by Elise Kova
He sighed softly. “Yes, you do. You want this. You want me.”
“I only wanted you for a night.” Fallacy colored her magic.
“You wish that were true.”
“Damn you, Cvareh.” She cursed loudly. “Damn you!”
Arianna pushed away from him, swaying as she stood.
“You want to kill my brother. I want to see you do it. Petra’s already marked him for dead! You want to free Loom from Dragon rule, and Petra will give that to you. I will help.”
“I—”
“No more objections, Arianna. You know it’s true just as you’ve known all along that the man who betrayed you was closely connected to me. Perhaps, somewhere in that brilliant mind of yours, you’d already deduced the possibility of our familial ties.” Cvareh appealed to her sense of logic, her sense of reason. She was too smart not to have put it together. Even if she hadn’t consciously admitted it, she knew it was true.
“Everything has changed,” Arianna whispered.
“Nothing has changed,” he insisted. “There’s not much time. Come back with me to Ruana.”
“This isn’t about you,” she said sharply. “The King, he said something, something about destroying the guilds. I have to return to Loom.”
“Yveun Dono would never.”
“You’re clearly delusional if you really believe that he would not resort to whatever extreme he deemed necessary.” The very statement made him wonder if she somehow knew of the poisoned wine.
“We’ll be stronger together.”
“I don’t even know if I want to look at you.” The raw honesty of the statement cut him low. “I’m going to find a glider, and I’m going home.”
Arianna started for the door. Cvareh reached out, grabbing her wrist, stopping her. He couldn’t let her leave, not like this. She, the woman who had so claimed his heart, was leaving, and he honestly had no idea if she would ever return to him. If she would ever let him return to her.
She stared down at the offending hand, clearly waiting to see if he was going to willingly remove it or if she needed to cut it off. Cvareh chose the former.
“Ari, I’ll wait.”
“For what?”
“For when Loom is ready to join my House in this fight.” He pointed to his ear, reminding her of the whisper link they established and that either had yet to break.
Arianna stared at him with her violet eyes for one long moment. They scanned his face as if memorizing its every curve and edge. He wondered what she saw in him.
“We don’t need you,” she whispered. “You’ll only betray us again.”
“Do not lump me with my brother’s sins because it is easer for you to remain angry!”
She started down the hall once more, ignoring the comment. Cvareh watched as the first and only woman he had ever loved marched willingly into the hornet’s nest of enemies that was House Rok. He wished desperately to know what she was thinking, just once.
Arianna paused and spoke without turning, “Don’t whisper me first, Cvareh. Or I will know that everything was merely for your House, and Loom will never side with you.”
Cvareh stared long after she was gone, the image of her back imprinted on his eyes. To most, the statement would seem like the definitive end of all possibilities. But not to Cvareh. He’d come to know something of the White Wraith’s logic. And in the smallest corner of his heart, it gave him hope.
For if she cautioned him against an action that would make her not work with him, it meant that despite everything, the woman still considered him her ally. She still regarded them as a possibility, perhaps even an inevitability if nothing further was damaged between them. Repeating this fact to himself, Cvareh started back through the estate, making haste through every hallway, killing the two servants who saw him.
Petra was doing an exceptional job of keeping the place busy, for he hardly ran into anyone on his way out.
49. Arianna
There was a swirling tempest in her chest. Its winds caught pains old and new, blending them with loves familiar and yet to be fully realized. The longer she spent in his presence, the greater the likelihood it would tear her apart.
She didn’t want to love someone at the cost of her ideals. She didn’t want to need someone attached to the murderer of the last person she needed. She didn’t want to set her heart free in a world that was slowly shifting closer and closer to the end of days.
She had spent too long on Nova. She had let her mind be swept away by music and paintings. She had let her body grow fat with magic, let her mind languish. She needed to return to Loom. There, everything would make sense again. She would remember who she was and what she needed to do.
Arianna gouged out a Dragon’s throat with a grunt of frustration. Her claws severed the spine and she cast the body aside, continuing onward.
The truth continued to stare her in the face every time she caught a glimpse of the blue of the nighttime heavens. The hue reminded her of the curtains in her room at the Xin Manor, reminiscent of the color of the sky when she and Cvareh set out for the temple.
She did love him. Despite everything, it was true. Of course, if she was going to fall in love again, it’d be a Dragon. And would she pick just any Dragon? No, she had to pick the brother of Rafansi. The traitor. Finnyr.
Arianna slammed a Dragon against the wall. It was a tiny thing, and had been trying to avoid being seen at all. The boy let out an almost-squeak at the feeling of her claws pressing into his chest.
“Gliders, where are they?” she snarled.
The child nearly wet himself.
“Gliders.” Her claws bit through his flimsy Dragon clothes and into his skin. “Maybe I’ll let you live if you tell me where they are.”
“Up those stairs.” He pointed. “Down the hall, second corridor, and out.”
She dropped him and continued upward. There was one thing that seemed to be similar across all races of life: the need for self-preservation.
