Golden

by Melissa de la Cruz

  “The bond—we have to break her bond with Mainas,” Nat told him. “It’s the only way.”

  “Can you bring them back?” asked Wes. “If you get them close, I can take care of Eliza.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Bring them here,” he said. She knew he was remembering the fierceness of the creature he had first encountered on the Pacific. It had nearly torn his ship to shreds, and it had tossed one of his crewmembers into the ocean, but he was not afraid. “Bring her to me. She is my sister. She is my responsibility.”

  Nat closed her eyes, focusing on her drakon once more.

  The creature crashed through the hole again, plummeting to the floor, landing in a cloud of dust and dirt.

  Nat and Wes ran toward it.

  The drakon was bleeding from its iron chains, its eyes weeping red tears that matched Nat’s own.

  Without hesitation, Wes jumped on the drakon’s back and pulled his sister down to the ground.

  28

  ELIZA SCRATCHED AND CLAWED AND kicked and threw herself across the room. The fire within her surprised Wes. Eliza would not give up easily. She wasn’t his sister anymore; she was changed. She had taken so many lives and so much power, it had altered Eliza and made her into something terrible. Wes followed her, a terrible feeling building within him. This wouldn’t end well.

  He knew her tricks, what she would do. But her power surprised him nonetheless. Her life was on the line, so she gave him everything she had. The world went dark and Eliza vanished. In her place, Wes saw his sister as he had last seen her—on the night the Queen stole Eliza. He saw that little girl, looking frightened and alone. She called out to him. “Help me,” she said. “Help me, Wes!”

  He shook it off. Though it pained him, he ignored her illusion. It’s not real. She’s not a little girl, and whatever innocence she had is gone. Eliza was gone. He looked again at the little girl, and it did not break his heart. He saw only his sister’s cruelty.

  “Is this all you have, dear sister?” It was too late for her to play the innocent little girl, for she’d strayed from that path a long time ago.

  Something struck him on the jaw and he tumbled backward. While he’d daydreamed, that little girl had attacked him, knocking him on the head with something heavy. Not bad, thought Wes. Maybe she hadn’t wanted his sympathy. Maybe all she needed was a distraction, something to keep him busy while she slashed his throat, bashed in his brains. Wes glared at the little girl. She giggled a sickly little giggle as the illusion faded.

  The baby girl was gone. Eliza stood in her place, her eyes flashing with anger.

  I’ve got to strike before—

  Too late, Eliza disappeared again. Now he saw only Nat, standing before her drakon. He watched in horror as the great black monster tore her limb from limb, rendering her body to pieces, blood splashed upon the stones.

  No.

  He dispelled the illusion, but she quickly made another.

  He was on the battlefield and everyone was there, Shakes and Liannan. They were pinned down by soldiers. They were trapped. In a moment, they’d be done. The soldiers were surrounding them now, executing his friends while Wes watched.

  No! No more illusions. He’d had enough. It was time to end this.

  She hit him, lie after lie, but he shattered them all. He could break her illusions, but could he break the weaver who made them? Or was she just too strong? Had she taken too many lives and too much power?

  How do I do this?

  His magic was strong—he’d fought the Queen and triumphed—but Eliza was something different. Her power was equal to a hundred Queens. But then Wes remembered that magical energy was much like any other energy. The more you used it, the more it faded. When he’d first used his power, the magic had drained him to near death. Eliza was too strong to fight, but maybe he could drain her power. Can I wear you down?

  “Is that all you’ve got?” he yelled, taunting his sister. Wes already afraid of what she might to do him next. If he goaded her into using all of her strength, she just might do it, and he shuddered to think what would happen when she did.

  In answer, she sent a wave of energy that was so strong it knocked him off his feet, but instead of fighting the blow, he let it pass through him, absorbing and nullifying it. Wes couldn’t use his magic to hurt others—he could only dissolve magic, so that was how he would fight her. Shock wave after shock wave rolled through him. He felt as if he were standing on the beach, holding his ground as wave after foaming wave washed over him, each one threatening to knock him down and drag him under. But he stood upright and absorbed her every blow. Eliza gave it all she had. After a time, she must have guessed at his strategy and known that he was wearing her down. Each time he absorbed her strength, it angered her and she poured even more power into her next attack. She did not think he would triumph; perhaps that thought did not even occur to her. Over and over she attacked and he defended.

  In the end, Eliza lasted longer than Wes thought she would.

  He waited until her strength waned and he knew she was vulnerable. Then he reached for the slender thread that bound the creature to his sister. While Eliza was focused on destroying him, he found the bond between her and the drakon. He focused all of his power upon it.

  And snapped it.

  Eliza fell to the ground, lifeless.

  Breaking the bond had doomed Eliza.

  Wes had known what would happen when he shattered Eliza’s magic. When he’d broken the Queen’s spell, he’d knocked her out cold. He guessed something similar would happen to Eliza, but he hadn’t thought it would kill her.

  Wes knelt beside Eliza.

