As he stared at the hovering body of his son, it seemed to Jaren that he saw a figure all in white, woven of starlight. A young woman, angelic, clad in flowing robes, her braid hanging across her shoulder. Her eyes shone like the stars, gazing down upon Vale, and she laid her hands upon him. When Jaren looked up, back to the stars, he saw that the dragon's eye—Issari's Star—had gone dark, had descended to this world.
Jaren fell to his knees before the woman of light.
"Issari," he whispered. "Princess Issari, Priestess of Starlight, Eye of the Dragon. Blessed be your name, Issari Seran of Requiem."
Her hands rested upon Vale, rivulets of light spreading from them, wrapping around the broken body, mending, healing. Issari—among the greatest heroines of Requiem's first days, a founder of the nation, a great healer and priestess—raised her eyes from her task and stared at Jaren.
And then she was gone.
The light faded.
The song died.
Once more, the cruel sunlight of Saraph slammed down against the cobblestones.
Vale lay on the ground, wrapped in Elory's arms. Blood still coated him. A collar still encircled his neck. His clothes were still torn.
"He's alive," Elory whispered, sobbing, pulling him close against her. "Vale, Vale. Sweet brother."
His chest rose and fell with breath, and Jaren knelt and wiped the blood away, revealing healed flesh. Only scars remained upon his side, his hands, his legs, old white wounds, washed away.
Thank you, Issari, healer of Requiem.
Then Jaren could retain his composure no more. His body shook with sobs, and he pulled his son close, squeezing him, never wanting to let go. Vale's eyes fluttered open, and he smiled softly and held his father and sister.
The other slaves gathered around, gazing with wide eyes. Men, women, and children who had defied the seraphim, who had endured whip and spear, refusing to kneel before Ishtafel—now they knelt before Jaren and his family. Now they bowed their heads.
"A miracle," one old man whispered, back scarred from decades of servitude.
"The stars shine again!" said a young man, raising chained arms.
Elory nodded, staring skyward, the Draco constellation reflected in her eyes. "We are not forgotten."
MELIORA
"She fell from the sky."
"Fell like a star of Requiem."
"She fell like a dragon! A dragon all in silver and gold, of feathers and scales, of sunlight and starlight."
Meliora blinked. The world was fuzzy, the light like feathers, scattering around her, mottled with dust. She coughed, and pain raced across her. Everything hurt—her belly, her chest, her spine, her eyes, her head. She blinked again, struggling to bring the world into focus.
She lay in an alleyway between weedy brick walls. Laundry hung on strings above, and an alley cat hissed. Graffito sprawled across one wall, showing a crowned seraph—presumably Ishtafel—with a baby dragon chomping on his backside. Two hundred yards away, the alley opened up onto the main boulevard; a crowd marched there, crying out in many voices.
"She's awake!" rose one of the voices, one near Meliora. A shadow fell across her.
"I know she's awake. Step back, give her some room."
Meliora pushed herself onto her elbows and her eyes widened. She gasped.
"Kira!" she said. "Talana!"
Her two old slaves, saved from the bull and banished into Tofet, smiled at her.
No, not slaves, never again, Meliora thought. Vir Requis. My people.
The memories flooded her, as powerful as a storm. Elory telling her the truth. Leaping off her balcony. Flying as a dragon—a real dragon of Requiem.
My father is Vir Requis. Meliora trembled wildly. The blood of dragons flows through me. I'm not the king's daughter.
The shock flowed through her, spinning her head, and yet . . . and yet somehow Meliora had always known. Her short stature—only six feet tall, shorter than almost all other seraphim of the courts. Her childhood dreams of dragons. Her longing gazes at the stars at night. Her kinship with her slaves. Her people.
"You are my people," she whispered.
She winced. Every word shot pain through her. She looked down at her body, and she saw bandaged wounds, scratches, burn marks.
"We caught you when you fell," Kira said, dark eyes shining. "You almost died. You flew as a dragon, Meliora! How did you do that? A real dragon like the Vir Requis of old."
Talana—pale of skin, her stubbly hair red—shook her head. "Not like a Vir Requis. We have wings like leather. She had feathery wings and feathers on her back instead of spikes. And she still had a halo, even as a dragon."