The gliders were exactly where he told her they would be. Some Dragons attempted to block her passage, but they didn’t put up much of a struggle. Arianna saw Chimera looking on from the edges of the platform, golden chains looped around their necks. The gold reeked of the same scent as her chains had, tempered to the King’s magic alone. Arianna couldn’t break them if she tried. Chimera slaves bound to do the Dragons’ bidding.
Yet they moved as one to the sides of a glider, doing nothing to bar her access.
Arianna sprinted over and mounted the vessel. She rested her hands on the handles, feeling magic surge from her fingertips through the interior channeling of the glider and into the wings.
“You won’t be able to fly it.”
“Yes, I can.” Arianna shifted her weight.
“Only Dragons can.” The man seemed tired, like he’d had this debate countless times. “Chimera don’t have enough magic.”
Arianna held up her palm and drew a claw across it, showing them her gold blood. It mattered little now, keeping her secret up on Nova. Let them talk. Let the Dragons know she was real and she would come to kill them with an army of Perfect Chimera just like her.
The Chimera looked on, stunned, like she was one of the Dragons’ gods come to life. She wished she could tell them that she was, and that she had the power to save them, but they were lost causes. She couldn’t bring them back to Loom with her and she had no doubt that when the Dragon King fell, he would take everything he could with him—assuming they weren’t killed for not barring her access now.
“I can’t save you.” She felt compelled to apologize.
“We know,” a woman replied. There was some comfort in hearing the tones of Fennish spoken again. “But we can save you.”
“What?” Arianna asked in confusion.
“Go. We’ll see to it that you can’t be followed.” The Chimera closed
in on the other gliders with tools in hand.
She pushed her magic into the wings, strong and even. Arianna focused her will and commanded the glider like an extension of herself. Up, she demanded mentally, and the glider took to the sky.
Arianna soared on her own for the first time. There was no illusion of another Dragon, no airship captain, no bird-like beast propelling her upward. Just her and her magic. The sight of the glider caused quite a stir, but by the time she was noticed, she was too far for any of them to reach her.
She leaned forward, shooting across the hills and towns of Lysip to its far edge. The Chimera might be on her side, but she couldn’t have absolute faith that they would dismantle every glider before some Dragon got to them. Arianna pushed hard over the edge, spiraling around the underbelly of Lysip.
Finnyr’s face seemed carved into the shadows of the clouds beneath her. She was deliberately leaving her opportunity to kill the man behind. Arianna swallowed, and let it go. She’d waited years; she could wait longer. Charging in recklessly had failed, so when she returned for his head it would be with an army at her side. It would be with his brother helping deliver him to her justice.
Ari began to gain speed, and braced herself for the winds that rippled the surface of the clouds below attempting to bar her entry home. Arianna pushed more magic, steadying herself, sparking a magical corona to encase her. She was ready. She would—
“Stop.” The shout was laced with magic that sizzled across her mind, penetrating the vulnerability of surprise and fractured focus.
Arianna looked toward the source, following the trail of magic back toward Lysip’s underbelly. Her eyes met a pair of fire-red orbs that seemed to glow with raw power in the distance. Let go, they urged her. She stared, vapidly confounded by the presence of the King of the Dragons in the underside of the island. But there he stood on a ledge, holding her eyes and mind in his sway.
Let go, he mentally urged again. Her hands shook.
Between the shock and magical exertion, Arianna’s fingers uncurled. It was only a second—the feeling of air rushing between her digits and over her palms—but she was jolted back into awareness.
A second was all it took.
The magical trail that had been following her the whole time dimmed as the glider lost its fuel. Arianna found herself spiraling in the air, trying to grasp for something that was never where she expected it to be. Her other hand ripped off the remaining handle with the force of the wind.
The clouds were coming fast and she had only one chance to try to get to the glider and form a corona that might be her only shot at survival. She twisted her body in the air, trying to swim through nothing toward the one life raft that would save her from an ocean of death.
Her fingertips touched gold as the clouds engulfed her with their howling winds.
50. Florence
The forest at night was cool, despite summer encroaching on them. Faint light from the gray sky above was almost completely smothered by the tree canopy. The leaves rustled in a faint wind, echoing the restlessness of the Fenthri below.
Florence had followed Derek and Nora to a group of their friends. She recognized James from earlier, but the rest were vaguely familiar faces, a tight-knit group of Alchemists that had no interest in allowing a wanderer to penetrate their ranks.
Perhaps that was the problem with Loom. They had all been told to stay in their place, to follow their guild marks, to not question when it had been their nature for so many years to question everything. The older generations resisted, but Florence’s age and younger? They knew no better. They had grown up accepting the idea that Loom was as it was for some unknown reason, even if they didn’t fully agree with it—even if history didn’t agree with it.
That was the danger of Sophie’s plan. She spoke of sacrifices, but the sacrifices she was risking encompassed the very future of Loom. The longer they spent accepting the Dragons’ rule, the more they would all forget. It was easy for Sophie to say otherwise from where she sat; she was of the last generation. Her heart had been hammered into shape before the Dragons had ever ruled.
