by Elise Kova
“Do not challenge me, Cain,” Cvareh snarled, his mouth wide and teeth bared.
“If I do, will you fight me in the pit, Xin’Ryu?” Cain gnashed his teeth back at Cvareh as he spoke. “Or will you send your Chimera? Will you have a woman from the land below do your fighting?”
He wanted to peel Cain’s skin off one strip at a time. He wanted to throw the man on the floor and cut down through muscle and sinew to bone. He would gnaw on his innards and feast on his heart. Cvareh had never bested Cain before in a fight, practice or otherwise. But he knew in that moment he could. Fighting for Arianna somehow made him more vicious than he’d ever been. It gave him a reason to be more dangerous than he’d ever thought possible. Dangerous enough to kill even a Xin. For her.
Cvareh threw Cain away. The man stumbled but spun, ready for a continued attack. None came.
“You have made a fool of yourself with this, Cain’Da. Abandon this folly, and return to the obliging man this House needs.” Cvareh straightened.
“You know the depth of my loyalty to our House.” Cain waited for Cvareh to challenge. He didn’t. “Do you think I would question you or Petra if I didn’t think it was in our best interest?”
His heart sang the truth of Cain’s words. Despite his means, the man worked toward an end he truly believed was best for their House. Cvareh sighed heavily. The fact would keep him alive. “I will keep this from Petra for now, for our friendship. For she would flay you for your disobedience.”
Cain had no objection. The man might think he could handle Cvareh in a row, but Petra was another force altogether. The only Dragon foolish enough to challenge the Xin’Oji was the Dono himself. They were titans among men and women.
And they both fear Arianna. Cvareh’s mind betrayed him. He snarled at the echo of Cain’s words twisting in his mind. Petra feared nothing. Petra only needed an ally.
“Return to the Xin Manor, and pray to Lord To for wisdom in this.” Cvareh threw a saddle on the boco at random, tightening it for punctuation. “And pray to every Lord and Lady you have breath for that I do not reconsider letting Petra know of your misgivings.”
A darkness lurked over Cain’s features that Cvareh had never seen before, least of all directed at him. The man had been his friend, his brother, and he was determined to dig a chasm between them so wide that Cvareh could not jump across. Cain saw one possible future, a bleak place where Cvareh would be forced to choose between his House and the woman he had come to love. He gripped the boco’s reins, leading it from the stable with a flutter of wings.
“Cvareh’Ryu,” Cain called. Cvareh should have never stopped. He should have not allowed any more of Cain’s poison words through his ears and into his mind. “That woman will be your undoing. If you wish to damn yourself with her, fine. But for the love of Xin, do not damn the rest of us by taking her into the House’s bed, too.”
Cvareh did not dignify the statement with a response.
33. Yveun
“She means to make a fool of you.” Coletta nursed a glass of wine, reclining in a chaise.
“That much is apparent to anyone with eyes.” Yveun continued to pace the room. It was large and open, with a gaping maw of a balcony and tall ceilings. It was more elegant than he wanted to admit and befitting of his station—which fed his anger further. Petra insulted him with one hand, while lauding him with the other. She toed the line finely enough that he could not challenge without seeming in the wrong to the masses.
“What is also apparent is that you are letting her.” Coletta regarded him with eyes the same color as the drink she consumed. Eyes that stripped him bare. Eyes that judged him even more harshly than he judged himself.
“I have not—”
“You are the Dono.” When Coletta wished to be heard, none would interrupt her. None would sway her. She was not a flashy weapon like most Dragons, and was all the more deadly for it. “You only do what you wish.”
“You would not have had me sit in the place Petra prepared at the Court.”
“I would not have had Petra organize the Court at all.”
He loved and hated his mate all the more when she was right.
“You did not consult me before this whole affair and you took a half measure on the matter, Yveun,” Coletta admonished. “You wanted to make a statement by holding the Court on Ruana. But you merely gave Petra the opportunity to show Nova what a Cobalt Court would look like. The only thing Dono about you today was the title servants called you as they fattened you on Xin food and drink while you sat out of sight and out of mind of the people.”
