When She Reigns

by Jodi Meadows

  “Didn’t you hear about this scorch mark? That was her.”

  “Stop. Both of you, stop.” Apolla’s voice was crisp with confusion and anger. And . . . jealousy. “She is the dragon soul. That is why they bow.”

  My heart pounded, and the remaining two hundred noorestones pulsed in answer.

  One hundred noorestones.

  Seventy-five.

  Thirty-three.

  The dragons waited, soaking in the last of the fire as rain drummed across their bodies and smoke and steam poured through the clearing.

  Two noorestones.

  One.

  When the last noorestone flickered dark, my wings dissolved into ghosts of light, and then nothing at all.

  “Is that it?” someone asked.

  The dragons all lifted their heads. Beautiful. Sharp. Wild and powerful and unknowable, just as the gods.

  I lifted my hand before me, and an ignitus bumped my palm before twisting away and launching into the rain-soaked sky. Then the maior, and the rest and the rest until only the titanus remained. He pressed his nose into my hand, so gentle for something so big, and then he, too, flew.

  Cheers rose behind me, but I couldn’t look away from the dragons as they spiraled through the air, circling into a small tower like the dragons at the ruins had. Colors flashed. Fire spouted. Roars made the whole world tremble.

  It was a fierce and joyous sight, making my heart tangle up with gladness and relief and awe.

  I’d saved them. In spite of the distance from our gods, and the illness that had ravaged their minds and bodies, and the toxic leech of the giant noorestone, I’d healed these dragons. They were alive. Happy.

  They were incredible.

  Then . . .

  Through our connection . . .

  I felt the change the moment they did.

  Far to the west, in the middle of an ocean with nothing else around, seven Fallen Gods waited. Three had risen. The other four were still pressed against the bottom of the sea.

  But imperceptibly to everyone but the gods’ most beloved children, one of the Fallen Gods began to shift.

  And the dragons began to scream in horror.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  THE RUSH OF FEELING CAME IN GREAT, UNFORGIVING waves.

  First, the horror.

  Together, we screamed at the knowledge of another god preparing to leave and tens of thousands of lives about to be lost. It was a nightmare, the kind of dread that should have disappeared at dawn, but there was no waking from this. No respite. No certainty that everything would be well in the end.

  Second, the pain.

  It was a deep, soul-wrenching agony I’d never experienced before—not in my darkest moments. It felt like ripping, like fire, and scream after scream ground out of me as I grasped for something—anything—to hold myself together with. My fingers dug into the brittle, scorched grass, and the muddy dirt beneath, but that was too insubstantial. I was falling apart. We were all falling apart.

  Third, the grief.

  Nothing had happened yet, but that didn’t ease the onslaught of emotion. It was like hearing a death sentence: inevitable, final, and completely devastating. And, because this was merely a warning, there were hours and hours of this to live through, and when the god—Khulan, my dragon soul told me—finally rose, it would still somehow be a shock.

  The change was terrible. One moment, the dragons had been soaring over the park, rapture in their hearts, wings snapping with the rolling thunder.

  And now: horror, pain, grief. The emotions ripped through them and surged into me before I had a chance to break off my connection.

  I staggered backward. My feet skidded over a darkened noorestone, and I tripped. I fell. Dull, lightless crystals gouged at me through my clothes, but I barely felt it. I shifted around to all fours, then lifted my head to scream at the sky, still caught up in the dragons’ fury.

  Soon, Khulan would rise.

  The god of warriors would abandon his people.

  Another nation would be lost.

  It was unthinkable, but it was happening. Again and again until there were no more Fallen Isles left. And I was here in another part of the world, safe with our ancient enemies, instead of helping. I needed the bones of the first dragon. I needed to go home. I needed to renew the bargain with the Fallen Gods.

  But what if they were all risen by the time I made it back?

  The possibility of that made a roar rip from my throat, aching and polyphonic—not human at all. It was another part of myself, the shadow soul of the dragon, and as the dragons above grew frenzied with fear and loss, the draconic side of my heart wanted to join them.

