by Elise Kova
“Did Sophie send you?” Arianna scowled at the mention of the Vicar’s name.
“Not directly,” he confessed. “But she has put a high price on the alliance of the rebellion.”
Arianna sighed and turned back to her box. She struggled with a tiny gear, trying to force it onto a peg and into place. It just wouldn’t go.
“I may have done all this out of order. But I want to earn your trust.”
“For your family.”
“For my family,” Cvareh confirmed. “And because I want to know why I can’t seem to stop thinking about you at every turn. Why I find the shade of your skin and flatness of your teeth charming, when a few months ago I found it repulsive.”
“What are you saying?” All emotion dropped from her voice. It was virtually unreadable to his ears.
“I don’t know what I’m saying.” Cvareh stood. “But I want to find out. And I intend to do so.”
“A Dragon earning my trust?” she scoffed, back to the Ari he knew. “That could take years.”
“Good thing I’m a Dragon. Years are something I have.” Cvareh chuckled and grinned. “If I have to, I’ll stop time.”
That almost earned him a smile, and he’d take almost. Cvareh was nearly out of the room, his mission accomplished for now, when something else struck him. He stopped and turned to find Arianna looking up at him in confusion. He would capitalize on whatever good mood he’d earned.
“One more thing. Whatever you think about me… don’t believe me, think I’m a total liar, take no heed of my truth.” The thought stung him a bit—the idea that after all they’d been through she could still not trust him. “But if you listen, not just hear, but listen to one thing I say, let it be this: patch things up with Florence. You will regret it, Ari, if you let her vanish because of your own stubbornness.”
41. ARIANNA
The bed was cold and the room, though nicely sized, felt a million veca wide. There was no rumbling of Cvareh’s deep breaths while he slept. Florence’s heat wasn’t warming her sheets. Arianna was left alone—as she had been for a week now—with her thoughts.
She had almost worked up the resolve to leave the Alchemists’ Guild without Florence, when Cvareh had visited her that afternoon. He’d come bearing himself to her in ways she hadn’t expected, and didn’t want to believe were true.
Because believing would mean trusting a Dragon again.
And then there were all the claims Florence had made against her. Arianna stared listlessly at the ceiling. The girl had seen vision in her, when there had only ever been vengeance. Both drove, both were pursued with all the passion of the soul.
But a soul driven by vengeance was a selfish soul. A soul driven by vision was a generous one—one that bore itself before others and put the needs of the many before the needs of the few.
There was a time that she had actually possessed those traits. A time when they weren’t just vacant, labeled pegs on the walls of her personality. She had written them off when the rebellion died. Eva, Master Oliver, and the Arianna they had known died alongside them.
She was nothing now, and that had enabled her to be an extension of her benefactors’ will as the White Wraith. What Florence had seen in her was nothing more than a mirror of the potential that lived in the girl herself. Potential Ari eagerly reflected and wanted to grow—as if its vines and roots could curl around the fragments of her heart and pull them back together.
Arianna sat up, rubbing her eyes tiredly. Even Sophie’s words about Eva had stuck with her. What would Eva think if they met now? Was Arianna still someone she’d want to love?
Chasing ghosts down empty halls, she stood, padding on silent feet through the Master’s passages of the Alchemists’ Guild. Eva was dead. Whatever she would or wouldn’t love no longer mattered. Now, Arianna had to live for the living—for herself.
Arianna turned the knob of Cvareh’s door, letting herself quietly into his room.
Even amid her virtual silence, the Dragon woke. Talons jutted from his hands, ready to ward off a shadowed attacker. She leaned against the door, waiting for him to calm himself, to realize who was there. It only took a moment.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered.
She could hear his quickening heartbeat, feel his magic responding to hers. Arianna crossed over to his bed with purpose. He sat straighter as she made herself at home without his permission, drawing up her legs to sit atop his sheets.
His words about her played relentlessly in harmony with everything else she’d been coming to terms with. Arianna had heard them clearly, but they were so difficult for her to process. This Dragon and she had embarked on an odd journey with each other. It was a winding path that had taken them across Loom, and what she thought was to be their final destination had turned out to be a resting point before the next, greater trek.
“I want proof,” she announced.
“Proof of what?” Cvareh asked skeptically.
“Proof that your sister is who she says she is. That if I help this resistance—and her—get their footing, I will not just be replacing one tyrant with another.”
The fact was that Loom was headed toward another war no matter what she did. If it was in one year, or twenty, eventually the rebels here would grow enough, become reckless enough, that they would attack. Loom wasn’t meant to sustain itself as it was. That Ari believed above all else. Tensions would be omnipresent until things with the Dragons were settled in a far better manner than their current arrangement.
“Whatever proof you want, I’ll get,” Cvareh said hastily.
“I don’t want it from you.”
“What then?”
“I want it from her.”
“Her?” It took him a second to put it together. “Petra? My sister will never come to Loom. She can’t. There are too many eyes on her.”
“I never said anything about her coming here.”
“You want to go to Nova?” Cvareh couldn’t process what he was hearing. The idea of Arianna on Nova was preposterous—she could agree with him on that.