His claws strained against his fingers from the tension he put them under. Still Coletta sat, and sipped, and spoke.
“You sent a half-trained ‘Master Rider’ into the fray, who was made into an even larger fool than you by an Anh.” She straightened slightly. “I gave you Leona. I instructed you to nurse her in every way a man can. You had one of the greatest tools of our past forty years of work, and you wasted her.”
“There is something deeper here.” Yveun knew there must be. He would not let so much power slip through his hands otherwise. There was a variable he was still missing. “The Chimera on Loom—”
“You would blame your shortcomings on a Chimera.” Coletta stood, walking to the balcony. “That is the only thing I could imagine to be worse than blaming them on Petra.”
Yveun watched as the small-framed Dragon ventured out into the night. She possessed all the grace of a Dono. But Coletta had never desired the title. She couldn’t win it by normal measures, so it had suited her better to attach herself to him. They needed each other in different ways.
“It is only through half measures that these things are allowed to happen.” She raised her wine to her lips again, savoring the taste. “And if they continue, you will lose everything, Yveun.”
She didn’t say “we” or “House Rok”. The statement was so pointed, it was nearly a threat. She wanted him to be made aware that the House would live without him. She would live without him.
He stood to lose the most.
Yveun felt like a man before a god as he approached Coletta. She stood, washed in night, like the Divine Patron under which she was born—Lady Soph, the Destroyer. He hated admitting he had erred. But if he was to swallow his pride, he would do it before Coletta and no one else. He would drink the bitter poison of her words, to save himself from anything else she might concoct.
“Did you know that the most deadly flowers are oftentimes the most delicate?” Her tone had shifted. It had taken a softer note. There was danger in the quiet.
“I would believe it.”
“They are beautiful, Soph Pearls, the most delicate of all. When the tiny white flowers finally lose all their petals, the smallest fruit forms. And in this is a toxin that can slay even a Dragon with some magic in their gut.”
She smiled, revealing her gray, abused gums. Worn from years of her work, from years of experimenting with flavors. From working up tolerances and immunities. From breaking down her body out of reverence for her Lady. From the belief that to create, one must first destroy.
Coletta held out the glass she had been holding. The wine sloshed, airing with the very darkness itself. The stem of the glass dripped between her fingertips like a moonbeam.
Yveun met her eyes. Coletta changed nothing in her stance. She was as still as silence personified. As ever-present as death itself.
He reached for the glass, showing no fear. He took it from her fingers and he drank. The alcohol burned lightly, cutting the sweetness of the wine. It was a jam profile, sweetened with fruit and aged in light wood. He savored the flavors, holding them on his palette, searching for anything he might have missed, before swallowing.
“Do you like it?” Coletta asked.
“It is the same wine we drank today,” he observed.
“It is,” she affirmed. Yveun waited patiently for
her to impart the importance of having him try something he’d consumed all day. He waited for the spark of magic of his stomach churning against poison. “This is a specialty for this side of Ruana, a favorite among House Xin. So loved that it does not even make shipments out of this corner of Nova.”
“I was not aware.”
“I know you were not.” Coletta shot him a glare from the corners of her eyes, conveying her lack of appreciation for his interruption. If such a look had come from anyone else, Yveun would have killed them on the spot. “Because you have become drunk on power, and are operating under half measures.”
Something indeed churned in his gut, but it wasn’t poison. No, anger at the truth his life-mate was lying before him tore at his insides. He had become drunk on power, on the idea that he was an invincible force and his rule was as inevitable as the sun rising. And tonight, that would change. There was something already brewing in the air.
Yveun took another long sip. “But you knew.”
“I knew.” She smiled into the blackness. “I knew, and I knew where the wineries are. I learned of each of the storerooms where the vintage is kept.”
