by Kym Dillon
This was not his dream. He loped to the queen’s chamber, Daya’s room, and there she was. His heart slammed to a halt in his chest. He whispered her name fearfully as he approached the bed where she lay. She was unnaturally still, and her skin was pale. Her lips were blue. He fell to his knees by the bed.
“Daya!”
“She can’t hear you,” Ainley said from the other side of the room.
He spun around to face her, eyes dancing with madness. “What happened to her? What did you do?”
The elderly Sylph crossed to him and waved a hand over his face, and the desolate vision of the keep disappeared. It was replaced by a grassy field beneath an azure blue sky with wildflowers bobbing in a light breeze. Arken was shaken by the transformation. He sank to the ground and drove his fingers into the hot, fecund earth. His head fell forward.
“Which is real?” he whimpered. It was impossible to erase the vision of Daya. He squeezed his eyes shut, but he still saw her lying there, dead.
Ainley placed her cool hand on his shoulder and stepped up beside him. “Neither,” she replied calmly. “Either. It all depends on you.”
He looked at the elemental through a haze of scalding tears. She stared into the distance with the wind tugging at her wispy hair. Her face was troubled. She released his shoulder and moved away from him, and Arken had no choice but to follow.
“This is what you see?”
“I see many things, Arken, Son of Imyr.”
“Show me,” he pressed.
She paused in the middle of the field of flowers. “I’ll show you what I can, but you must know the threads of destiny are constantly shifting colors.”
“Yes! And, I need to know that, with every shift, she’ll be safe,” he whispered hoarsely.
Ainley faced him and clutched his shoulders. As she held him at arm’s length, she looked at him until her stare became too knowing. “But, what of your duty to the dragons?” she asked solemnly.
Arken choked back a sob and turned away. His unseeing eyes swept the horizon as he balled his fists and trembled with emotion. He knew he was beyond help. His love for the mortal was strong enough to wipe the thought of his people from his very mind. His chest constricted, knowing he couldn’t have it both ways. He couldn’t be the king the dragons needed and hold onto her.
Yet, his heart wouldn’t let her go.
“Show me what threatens her,” he said in defeat.
Ainley waved her hand again, and the world transformed. “This is the Isle of Warriors,” she explained.
Confusion descended as he stared at huge steel cages. Imprisoned dragons breathed fire and slammed their bodies against the bars. His sister was in one of them. He gasped at the jagged teeth marks oozing infection at her shoulder. She was close to death.
“No!” he roared. “She’d never let this happen! Gaova wouldn’t let the dragon eaters capture her like this. She’d get away.” His angry gaze flew to Ainley, but she was unmoved by his show of fury.
“Look around you, Arken,” she murmured. He moved closer to the ugly cages in the dream-like vista and touched the metal. It crackled with power. His eyes widened as he realized the dragons couldn’t take man-shape and escape. They were bound by magic.
Shaking his head, he pivoted and saw younger dragons practicing maneuvers in the distance. He jerked his chin toward them. “Why aren’t they helping?” he asked.
Ainley beckoned space, and the entire landscape shifted beneath his feet. Arken found himself within yards of the crashing dragons who parried and darted just above him. Blazing fire exploded from their mouths, and their razor sharp claws glinted in the sunlight. He watched them go over stealth attacks and practice feints, but none of it made sense—the part or the sum total.
“They should be helping the general and the elders, and that’s not the maneuvers they should be practicing for battling at sea.”
Ainley replied, “They don’t intend to fight at sea.”
“Then, where do they intend to fight? They intend to let Feis reach the mainland?” He looked around with a haggard sigh. “The young idiots! Where are the others? I count twelve between here and the cages. There should be dozens more.”
“Some dead, some exiled.” Ainley shrugged.
Arken’s jaw dropped in disbelief. “Is this what’s going to happen? Is this one of the threads of destiny?”
“Arken, I am so sorry…This isn’t the future.”
His face went ashen. “What are you saying?”
“This is now,” Ainley said gravely. “This is the Isle of Warriors as it is now.”