Kira—darker than her companion, her skin olive and her stubbly hair black—groaned. "You've never even seen a real dragon."
"I have!" Talana stamped her feet. "They fly all the time over construction sites, and I watch them." She sighed wistfully and tugged at her collar. "I wish I could become a dragon someday. I can feel the magic inside me, itching."
"That's the cricket you ate yesterday." Kira glowered at her friend. "I told you not to eat it."
"Crickets are good!" Talana pouted. "If you stick 'em on a stick and fry 'em, they—"
Meliora rose to feet, wobbly. "Your collars," she whispered. "Your collars! You can become dragons without them."
The two young women, collared and hobbled, stared at their former mistress, lost for words. Meliora sucked in a breath and clutched her spinning head.
I have to remove their collars. I have to find the Keeper's Key.
Meliora had to lean against the alley's wall. She had seen the key before—a long, crimson key engraved with golden runes. It was imbued with ancient magic, tying it to the curse of the collars. It fit into no padlock. At a mere touch, its old, dark power let it break the curse upon the collars, then cast it again. For five hundred years, her family had safeguarded this key—the key to their power.
"The Keeper's Key," Meliora whispered. "A way to remove the collars. I have to find it."
Kira and Talana glanced at each other, then back at Meliora.
"But . . . my lady." Kira shuddered. "They say that only the highest ranking seraphim ever carry the key."
Talana nodded. "They say only one Keeper's Key even exists! That it's only carried by—"
"—the royal family," Meliora whispered.
She spread her seraph wings.
She flew.
Leaving her slaves—no, not her slaves, her fellow Vir Requis—Meliora soared into the sky and flew above the City of Kings. Many slaves were gathered around the ziggurat, and many seraphim flew above. Blood stained the steeple of the ziggurat, a red pupil in the great Eye of Saraph, but the slave who had been nailed there was gone.
And there, on the balcony beneath the bloodstain, she stood—Queen Kalafi.
Meliora flew toward her.
Her lips peeled back, her eyes narrowed, and her hands balled into fists.
The woman who lied to me. Meliora snarled. The woman who blindfolded me, who kept me in a darkness of gilt and gemstones. The woman who raised me to spit upon the people whose blood flows through me, whose blood she spills upon our fair city.
Kalafi stood in fineries, resplendent—her golden hair flowing and lustrous, her tiara gleaming, her kalasiri strewn with thousands of diamonds. Wings spread wide, feathers charred, blood staining her bandages, Meliora landed before the queen. They stood facing each other—an ancient seraph of immortal beauty, and a young daughter with dragon blood in her veins, only just awakened to the world.
"Daughter," Kalafi said, reaching out to her.
Meliora took a step back. "Mother."
"Meliora," Kalafi whispered, reaching to her again.
Again Meliora stepped away. The city spun below her, and the chanting pounded against her skull. She stepped into her mother's chamber, leaving the balcony. The heated pool steamed before her, and the splendor of the chamber glittered: columns of silver and gold, jeweled vases, statues of preciou
s metals, artifacts from distant lands, priceless rugs, murals, mosaics. Everywhere Meliora looked: the luxury of an empire.
Meliora thought back to the land of Tofet, just across the river. A nightmare. A hellish landscape of cracked earth, pits of steaming tar, of slaves crawling, limping, suffering under the yoke and the whips of their masters, crying out. Slaves laboring to carve bricks for palaces such as this one. To dig up the bitumen that held those bricks together, that glued jewels to gold and stones onto mosaics, that waterproofed the ships that brought these treasures from distant lands. Black tar and the red blood of slaves—the fuel of the empire, of the dynasty Meliora had been born into, the dynasty that was a lie.
"They're my people," she whispered to her mother. "The slaves. The slaves in chains. The slaves whipped. The slaves burned in the bronze bull. My people. My blood. My father."
Kalafi stepped toward her, wincing, still reaching out to her. "My daughter—"
"Don't touch me!" Meliora shoved the queen's hands away. "Don't call me that."
Pain twisted Kalafi's face. "Meliora, all that I did, I did to protect you. To shelter you from the cruelty of the world, from—"
"From the truth!" Meliora shouted, and now she could not curb her tears. "You lied to me!"
