Truth of Embers

by Caitlyn McFarland

  Her feet hit sand. She let the light rage for another few seconds before she dropped the pressure-cooked magic. It exploded like a mini supernova, sending Kai staggering. She dropped her arm and called forth a much dimmer ball of golden fire, flinging it to the ceiling so that it would illuminate the room.

  Isi landed next to her, whipping sand away from them in a scourging wall. The dragon—there was only one, thank goodness—had just lifted his blind, blinking eyes, only to have them filled with sand. He curled on the far side of a room half as large as the one above, the stained-glass pattern of a Wonambi clear on his scales.

  The Wonambi opened wide jaws as Thabo hit the sand, but the dark man raised his hands like he was expecting someone to pass him a ball. The roar that came from the dragon’s mouth was no louder than a cat’s meow—Thabo had muffled the movement of the air that would have carried the sound.

  Kai, panting and exhausted, sprinted over to the dragon, forcing her overextended muscles to obey. Thanks to all the practice from Rhys, she managed to clamber onto the Wonambi’s back, then high onto its swinging, spiked neck, where she wedged herself just behind its head.

  Claws raised to tear her away, but Kai pressed her palms against the dragon’s neck and let heat flare. “Don’t move, or I’ll set you on fire.”

  Apparently unimpressed, the dragon thrashed its head from side to side in an attempt to dislodge her. Kai had to wrap one of her hands around a neck spike, but she poured more fire into the other. Blessedly, this dragon wasn’t a Fire Elemental. If he had been, they’d be screwed.

  The dragon thrashed harder with the heat. Kai repeated her threat three more times before he finally stilled. She lifted her hand. The scales were discolored and warped, the skin beneath bubbling with blisters. “Lie down,” she commanded.

  The dragon growled, and Kai put her hand against his neck. The Wonambi lowered himself to the ground, resting his chin on the sand.

  Kai was so tired. It took every ounce of her self-control not to collapse in a heap. Not done here yet. Almost. Then rest. She took a breath. “Good. Now change to human.”

  She had to burn him again before he listened. She jumped clear as the magic of his transformation took him. Once human, the man tried to run, but Isi tackled him to the ground and Thabo took out the stone he’d picked up earlier.

  “Sorry,” he said. Then he knocked the man on the head. The Wonambi dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Thabo dropped the bloodied rock.

  Isi checked for a pulse. “Success,” she declared. Then rolled off the unconscious body and dusted sand from her skirts.

  With the dragon knocked out, Kai could finally look around the room. Almost identical to the room above, except that a wall of stone divided it in half. The wall had a small door.

  The prisoners. Her family. She strode over and pulled it open.

  She didn’t even have time to call up a new fireball before she was attacked again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Bits of Broken Candy

  The attack came out of nowhere. One second, all was darkness, then Kai’s face was smashed into the sand by a heavy, hot body.

  The stench of unwashed, sweaty man assaulted her. Her attacker leaned forward, a knee on Kai’s back, threatening to crush her ribs. A shard of something razor sharp pressed into her neck, breaking the skin. Blood dripped down her neck. Fetid breath washed over her as the man leaned into her face and whispered in heavily accented English, “Let’s see you heal from a slit throat.”

  The knife pressed harder into Kai’s neck. She stiffened, her hands heating.

  Then he was gone, his weight flying from her back. A thud sounded, and Kai coughed and gasped, pressing a hand to her bloodied throat. Kai tried to call the little ball of fire, but adrenaline made the magic hard to control.

  Knives and cutting and bleeding and pain.

  Pain, and no escape.

  “Are you all right?” Thabo’s voice brought her gasping to the present.

  Isi took Kai’s arm and pulled her up. “She’s all right.”

  Thabo’s voice. “I forget how fragile they are.” The sound of footsteps in the sand. “He’s alive.”

  Shrugging off Isi and the miasma of memory, Kai reached again for her fire, needing control. This time she succeeded, producing a small, dim ball of golden light that hovered at her shoulder.

