No wonder he wouldn’t come near.
She tried to sit up again. “Help me up. Let me heal them.”
A muscle in Cadoc’s jaw twitched. “Rhys and Kai have been sundered. There’s nothing you can do.”
Seren froze. It felt like someone had opened a trapdoor beneath her, and she was in free fall. “Sundered?”
Cadoc sat down again, brushing hair from his eyes. “Owain sundered them hours after we left Cadarnle. Rhys crashed. They seemed all right at first, but then...” He took an unsteady breath. “Some of the rogues—Kephas, Rajani and Tharah—they’re here, as well. But we’re barely a day’s flight from Cadarnle. We’ve been cowering here like rabbits in a hole for three days. Rhys and Kai are alive, but they...they aren’t well. They keep getting hit by some sort of ripple effect of the sundering. Ashem has kept them unconscious through the worst of it, but he can’t hold them forever. We’ve seen Owain’s scouts overhead four times. They’ll find us if we don’t move soon.”
“Three days?” Seren squeaked. She had been unconscious for three days?
A sad smile touched one corner of his mouth. “Ashem may have been helping you, too. You were in a bad way from that poison they were forcing into you.” Cadoc let his head fall back onto the uneven cave wall. “Ancients, Owain hasn’t killed either of them, but he’s won.”
“Don’t say that.” It couldn’t be true. Her brother wasn’t inches away from death or madness. His cause couldn’t be all but lost. “There must be a way to fix it.”
Cadoc shook his head. “No one has ever healed a sundered pair, my lady.”
“There have only been a few sunderings in history.” She gritted her teeth as her empty stomach cramped. “And every one that I’ve heard of was sundered by choice. No one has ever tried to heal one before. There must be a way.” She brightened a bit. “Maybe all it will take is a kiss. That’s what sealed the heartswearing in the first place.”
“They’ve tried.”
Somewhere in the cave, Kai sobbed, raspy and raw. Seren cringed. “At least take me to her. If Rhys crashed while he was carrying her, she must have some injury I can heal.”
Cadoc shook his head. “It’s been three days. They may be sundered, but she’s kept her powers, just like Mair did.” He caught a glimpse of her face and added, “But I’ll ask Ashem.”
He left, then returned a moment later with Ashem. The dark man went down on one knee next to Seren. He touched her chin gently, tilting her head so he could look into her eyes.
Cadoc turned away.
Seren met Ashem’s golden gaze. He had circles under his eyes. She wondered if he’d slept at all. “Commander, I will heal my brother’s injuries, as well as his mate’s.” It took a massive effort to keep her voice steady, but she managed.
Ashem’s brow furrowed. “You aren’t well.”
Seren frowned. No one said no to a direct command from the Seeress. “I am perfectly well.”
Ashem stood. “No. You are not.”
Seren crossed her arms. The movement almost made her fall over on her side. “I am the Golden Lady of Eryri. I demand that you let me heal them.”
Ashem raised an eyebrow. “All right, my lady,” he said. “You can heal Kai.”
“Good. Now—”
“If you can walk to her without assistance.”
Seren bared her teeth. She didn’t know Ashem well. The commander, it would seem, was insufferable.
She almost managed to stand before her shaking legs gave out. This time, however, Ashem caught her before she could land on her behind. He lowered her to her blankets, and Seren made a noise of frustration.
“Their superficial wounds are healed, and even you can’t repair a sundering.” Ashem’s voice carried equal measures of exasperation and amusement, but his eyes were troubled.
Morwenna appeared in the doorway. “Ashem, Rhys needs you.”
Ashem helped Seren reposition herself in the blankets. Seren tried one more time. “Please.”
Ashem shook his head and was gone.
Cadoc toyed with an old stick he’d picked up off the ground. “They’ll survive, but you might not if you try to heal them while you’re this weak. You’re too precious to risk, my lady.”
Seren wanted to snap at him. Worse, she wanted to cry. She wasn’t more precious than anyone, and—stupidly—she wished he would use her name.
