wrist. “Did right,” he whispered. I slid my hand under his curled fingers, the slack weight bringing a sob into my throat. He swallowed, gathering moisture to make the words. “The dragons?”
“They have their power. They are renewing.”
The corners of his beautiful mouth lifted. “Let me see.”
Around us, the flames from the circle of pearls were like a curtain of leaping gold and red, the shapes of the dragons glimpsed behind it. Carefully, I settled Kygo’s head onto my lap, the pain of the shift shivering through his body. The knife hilt still protruded from his back. Dark blood seeped from the sucking wound, the gloss of it catching the flicker of the gold fire. I carefully pressed my thumb and finger around the wound, trying to stop the leak of his precious breath.
The Mirror Dragon lifted her head and sang—a long rising scale that called beyond the earthly plane. The sound was like kindling to the gold flames. Every pearl flared up into high, bright heat. One by one, the male dragons moved forward and stepped into the fire of their pearls. A scorching wind rolled off the fierce combustion, the intense blaze snapping and roaring around the old beasts. The charred smell of dragon death was thick and harsh in my aching throat as each one of their huge bodies was reduced to ash. Finally, only the Mirror Dragon stood behind her pearl. She turned her head toward me, her gold and bronze flecked mane already ablaze as she stepped into the fire of her rebirth. I moaned as the flames overwhelmed her, drying the tears in my eyes into stinging salt.
The circle of fire exploded upward into bright embers that swirled and danced in multicolored streams. The huge dragon pearls cracked and split.
My breath caught as shapes emerged within the flames: curled horns, long, elegant muzzles and muscled legs, talons that sparked with the hard color of precious stones. The new Horse Dragon emerged first from his flaming pearl—bigger than the old beast, his magnificent orange scales steaming with heat, pale watersilk wings flicking out into a tentative stretch. He shook himself, his soft ocher beard shifting to show the gleam of the apricot pearl beneath his chin. The neverending cycle. As he launched himself up into the dark clouds, the flames of his pearl guttered and died. I craned my head back to watch his flight; a wide circle around the plain, his big body sleek and supple in the air. With a loud, triumphant call, he disappeared into the celestial plane.
Eona: The Last Dragoneye Page 49