  The light revealed Isi and Thabo, then the crumpled form of the man. Kai brushed sand from her pants and shook it from her hair, spitting grit. Because of her efforts, it took her a moment to hear the rustling and terrified breathing.

  Isi leaned over and whispered, “I don’t think they know we’re here to save them.”

  “Shine your light over there, Majesty.” Thabo indicated the darkened corner.

  Kai complied, feeding more fire into the small, dim globe hovering over her shoulder like a familiar made of flame. It grew in size and brightness, and Kai gave it a gentle push with her mind, sending it toward the ceiling.

  Scrabbling and quiet cries of fear melted into frozen silence as light reached the far wall. A small knot of people appeared. Some stared defiantly, some huddled with their arms over their heads, trying to hide. She scanned the crowd for her parents, but the people were too close together and coated in dust to tell anyone from anyone else.

  One of them, a woman with a swollen lip and a sheet of knotted brown-black hair spat in their direction. “Monstruo,” she hissed. “Bestia!” Then she rattled off a long string of angry words in what Kai suspected was Spanish or Portuguese. Or Italian. Maybe.

  It hadn’t even crossed her mind that the people she was aiming to rescue would think they were the enemy. Or that she wouldn’t be able to explain what was going on.

  Clearing her throat, Kai addressed the huddle of twenty or so people. “I’m looking for Stephen, Leila and Brendan Monahan.”

  Silence. Her heart lifted a little. Maybe her parents weren’t here. They never had been.

  Then she sank back into fear. Maybe they had been, but now they were dead.

  “Do any of you speak English?” When they got out of this, she was going to have to have Rhys start teaching her a couple of languages. Thabo and Isi probably spoke quite a few, but Kai was still shaken from the flashback to her torture. Still needed to be in control.

  From the back of the crowd came an ancient-looking woman with white hair piled into a dusty bun on top of her head. “I do.”

  Kai scanned the crowd for her parents one more time. “Great. Okay.” She indicated herself, Isi and Thabo. “Do you know the Monahans? Are they here? Were they ever here?”

  The woman regarded Kai warily. “Why? Are you going to kill them as a family? I thought you were keeping them alive for some kind of show.”

  Kai swallowed hard at the implications of those words. “No. I’m going to set them—all of you—free.”

  “Dragons lie!” someone shouted from the back. The voice was familiar. Male. Brendan?

  Kai edged around the small crowd. “I’m not a dragon.”

  Several people made a noise of derision. The old woman said, “If you aren’t a dragon, how are you controlling fire?”

  Her accent, Kai realized, was the same as Rhys’s, though far more pronounced. The woman had to be Welsh. “It’s hard to explain. There isn’t much time.”

  “How do we know you’re human?” someone else called.

  Kai yanked up her left sleeve, revealing the colorless scales of her indicium. “I’m not human. I’m Wingless. Now give me my family.”

  A gasp sounded from the back of the room. “It is her. Stephen, it’s her. She’s real this time! Kai?”

  Her stomach dropped. The crowd parted, revealing...

  “Oh, hell.”

  Her mother ran forward and flung herself onto Kai, weeping
. Her father and Brendan followed. Kai patted her mother’s back absently. “Colm wasn’t taken?”

  “No. They didn’t get him,” Brendan said, as if that was a triumph. “He and Marissa were at her parents’ place in Grand Junction.”

  “Okay,” Kai said, dazed. She thought she’d been prepared for this. Her parents. Dragons. Knowing about each other. It was a lot to process. “So...they’re safe. The kids are safe. But you guys are here.”

  Owain had wanted to turn her family into some kind of show, so he’d put them in the most secure prison he’d had.

  She really was going to enjoy murdering him.

  Her mother was still sobbing. The rest of the humans remained in a huddled group, staring. Kai met Thabo’s gaze and gestured to the woman weeping into her neck. “This is my mother.”

  Thabo’s eyes went wide and Isi’s mouth made an O. She gestured at Kai’s father and brother. “So this is your family?”