“Want may be a strong word, yet…” Arianna sighed softly. “I’ve been standing still for far too long, hiding behind excuses and poor attempts at belief in something, anything.”
“Is this because of Florence?”
“Among other things.” He may have been ready to bare his soul to her, but Arianna wasn’t there yet. They were still too much of nothing and not enough of everything for her to expose herself emotionally.
“So you patched things up with her?” he asked.
“I’m on the way to doing so.” Arianna was pointedly ambiguous, and he fell down the rabbit hole of drawing his own conclusions. The Dragon no doubt presumed she’d spoken to Florence about her plans. But Arianna would face Florence again when she could be the woman the girl had seen in her all along. She would apologize with her actions before her words.
“I’m glad.” The Dragon genuinely sounded it. Sincerity, from a Dragon. The idea was far-fetched in her mind, but Cvareh continued to make a strong case. “I’ll speak to my sister, and figure out a way back to Nova for both of us.”
Arianna shook her head. “We should go now. The more time you take, the more opportunity I have to back out of this.”
“But we have no way of breaking through the Gods’ Line…”
“The what?”
“The clouds,” he corrected hastily.
“Yes we do,” she declared triumphantly. “You didn’t think the Alchemists would let a Rider’s glider sit in the forest to be picked apart or rusted to dust, did you?”
“Leona’s glider is here?” He’d heard nothing of it.
“I found it when I was nipping through storerooms for parts.” She stood.
“The nipping around bit I believe. The rest seems suspect.”
Arianna grinned and extended her hand to the Dragon. “I like this newfound sass of yours, Cvareh. Don’t give up on it.”
“As you ask.” He took her rig
ht hand with his left. It was awkward, but it suited them. She went right, he went left: two halves of the same whole.
42. FLORENCE
Florence raked her hands through her hair, teasing out the tangles from sleeping. It was nice to finally have a certain level of cleanliness back in her routine. Her hair had been so knotted upon arriving to the Guild that she’d been afraid she’d have to cut it. Luckily, she saved her dark locks with about an hour of careful brushing.
Her morning routine still took some getting used to. All the clothes were in their proper place. There wasn’t a Rivet tearing through closets and coming in at all hours from odd jobs, leaving her soiled clothing lying about. Her room was neat and orderly, as she preferred it and as it had been her whole life before Arianna.
But now it seemed sterile.
She hadn’t found the courage to talk to her teacher. Former teacher? Teacher. Since the day of her transition. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, but that she had no idea how.
Arianna wanted Florence to go back to her and apologize. She wanted the girl she’d known in Dortam. But Florence had changed, and she wasn’t going to hold herself back for the sake of someone who claimed to want what was best for her but couldn’t live up to those words in practice.
Ari was being the fool, Florence was being stubborn, and she wondered how much longer they could both go before something broke. She just desperately hoped that all that gave was the silence, and not her morals, or Arianna’s love for her. She pulled on some of her borrowed clothing and started the day.
The connections Florence had gained in Mercury Town and the convenient knowledge of two transporters in Ter.4’s Underground was proving more useful than she ever imagined for helping the resource-starved Alchemists. She’d spent most of her days with Derek, working on how to get them more ammunition so they could actually make a stockpile, rather than just using it regularly to fight off endwig.
In the hours she wasn’t there, she was helping the armorers see how they could stretch their supplies further. Sometimes, she ran into something that made her wish she was still on speaking terms with Ari—or something that made her wish for the Revo teachers she’d had in Dortam. But Florence was determined to power through it on her own, even if it meant some late nights of trial and error with her newfound magic.
“Good morning,” she greeted Derek. He occupied one corner of a laboratory he split with a girl named Nora. She was a late riser due to her midnight bursts of inspiration, and they usually had the desk to themselves.
He stared at her skeptically.
“What?” Florence wondered if she had only thought she brushed her hair and it was still a tangled mess.
“Did you know?”
“Know what?”
“You know what,” he pressured.
“Actually… I don’t.” She hadn’t the foggiest what had gotten him so twisted in knots.
“You really don’t know?” Derek eased off, sitting across from her.
“I don’t know what I don’t know?” Florence thought about the self-posed question and struggled to see if she’d said it right. “What am I to know?”
“Your friends stole the Rider’s glider we pulled from the wreckage of that airship crash.”
“I didn’t know you had the glider.” Out of everything to focus on, she picked the fact that the Alchemists had taken one of the gliders? “Where did they go?”
Florence folded her fingers together, gripping them tightly. They’d left her behind. It was all for what she said. Maybe she’d been right, maybe she’d been justified, maybe she still was, but none of that expunged the pain at the thought of being left alone.
“Well, with a Dragon glider, they could’ve gone anywhere far and fast.” Derek leaned back in his chair, terribly amused by the situation since he lacked all emotional investment. “But the morning watch says they charted a course skyward for Nova.”
“Impossible. Arianna would never go to Nova.” Florence couldn’t believe it.
“Think what you will… But that happens in the dawn, and now, the Vicar tells me that we must increase our preparations. We must remain diligent, she says, because one ‘never knows when the resources we need could come’.”
