His smile faded. “I wondered how much you would remember.”
Nervousness made her empty stomach churn. “Lyre, just tell me. You’re freaking me out.”
“You should be freaked out,” he murmured.
He stepped over to the edge of the water and sat on the stone, gesturing for her to sit beside him. She sank down, clenching her hands in her lap. Her sense of dread increased. Why couldn’t she remember the journey to the city?
“You remember coming through the ley line, right?” he began. When she nodded, he asked, “Do you remember telling me about Natania? And me telling you to give me the Sahar because it was too dangerous?”
Her brow wrinkled. “Um. A little? You were really worried about Natania being able to mess with my head.”
“Yes,” he said grimly. “Do you remember anything after that?”
After struggling to pull up any kind of memory, she shook her head.
“Well, to make a long story short, at that point I found myself talking to Natania and not you.”
Her stomach churned twice as hard. “W-what?”
“She took over your body.” His golden eyes bored into hers. “You were completely gone. She as good as told me that she’d been plotting to do it. As she put it, she had a perfectly good mind of her own, but no body.”
Piper stared at him, her mouth hanging open. It was stupid to feel betrayed—it wasn’t like she’d ever trusted Natania—but she’d still come to feel a sort of kinship with the woman and even empathized with her suffering.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“Well, Natania and I had an interesting conversation. She also tried to kill me.” He gestured at his cheek. “But she likes to talk too much and gave me a chance to use aphrodesia on her.”
“I know she likes to talk, but why aphrodesia?” A horrifying thought popped into her head. “Wait, you didn’t—not with—”
He snorted, waving one hand as though casting aside the suggestion. “Not that way.”
Right, of course. Out of glamour, Lyre was so magnificent and alluring that he could overwhelm a woman’s willpower and make her a slave to his desires. It was a dangerous power that she’d only briefly glimpsed before.
He let out a long breath. “It was close. If she’d used the full power of the Sahar from the start, I wouldn’t have had a chance to—well, anyway, I managed to subdue her, so it worked out.”
She squinted at him, pretty sure he was glossing over something. She just didn’t know what. Knowing him, he was probably hiding how close he’d come to getting killed.
She swallowed hard and touched his arm. “I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. I should have given the Sahar back right away.”
“No,” he said, smiling wanly. “It’s best it happened the way it did. It needed to happen here.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked at the blue water swirling past them, his face suddenly haggard. “I took the Sahar away and tried to wake you up, but … you were still gone. I don’t know what she did to you, but it was like I was holding an empty shell, not you. Hinote couldn’t even explain it. It took them two weeks to put you back together again.”
“Two weeks?”
“Natania was planning this—planning it for a long time. After Ash and I got the Sahar away from you at the Gaian facility, she must have realized she needed a more permanent way to control you.”
“A permanent way to—She controlled me?”
His warm hand closed around hers.
“I don’t know where her interference or control started, but you aren’t solely responsible for what happened at that facility,” he told her, his voice gentle with compassion. “I do know that you didn’t attack me and Ash. That was entirely Natania. She told me herself.”
“I—I didn’t …” A weight seemed to lift from her shoulders. She rubbed her free hand over her mouth. “It’s all my fault. I should have realized—”
“How were you supposed to guess she could do such a thing?” He squeezed her hand. “We fought you—her—and didn’t realize it ourselves. Don’t shoulder the blame for her crimes, Piper.”
She concentrated on breathing for a minute. “So Hinote was able to put me back together again?”
“With the help of about a dozen other ryujin healers. If they didn’t have telepathic abilities … I don’t think anyone could have saved you.”
Shivering, she thought of everything Natania had said or implied in their conversations. She huffed a bitter laugh. “She’s been playing me all along, hasn’t she? She must have started making plans after our first conversation. She originally talked about keeping me with her forever for company, but then changed her mind with no explanation. I noticed after that that it was much easier to use the Sahar. I bet she was making it easy for me so I would keep using the Stone while she figured out how to take my body for herself. She wants a second shot at life.”
“As soon as I gave the Sahar back to you, she decided she wouldn’t allow you to let it go again, not after losing her chance at the Gaian facility.”
“She’s been setting me up since—” Her eyes went out of focus as she remembered something else: Natania commenting on how Piper couldn’t control her daemon blood. She’d wondered why shading was different since she’d gone to the Underworld—less crazed and bloodthirsty—but only one thing had changed: she’d no longer had the Sahar.
“I think she was messing with me when I shaded too,” she whispered. “All that violence and bloodlust … it was coming from her. Why didn’t I realize it? She wanted to keep me as weak and dependent on the Sahar as possible. Every time I almost killed someone I didn’t mean to while shaded—she was doing that to me.”
The bloodlust had felt like another person inside her, driving her to violence, and she’d attributed the feeling to the alienness of her daemon blood. But it had been Natania all along; it was the only explanation that fit her newfound control over shading.
Disgust rose like bile in her throat and she swallowed it down, lifting her eyes to Lyre again. “I can never touch the Sahar again, can I?”
“I don’t think you should be anywhere near it.”
Slipping her fingers from his hold, she pressed her hands against her face.