  “Yup.” Kai turned to her father. “How did you get taken? Ashem had a barrier around the house.”

  “Ashem...?” Her father blinked, apparently at a loss for words.

  “We weren’t in the house,” Brendan answered. He seemed to be handling things better than either of their parents. “We went to a movie and they grabbed us when we came out. How are you here, Kai the Fly? Why are you with dragons? How are you controlling fire? And what is that on your arm?”

  “Uh... Yeah. I’m with the good guys, and we’re here to get you out.” She would have to explain the rest later.

  The old Welsh woman spoke up again, not as hostile as she had been before. “How do we know this isn’t some kind of elaborate trick to get us to come quietly?”

  Kai jerked her head toward Isi and Thabo. “These two can turn into sixty-foot monsters. Do you think they need you to come quietly?”

  There was a murmur at that, but Kai wasn’t listening. Her father and brother came up on either side of her and her mother, and then her family was embracing, and they were all crying. Kai knew she should cry with them, but her eyes stayed dry. She couldn’t process that her mother was here, covered in sand and scratches and clinging to her. Her father and his broken glasses. Her brother, his hair so dusty it looked gray.

  There were too many emotions to deal with, so Kai shut them away with the rest. Just until she had more time.

  “Kai?” Rhys’s voice startled Kai out of her family hug. He sounded angrier than she’d heard him since Morwenna dragged her in front of the Council.

  This was going to be fun. “In here!”

  Rhys strode in through the door, face thunderous. When he saw her, it only got worse. “I didn’t know where you sundering were. I thought someone had come and taken you again. I—”

  He broke off, staring at her family. His eyes darted to Kai, then back to her parents. He visibly composed himself and stuck his hand out to Kai’s father. “Mr. Monahan. It’s good to see you again.”

  * * *

  Rhys ran his eyes down Kai’s body, checking for damage, resisting the urge to grab her and pull her close. It would have been awkward, since Leila Monahan was still holding on. He ran a hand through his hair and forced himself to let go of the blind panic. She was here. She was fine.

  Just because he couldn’t sense her didn’t mean she was dead.

  Kai tilted her head. “I found the humans.”

  Rhys took in twenty or so humans in the corner, watching him like they expected the dragons to turn on them any second. “I see.” He’d come down to tell her that they hadn’t found the prisoners, but they had found Owain’s stash of cordial.

  And the artifacts.

  Rhys pushed the gruesome scene from upstairs out of his mind. He’d have to deal with it again soon enough.

  “Are all the guards taken care of?” Kai asked.

  “They are.” Rhys was relieved that Kai couldn’t tell how much the mantle was draining him. Like sand from an hourglass, he lost more every second. When he’d come down to find Kai gone, he’d nearly lost control.

  “Let’s get these guys upstairs, then.” Kai gently extricated herself from her mother’s embrace, but didn’t pull away when Leila took her hand.

  It wasn’t easy—a few of the humans had to be threatened. One man had to be carried. Thankfully, most of them seemed to believe that Kai was going to help them.

  Rhys led the way to the chute he’d come down. He’d only found it in the first place because dim golden light had been shining up through the opening.

  “Where did you find a ladder?” Kai asked, motioning to the rope ladder that dangled from the floor above.

  “Upstairs.” It had been in the same room where he’d found the cordial, and he’d picked it up on a whim. Rhys suspected they only lowered it when it was time to change guards.

  He led the way up, using the burn of the climb to refocus his mind. The mantle was gnawing on him, pulling at him. The dragons under his power were fighting it with everything they had, and he was going to lose them soon.

  They had to get out.

  Kai started to climb after him. Halfway up she hooked one arm through the rungs, panting.

  “Kai?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She didn’t sound fine. She sounded wheezy and breathless. Rhys climbed the rest of the way up. Kai was still in the same spot, still panting.

  Not fine.

  He hauled the ladder the rest of the way to the top and grabbed her arms, pulling her off. She landed on top of him and he let himself fall back, the ladder tumbling down the chute once again.

