by Meg Cowley
“Sire, I am honoured.” Khyrion sank into the lowest bow he could muster.
“Show me how much. Go, all of you, and begin our mission anew.”
Khyrion glanced at Dimitri once more, his lip curled into a smug smile at his discomfort. Dimitri’s hand brushed Harper’s as it twitched and clenched into a fist.
Khyrion turned and left. Those affiliated with the Order filed out or vanished into the shadows, leaving even more gaps in the chairs, like teeth missing from a jaw, followed by the black cloaks, until only the council members remained in the hall.
It looked pitifully empty in contrast, and they all froze under his scrutiny.
“Spread my message to your homelands. A new age of Pelenor dawns. Let it bleed through the kingdom as the old rule bleeds out.”
Dimitri bowed as Saradon dismissed them all, then grabbed Harper by the arm, ready to whisk them away into the ether. At Saradon’s flicked finger, he stopped.
“Lord Ravakian?” Dimitri kept his tone neutral.
Beside him, Harper slowly pulled herself from his grasp and crossed her arms before her.
Saradon’s attention flicked to her in annoyance. “That is unladylike behaviour.”
Harper slowly unfolded her arms and forced them down to her sides, meeting Saradon’s glance with an insolent stare of her own, making him narrow his eyes.
“You must educate her on courtly ways whilst she is under your care, Lord Ellarian,” Saradon said sharply. “She is my heir and must present herself as such. You both must present yourself as befits you. I shall expect her full indoctrination into the Order at once, as well as your own return to their ranks, if only in symbol. I need you to ensure they are truly loyal to the cause.”
What cause is that? Dimitri longed to ask. Valxiron lurked within Saradon, but Dimitri could not discern who was in control. Did Saradon still have his own voice and mind in there? He didn’t know when Valxiron would reveal himself–to the world, and to the Order who would only be too fervently delighted to follow him.
“Yes, sire,” he murmured, but anger bubbled up inside him. Anger at himself.
You did this, his subconscious accused him.
As he left with Harper, spiriting them back to his quarters, it continued to hound him.
An entire dwarven city dead. Their lands falling. The Indis spreading death in the east. Tournai faltering. All your fault. All your fault. All...your...fault!
Without a word, he dumped Harper in the entrance hall and vanished again–to the library, the bookcase, and the secret room. He wrenched open the door with a growl, and it slammed into the stone with a resounding crash. In he stormed, fire in his heart and at his fingertips.
Years of carefully stacked papers gathering dust. Painstaking details spied over years to connect the dots. And for what?
Nothing, you stupid fool. All for nothing.
What had he truly sought? Freedom? Happiness? When had it gotten lost over the years?
Dimitri growled to himself. No. Never. He had never truly desired those things, not above his main prize.
Revenge.
Revenge on his father and brothers for decades of torment and cruelty. And where had it led him? To folly and ruin–and to his shame.
Useless, he realised. It’s all pointless.
The desire for revenge cleaved away from his heart, leaving him utterly empty inside. He would never forgive them–and why should he, after what they had done–but they would not rule him a moment longer.
I always blamed my greatest failures, every folly and shortcoming, upon them... I was but a mirror for them. It is all my fault. My choices.
The painful cut of responsibility and realisation created fresh pain he could not quite bear to fully acknowledge. And emptiness.
What is my purpose, if not that? What am I, if not driven by hate and revenge?
He had no answers. Yet one thought rose above all others, and he knew it to be true.
Kingdom’s will perish for my blindness.
The fury at himself rose even higher, until he could hear nothing over the roaring that was no longer only within him. Fire bled from him, consuming all in his path. One by one, the records before him caught fire.
“Burn!” he cursed them all with a snarl. They would not help him now. Nothing would.
Saradon was free. Valxiron walked the earth. Neither petty revenge nor out-of-date records no longer mattered when the end of them all was so close.
He stormed from the inferno, putting out the flaming edges of his own garments with half a thought, into the library, looking around. Pristine. Too perfect. He exploded into a rage. If he could not take it out on himself, he would take it out on things that did not bleed and die.
“STOP IT!” SHRIEKED Harper.
Priceless artefacts smashed and shattered about them in the maelstrom. Books fluttered through the air, as though birds on the wing, aged pages fluttering down to be torn to shreds by the wind and debris howling around them.
Harper shielded her eyes and forged into the heart of the darkness until she found him. She leapt upon Dimitri, hitting him with all her might, trying to knock him to the floor, though he was too great in stature for her to achieve it. No matter how much her fists beat his chest, he did not move, save to push her away.
She reeled backwards, catching herself on a bookshelf. With desperate, scrabbling hands clawing to find purchase, she somehow kept herself on her feet. Debris slapped and sliced at her, peppering her with cuts and bruises that stung as much as her pride. She growled into the storm, but her fury was lost in the howling wind.
Harper pushed off from the bookcase and stormed toward him, a darker shadow bleeding into the dark all around them. She slapped him across the face, a hard, stinging blow, and all ceased. The darkness swirled, slow and lazy, falling away. The wind quieted. All that had been held up by its power and his will fell to the floor in a rain of ruin, the only sound that of papers fluttering.