“No,” he whispered, backing away in shock.
Ainley nodded with regret. “They plan for war, but not against the dragon eaters.”
“An insurrection. The younglings have abandoned order. Why didn’t you show me sooner?” he sobbed.
“I did not see. There are always unknowns, even for me.”
He covered his face as his world came crashing down around him.
“It’s not too late to change your future, Arken.”
“How?” he yelled. “How can I fix this?! I can’t protect my kind! I can’t protect her!”
Ainley returned him to the peaceful mountainside, but his soul was tainted by the knowledge she had unlocked for him. He sat on the hard earth and buried his head in his hands. Crushing waves of sorrow almost unmanned him, but he lifted his head. He couldn’t remain in the Realm of Dreams. He had to get back. He had to save his sister. He had to get Daya to safety. He just didn’t know how.
“There’s more you need to see,” Ainley cut into his thoughts.
“I can’t take more,” he breathed.
“You must understand why it has come to this.”
“There’s no time! I must get back to her!”
“Remember your duty,” Ainley replied.
Chagrined, he clamped his mouth shut. She waved her hand again, and he blinked as the sunny field became a small cavern. Torches lined the wall at intervals, and he recognized the room as a nursery. When he had been a young dragon, the circular mounds of gold hosting dragon eggs had been plentiful. Here, there was only one mound.
Arken muscled through his despair and focused on what Ainley was revealing. “What time is this?” he asked, his voice back to normal.
“It’s the past,” the Sylph replied.
She pointed as Vyda suddenly appeared at the mouth of the cave. The dragon warrior was in woman-shape, and her face was set in a scowl. She hurried through her task of collecting water in a bucket from an icy underground pool. It was fed with runoff from the mountain that trickled through the limestone and became a waterfall above the cave.
Vyda poured the water into a boiling cauldron suspended over flames in a large hearth, but she flung the bucket aside when a matron entered. The woman bore an uncanny resemblance to her, and Arken surmised it was her mother.
“You must control your tantrums,” she admonished tiredly.
“It isn’t fair!”
Limping toward the hearth, Vyda’s mother replied, “Life isn’t fair. We must all make sacrifices for the good of the dragons.”
“I should be out there training with the warriors,” Vyda whined. “You know I’m strong! Every day I waste in nursery rotation threatens my position in the force.” The petulant girl crossed her arms and glared at her. “I’ll be stuck here with you.”
“And, what’s wrong with that, huh? You’ll be safe! Away from that snake, Cithurel and his rebels—”
“The rebels still remember what it was like when we weren’t running and hiding. They want me to be the warrior I was born to be, to rise up and take the—"
Her mother slapped her so hard that Arken flinched from the force of it. Vyda clutched her face with a stunned cry as the woman growled in fierce whisper, “The rebels know nothing! They’re too young to remember. You will know your place.”
“Our place is not on this island.”
The older woman grunted with exertion as she li
fted the cauldron and carried the boiling pot to the egg. “It is until the king calls us,” she said. She gently poured a stream of water over the jewel-bright oval glistening from the mound of pure gold.
Vyda whispered, “He won’t be king forever.”
“You better hope he is, or at least this young prince. For all our sake. If those savages you call friends get the throne, there won’t be a revolution. We’ll all be dead within the century. Now, stop talking nonsense and help me water the egg.”
The dragon warrior grabbed a ladle and spooned water into the gold to keep it warm. As she refilled the cauldron and placed it in the hearth again, her mother tested the temperature of the egg with the back of her hand.
“It’s good. Nice and toasty, as it should be,” the woman sighed. “Stay here with it, and send for me when it begins to hatch. It shouldn’t be much longer now.”
Vyda stared after her limping mother with a pensive expression marring her beautiful features. When the room was clear, she tiptoed to the mouth of the cave and peered out. Then, she crept to the egg and prodded it with her finger.