  He remembered Emrys standing above the dead body of Nineveh, as he loomed over the broken form of his twin, conflicting emotions roiling inside—grief, regret, sorrow, anger. Eliza Wesson had brought so much damage to the world, but he found that at the last, the dominant feeling in his heart was one of compassion. She was a broken child of the ice, just like them. In a way, they were all shattered, all broken. Eliza had suffered more than most, but she’d done more harm, too. She had been stolen from her family, raised to think she was special. Her failure was their failure to love her for who she was. She’d never really had a family, a mother. The Queen had wanted to use Eliza. She was a pawn, a tool, a means to an end. And when that end was not achieved, when Eliza failed to enter the tower, it had destroyed her.

  What kind of magic was this? What kind of magic demanded that a mother sacrifice her child? What kind of magic twisted its bearer into a monster?

  Wes knelt by her side and took his sister into his embrace.

  Eliza blinked her eyes at him. “Ryan?” she asked. “Where am I?” Her blue eyes were brown now, like his. This was the sister he’d known for a brief period, before her sixth birthday, before the corruption, before the darkness inside her had taken root and festered. When she was an innocent girl, still.

  “You’re with me,” he said, brushing back her hair as the color drained from her face.

  “I’m cold,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, holding her up. “I’m so sorry, Eliza, I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect you.”

  She stared at him. “But you did protect me. You took it away,” she whispered.

  “What?” he asked, unable to understand in his grief. That she would return to herself at the end was unexpected and searing.

  “The dark thing inside me isn’t there anymore,” she whispered. Her eyes fluttered and rolled to the back of her head.

  “But how?” he asked. When he’d hit her with all his strength, he must have done more than just knock her down. He had destroyed the dark magic within her, the rot that had driven her mad for all these years.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “No,” he murmured. He couldn’t lose her now, just when he’d gotten her back. She was
his sister again, the one he had tried to rescue. She was the girl he had hoped to find at MacArthur Med.

  “Eliza, don’t go,” he said, pressing his hands to her heart, trying to make it beat again. He breathed air into her lungs, he did what he could, but it was no use. “Don’t go,” he said, but she was already gone.

  Wes sagged under the dead weight. He closed her eyes with his fingers. The only family he had left was gone from this world.

  Then he looked up. Somewhere, Nat was waiting for him, her drakon at her side. What remained of their crew—Shakes, Liannan, Brendon—needed them.

  Family was what you made of it.

  29

  NAT WALKED TO THE SUFFERING CREATURE and stroked its neck and removed the iron chains, letting them clatter. Easy, she sent, soothing the drakon. Easy. She is gone. We are free.

  The drakon bowed and Nat walked to the place where its shoulder met its neck. She nuzzled upon the creature’s shoulders. She was whole at last, bonded once more to the creature, and she had Wes to thank for that.

  “Eliza?” she asked when she saw Wes.

  He shook his head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and she was. She knew that the loss was a blow, no matter what kind of person Eliza had become. She ached for him, for what he had had to do. He had killed his own blood for her.

  “She died in peace. She came back to me, in the end. She wasn’t . . . Lady Algeana anymore.”

  Nat nodded, knowing there were no words that would make the grief easier, but she could offer comfort and succor nonetheless. “Come,” she said, opening her arms to him.

  He fell into them, putting almost all of his weight on her, but she stood firm, holding him, wrapping her arms around him so that his grief flowed out and into her, so that they shared it, so that he knew that he was safe, that he was loved.

  Her shoulder became wet with his tears, and she was crying as well. Eliza’s was not the first death and would not be the last.

  After a long silence, he rocked back on to his feet and pulled away slightly. “Is Mainas all right?”

  “The drakon will heal.”

  “And you?”

  “I can bear the pain.”

  “But you don’t have to bear it alone,” he said.

  She was silent.

  He put his arms around her once more and put his mouth next to her ear. “I was thinking about what Emrys said. About the sacrifice that’s part of the spell,” he said.

  She tensed, wondering what he was going to say next. It was not what she expected.

  “I know what it is,” he said. “It’s me. That’s why you pushed me away. Because you thought you could make me leave you.”

  It appeared she was the only one who had been in denial about what the sacrifice entailed. “How long have you known?”

  “When you stopped talking to me,” he said. “I knew there had to be a good reason. And there could only be one reason for it. You’re trying to keep me alive. Because you can’t live a second without me.”

  “Cocky boy,” she whispered, but she was smiling even as she said it.

  He tightened his hold on her as the drakon lifted its wings and flapped toward the sky. “I wanted you to tell me yourself. But you really are stubborn. So I have no choice but to tell you now.”

  “Tell me what?” she asked, as they flew from the ruins, looking down on the devastated cityscape below.

  “I’m not leaving you. Ever. I’m right here. Whatever that spell wants, whatever it needs, I’m here. If you die, I die with you. You’re only trying to save me somehow and that’s not going to work. We’re in this together. I share your burden. I’ve seen the weight you carry. You can’t do it alone.”

  Nat let the tears flow down her cheeks, letting the wind carry them. “But you’ll die,” she whispered, shaking in his arms.

