Golden

by Melissa de la Cruz

  A moment before the creature struck, Wes recognized the pounding of the drakon’s wings. He heard the familiar sounds of the creature and ducked for cover, hiding among the debris. A moment later, a cloud of flame tore through the tower’s walls. The drakon broke through glass and stone, rending an opening in the stairwell. Avo’s soldiers cowered before the beast, then tried to find cover, but it was too late—the drakon was upon them. It reached into the building, gathering up the soldiers with its talons and taking them away.

  Wes watched the creature go. It had taken the soldiers and gone, eliminating the threat to the rydder.

  The tower was safe.

  He brushed the soot from his jacket and face and breathed deeply, mentally thanking Nat and her drakon.

  The moment didn’t last.

  “I’m glad I saw you duck for cover,” said Avo as he climbed from the remains of the stairway. “When I saw you hide, I did the same. I guess my grunts weren’t quite as clever.”

  “Only an icehole like you would leave his men to die.”

  “I’m not a hero, Wes.”

  “No one ever said you were,” Wes said. He looked Avo and down. The drau had no weapon. He must have lost it in the scuffle. “Noticed you don’t have a gun aimed at my head. I guess it’s just you and me now. No more guns and knives.”

  “Suits me,” said Avo. “Guns make killing easy. I like to do it with my hands,” he said.

  “Works for me,” said Wes as the two circled. The stairwell was open to the sky. The drakon had torn a massive, smoking hole in the side of the building. There were stray fires all around them and smoke filled the air, all of it pouring out into the sky. If Wes stepped to his left he’d tumble off the edge, and if he went left he’d run into a wall of flame. There was nowhere to go, no way to escape. It was just the two of them, alone on a platform in the sky, the building below them threatening to collapse, the air filled with the stink of drakonfire. He’d hoped the drakon would return, but the air was quiet, the sky empty.

  Wes’s sights narrowed to a slit and he saw only Avo. There was nothing else. No tower. No stairs. It was just Wes and Avo.

  Avo’s mark was shining. There was blood on his chin where the concrete struck him.

  “Let’s end this,” Wes said.

  35

  THE JACKPOT MACHINE—THE ARCHIMEDES Palimpsest—came to life. Each turn of the wheel revealed another line of the spell, one after another, as if Nat were unrolling a great scroll. Her face lit by the glow of the machine, she memorized the lines, taking each into her thoughts. She was in a casino—lights flashed and machines tinkled all around her—but she ignored it all. She heard nothing; she saw only the words.

  There was a stool attached to the machine and she sat on it. She placed both hands in her lap and forgot about the world around her. She forgot she once worked in a casino, that she’d spent her days shuffling cards and exchanging banter with the clients. She forgot about her drakon and the war she’d fought. Nothing that came before this moment mattered. This is what I am here to do. The bright letters revealed words that were like a song, a poem of making. These are the words that Nineveh read one hundred and eleven years ago. These are the words that broke the worlds when she failed to do what the spell asked of her. She could not forget the Queen’s failure. If Nat failed, she would damn everyone. The spell had the power to do as much good as bad. She would decide what happened next. Her actions would make or break the world and everyone in it.

  She breathed calmly. I will not fail or falter.

  Line followed line, word after word.

  Time passed, but she did not sense it.

  She knew that somewhere a battle raged. Her friends were out there, fighting to keep her safe, to make certain she accomplished this task.

  Nat could not fail.

  She learned every word, absorbing each as if it were a form of sustenance, a thing that would become part of her being.

  She barely noticed when the machine stopped spinning.

  There were no more lines.

  The slot machine’s dials were empty.

  The spell was a part of Nat. She knew it through and through.

  Before she could speak, a vision came to her. She saw old Vallonis, a city floating upon a sea. Atlantis. She heard the words that forged the city. The magic was strong. It was baked into every brick and every bit of mortar. But Atlantis failed, and the world of magic slept.

  It awakened once more in Avalon. The Queen said the words, and Avalon sprouted from the primeval forest. But the city did not last. When it failed, the palimpsest lay hidden for centuries, till Nineveh found it and spoke the spell that wrecked the world.

  Now the scroll had materialized again. It was within her. She would make a new world. Nat would erase the damage done. It was time.

  She removed the charm from her throat and spoke the words written in the palimpsest. She trembled as she finished each line. There was only joy now, happiness. The long night was over; the sun would once more shine upon the earth.

  The last word escaped her tongue, and Nat held her breath.

  She waited, and her heart drummed.

  The moment stretched.

  A minute passed, then another, but nothing happened.

  36

  WES GRABBED AVO’S LEG AND SLAMMED him down against the concrete. The two were balanced on a platform at the top of the stairway. To Wes’s left, part of the wall was missing, the stairway open to the sky. The tower door was behind him, and Nat was inside of it. Drakonflame gathered all around them. The only way out was to go through the door or over the edge.

  Avo pushed back, sending Wes hurtling into the door. His head hit the heavy wood, making a terrible crack. There was a burning in his skull, a deep thudding in his ears. He felt hands wrapping around his throat. Then he couldn’t breathe. Avo was on top of Wes, hands clutching his throat. Wes drove his fist into Avo’s gut, and the drau let go.