After a few minutes, Cadoc left, as well. Morwenna stayed, offering Seren a dented metal bowl of thin broth. Too weak to even hold the bowl, Seren had to let Morwenna prop her up and feed her. She sucked down the broth greedily, however. It had been so long since she’d kept down food.
Was she precious? If she was, it wasn’t because of herself, only her magic. Her visions had averted entire battles, and she had saved Rhys’s life more than once—like the time she’d foreseen an assassination attempt. But there were so many times she hadn’t foreseen things. So many lives she hadn’t saved.
And the visions took so much.
Guiltily, she let her mind wander to Cadoc. To what life would be like if she wasn’t the Seeress. She imagined dancing with him at one of the festivals. The Day of Light and Dark, perhaps, when the dragons celebrated the Summer Solstice in one hemisphere and the Winter Solstice in the other. And after, he would take her by the hand and tug her out of the room, the way she’d seen him do with the other girls. They might walk along the beach, his arm around her waist. Or they might...they might...
She finished the broth and Morwenna settled her back into her blankets. She would never dance with Cadoc. Never feel his hands or his breath or his kiss. Her calling was higher than that—she was the Seeress, a dragon born less than once in a generation. Born to the people, sworn to the people. They needed her. She wanted to fulfill her duty.
Seren closed her eyes. She loved Cadoc, but she should have remembered that allowing herself to think of him—to wish for him—brought only pain.
Chapter Twelve
Sundered and Undone
Rhys didn’t remember the landing. Didn’t remember sliding down from Ashem’s midnight-scaled back. As it had when he’d been sworn to Kai and she’d run away, everything disappeared in a blaze of black fire so cold it burned. Time passed in fits and starts. He woke up once, realized he was in a cave. Kai was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t feel her in his mind.
Gone.
He lay on the ground on a blanket thrown over a pile of dried leaves. Morwenna sat against one wall, dozing, a fall of chestnut hair across her face.
Rhys scrambled off the makeshift bed. At least, he tried. But the blankets tangled around his feet and he was as graceless as a newborn lamb.
“Rhys!” Morwenna woke and she knelt by his side, a solicitous hand on his back. “Are you all right?”
“Kai.” He ground the word through clenched teeth. The space where she was supposed to be had become ragged darkness, half of himself torn away and lost.
Morwenna recoiled as if he’d raised a hand to her, but Rhys couldn’t bring himself to care. Black thoughts circled his head. Kai had been alive when they got to the cave.
Hadn’t she?
Had her injuries killed her? Had the sundering?
He would return to Cadarnle this very instant and burn it and Owain until there was nothing of either but scorch marks and ashes.
Stars, don’t let her be dead. Rhys gripped Morwenna by the shoulders. “Where is she?”
Morwenna flinched and shrugged away his hands. “In another chamber.”
Rhys stood and staggered into the main tunnel of the cave. To his right, the entrance glowed with dim afternoon light. Pines whispered in a chill breeze, and the ground was a patchwork of white snow and dry brown needles.
A cry echoed to his left. He staggered toward it, away from the light. Morwenna appea
red at his side and tried to slip under his arm, but Rhys refused her help, using the wall to push deeper into the cave.
He came upon another alcove. Seren lay on a pallet similar to the one he’d woken on, dozing fitfully. Cadoc stood against the wall, his arms folded tightly across his chest. On a pallet against the wall opposite Seren, Kai lay as still and pale as a porcelain doll.
For three, long heartbeats, Rhys stared. Dead. Dead. Dead. He stumbled to Kai’s side and sank to his knees.
Cadoc shifted and stretched. “She’s alive, boyo. She had some broken bones and you kept thrashing. We thought it better to give her a little room.”
Hands shaking, Rhys touched Kai’s cheek. Warm. He found her hand and pressed it against his heart, trying to hide how his voice shook. “Has she healed?”