Florence knew for all the help she’d been, the Vicar wasn’t talking about her. It’d take a greater force to sway the tides in the favor of the fledgling rebels. A force that might be mustered by a Wraith, and a Dragon.
“We should get to work then,” Florence resolved with a small smile. “There’s much to be done—just in case we have the opportunity to overthrow a King.”
“Just in case?” Derek grinned. The man clearly believed she knew more than she did. But all Florence had was her intuition. Then again, when it came to Arianna, her intuition was rarely off.
“Just in case.” She gave him a small wink and looked over all there was to be done.
43. PETRA
It was the second time she’d been summoned to the Rok Estate in a few month’s time. It wasn’t that Petra didn’t enjoy inspiring frustration and anger in the man who was supposed to be revered as her supreme ruler, because she did—she enjoyed it a lot. Shameful amount, really. But she just had other things to do.
Running a House, managing nobles, and overseeing the wellbeing her family was enough to fill anyone’s plate. Throw on regicide and treason while trying to broker deals with—apparently—the most temperamental Fenthri there were? She barely had time to sharpen her claws these days.
She clicked her tongue off her teeth, pulling lightly at the boco’s feathers, guiding it with her knees to bank toward the landing area for nobility. Other giant birds milled about, some saddled, some not. Their iridescent feathers shone in the midday sun.
With the buffeting of large wings, her cerulean mount landed with a dignified caw. At least Petra found it dignified. She didn’t speak boco, and some of the other birds ruffled their feathers at whatever it was her Raku had said.
Petra patted him lovingly on the bill. “You annoy the feathers off these gaudy chickens.”
She might not speak boco, but she suspected Raku understood her language as he cooed gleefully in reply. Spinning, she adjusted the thick beaded necklace that ran down front and back, sauntering into the Rok estate as though she already owned the place.
“I haven’t met you before.” She gave a wide smile to the Rider who was escorting her to Yveun Dono’s infamous red room. The thought of it made her yawn. He did it to be intimidating, but it made him predictable and dull.
The real way to intimidate people was to capture their imagination. The imagination was far more wicked than anything someone else could think up because it knew every insecurity to play off. Yveun Dono was too overt. House Rok sharpened their blades, but not their minds.
“We have not had the pleasure, Petra’Oji.” Nothing about the Rider’s tone made Petra think that meeting her was a pleasure. She raked her fingers through her golden curls, drawn back and pinned away from her face.
“You have two whole beads I see.” She made a scene of fussing over them. “What an accomplishment.”
The man almost swatted her hand away. He might be new, but he was trained enough to avoid making that mistake. If he struck her, she would kill him. Not even Yveun Dono would bother denying her that duel.
“Dono, I have brought Petra’Oji,” the Rider announced as they crossed into the threshold of the red room. The man strode ahead of her, assuming the place at the side of the King.
Petra tilted her head. Now this was too delicious not to comment on. “Yveun Dono, did you change staff? Or is our dear Leona sick?”
The King’s claws dug into the throne. He was on edge. No, not on it—past it. Further than she’d ever seen him before.
Petra drew her magic within her, bracing herself subconsciously against the King’s aggression. If he wanted to fight her here and now, that would be fine. In fact, it’d save her a lot of time and effort if he just challenged her to a duel. But she wanted i
t to be a fair duel, one that didn’t involve outside interference. And the Riders seemed to have their own definition of fairness when they claimed they were all one to begin with.
“You know what happened to her,” Yveun Dono snarled.
He looked like an old man guarding a stupid bone. Petra didn’t tell him so. She just continued to play dumb. “Me? My lord, if I knew I would gladly tell you as your most humble servant… But I’m afraid I’ve been overseeing the smiths lately, working on establishing our own gold tempering mills here on Nova as you yourself requested.”
And for every one she set up for the King, she set up one for House Xin.
“You are on your last line, Petra,” the King barked. “Leona is dead, and I demand Cvareh’s head for it.”
He led them down the exact path Petra had been expecting.
“Cvareh had nothing to do with it. He’s been praying at the Temple of Lord Xin, as I told you months ago.” Petra watered the seed she’d sewn and watched it flower.
“If you’re lying to me Petra—”
“See for yourself, Dono,” she interjected. “If you are so concerned, venture to the temple. While he is in private mediation, I imagine even the gods would forgive the intrusion of our supreme ruler.”
“Perhaps I will.” He grinned madly.
Oh, Yveun Dono, you make this too easy. He thought he was calling her bluff while she watched him play right into her palms. House Rok certainly hadn’t stayed in power for so long because they possessed the most wit of all the Dragon houses.
“Very well. I will gladly go with you. I haven’t seen my brother in far too long.” She smiled easily, flashing her canines.
The King stood, furious. “If you are lying, I will kill you.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Then lead on, Petra’Oji, and we will see where we stand when the sun falls.”
She led without hesitation or concern. She’d stalled the King’s demands for an audience long enough that Lord Agnedi had turned his lucky eye on her. Cvareh had arrived just that morning. And a few hours was plenty of time to hide a glider, position her brother where he needed to be, and mask the curious scent of the Chimera who traveled with him.