“Hello, young prince,” she whispered sweetly. Her emerald eyes took on a calculated gleam. She poked the egg again and watched the softening shell bulge toward her as the dragon within slowly rolled in its metallic home. “What would happen if you don’t make it? Then, who will be king when the Scared One falls?”
Arken sneered with disgust. “The Scared One.”
Ainley whispered, “The rebels recruit the younger dragons with tales of your submissiveness to Feis.”
“But, I haven’t been submissive! I’ve been strategic!”
“Sometimes it’s not the truth that counts, but the story.”
“How can I defend myself against stories, Ainley?”
The elemental locked eyes with him. “By showing them the truth.”
He clamped his mouth shut and kept his eyes on the deceptive dragon warrior who had come into his keep and made him erroneously feel sympathy for her. She sauntered to the heavy cauldron filled with water. He gasped at what she did next.
It took all her strength, but she lifted it from its hooks and carry it to the nest and dropped the oversized pot into the pile of gold. Arken cringed. He knew the egg was tough enough to withstand the weight; however, the sight of Vyda trying to harm it unnerved him.
The pot tilted over and spilled its lukewarm contents across the nursery floor, and Vyda’s eyes widened in fear. She stared at the cave entrance, but no one came to investigate the noise. Her lips curled with contempt.
“Useless!” she swore savagely.
She put the cauldron on its hooks and searched for something else to do her dirty work. Eyes landing on black pool of ice cold water. Arken shook his head as his pulse raced. He sucked in air by the lungful, yet couldn’t breathe.
“She wouldn’t,” he whispered.
She did. She lifted the egg from its warm mound of gold and carried it to the freezing pool. Wincing as her fingers touched the water, she pushed it beneath the surface and held it there for minutes. Arken’s jaw tightened with every second that ticked by.
“She killed it.”
Ainley rubbed his back soothingly, but nodded. They both shared the agony of seeing the dragon egg shiver and shudder in the frigid depths of the pool. Vyda lifted it briefly, and the tiny creature mewled piteously as its beak broke through the shell. She dunked it again without mercy.
By the time she lifted the egg, the dragon had gone still. She nodded with satisfaction and carried to the nest of gold. Arken emitted a broken sob as she reheated water. She cracked the rest of the shell while she waited for the water to boil. Then, she ladled it over the flaccid, gray dragon to warm its corpse. He watched her fix her face into an expression of sorrow before running to the mouth of the cave.
“Momma! Come quick! Something happening,” she shouted tearfully. False tears. Arken turned away as, suddenly, the cave filled with nurses and matrons who hovered over the shattered egg. “It’s stillborn,” Vyda whimpered.
Someone mumbled, “Get the general.”
The others believed her, but Arken saw her mother’s face. She did not. She stared at Vyda with all the dread of a mother who realized she had birthed a monster. She backed out of the cave, shaking her head, as her daughter hid a secretive smile. Arken’s face hardened.
He said coldly, “She won’t get away with this.”
The cavern disappeared, and Ainley took him back to the mountain. “She did it for love,” she explained unsympathetically. “Vyda is a rebel. She did it to help her lover ascend to the throne. It wasn’t until she met you that she realized there were other ways of getting what she wanted.”
“I told her I would make her my mate,” he groaned.
“Yes, because you thought it was your duty. You followed the rules, understanding the laws regarding mating would be suspended in such dire circumstances as the untimely death of the prince. Therein lies the problem, Arken. There’s more to being a leader than merely bending the rules to fulfill your duties.”
He met her rainy gaze. “Am I to abandon my responsibilities?”
“You tell me,” she shrugged.
His brow furrowed in anger. “While you keep me here and tire me with riddles, I have rebels planning an insurrection, my sister injured and near death, the dragon eaters preparing to sail against the Isle of Warriors, and Daya in danger with every possible future that unfurls. Tell me how to proceed!” he yelled.
“Arken, you must do whatever you have to do! Don’t you understand? There are no rules. There are only the things worth fighting for, and the things worth dying for. Your duty is to love too fiercely to ever give up, no matter what comes next, even if it means sacrifice. That’s the best advice I can give you.”