  I surged to my feet and reached for the sky, roaring with every piece of both my souls. And then, even without the fire of noorestones, my wings flared and scales rippled down my body like armor. A too-big sensation filled my chest, like if I breathed just right, I could inhale into a second set of lungs.

  Like I could breathe fire.

  I inhaled sharply, sort of sideways, and the back of my throat tingled with possibility.

  Stop.

  Not the dragon me, but the other me. The girl me.

  Stop.

  I looked up to find the other dragons still screaming, circling, waiting for me to join them. And I could do it. I could lift my wings—

  Stop.

  Reason cut through the grief at last. If anyone saw me like this . . . if Apolla saw me like this, using my dragon powers . . .

  I had to protect myself, and my dragon soul, from anyone who might want to use me for their own gain. I’d already spent most of my life in that position. My face, my opinions, my voice. I couldn’t let it happen again.

  “Go,” I told the dragons, and then I wrenched my soul back from them, damming the threads between us.

  The dragons screeched, their talons ripping at the rain-drenched sky. Flame arced overhead, higher than before. At last, they peeled away from me, flapping and spitting fire as they twisted through the drenching sheets of rain, flying toward the mountains as fast as they could.

  Or maybe they were flying away from the city and the empress.

  I watched them, heart whole and shattered all at once. They were healed. Their world was broken.

  Then the dragons were gone.

  I dropped to my knees as the wings and scales and fire disappeared. My skin itched and my chest felt shrunken, but even though I was only a girl again, rain sizzled where it hit my body, and steam rushed up around me.

  Khulan was leaving.

  Idris, Bopha, Harta, and now Khulan.

  For several minutes, there was only the sound of rain pounding on the field, plinking off the darkened noorestones, and hissing off my face and shoulders and arms. There was only shock and terror and thunder rolling through the sky.

  And there was anger.

  Maybe it was surprise that had delayed her rage—I couldn’t imagine that it had been fear of the dragons or me—but all at once, Apolla left the protection of her tent and rushed at me in a storm of her own making. Guards and servants followed, but she was faster.

  “What did you do?” The empress reached me, her hazel eyes hot with fury. “Tell me what you did.”

  “I healed them.” The words came out with little puffs of smoke. “Like you asked.”

  “I asked you to heal them,” she growled. “I had their chains removed because you told me to. I had your crystals moved from the harbor, let you have whatever you needed, and now you’ve sent them away. My dragons.”

  “No.” I climbed to my feet, and mud and rain sluiced down the front of my dress. “I didn’t send the dragons anywhere. They felt a tremor coming in the Fallen Isles.”

  Her expression said that was no real answer.

  “They always feel it first. Sense it. Even from so far away, the dragons are connected to the Fallen Isles because they were born from that land—from the very bodies of our gods. And now the earthquakes aren’t just—” My voice caught. “They a
ren’t just earthquakes anymore.”

  Empress Apolla just glared at me as her guards and servants and all the keepers came to stand behind her. Some looked at me as a challenge, while others seemed wary. Even those from the Fallen Isles watched me with uncertain gazes, as though I might breathe fire on them here and now. Even Ilina’s father.

  “These earthquakes make the dragons act . . .” How? As though their parents were leaving them? As though they were being abandoned, too?

  It was true.

  And I could try to explain all that to Apolla, but the fury in her eyes was starting to shift to something else—something darker and harder to soothe.

  “I gave you the means to heal the dragons,” she hissed over the rush of rain. “I gave you everything I could offer to someone of your station. And this is how you repay me: telling them to go.”

  “I didn’t—” I had, though. I had told them to go, but I’d meant to go without me, go blow fire somewhere else—away from the people and city.

  Apolla’s gaze was steady and sharp. “You planned this, didn’t you?”

  “How would I have planned an earthquake? Why would I plan for one of my gods to abandon my people?”