  Kai groaned and let her head fall onto his chest. “I am so tired.”

  Rhys ran his hands up and down her back in silence. They had to get up, move, finish what they’d come to do. For a moment, though, he just wanted to be with her.

  People rose out of the chute, both by ladder and by drifting out of the top and arching gracefully over onto the sandy floor. That had to be Thabo’s work, his magic lifting those too weak to climb.

  When Kai’s father, mother and brother clambered up out of the hole, he nudged Kai and they stood.

  “So,” Brendan said. “What are you doing with Ashem’s friend?”

  An old woman levitated above the edge. Kai caught her arm and helped the lady over the side. The woman caught sight of Rhys and said in Welsh, “I see you, Y Ddraig Goch.”

  Rhys stared at her. The woman gave him a canny look and went off to shush the people in the huddle.

  Kai leaned over to clasp a tired-looking Thabo by the forearm and pull him from the empty shaft. “Um, yeah. Mom, Dad, Brendan...you remember Rhys.”

  Rhys had expected the Monahans to be here, but he was having trouble reconciling the sight of them with reality. Anger surged hot inside him, and the mantle slid and blurred under the pressure he exerted on it, making it hard to think.

  Ancients, he couldn’t handle any more of this. Owain rained blow after blow down on Rhys’s head. Every time he blocked one punch, another caught him in the jaw. A man could only take so much, and now each blow landed only served to enrage.

  But he couldn’t let that show—not the fury, not the strain of the magic—not in front of Kai’s family. So he inclined his head. “Nos dda.”

  Her family only looked at him. Rhys sighed. “We will explain, but there are things we must do first.”

  “Let’s do it, then,” Kai said. “You found the artifact?”

  “Yes.” Rhys saw the awful images in his mind’s eye again. “Ashem is...preparing it. Tane and Morwenna are on one of the middle floors. We found a vault filled with cordial. I forced the guards to become human and help empty the vault. When it’s clear, Tane and Morwenna will lock them in.”

  “And what will you do with us?” the old Welsh woman asked.

  “Once we’re finished
upstairs, we’ll take you out of this place.” Rhys didn’t say that they’d be taking all of the humans to Eryri. He didn’t have the numbers to return them all to their homes yet. “It won’t be long. Kai?”

  Kai couldn’t convince her parents to stay behind with Isi and the rest of the humans, so all of the Monahans accompanied Rhys and Thabo on the grueling walk up the spiral ramp that led to the top of the tower. There, they found Ashem, still in his dragon form, just completing his grisly task. Rhys turned Kai toward the main room, however, hoping to protect her from the sight as long as possible.

  Only a handful of slender columns supported the roof, the open walls offering a breathtaking view of the city spread out all around them and the desert beyond. The room, though it was the smallest in the tower, was large enough to hold thirty dragons.

  Ten man-size dragon runes—the symbol for power—were inlaid in a circle in the center of the semitranslucent stone floor, each made of hundreds of purest, pale yellow citrine.

  The stones were hard to see, however, because of the puddle of black, dried something congealing around them. Broken chains littered each. Kai paled at the sight, but in Rhys’s opinion, it was the scent that made the scene truly horrific. The metallic, rotten smell of slow death.

  Kai turned to Rhys, but her eyes focused beyond him. Beyond her family, who stood behind him.

  She’d found Ashem.

  The black dragon had found some kind of tarp. With delicate claws, he laid it over the line of ten bodies in one corner—one for each of the citrine runes. Rhys wanted to tell her to look away, but she’d made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t allowed to protect her from everything.

  But Ancients, he wished he could.

  “They’re ready,” Ashem said.

  Kai pressed her hands to her mouth and Leila Monahan took her husband’s hand. Even her brother looked pale and sick.

  “They’re dead?” Kai asked. Her voice was flat, distant. Her mother tore her gaze from the dead long enough to peer at Kai in concern.

  “Yes.” Realization washed over Rhys as he watched the Monahans react to the humans they’d found in this room, each chained to one of the runes.