  “If you kill me, you’ll never get through that door.”

  “That’s okay,” Avo said, backing away and standing. “We’ll just wait until your girl comes out. Either way, I’ll get what’s inside.”

  The wind changed directions, throwing black smoke in Wes’s face. He lost track of Avo. Wes put his back to the door and waited, the flames advancing all around him. I don’t know how much longer I can stay here. If he didn’t tumble over the edge or fall into the flames, he’d be slow roasted by the fire. Hurry, Nat, get it done, he sent, hoping she could hear him.

  A bullet shot past Wes’s head, striking the heavy wooden door just as Avo emerged from the haze with a gun in his hand. He had found the gun. Wes groped for the weapon, taking the barrel in his hand. Now both of them were fumbling for the trigger. Changing tactics, Wes pulled the gun away and tossed it down the stairs. Bullets meant a quick death, and Avo deserved something far more terrible.

  The gun rattled all the way down, striking iron and concrete.

  “No more weapons, just you and me,” Wes snarled, ripping free from Avo’s hold. “Just how you like it.”

  For a moment, the two faced each other briefly, fists raised, as if in a boxing match.

  Then it began in earnest.

  Wes took a punch to the jaw, but managed to hit Avo in the gut. The drau spit, gurgling a moan as he bent over.

  Still folded in half, Avo kicked at Wes’s boot, pulling his leg out from under him. Wes hit the concrete with a thud but managed to take hold of Avo’s empty gun belt. He dragged the drau down to the floor beside him. He leapt on top of Avo and knocked him once more in the jaw, twice. Blood formed on Avo’s lip.

  The drau laughed.

  Did he know his fate?

  Did he care?

  Before Wes could land another punch, Avo took hold of Wes’s collar and rolled them both away from the door. They rolled too close to the flames and Avo’s uniform
caught fire, the flames slithering up his leg and back. The drau cried out as he tumbled through the flames and down a flight of stairs. Wes followed, leaping over the fire. He couldn’t risk letting Avo get away. The drau would only return with more soldiers and more weapons. This had to end now.

  Wes plunged through the flames into the smoke-filled stairway. He saw nothing but black, and the smoke burned his eyes, his nose. A fist grazed his arm; it was Avo, but neither of them could see through the smoke. He’d struck blindly and missed. Wes lunged at where he thought Avo was standing, pushing himself through the smoke and the black, hoping his punch would hit home. His fist hit home, but Avo struck back with a kick, throwing Wes to the floor. Avo landed on top of him, knocking Wes in the face with the backside of his hand. Wes deflected a second blow. They tumbled again, down another flight. Halfway to the next landing, Wes took control, stood up, and threw Avo against the wall. They exchanged blows in the darkness of the smoke-filled stairs.

  “This is pointless,” Wes cursed beneath his breath, his mouth filling up with smoke. They were both too evenly matched. There would be no victor. Not that Wes had ever thought there would be one.

  “There’s only one way this is going to end,” said Wes, standing up.

  Avo did the same, spitting out a tooth, so that when he smiled, his grin was even more frightening. With the black smoke swirling around him, he looked like a demon straight out of hell. “How’s that, Wesson? With you dead like your friends?”

  “You’re almost right.”

  Avo smirked, and the flames danced at his feet. The fire made his white skin red.

  A cool wind hit Wes’s face. There were gaps in the wall where the drakon had torn through the steel and glass. Snowflakes drifted through the air, mixing with the smoke.

  It was a long way down to the street below.

  “So that’s how it is, is it?” Avo asked. “You think you can end it like this?”

  “It’s the only way,” said Wes as he grabbed Avo by the coat and threw him toward the opening in the wall. The drau resisted, but Wes pushed back, moving them both slowly toward the door. Each step lasted for hours. Avo pushed Wes backward, straining, using every drop of his strength to resist, but Wes could not be stopped. He took one step, then another. He pushed Avo toward the opening, toward a cliff higher than any mountain, toward death.

  Avo thrashed when he saw what Wes was doing. His hands grabbed at the sides of the wall, hoping to hold on. He glanced left and right, trying to peer through the smoke, to find some way to escape his fate, but there was none. The two locked eyes, and Wes saw fear in Avo’s. True, unbridled fear. Avo had felt Wes’s strength, his determination, and it frightened the drau terribly.

  This is how it ends.

  There was no other way to do this.

  To kill Avo, he would have to kill himself.

  No time to think; no time to plan.

  Nat would cast the spell. She would end all of this. All Wes had to do was make certain Avo never made it through that door. That was how he won.

  Wes tightened his grip around Avo’s chest, breaking his hold on the wall, twisting the metal out of Avo’s grip. The drau fought back, he cursed, he kicked, but none of it made any difference. In the end, as Wes threw them both out of the opening and into the air, Avo stopped fighting and looked down and the clouds below them.

  “Damn you,” he cursed, then was silent. He’d lost. He wouldn’t make it to the tower and in that final moment he accepted his fate.

  They tumbled through the opening; Wes’s feet met nothing but air.