“Her bones have,” Cadoc said. “It’s been four days since the crash. Ashem made sure they were set right and let nature take her course.”
Rhys brushed Kai’s hair back from her face and gazed down at her.
Something was missing.
The magnetic pull. The all-consuming need that characterized heartswearing. It was gone. When his skin brushed hers, there was no extra burst of energy. No wave of heat. For the first time since he’d known her, touching Kai felt like touching anyone else.
“...the feelings you have for Kai aren’t real. They’re lust and obsession and infatuation. Don’t let the magic cloud your good sense.”
No. He still loved her.
Of course he still loved her.
“All right?” Cadoc asked.
“Fine.” Rhys drew Kai onto his lap. She was hardly more than skin stretched over fragile bones after her weeks with Owain, but her weight grounded him. He cradled her, waiting to feel something. Anything.
Was it just the magic?
Kai stirred, eyes flickering open. She fixed him with that fey, green gaze. “Ow.” She put one hand to her chest. Then her eyes widened, and she grabbed Rhys by the shirt. “Holy hell, you’re alive.” She put a hand to her head and said, like a lost child, “But where are you?”
The reaction was so Kai, and the way she looked at him—like she needed him. Rhys let out his breath in a rush, emotion slamming into him like an unexpected gale-force wind.
Yes, he still loved her.
“We’ve been sundered.” He’d thought he was calm, but the words were rough and ragged. “Do you remember?”
Kai tightened the fist in Rhys’s shirt. “Fix it.”
The demand took Rhys by surprise. “What?”
“Fix it,” she repeated. “You told me once before that Owain has to use his half of the mantle to sunder people. Well, you’ve got the other half. Put us back together.”
Ancients knew he’d tried. Right after the sundering, before the aftershocks started and Ashem must have sedated them. He hadn’t told Kai, not wanting to get her hopes up.
That way he’d only shattered his own.
He shifted her so that she could sit upright on her own and brushed unruly midnight tendrils of hair from her eyes, his thumb lingering over her scattered freckles. “Imagine our bond as chains of glass. Owain smashed them. If I focus, I can sense the damage. I might even be able to piece them together. But even if I did, it would take a surge of power beyond anything I’m capable of to fuse them into a whole.”
“Try.” Her voice carried as much of a command as it had a moment before.
“Kai—”
“Please.” Kai’s voice was desperate now. Her fingers feathered through his hair. Sundered or not, to have her hands on him again was gloriously distracting.
Lust and infatuation...
“Wingless do have the ability to give a power boost to other magic-users.” Seren’s voice made everyone in the room turn.
“Normal magic,” Rhys said. “Not the mantle.”
“You might as well try,” Cadoc said.
Morwenna was silent.
“Don’t do it now.” Ashem set down the bowl of broth. “You’re both weak. Wait until you’re stronger.”
“You get sundered and wait,” Kai retorted. “You think Owain is going to sit back and relax?”
“I am less concerned about Owain than getting you two to Eryri.” Something in Ashem’s voice was too careful. His face too still.
A sense of foreboding unfurled dark wings. “Tell me what you know, Ashem.”
The Azhdahā scowled.
“Ashem!”
Finally, he shrugged. “Juliet has been gathering information while you were unconscious. Kai is right. Owain is preparing for war.” He hesitated. “And I know why we lost the last battle.”
Rhys set Kai on her feet and stood. Neither of them was very steady. “Why?”
Ashem’s scowl deepened. “Do you remember when you first brought Kai back to Eryri and Harrow reported that humans were turning up dead in the Taklamakan Desert?”
“Yes.”
“He was right. Owain has been kidnapping humans and taking them into the desert.”
“Why?” Kai broke in. “Why the hell would he take random humans?”
Ashem’s mouth twisted. “They aren’t random. Do you remember asking about the odds of both you and Juliet becoming heartsworn?”
Kai nodded.
“What did Rhys ask you?”