“This just keeps getting better and better,” she said bitterly. “We have the only weapon that can possibly save Ash from the dragon, and the only person who can use it—me—can’t ever touch it again.”
Tears burned her eyes and she dug in the heels of her hands. “We’ll never be able to save Ash, will we? Even if we could find him, we don’t stand a chance against the dragon.”
Lyre sighed and she suspected he was regretting his failure to kill Ash before the dragon took him away—a failure her interference had caused.
She dropped her hands into her lap, staring at them. “The Sahar is an evil creation. What were Nyrtaroth and Maahes thinking? Binding a living soul into a piece of rock so they could have unlimited power … It’s revolting. I don’t think Natania was a malicious person before, but being stuck in that stone for five centuries has twisted her into a monster.”
“I looked at it while they were healing you.” He traced a small ridge of rock with one finger, watching the spot without seeing it. “I mean, I looked at it before to see what Maahes and Nyrtaroth had woven, but this time I wanted to see what it would take to break the weavings.”
She looked over at him. “And?”
“I don’t think it’s possible.” He lifted his somber golden eyes to hers. “They were genius weavers. The Sahar is full of rage and hatred, right? All that emotion comes from Natania’s soul, and emotion is fuel for magic. All the weavings are tied into that source, making it a self-perpetuating cycle of emotion fueling magic fueling the spells. And because their source is unlimited, the weavings themselves are indestructible. Even the physical stone is tied in, so it’s just as unbreakable.”
Piper swallowed back her revulsion. “So they made it so the
re would never be an end to Natania’s imprisonment?”
He nodded, looking as thoroughly disgusted as she felt. “They built the weavings so they would never weaken with age or fade. The weavings feed off of her, binding her for eternity.”
Her fingernails cut into her palms. “Nyrtaroth and Maahes had wanted their lodestone to be fueled by her love for them, not by eternal hatred.”
“That didn’t work out well for them,” Lyre said, his tone half dry, half bitter.
“Do you think they knew?” she asked, thinking back to her vision of the two ancient rulers. “Did they know what they were condemning Natania to?”
“Maybe, or maybe not. Sometimes inventors get too focused on whether they can create something instead of whether they should.” He pushed to his feet and extended a hand to her. “Let’s go talk to Hinote. He’s been researching the great dragons for the last few days. Plus, I bet you’d like something to eat, huh?”
Her stomach gave a loud rumble. She grimaced as she accepted his hand and let him pull her up. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so hungry in my life.”
His trademark half-smile of suggestive wickedness curved his lips. “I’m always hungry.”
She rolled her eyes and almost turned away but stopped herself. His smile faded into puzzlement as she stared at him. Then she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, burying her face against his shoulder. His arms closed around her, enveloping her in the spicy cherry scent of incubus.
“Thank you for sticking with me through all this crap,” she mumbled into his shoulder, her voice quavering with unshed tears.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” he said, his tone so gentle she almost cried again.
She stepped out of Lyre’s arms, sniffling and trying to hide it.
“Let’s go see Hinote,” she said in an effort to recover some dignity.
With a chuckle at her terrible attempt to sound composed, he took her hand and led her away from the water.
* * *
The first thing Piper did when she walked into the room was rush straight to Hinote for a hug. He embraced her gently before stepping back. With his hands on her shoulders, he gazed into her eyes. His eyes, dark and solid with no discernible pupils or sclera, looked right through her.
“You healed well.”
His slow, soft voice sounded inflectionless, but she’d already learned to pick up on the subtle hints of emotion. The ryujin weren’t outwardly expressive; they shared their emotions on a much deeper, more intimate level than tone and facial expression.
“I owe you big for—” She broke off at the stern look he gave her. “No debts among family?”
“Absolutely not. I will not hear of owing.”
“Arguing with Hinote is futile,” Lyre advised her. “He’s almost as stubborn as Ash.”
The ryujin smiled briefly and Piper realized Lyre probably knew Hinote at least as well as she did—or maybe even better. She’d only spent five days here—five conscious days—on her last visit, but Lyre had been hanging out with the ryujin for two weeks on his own.
“I have lunch,” Hinote said without preamble.
He led the way to a low table surrounded by cushions, the centerpiece of the room. She wasn’t sure if this was his home or office or some other space, but it was another room she’d visited on her last stay. Nooks, filled with bound scrolls and heavy parchment sheets, had been carved into the walls, but she could spare little attention for the rest of the space, not when a wide platter sat on the table, laden with wooden bowls of food.
She dropped onto the cushions, folding her legs, and waited impatiently for Lyre and Hinote to get comfortable. As soon as they were settled, she picked up a small, carved wooden plate—almost more of a mini cutting board than dinnerware—and loaded up on a selection of cut fruits, steamed vegetables, and fish. Some fish was cooked, some raw, all of it deliciously seasoned. She’d learned last time that the ryujin—or at least Hinote in particular—were culinary masterminds. There were no breads, noodles, or grains in their cooking, but she couldn’t miss them. Everything was too tasty.