  Together, they plunged off the Gray Tower, falling one hundred stories to the frozen ground below. The world whizzed past them, the wind screaming in their ears.

  The rushing of the air was like the first gasp of a baby born into the world. This was not the end after all. Maybe it was a beginning. This is how the world starts again.

  The ground rushed toward them, growing larger and nearer.

  Wes was at peace. Nat lived and would cast the spell. He’d done what he had to do, what he was meant to do. They had all done their part and now it was time for Nat to do hers.

  Avo’s scream was cut short by a sickening thud.

  Wes heard it before he, too, crashed to his death. When the cold and the dark took him, he was glad for the silence.

  He saw a flash of white from the tower.

  Go, Nat, light the world, he thought as he lay dying on the cold ground. Set the world on fire.

  37

  WES WAS DEAD. SHE HAD FELT IT. Like a knife, it cut her, making a gash that would never heal. She felt it in her heart. He was no more. She saw his final moments: the smoke and the sky and the earth hurtling toward him. His pain was an echo. She felt it once, before it was gone again. He was gone. She searched for him in the darkness, for any trace of his being. Are you out there still? Will you come back to me? The Merlin had said that there were many worlds and many futures; she hoped in some other world they were together, that he didn’t have to die so she could live, that there was a world where they could be together.

  I don’t live in that world. This one is corrupt; the graylands and the blue are fractured. Still, she searched for him. She rummaged for his spirit. How did he smell, and what shade were his eyes? She recalled the rush of her heart when he came close, the way his skin felt when she ran her fingers across. They’d had so little time together—even her memories were few and fading. Don’t go, she wished, but she knew he was gone. She searched but she could not find him. Even the echo had faded.

  She was alone.

  What do I do?

  Silence.

  The spell had failed.

  She had failed.

  Everyone was dead for nothing.

  She had said the words, but the world was unchanged.

  Nothing happened.

  Except now the casino was gone. Nat stood in the burned-out wreckage of the Gray Tower.

  In an empty room.

  She lifted her chin. Through cracks in the walls, she saw the gray sky. The tang of rusted metal filled her nose. Black smoke swirled around the tower, and she saw flames at the edges of the door.

  This wasn’t what was supposed to happen.

  Where was the new world? Had they all died for nothing?

  She looked at the city beyond, searched for some sign of her magic. A clue that the world was changing. But there were only gray towers and white snow. The sky was as bland as the earth, all of it gray and lifeless. All of it ruined.

  “I’ve failed,” she said. “It’s over.”

  She heard the flapping of wings. A black-winged creature flickered in the distance.

  No, a familiar voice boomed in her thoughts. You have not yet begun.

  Drakon Mainas circled the tower, coming closer, breathing flame. The black-scaled beast tore through what remained of the tower’s shattered walls, sending dust and snow hurtling through the air. She saw that the drakon had been here before, that it had tried to save Wes. But he couldn’t be saved, she knew that now. He was never meant to live, not in this world. None of them were. The drakonfire abated and she walked to the edge of the room. Below, she saw the ground. She looked away, backing up a bit as her drakon approached.

  The creature landed in the hollow it had made in the tower’s core. Her steed had come to her. She was still numb from Wes’s sacrifice, from her own failure to cast the spell. She felt like a ghost, as if she were watching from outside of her body. None of this seemed real.

  It is time, her drakon sent.

  No, no, she said. Not yet. She wasn’t ready. She knew what was next and it frightened her.

  Everyone you love will be destroyed.

  They were all gone now.

  Except Mainas.

  The drakon’s voice was her voice, it was in her head. She knew the words before they were
spoken. The blood of drakons forged the world. Our blood maintained Vallonis through all its incarnations. Our blood is the primal source of magic, of power.

  Take that strength.

  Forge the ring.

  Fulfill your destiny.

  “No,” she cried. “There must another way. I’ll try again. I’ll say the words until they stick.”

  There is no other path. There never was one. The blood is yours—take it.

  The drakon crawled toward her and reared up on its hind legs, exposing its chest. She saw the shape of its great and powerful heart beating beneath black scales. This was the last of the drakons, the last of the great ones that forged the world.

  Her task seemed impossible.

  She had not thought she would need to slay her drakon.

  The heart that beat beneath those scales was her own.

  She pressed the tip of her sword to its flesh.

  Do it! the drakon thundered in her thoughts, but the strength was gone from her limbs. The sword rested against the drakon’s scales, but she could not take its life.

  There must be another way. She said it over and over as the tears flowed. Of all the endings she had imagined for herself, this one had never entered her thoughts. To lose Wes and her drakon, it seemed impossible.

  They stood, poised in the cold like two soldiers entrenched in some unsolvable conflict. She imagined herself plunging the blade into the drakon’s heart, but the thought repulsed her. She tightened her grip on the blade, steeling herself for the task ahead. But she could not proceed. She couldn’t finish it, not alone. She needed help for this last sacrifice.

  There was only the drakon now, and they would need to do this as one.

  “We’ll do it together,” she said, though she could not believe the words had escaped her lips.

  Nat’s fingers tightened on the shaft.

  The drakon tensed. It did not want to die, though it knew there was no other way. Even the doomed rally against the end.