"To protect you!" Kalafi swept her hand across the chamber. "To raise you like this—in comfort, in wealth. Not . . . not out there!" The queen barked a bitter laugh. "Would you have preferred to grow up in chains, collared, whipped, suffering in the dust like a slave?"
"I am a slave!" Meliora shouted, tears flowing. "All my life I've been a slave, kept in a gilded cage, collared with necklaces of gold, hobbled by ignorance. All while my family suffered. While my sister carried a yoke until her shoulders twisted. While my father—my true father—screamed under the lash. While hundreds of thousands of my people cried out in anguish, begging for mercy that would never come. While your son—your own son!—slew them for his sport. Would I have chosen chains? I would have abolished the chains! I would have smashed the cruel god Malok, and I would have sent the Vir Requis to their homeland, far from this accursed city, this accursed empire, this accursed family—"
Her voice died with a strangled cough as Kalafi gripped her throat. The queen sneered, tightening the grip, crushing Meliora's windpipe.
"You will not speak disparagingly of this family—this family that raised you." Kalafi's eyes burned. "I've given you everything, Meliora. The life of a princess."
"I would rather have the life of a slave." Meliora wrenched off Kalafi's hands and lifted a jug off a table, its porcelain painted with hunters and pheasants. "I would choose chains over wealth." She slammed the jug down; it shattered. She lifted an ostrich egg inlaid with jewels and golden wires. "I would choose the whip over jewels." She shattered the artifact and grabbed a jewelry box. "I would choose the collar over necklaces of gems." She tossed the jewelry box to the balcony; it shattered against the floor, its jewels spilling toward the city below. She fell to her knees, and she howled with her pain. "You lied to me!"
Kalafi stared down at her, calm now.
"Are you done having a tantrum?" the queen said. "Do you see why I withheld the truth from you, Meliora? Because you're still a child. Still only a pampered child."
"Yes." Meliora nodded and rose to her feet. She stared into her mother's eyes—a mother taller, fairer, endlessly older, a pure seraph, a pure being like Meliora would never be. "I'm a child. Nothing but a child. You made me this way. Ishtafel was my age when he conquered Requiem. Yet you kept me in a state of infancy, Mother. Deceived. Pampered. Crippled by fineries. But it ends now; that life is over. Elory came into my life—my sister!—and she started something, Mother. Something you cannot stop." She took a deep, shuddering breath and raised her chin. "The slaves will be freed. You will give me the key to their collars. My brother stole them from Requiem, but I will lead them home."
Her mother stared at her silently for long moments, face blank.
Finally the queen spoke in a whisper, "I should have killed you." She gave her head the slightest of shakes. "So many times I wanted to, was going to. When you were in my belly, a mixed child, I was going to see the women in the temples, to drink their poison and flush you from my body. When you were a little girl, when I could see your weakness, your short stature, your eyes that gazed upon your slaves as pets rather than livestock, I wanted to drown you in my pool, to hold your little body—so small, so weak!—under the water until you stopped flailing. When you stepped into the bronze bull, I wanted to let you burn, to hear you scream; if not for the embarrassment it would have caused me, perhaps I would have. Just last night, I stood above your bed as you slept, a dagger in my hand . . . and oh, sweetest daughter." She reached out to caress Meliora's cheek. "I wanted it so badly. More than I wanted anything, I wanted you dead."
Meliora stared at her mother in horror, seeing a different person, not the queen she had known, not the mother she had loved . . . but the bane of Requiem. A tyrant. A monster.
"Who are you?" Meliora whispered.
Kalafi smiled thinly. "Something you will never be. Pure."
Lies. All my life—lies.
Meliora closed her eyes, and she thought of the years idled away, twenty-seven years blind. Almost three decades wrapped in silk and gold, a princess in a tower. And she thought of her dreams. Of wings in the night, of marble columns rising from a birch forest, of the stars—a million stars in a different sky, brilliant in the night, and among them a great celestial dragon. She flew with her kind. With Elory. And Kira and Talana. With millions of other dragons. Free in Requiem.