The young ones who sat among them now were still taking form. Florence watched silently from her seat at the far end of the table, closest to the open window, as the younger initiates slowly trickled from the room. When they were older, would they even remember a rebellion? What world would they inherit?
“You’ve been quiet,” Nora noted, tearing some bread off the loaf in the center of the table and shoving it into her mouth.
“Just hungry,” Florence lied. Well, it wasn’t a complete lie. She was hungry. But that had nothing to do with her silence.
Nora hummed, clearly unconvinced. “Does it have to do with what the Vicar said?”
“What else?” Florence mumbled, wishing the conversation would change. She had yet to work through the best response to Sophie’s decision.
“You spoke with the Vicar Alchemist?” one of the women seated at the other end of the table interjected with surprise.
“When we returned,” Derek affirmed.
“What did she have to say for herself?” The woman stabbed at the food on her plate with renewed purpose.
“In regards to…” Florence left the question hanging. She wanted to see how the woman would finish it. Her tone was too similar to the one James had spoken with when they asked about the Vicar earlier that day.
“Killing her own guild.”
Everyone at the table suddenly found everything else in the room far more fascinating than the Master speaking, or the three people she addressed.
“Explain yourself.” Derek was visibly uncomfortable with the narrative being constructed before him.
The master exchanged a look with another circled man at the table, as if tacitly asking—and being granted—permission. “When we learned of the Dragons’ plot, we made to evacuate the guild as fast as possible. But our Vicar didn’t want to risk alerting the Dragons to our attempts. She didn’t want to see Keel attacked in place of an empty guild hall, or in addition to.”
The logic was very real, and instantaneously uncomfortable.
“She wanted to give the illusion that nothing was amiss.”
“She left a third of the guild in the hall.” It escaped Florence’s mouth the moment she thought it.
“She told them we were moving in groups to prevent suspicion. The first group left. Then the second, her with it. It wasn’t until we reached Keel proper that any of us realized her intent…”
“… and by then it was too late,” Nora whispered.
Florence rested her elbows on the table, her chin sinking into the heel of her hand in thought. The reasoning, however horrible, made sense. No one would ever really know if Sophie’s calculation had paid off. Keel wasn’t attacked, but who could say if that was for Sophie’s decision or merely because the Dragons never had any intention of destroying the city?
“You went to Ter.1 to seek help for the rebellion, didn’t you?” One of the Masters asked. If their trip had been a secret, it wasn’t any longer. “We must see an end to these Dragons.”
The tiniest sliver of light appeared on the floor of Florence’s mind as a door of opportunity cracked open.
“We did go to Ter.1 for help with the rebellion,” Derek started delicately.
“And? Were you successful?”
“Not quite…”
Florence was going to smash through that door with force if she had to. “We were successful,” she said, injecting herself once more into the conversation. “Not only the Harvesters, but the rest of the four guilds of Loom want to align with the Alchemists. This is Loom’s fight, and they will stand with us, give us the help we need.” It was a bit of an embellishment, but Florence believed it to be nothing but truth. There could be no other way for the future to unfurl. Surely, the other guilds would see this logic.
T
he two Masters exchanged a look of relief, and a surge of power flowed through Florence. She had always seen tools of destruction as the way to gain control. Hope was a much more dangerous weapon.
“Florence—” Derek urged her for silence, but she ignored him.
“The first Vicar we spoke to was uncertain. But after his untimely death, the current Vicar Harvester was all too happy to agree to a Tribunal at Ter.0.”
“A Vicar Tribunal?” The Master sat back in his seat. “I never thought I’d live to see the day.”
“Well, you may not…” Florene gave a heavy sigh, picking at her food anew. “The Vicar Alchemist refused to attend, demanded the Tribunal be called off.”
“What?” the woman gasped. “Derek, is this true?”
Florence felt mildly guilty for the position Derek was put in as he looked between her and the Master. “Well, yes.”
“Why?” the entire table seemed to demand at once.
“Vicar Sophie said that it is best for the rebellion if we submit to the Dragons, for now. Lure them into a false sense of security, strike when they’re not expecting.”
The Master stood so quickly his chair nearly went tumbling behind him. He slammed his palms on the table in visible rage. “She still has her head in the clouds from the last rebellion. There is no Council of Five to lead us any longer, not unless we make one by banning together. There are no great minds to lead us through this dark night. If we do not ignite the flame of our own lanterns, we will lose the way.”
“What do you think should be done?” Florence asked, as if she had never even mentioned the Tribunal.
“The Vicar must go to Ter.0. Sophie must work with the other guilds. The Dragons have asked for war; we must give it to them.”
Whispers of agreement turned into murmurs that then gave birth to outright spoken affirmation.
“There is no way Sophie will agree.” She tried to muster all the delicacy she had.
“We must make her agree.”
“And if she still doesn’t?”