  She just shook her head. “You tricked them somehow. You’ve betrayed me.”

  Lightning flared and thunder clapped, the only break in the endless drone of rain. I tried to keep Apolla’s gaze, like a dragon refusing to submit, but the memory of their grief and horror was so strong, and my own knowledge of another god rising—it was too much. It was overwhelming.

  “Guards.” Apolla snapped her fingers, and a pair of uniformed men closed in. “Escort Mira and the island keepers to the barge. We’re returning to the palace.” She spun to address one of the servants. “Send a message ahead of us. I want the throne room ready. Summon Mira’s friends. All the other islanders who were taken off the ships. Including”—Apolla glanced at me—“her governments. Bring them to me in the throne room.”

  “And the court, Your Eminence?” One of the servants already had the small communication device out.

  Apolla pressed her mouth into a straight line, so hard her lips lost color. Then: “Yes. Summon everyone. I wish to make an announcement.”

  The guards flanked me.

  “Will you go without fighting?” Apolla turned her attention back on me. “Remember, I have Ilina’s father right here. And all your friends are back at the palace. If you can’t control yourself . . .”

  “Your threats are unbecoming.” I stepped around her—moving toward the barge still moored on the rain-swollen river. We both knew I wouldn’t resist going back to the palace. That had never been a question. But the fact that she had felt the need to threaten me . . . That was revealing.

  She was scared.

  She didn’t know what I would do.

  She didn’t know what I could do.

  And maybe neither did I, because I’d never had wings without noorestones until now. But I knew what it meant: every day, I was becoming more of Mira the Dragon—and less of Mira the Girl.

  When I reached the barge, I was deposited inside the main cabin, where the last of the rainwater hissed off my skin and clothes, leaving my dress torn and stained with smears of dried mud. A table held a carafe of cold water and four empty glasses, a tray of refreshments, and several sheafs of paper. Drafts of the agreements we’d discussed—before the dragons had flown away.

  They closed the door, leaving me alone in the dark; no one had touched the light sigils, and I didn’t want to risk the guards seeing anything I did as a threat. Rain drummed on the roof, a desolate and hollow sound.

  For several minutes, I stood in the center of the cabin, trying not to let my thoughts drift to the people who were about to lose a god, to the dragons who were losing another parent, or to my friends. I could only imagine what they would think when they were summoned to the throne room.

  Finally, Apolla’s voice sounded from the deck, and the barge lurched into motion down the river once more.

  When the cabin door opened, the empress stood there, framed by stormlight: bright and beautiful and unforgiving. The clatter of rain was loud against the deck, then muted as the door swung closed behind her. She tapped the nearest light sigil, and a warm, flickering glow filled the space as she just looked at me, evaluating.

  Her anger had cooled, but now she was thinking clearly again. That seemed more dangerous.

  “Sit, Mira.” She gestured to one of the chairs.

  “I’ll stand.”

  She only lifted an eyebrow before taking one of the chairs herself. “I know why you came to the Algotti Empire.” She kept her tone conversational as she poured a glass of water—for herself—and drank deeply. “I knew it the moment you entered my throne room.”

  My breath caught, and instinctively I stretched out my mind for a noorestone—to burn away the anxiety—but there were none. Only the scattered piles of darkened crystals in the park, growing more distant as the barge lumbered down the river. There wasn’t even a spark left in them.

  Now threads of panic seeped through me like a poison. I forced myself to breathe evenly.

  “You know we’ve been having your apartments monitored.”

  “Of course.” My voice came thin.

  “My listeners told me you’d come looking for legends about something called the first dragon, but none of us knew what that meant. But I saw your face as you came into the throne room. I saw the way you looked at the bones—the way your friends looked at them, too.” She smiled and sipped her water. “I’ve seen awe, admiration, fear. Often shock. Those are natural reactions to seeing a huge dragon skeleton. But I’ve never seen love.”