"Requiem," Meliora whispered, tears on her lips. "May our wings forever find your sky." She opened her eyes and stared at her mother through the veil of her grief and her joy. "Yours is the purity of poison, the purity of the finest steel blade thrust into an enemy's back. But I am a child of starlight. I am a child of Requiem. I am a dragon."
And in this chamber of wealth, this heart of an empire, Meliora summoned her ancient magic.
Starlight spun around her, glowing, spreading out, finally gathering into scales as small and bright as pearls, in claws like alabaster, in great wings of white feathers, larger than her seraph wings. She stood before her mother, a dragon—not a dragon like the others, a creature of spikes and wide scales, but a dragon nonetheless. A dragon of Requiem.
"This is not purity," Meliora said to the queen, her voice flowing through her long neck and jaws. "But this is truth. This is righteousness. You will open the slaves' collars, Mother . . . or all the empire will see that your daughter stands among them."
Kalafi screamed—a wordless, beastly cry of pain. She drew a secret dagger from her dress and thrust the blade.
Meliora beat her wings and rose in the chamber. The dagger scraped across her scales, chipping them. With a thrust of her claws, Meliora knocked her mother down.
The queen fell with a scream, her dress tearing to reveal the ugly, never-healing wound beneath.
Meliora stared down at the fallen seraph. Smoke blasted from her nostrils. Kalafi stared up, fear in her eyes, blood on her dress.
"Where is the Keeper's Key?" Meliora growled, white fire crackling in her maw. "Give me the key, Mother. The key to the slaves' collars. Where is the key?"
Kalafi began to laugh. Lying on the floor, pinned down beneath Meliora's claws, her wound exposed and dripping, the queen laughed as if watching jesters fight for sport. "You will have to kill me, daughter. So long as I breathe, the key will never be yours. Do what I did! I slew a husband. Slay a mother. Show me that you're a killer too."
Meliora's claws rested on her mother. How easy it would be, she thought, to simply lean forward, apply just the slightest more pressure, to pierce Kalafi's flesh. To make the queen suffer. To pay for all she had done.
With a deep breath, Meliora removed her claws off her mother.
"I stand above you now," Meliora whispered. "And I could kill you as easily as a child crushes a bug. But I grant you
life, Mother. I grant you shame. A shame all the empire will know. Next time you see me, I will wear rags, my head shaved, my back whipped, for I am a child of Saraph no more. I am a child of Requiem, and we are a nation in chains . . . but we will be free."
As Kalafi lay on the mosaic floor, staring up in silent fear, Meliora beat her wings. She knocked over vases and statues, her claws clattered across the floor, and she burst out onto the balcony. She leaped into the air, and Meliora soared, flying high above the city, high toward the sun and across the wind . . . flying to the land of Tofet. Flying home.
ISHTAFEL
My sister. My sweet Meliora. The future mother of my children. Ishtafel trembled with rage. A weredragon.
He marched through the palace, fingernails digging into his palms. A crack split his breastplate, and his chest dripped ichor. The golden blood, the pure blood of the gods, sizzled as it dripped, forming a trail. In one fist, he clutched a feather, long as a sword, white as leprosy—Meliora's feather, the feather from her dragon form.
A creature half seraph, half dragon. Ishtafel sneered, bile rising in his throat. A disgusting freak. A monster I almost impregnated.
He stormed down a portico. To his right rose a wall, its murals depicting his ancient victories. To his left rose columns, and between them sprawled a view of the city. The crowds were dispersing, and an eerie calmness fell across Shayeen, but inside of Ishtafel the battle still raged—the battle against his sister, his battle against Requiem five hundred years ago . . . a battle he still fought today.
The weredragons rebel. He squeezed the feather in his hand, his blood staining it. I will crush them. I will crush every one. I will grind them into the dust. Their sickening blood stains my family. That blood will spill across the empire.
A slave appeared in the corridor before him, rushing forth with a jug of water. The man froze and knelt. Ishtafel stomped toward him.
Their blood will spill.
Ishtafel grabbed the man's skull. He shoved his thumbs forward, gouging out the creature's eyes, squeezing, crushing the skull, sneering as the man's screams died, as the brains dripped. He lifted the body and slammed it against a column, shattering its bones, then lifted it again and threw it again, tossing the dripping remains to the city beyond.
Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1) Page 18