Rhys remembered that conversation. Ancients, he’d been furious with Ashem. There he was, fighting tooth and claw to give Kai a choice, and Ashem had kissed Juli and completed their heartswearing before the girl knew up from down.
Kai glanced from Ashem to Rhys. “He...wanted to know if Juli and I were related.”
Rhys nodded.
“And?” Ashem made a crisp “keep going” motion with one hand.
“We’re something like first cousins a bunch of times removed. And then you said...” Light dawned in Kai’s eyes. “The ability for humans to heartswear tends to run in families. They’re kidnapping potential Wingless. But that still doesn’t explain why.”
“I would explain why if you stopped sundering speaking,” Ashem barked. Rhys glared at him.
Kai looked Ashem up and down, resignation on her face. “You’re going to be a barrel of laughs for the next six months, aren’t you?”
Ashem growled.
“Commander.” Rhys couldn’t help the warning in his tone. He gestured at Ashem to continue.
He did so with ill grace. “As Seren pointed out, in addition to your Wingless powers, you can give a dragon or another Wingless a...power surge. That ability lies latent within you, even before you heartswear.”
Kai. “So...in these families, even the unheartsworn have magic? Human magic?”
“Magic isn’t what you see.” Rhys skimmed his knuckles over the back of Kai’s hand. “What dragons do—manipulate heat or read minds or cast illusions—we’re all tapping into the same power. We just manifest it in different ways depending on our genetic makeup. That’s why inter-clan heartswearing was discouraged for so long. No one knew how mixed dragons would manifest their powers. Like Griff. He has—had—” A pang of grief. Ancients, he’d never get used to the fact that his friend was dead. “—the magic of an Earth Elemental, but he was half Bida, as well. They’re more or less telekinetic. He used that when he worked with stone or metal to produce finer work than any other Earth Elemental ever could.”
Rhys cleared his throat, which seemed to be closing. “In any case, few dragons know how to touch pure magic. The Naga can do it when they craft magical objects, but only a little. Owain, however, has learned to siphon whole chunks of magic. He’s always been...willing to experiment. So he’s...”
Rhys looked to Ashem, who sighed. “He’s taking potential Wingless, extracting the ability to give a boost in power and bottling it for dragons. The process is fatal for the hu
mans.”
Kai blinked, frowning. “So, Owain is killing people and using their bodies to make dragon ‘roids?”
“What are ‘‘roids’?” Ashem asked, irritated.
Kai ignored him. “That’s insane. We have to stop him.”
“We can’t take Ser—the Lady Seeress to the Taklamakan,” Cadoc protested. “And neither of you are fit to travel.”
Rhys rubbed at the insistent pain in his chest. His father had fought Owain the night he’d been sundered, and here Rhys was, half a week later, barely able to stand. No wonder the white dragon had been successful.
Kai gripped his fingers. “What are we going to do?”
Rhys needed a moment to think. Ancients, he was in the middle of a war. He’d just been sundered. Now this.
“Do we have to do anything?” Morwenna asked, her voice like cut glass. “Owain will come against us soon enough. The Seeress has had a vision of the final battle. If we win, Owain will be dead and his human harvesting operation will have to stop. If he wins, it won’t matter. The humans will be doomed no matter what.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Kai said through gritted teeth.
If Owain won, they would all be doomed no matter what. Rhys had been prepared to go into battle against him to get Kai back, but knowing about this superdragon potion changed things. He would not force his people into a hopeless fight.
But perhaps, if they could somehow take down the facility, they could use that to tip the odds in their favor...
Kai swayed against him. With no heartswearing bond, he couldn’t tell how tired she was or how much pain she was in. After two weeks of constant awareness, of profound intimacy, it was as if he’d gone blind.
Abruptly, Rhys needed to be alone with her. To touch her. To take in that she was alive—and so was he.
And he wanted to talk to her about the scalebrained plan that had just popped into his head. “Kai is right. We need to take the operation down. If we’re going to face Owain in battle, the last thing I want is for him to have access to something that makes his soldiers stronger.”
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