The Sylph dragged him closer with unnatural strength and brought him to eye level. “I see ships on the horizon. I see dragons fighting, and I see you betrayed by someone close to you and sacrificing everything,” she hissed. Her words tumbled out so quickly they slurred together. Arken trembled at the mad glaze in her eyes as she continued.
“You will make your last stand there, to the east.” She pointed toward the Isle of Warriors. “You won’t be alone! The tapestry of this future is nearly complete, and the picture burns clearer than ever in my mind. It all hinges upon what you do with the threads you have been given. There are no rules, Arken. There are no rules binding you. Now, go!”
His eyes bulged and he came awake, fighting. Echoes of his outcry reverberated in the room. He flung his sheets aside as he bounded from the bed and rushed through the keep. Vyda. He had to deal with Vyda. Then, Daya. She was the one who would be at his side when he took his last stand. Ainley’s words reassured him that he should have trusted her all along and not the dragon warrior.
As he raided the hall of treasures were the treacherous dragon slept, he prayed he hadn’t waited too long to come to his senses. But, the room was empty. Vyda wasn’t there. His heart beat in his chest like the drums of war.
11
“Are you sure this will work?” Vyda huffed.
Daya wiped sweat from her forehead and trudged deeper into the forest. “Maybe you should’ve asked me that back at the keep. Of course, I’m not sure it’ll work, but do you have any better ideas?”
“No.” The dragon warrior shouldered a heavy leather satchel as she guided Daya through the woods. They were both too breathless from the hike down the mountain to debate much.
Besides, Daya couldn’t explain her plan. She dodged a branch that swept toward her in the dark. Her boots sank into dense brush, and she wished Vyda would hurry up and find the path already. She knew the dragon could only take her so far, but, at this rate, she wouldn’t make it to the city for another two days.
“I just wonder why you didn’t tell Arken what you were up to, is all,” Vyda said from up ahead.
“If I had, he would’ve tried to talk me out of it.”
“He cares about you.”
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Daya bit her bottom lip. “That’s why I’m doing this.”
“To prove your love for him?” Vyda glanced over her shoulder with a knowing smile. “It’s a stupid plan. Feis will never believe the decoy is the real stone, and she’ll kill you.”
“Yes, and wouldn’t that make you the happiest dragon in the realm,” Daya snipped. She stopped walking and dropped the heavy pack of supplies borrowed from Neigen. She leaned against a tree to catch her breath, although the dragon warrior continued heedlessly until she called after her. “I don’t have your birdlike lungs, my dear. I need rest.”
Vyda dropped the pack and faced her. “So, what do you hope to accomplish?”
“Haven’t you ever wanted to change someone’s impression of you?” she sighed. She sank to the ground at the foot of the tree and cracked open her canteen. “Arken thinks that I’m a heartless thief who only looks out for myself, and that isn’t true. I’ve done what I’ve had to do in this lifetime to stay alive, but I’ve never hurt anyone who didn’t have it coming to them.”
“We have a lot in common,” Vyda chuckled, settling beside her.
“Humph! Yeah, I think so,” Daya smiled. “Anyway, I want to buy him more time. Even a fake stone will slow Feis down while she tries to figure out how it works. When you get back tonight, you must convince him to head straight for the Isle of Warriors. There’s no time to lose.”
“And, what if he wants to come after you, Oedaya of the Sky Realm? You know he will. He’s smitten with you, although I can’t see how. You’re weak. You’re—”
“Yes, I know, a useless sack of human waste.” Daya rolled her eyes. “Just take the good advice when it’s given to you. Look, I know Arken asked you to take the decoy, and you refused. I heard you arguing earlier tonight. I also heard you tell him that he was on his own, but I need you to reconsider.”
She shifted toward the dragon warrior and took her hands. “Neither of us may be the mate he desires,” said Daya, “but we’re both the warriors he needs. You’re healthy and strong. Show him that he can count on you. Guide him from that accursed fortress and get him to the Isle.”