  My heart pounded too hard, too fast, and everything seemed to be spinning. She’d known this whole time. Maybe not that I wanted to take the bones back to the Fallen Isles, but that I hadn’t come simply to warn her of Paorah’s attack, and that I hadn’t come simply to take over his agreement with her. She’d known that I had come for something else entirely, and she’d been waiting for me to make some sort of move toward taking what I wanted.

  She probably thought this was it.

  And now she hated me.

  “Tell me,” Apolla said. “What good are my dragon bones to you? And when were you planning to steal them from me?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  APOLLA WAS NOT A PERSON WHO DELIGHTED IN CRUELTY, and for that, I was grateful.

  When I held my silence, she didn’t threaten to hurt me, or hurt everyone I loved. She just nibbled on the fruits and cheeses as she flipped through documents, and when we arrived at the palace, she declared that both of us would need to change before we were presentable.

  “I won’t have anyone imagining I treat my guests so poorly.” The empress glanced derisively at the mud streaked down my dress. “Clean her up. Put her in something beautiful.”

  I didn’t resist as I was taken through the palace. The halls were empty—everyone was already waiting in the throne room—and my apartments were quiet except for the fountain bubbling in the center of the public parlor.

  In my suite, the attendants peeled off the filthy dress, and—once I’d been scrubbed clean—they approached with a soft blue gown, embroidered with silver filigree across the bodice.

  I waved it away. Though it was stunning, I didn’t want to go wearing an imperial-style gown. I wanted to go as the Hopebearer.

  “Get one of my hunting dresses,” I said. “The deep pink with white-gold trim.” That, with black leggings and boots, would be more than sufficient.

  The attendant holding the gown shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s not here.”

  “What do you mean?” I glanced around the dressing room. Now that she said it, I didn’t see the bag I’d brought from the Fallen Isles. “Where are my things?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know.” Her eyes were round, like she thought I might hurt her. Like she’d already heard what I’d become in the dragon park.

  How quickly she’
d learned to fear me.

  Thunder shook the whole palace as I sighed and allowed them to dress me in their choice of gowns. Hair, shoes, nails: with the amount of care they put into my appearance, it might have been difficult to remember that Apolla hated me now. Then the guards escorted me to the throne room.

  Even before I got there, I could feel the first dragon.

  It was remarkable how powerful a presence she had, even two millennia dead. When I stood before the open doors, hearing the buzz of conversation—worry and delight and speculation—the great bones drew my eyes. I looked at her, and she looked at me.

  The first and the last.

  No one else paid her any mind. The courtiers spoke only to one another, and if they glanced the first dragon’s way, it was only to confirm that Apolla hadn’t yet appeared on her throne.

  Before I could scan the court for the other islanders, my guards escorted me to one of the high galleries where my friends—Ilina, Chenda, Gerel, Hristo, Zara, and Aaru—were already positioned. We’d been sectioned off from the rest of the imperial court, and from up here, we had a clear view of the entire throne room: the white columns and statues, the brightly dressed courtiers in the upper and lower galleries, and Apolla’s throne.

  And of course, beyond that, the bones of the first dragon, lit in the warm glow of flickering sigils. Beautiful. Deadly. Long dead.

  When I’d arrived, my friends had been staring at her, hope naked on their faces, but now they turned to me and—after hugs and questions and Aaru slipping his hand into mine—I gave them the short version of everything that had happened since this morning.

  “Khulan is rising?” Gerel clenched her jaw and swallowed hard, clearly trying not to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  Chenda took Gerel’s hand and squeezed.

  “What do you think she’s going to announce?” Ilina glanced around the throne room, her face hard, and I knew she wanted to talk about Khulan, but not here.

  “Nothing good,” I said. “Where are LaLa and Crystal?”

  “Outside.” Hristo frowned. “They were already worried when they couldn’t find you, and then they started behaving the same as they did the other night. The skylight above the fountain opens, it turns out. When they started breathing fire, one of the attendants opened it and the dragons got through before we could stop them.”