Silence descended around them in the destroyed library.
Harper blinked away the dust in her eyes and swayed, holding onto the back of a chair to steady herself. In the middle of the chaos knelt Dimitri, his head hanging.
“What the blazes are you doing?” she hissed, anger still spiking through her. First, they had a chilling experience with Saradon, then he had rudely dumped her in the entrance hall before she found him tearing apart his own home in some fit of petulant rage.
“Go away,” he growled.
“I will not. Look at me.”
“Go...away.”
Harper curled her lip at him in disgust and turned away. “Coward,” she spat.
He looked up at that, snarling, “I am not.”
She halted, turning to look over her shoulder. “I don’t see anything to convince me otherwise,” she said icily.
“You don’t know anythi—”
She spun toward him. “Don’t you dare drag me down with you.” She winced as her snarl pulled open a cut on her face.
His eyes widened and gaze strayed, taking in her nicked face and arms, the rips in her dress.
“I hurt you,” Dimitri breathed. He scrambled to his feet and quickly crossed the space to her, not taking care to pick his way through the debris but walking upon it all unceremoniously. “I’m sorry.”
She flinched as his hands cupped her face. With a warm, tingling sensation, his fingers wiped away the cuts, one by one, from her cheeks, her neck, her arms, her hands. He then stepped back, seemingly awkward.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
She responded with silence.
“I’m sorry,” he pressed.
She glared at him accusingly.
“I’ll buy you a new dress.”
She scoffed. “I don’t want dresses.”
“Then what do you want? I’ll give you anything.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it and shook her head. “I don’t need things, Dimitri.” Her eyes filled with disappointment, and she knew he could
sense it radiating from her. “Things don’t fix anything.”
“Then what will?”
She thought for a moment, then stepped closer, raising her chin so she could glare into his dull, lavender eyes. “Honesty. Trust. Determination.”
His brow furrowed, not understanding what she meant.
“I need you to be honest with me. Whatever this is...” She gestured at the devastation around them. “Whatever it means, I need to understand it. All of it. What you don’t tell me compromises everything.”
He nodded slowly.
“I need to know I can trust you. We must be able to trust each other to get out of this mess, even if we should never see each other again after.”
“You never want to see me again?” His expression was imperturbable.
“I... That...” Harper threw up her hands. “I don’t know. That doesn’t matter. Who knows what will pass afterward. We’re not working together because we want to, are we?”
“I suppose not,” he replied in a level voice that gave nothing away.
“Lastly, I need you to...” She struggled to find the words, then huffed, “grow a pair and start acting like a man, for goodness sake!”
His eyebrows rose, and to her surprise, he let out a sharp chuckle. “Grow a pair?”
“Start acting like a man, not a sulky child! Whatever this is...” She gestured around them again, “it looks like nothing more than a temper tantrum to me. For goodness sake, you’re one of the most powerful men in Pelenor, probably one of the few people who has a real chance of stopping this madness, but instead of trying to work on that, you’re tearing pages out of books.” Her fists balled and face burned with annoyance.
“I’m not a man,” he said at last.
She gaped at him. “That’s your only retort?”
“Well, I’m not,” he said petulantly, pursing his lips.
“You’re insufferable,” she growled, throwing up her hands in despair.
“Thank you for noticing.” The cocky mask had returned the smirk to his face and spark to his eyes.
She let out a strangled cry of frustration. “I can’t deal with you right now. I’m going to get out of this destroyed rag and figure out how in Pelenor we’re going to get out of this mess.” She shot him a venomous glare and stormed away, leaving him standing in the middle of his ruined collection.
Thirteen
“You’re right.”
Harper startled and twisted in the fine wooden chair to see Dimitri standing in the entrance to the dining room, hands in his pockets, cast in the pale light of a winter’s day balefully glaring through the open shutters. She put down the sandwich she had been eating and silently stared at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, his gaze fixed on hers with level sincerity. “You are quite right. It was immature of me to react the way I did. I was frustrated and, truth be told, had a difficult realisation, but I shouldn’t have lashed out like that. Please forgive me?” He drifted closer, yet still stayed at a distance.
She eyed him for a few moments, then sighed. “Fine. Apology accepted. Come. Tell me all about it.” Harper turned back to the table and took a drink.
“All right.”
His shadow crossed her as he strode past to sit at the opposite end of the table. The delicate clink of metal on crockery sounded as he prepared some food for himself from the spread between them. The usual fine fare of meats, cheeses, and breads, a tureen of broth in the middle.
“Where to begin...,” he murmured.
Harper’s eyes flicked to him, then back to her bowl as she finished the sandwich and started on her broth.
“When I was young, it was always clear I was different than my brothers...than everyone else, in fact. More powerful, somewhat odd. I was the bastard to be shamed and hidden away, so my talents and quirks earned me no favours, only more punishment for a crime that wasn’t mine.”
Harper’s attention was fixed upon him, the spoon of soup hovering over the bowl forgotten already.