For several minutes, she concentrated on eating, loading her little plate several times as was ryujin etiquette—small plates, small servings, lots of going back for more. Eventually, Hinote passed her a delicately carved cup filled with crystalline water. She swallowed her last mouthful—grilled white fish wrapped in crisped, salty seaweed—and accepted it, quickly downing the whole thing.
“Amazing, as always, Hinote,” she declared, setting her plate and cup onto the edge of the platter. “I missed your cooking.”
“My table is always open, child.”
She smiled, a little of the lonely, broken ache in her chest easing.
“Lyre told me of your encounter with the great black dragon of the Underworld, and of Ash’s fate.”
He didn’t offer any words of comfort or sorrow, but she could feel his sympathy emanating with each word. She swallowed hard, forcing down the lump in her throat. “Did he tell you about the dragon king legend?”
“He did,” Lyre said, smirking as he popped a piece of orange fruit in his mouth. “Every word.”
“While you healed,” Hinote said, “I searched our archives and histories and collected what information I could. Those who had time to answer my request also sent records from their libraries.”
He rose to his feet and picked up the mostly devoured platter. Lyre sighed wistfully as Hinote carried it away and deposited it in a nook beside the curtained doorway. He pulled a woven basket from another nook and brought it to the table. It was overflowing with large, heavy scrolls. Selecting a scroll from the top, he carefully uncoiled it and spread the thick parchment over the table, revealing its contents.
A beautiful painting covered the entire expanse of parchment, drawn with the graceful strokes of a paintbrush. A silver dragon arched above curling ocean waves, looking as though it had just leaped from the water, with its majestic fins spraying a mist through the sky. And above the silver dragon, its wings sweeping through swirling clouds, flew a black dragon—a very familiar dragon.
Lyre leaned over the scroll beside her, his eyes wide. He clearly hadn’t seen this yet either.
“The great dragons are not bound to a single world.” Hinote passed one end of the scroll to Lyre to hold so it wouldn’t roll back up and used a finger to trace the lines of the water dragon without touching the paint. “We do not know if they chose their homelands because they felt a kinship with the magic of that world or if the magic of the worlds they chose absorbed their essence instead.
“Here in the Overworld, we call our great dragon Shinryu. Whether there are one or many, we cannot be certain. Though it has been many long millennia since Shinryu has stirred herself from the depths, her presence can always be felt in our waters.” He lifted his eyes from the painting to Piper. “You have felt the touch of her power. She once answered your call for aid.”
Her heart fluttered in her chest. “The elemental power in the water?” she whispered in disbelief.
“Some say the dragons are the mother and father of all daemons, that we were created by their magic. The truth of this is unknown, but I know they are guardians of their lands and the magic of their world.”
Piper stared at the painting. “So Shinryu is a guardian? But then why is the black dragon evil?”
“I do not believe he is.”
He rolled the scroll up and carefully replaced it in the basket before choosing a second one. He opened it, revealing another painting. In this one, a silvery water dragon reared out of the water, surrounded by blue and green magic that swirled like an impossible blend of fire and water. A ryujin stood before the dragon, also enveloped in the colorful magic.
“As the legends tell, Shinryu was once all-powerful, a goddess of the seas, before she chose to sacrifice most of her magic to create us … and the other daemons of our world if you ascribe to that belief. She no longer needed her god-like power and came to slumber beneath the wat
ers while we acted as caretakers of this world for her.
“Our ancient histories tell of dark days when enemies beyond our abilities threatened us. In those times of need, Shinryu rose from the depths to seek a ryujin with whom she could join her magic, so as to reclaim a fraction of her former power. Together, they defended us and our lands.”
“Did she kill a bunch of ryujin when she tried to bind their magic?” Piper asked, the question coming out more harshly than she’d intended.
“It would not surprise me if some did perish,” Hinote murmured. “You have felt the whisper of her power in these waters; her magic is great and our bodies are weak. Were Shinryu to appear today, any ryujin would be honored to be chosen, even if we should die.”
“Honored?” she spat, her fury breaking free. “How could that be an honor? You didn’t see what that dragon did to Ash. It obliterated his soul. It turned him into an empty power husk, a lifeless tool!”
Hinote’s dark eyes were gentle. “I can speak only for the ryujin and Shinryu. If she asked you to risk your life to help her, would you?”
She went still, remembering the tender, metaphysical embrace of the ancient presence in the river, ready to come to her aid. Her shoulders wilted. “What’s the matter with the black dragon then? Why is he like that?”
“Shinryu is considered the mother dragon—a guardian, but also a nurturer. The black dragon would be a patriarch—a warrior guardian. Perhaps he does not possess the nurturing nature of Shinryu; our earliest art often depicts the black dragons more aggressively.”
She crossed her arms, scowling at the painting as she muttered, “That’s kind of sexist.”
“Shinryu is still very fierce, Piper,” Hinote said, amused.
She exhaled. “The dragon was drawn by Ash’s magic. There’s obviously some kind of connection there, but if the great dragons are supposed to be guardians, why have the Taroths been terrified of them for hundreds of years?”
Hinote rolled up the scroll, his silence its own answer. They could guess that the Taroths had been so afraid because the dragon had killed so many of them, but that didn’t answer any of their questions about why the beast wanted to control Ash, or for what purpose.
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