“It would be a shame if someone tampered with the brew.”
Far on the streets below, the first cry cut through the night.
“Such a shame.” Coletta took back the wine, helping herself to another long sip. “For the flavor is right.”
More screams as Dragons fell, convulsing on the stone streets that sprawled out beneath them. A symphony of agony his Coletta had produced sang to them with all the beauty of a full orchestra.
Yveun wrapped a hand around her hip and smiled into the night alongside her. It was going to be a much shorter Court than he was accustomed to.
“There has been word from the whisperers to Loom.”
“What did they say?” Yveun asked over a particularly high-pitched cry.
“Two messengers arrived to the Harvesters’ Guild. They came to sow seeds of dissent from the Alchemists. They are seeking to rise against you. A rebellion has formed.”
Yveun cursed under his breath. It was hardly a surprise. An annoyance, the persistence of Fenthri. At least, that was how he’d always viewed it. And that had been the problem. He had treated the men and women in the gray world below like children, poor helpless creatures in squalor, in need of his guiding light.
After all he’d done, they still stood against him.
“What did the Guild do?”
“The Vicar Harvester took their meeting. It was one of their Masters who alerted the guild’s Dragon whisperer to Nova of it.”
“Without order from the Vicar?” Yveun clarified.
Coletta affirmed it with a small nod.
There was only one reason for the Vicar Harvester not to immediately come to him, not to immediately take the rebels’ treasonous heads: they were entertaining the notion. Or they were trying to hide it. It didn’t matter which to Yveun; both were equally unforgivable.
The Harvesters had been a loyal guild. From the beginning, they had followed his laws when he had shown them the error of their ways. They had remained in communication. But the Fenthri were fickle creatures. They tried to fit multiple lifetimes in what was not even one-fourth of his.
“I have taken enough half measures upon Loom.” This was what happened when one tried to leave room for the foolishness known as kindness. He had tried to be kind to Loom, and this was how the Fenthri repaid him.
Delight rose in his mate. Coletta’s magic shifted to a pleased pulse that hummed against his palm. It was a wonderful physical sensation to the auditory wonders of the world falling apart around him. It encouraged him to be one step more vicious, to be wholly committed.
“The guilds on Loom are bold anew. Squashing their last rebellion was not enough, because from its ashes the Fenthri rose again. Attempting peace by allowing them their guild cultures, to allow them to teach, was far too generous. They forget too quickly, and for that, they need a firm hand.”
There would be no more exceptions. No more half measures. The tree had rotted; he would no longer pick through the fruit. He would cut it down at the base, burn out the roots. He would till the soil and plant again.
“The world below is broken beyond repair. It must be destroyed and rebuilt.”
“Lady Soph and Lord Rok,” Coletta referred to both of their Divine patrons with a toast, continuing to pass the glass back and forth between them.
“Tell the whisperer that all Dragons loyal to me are to be pulled from the guilds. They will be moved to New Dortam, where my Riders will shuttle them back to Nova. Then, the Riders will remain on Loom and take over the Revolvers—and their weapons.” The plan took shape with vicious precision. “The Harvesters are to be made an example. It will show all of Loom that I am their King, that they thrive by my will and that they will die by it too. If even the most willing and loyal guild could not resist entertaining treasons against me, they and the rest will know none are safe, from the tallest of their mountains to the deepest of oceans. The land below is mine, and they will know it in every unbroken scream.”
“Merely the Harvesters?” Coletta pushed.
Yveun’s magic surged, his bones hot with power that boiled over into the atmosphere. He wanted to rain magic and blood down upon Loom from the chaos he would unleash on Nova.
“No. Destroy the Harvesters without warning. Lay waste to the Alchemists before their pathetic rebellion can retaliate. Shatter the Rivets’ tallest clockwork towers so that nothing may be rebuilt. Stop every one of the Ravens’ trains and snuff out trade and communications. Then, when the four are destroyed in absolute, bring the torch to the Revolvers’ gunpowder. Explode all those who know how to make the tools of war to disrupt this world’s divine hierarchy.