“I lived with the guilt and shame of it for years, convinced it was my fault. No matter how much of a perfectionist I was, I could never win any favour. No matter how many times I tried to please, I could not. My father would tell me nothing of my mother. I don’t even know if she is alive or dead, let alone who she is. They took a lot from me–my dignity, my identity, my will to live.”
Dimitri’s mouth thinned, and the glimmer in his eyes dimmed as he stared into nothingness.
“Suffice it to say, I eventually realised it was not my transgression. I was not responsible for their choices. It was not my fault. My father was a weak fool. My brothers cruel beyond measure. So I turned my despair into a desire for revenge.
“It’s driven me all these years. Through my hard work, my family found fame and fortune, elevated to a House of their own. The irony isn’t lost on me, but I was determined that no matter how high they rose, it would only make their fall all the greater. More painful, punishing.”
Harper set the spoon down, captivated.
“But I now realise that my desire for revenge has cost an awful lot more than I thought. It’s time to stop blaming them for the life I never had. I’ll never forgive them, but the life I live now is my choice, not theirs. I won’t let their shadows haunt my footsteps or my fate any longer.”
His eyes flicked to Harper. “Thank you.” At her furrowed brows, he grinned ruefully. “I needed the slap.” She winced, realising that his cheek was still faintly reddened. “It reminded me that there’s an awful lot to live for. No matter how stupid I was, I can still change what happens next. And there’s more than ever at stake now. More reasons than I have ever had to do so.”
She nodded, still wondering at his words, his life, what darkness he had endured to twist him so much that he had taken the extreme path in life that he had. “Then let’s change what happens next,” she said, raising a crystal glass of amber liquid to him.
“Let’s change what happens next,” Dimitri toasted, raising his glass to her. They drank in silence, the warm liquid burning its way down her throat.
Harper sighed. “Now we just have to figure out how.” She shook her head.
“We know, or at least suspect from the prophecy, that Saradon’s Curse, and perhaps himself, can be destroyed by use of Dragonhearts. So it would seem there is one thing we must seek,” Dimitri mused.
“Then there is the not so small matter of the Order. We are both expected to be involved with that.” He shuddered. “It will not be pleasant, but it will at least arm us with as much knowledge as we might need in the end.”
“Find the king’s hoard of Dragonhearts. Break the curse. Cast down Saradon. Defeat the Order. Then we can be free of his control again?” Harper asked.
Dimitri laughed. “You make it sound easy, rattling it off like that. But yes, I suppose then we would be free.”
Free. A small word Harper was beginning to realise was no insignificant thing.
“How do we do it?” she asked, a quiet admission of her ignorance about such grand matters. Erendriel’s voice, her smile, her feather-light touch hung in the back of Harper’s mind, but they were nothing more than empty promises, fragments that made no sense to her.
“Well, Saradon tasked me with making a lady of you, so I suppose that might give us scope to explore the palace. Perhaps we can uncover what happened to the rest of Toroth’s Dragonhearts.”
“Yes!”
Harper’s heart lifted at the prospect. I know just how to seek them out.
Her thoughts drifted to dark vaults, dragonfire, and friends as they had fought and escaped with their prize of one single Dragonheart.
That feels like an age ago.
She pushed back her plates and stood.
“You want to go now?” Dimitri asked incredulously.
“Why not. We don’t have anything better to do in this godsforsaken place.”
He shook his head and laughed. “Your enthusiasm is quite infectious. All right. Let’s go f
ind a Dragonheart.” He chuckled to himself, laid down his napkin, and rose, snagging a bread roll. “I don’t want to starve, you know,” he said at her raised eyebrow. She rolled her eyes at him.
THEY WALKED THE DESERTED halls of the palace, casting for any essence of Dragonhearts, to no avail. Harper marvelled as Dimitri led her through long galleries lined with artwork and sculptures, through grand halls with stained glass windows and majestic, mural-filled ceilings, and endless rooms filled with extravagant furnishings and oddities.
“Why does anyone need this much?” Harper murmured, pausing to stroke the soft, velvet upholstering of a chaise lounge as they meandered through a sitting room, the walls hidden behind thick tapestries depicting scenes of battles long past.
“They don’t,” said Dimitri, moving to the window to glance at the city far below them.
“You have a lot of things,” she said snidely, regarding him from under lowered lashes.
“And none of it I need.” Dimitri pursed his lips. “My home is simpler.”
“Ah yes. Where is your other home?”
“Far from here.” His tone sharpened. “And a secret well kept.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
He swallowed. “A secret I must keep. It keeps it safe. I need to have somewhere I can go that will never come under scrutiny. Never be compromised or violated.”
“That must be nice,” muttered Harper. I don’t even have one home, let alone two.
“I know it still seems like too much. And it probably is. My quarters in the palace come with my position. I don’t own them. You can’t imagine how much I long to give them back.”
“Then do it,” she said, tipping her head back and closing her eyes, allowing herself a fanciful daydream. “Give them back and take us to your secret home, where we can be in peace and safety.” She sighed and opened her eyes, finding his thoughtful gaze upon her.
“If only,” he murmured, then turned his gaze to the window once more.
“Come on,” she said glumly. “Let’s keep looking.”