  Wes leaned even closer, so that his lips were against her wet cheek now, and he knew she was crying. “If that’s what you need from me,” he said.

  “Ryan,” she said. “I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t let you die. I won’t.” She was sobbing now, her shoulders shaking. “I wanted you to think I didn’t love you, so you would leave me. But I love you so much. I can’t let you go.”

  Wes kissed the tears as they fell. “You don’t have to let go. You can’t anyway. I’ll be there till the end. Remember my promise? I’m never leaving you.”

  Even as they stood at the edge of the precipice, she felt a lightness and joy to know she wasn’t alone. She had Mainas. She had Wes. Their friends were still alive and would help them secure the tower.

  “I knew you never stopped loving me,” he said, his voice as shaky as hers. She twisted around so that she faced him, raising her chin so that he leaned down and they shared a brief but sweet kiss.

  “I’m sorry we wasted that time apart,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, too.” He cleared his throat. “But there’s no time to dwell on that now. I spoke to Shakes and Liannan. They’ve reached New Dead City. Avo’s troops have surrounded the tower. They’re going to blast it with nukes to try to get inside,” he said.

  “Let’s go then.” Nat lifted her foot, placed it upon the drakon’s spine, and swung up onto its back. The scales felt warm beneath her, like coal rustling in a fire. The sound of the scales moving across one another was soothing, familiar. She was back where she belonged. She offered him her hand and he took it, swinging to sit behind her.

  They flew away while, below, Apis gave one last sigh and collapsed completely. Its walls caved in, one after another, falling upon each other, shooting up towers of dust and sand that the drakon deftly avoided.

  “I’m scared, Wes. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know it’s not going to be good.”

  He murmured into her hair. “Emrys said there was always hope. I’m going to cling to it.”

  Hope was a thread as fine as drakonscale. Nat decided she would do the same.

  PART THE THIRD

  RING AND TOWER

  There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met

  To view the last of me, a living frame

  For one more picture! In a sheet of flame

  I saw them and I knew them all. And yet

  Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,

  And blew “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”

  —ROBERT BROWNING

  Go then, there are other worlds than these.

  —STEPHEN KING, THE DARK TOWER, BOOK I: THE GUNSLINGER

  30

  WHEN THE ICE CAME, THE COASTS WERE the first to fall. The waters rose, claiming the coastal lands, drenching the streets with black water, making the cities uninhabitable. New Dead City was devastated. The city that never slept entered a long hibernation. It forgot about its past. Names faded and the city became one more ruin in a world full of ruins. The Gray Tower was one of those ruins, those places that had lost their names. It was once called by another name, a building of the Empire State. This had been a great metropolis once, from the time before, a magnificent skyline of glistening towers of steel and glass. Its citizens fretted over what to eat and what to wear. They worried over luxuries. War had come to the city once before, leveling two of its marvelous towers to dust, but the city had recovered, had built new towers, more towers, until this one was just a tower in a city full of them. Now those towers were rotted. Some were collapsed; none stood intact. Though broken in places, the Gray Tower stood above the rest. Almost everything around it had fallen, making it appear as if the tower were some last holdout against the end of the world. It looked as if it were waiting, holding on until someone arrived to claim the power within it.

  In the dead of the night, Wes and Nat came to the city. In a swirling cloud of energy, they appeared above the dark waters of the Atlantic. They were perched atop the drakon’s back, clinging to each other. There
were only a few passages that connected the Gray Lands to Vallonis, but a door from Vallonis could take you anywhere in the Gray Lands. So they had used one such door to bring them here, to the doorstep of the tower.

  Wes had half expected to see a few lights in New Dead City or a fire burning behind a broken window, but the city was quiet, dead like its name. The once-glittering towers were caked in soot and grime. The streets that had glowed with light were now dark. Only the snow and ice gave off the occasional shimmer.

  Shakes had told them to meet on the sixteenth floor of a building twenty streets south of the Gray Tower. Wes saw the great tower and counted the dark streets till he found the one Shakes had identified. Its sign read MANHATTAN PENTHOUSE. They circled once in the darkness, looking for a place to land, but found none. Even if they could land here, there was nowhere to hide the drakon, so Mainas took them to an edge of the city where they left him in an abandoned warehouse. Wes and Nat made their way back on foot, navigating the streets, bounding over piles of snow and ice, dodging the broken cars that hid within the piles of white.

  Through a great hole in one of its walls, they slipped inside and on the sixteenth floor, they found a broken window that let them keep watch on the streets below while they waited for Shakes to arrive.

  An hour passed, maybe two, and the sky turned a deep shade of purple. Wes motioned to Nat when saw signs of movement in the distance.

  “Do you see them?” she asked, joining him at the window.

  There was movement in the street corner below, three shapes flitting between the shadows.

  “I think so,” he said, pointing. “Isn’t that Brendon?” The smallman zigzagged through a street full of rusted taxicabs. Shakes was next, then Liannan.

  After a few minutes, they heard the clatter of footsteps up the stairway and the door opened.

  Brendon was the first to reach them. He was winded and out of breath, but still had a grin on his face.