“Let them cry for order from the chaos. Let them beg for a savior to deliver them from the suffering they will know.”
“And you will be that savior?” Coletta asked after a long stretch.
“When I return their lives to them, I will be Lord Rok Himself. I will be their red God.”
“No half measures,” Coletta said with singsong delight.
“No half measures,” Yveun repeated, and savored the tuning sounds of discord in the air as he stepped behind the conductor’s podium for the greatest symphony of destruction ever composed.
34. Arianna
At night, the clouds below Nova looked like a sea of silver. The garish and brightly colored world was washed clean by the pale glow of the moon, which softened the harsh tones to something Arianna’s eyes were more familiar with. The stars spread out above her infinitely. On one of her first nights she had attempted to count the glowing celestial bodies, but lost track around three hundred.
They sparkled and winked, dancing in tiny streaks of light, hiding behind the glow of the great, bright moon. Certainly the sun fascinated her, but it was the celestial elegance of the night that had begun to enchant her. There was something, dare she even think it, romantic about it. The night sky, the changing landscapes, the sparking magic... It had all begun to fit together in her mind to show her a picture she hadn’t even been able to comprehend before coming to Nova: a world defined by beauty and a people that embraced it above all else.
One such person was under her palms now. Cvareh had been cryptic about where they were going. All he had said was “off Ruana,” but to where and why he had not revealed. Arianna hadn’t questioned, nor forced it from him.
The man had been changing her, against her will and beyond her expectations. And, today, she had given in to it. Arianna had loved Eva; the woman had been a mental equal who pulled Arianna’s mind into delightful shapes and caressed her intellect in the right way.
Cvareh was a similar force, but different. His very being was a mystery wrapped in an enigma. He needed to pose no scientific riddle or postulation. Just trying to rationalize who h
e was and why he acted how he did was more than enough. Arianna wanted him all the same for it.
Ruana shrunk in the distance. Smaller, floating islands drifted through the pale ocean below them. Arianna had been trying to get her hands on a map of Nova for some time, but apparently no one had bothered to make one in recent years. Over time, the islands drifted and their arrangement changed. Dragons navigated by these smaller, unimportant rocks like skipping stones or breadcrumbs that rode on the invisible current of magic that tethered Nova together.
It was as illogical as anything else was in the sky world, and she accepted it now with a grace she hadn’t possessed months ago.
“We’re headed there.” Cvareh pointed to an island at the end of a long line.
“What’s there?” She squinted at the barely visible outline of rock in the distance.
“I know you’re at least somewhat familiar with the pantheon, thanks to Cain.”
Arianna huffed in objection. “I studied well before Cain.”
“So you know of the Twenty Gods?”
“Each of the Twenty is Patron of a month on the calendar, and each has an aspect of your world to oversee, such as Lady Lei supplying your water.” Arianna grinned faintly at the asinine nature of the idea. But the expression faded. She was riding a giant flying bird across the heavens above floating islands in a world of rainbow-colored people and magic. At this point, it was almost irresponsible to entirely rule out the possibility of some even greater magic overseeing the Dragon’s every need.
“Just so.” Cvareh missed her expression, guiding the boco as he was. “Every Dragon possesses two patrons, that of their house and that of the month they are born in.” He paused, interrupting himself. “What month were you born?”
“The tenth.” Even knowing why and seeing the brightness of the sun for herself, it still amazed Arianna that Dragons and Fenthri kept the same twenty-month calendar.
Harvesters had observed the patterns in the light of the moon long before the discovery of Nova—how every thirty days came a night of complete darkness, and every twenty months a day of total light. The Dragons had told Loom it was Lord Rok and Lady Luc heralding the new year with a flaming chariot that lit the night sky. She had always been skeptical but never had a better explanation. Even now that she’d lived on Nova, she still had no better reasoning to offer.