Afterward, all that had been left was a pile of ashes. I didn’t even get to say goodbye, because Faye knew I would have stopped if I had known what was to come. I cared too much for her.
If I’d been a man grown, I might have killed the King in my rage, but his sorcery barely held my wrath at bay until I’d calmed enough to see what Faye had seen: That her sacrifice had been necessary. That she’d gone willingly.
I donned armor on that day that I’d never remove. The girls that came after her had each been just as courageous and beautiful as Faye had been, but I never allowed them to touch my heart. I did my duty, I taught them, and once they understood, they’d each gone to their doom as bravely as she had. Would that I could have taken their places, I’d have done it in a heartbeat. But instead I stood and watched them die by my hands at the heart of Thrakongarde, one after the other, and hardened myself to it.
But now this girl Ella had somehow found a chink in my armor that I hadn’t even known was there. I don’t know what it was about her, but from the moment I’d laid eyes on her, everything she’d done inflamed my passion and fascinated me. The way she moved, the way she spoke. Her scent and her curves and her fire and her courage. Her deep concern for her family and her longing for home. I knew, deep inside, that she would make the same sacrifice that the others had if she remained with me. I could read the bravery in her eyes, and somehow I knew that if I allowed it, my feelings for her could grow to an inferno beside the candle of what I’d felt even for Faye.
When she’d asked me to take her back to her people, I’d almost said yes.
Yes, beautiful human girl, go back to your family. Run as far and fast from me as you can. I am the Dragon, and I am fire and death.
But Valeria was right. We did need her. And my pain was my silent, solitary burden to bear. k`1`2
I curled my hand into a fist and stared at it, feeling the warmth of my magic unfurl in my chest once more as flames danced across my knuckles. I understood the sacred duty of my people, and I understood what must be done. Though Ella touched me as no other had, it would be best for both of us to keep her at arms’ length. I could be distant without being uncivil to her. I could teach her without allowing myself to grow too close. I could protect her without loving her.
I nodded to myself and strode to my window, staring out across the northern forest to the dark peak of Thrakongarde. When Ella was ready, I would tell her everything.
Until then I must train her as I had each of the others.
I had brooded long enough. Her training would take months, and it was time to begin. She’d have many questions. I could answer some of them.
I left my chambers and marched through the tower in my long black cloak, preparing an apology for leaving her locked away in her room for so long while I sorted out my thoughts. She’s probably as frightened and lonely as I was when I first came to Alkazar.
The hook for the magic key to her room stood empty at the front of the guest wing. I suppressed a feeling of unease. She’d probably just called upon Valeria’s servant, Rowan, who I’d asked to watch over her. I went to her room and knocked on the door, wondering what the two of them might be doing inside. Perhaps Rowan was comforting her while she cried.
“Ella?” I called sternly. “Rowan?” I heard only muffled sounds from inside. “Unlock the door at once. It’s Kaden.”
The rooms of the guest wing were intended as cells for the noble enemies of the Aethlings captured in battle, and the enchantments on them kept others out as well as they kept guests in. There was only the one key. A handful of sorcerers within Alkazar wielded enough power to break the wards; Rhys, Valeria, and I were among them. But doing so without killing the person inside the room would require a long and arduous spell across many days.
The muffled sounds inside the room intensified, soft thumping and muted speech, and I began to grow impatient. What were they doing? “I will not ask again,” I thundered. “Rowan’s punishment will be severe if you do not open the chamber at once.”
Now the sounds cut off altogether. I laid my ear against the door and listened intently. Very faint sobbing came from somewhere within. My pulse picked up and my annoyance shifted to concern. I pounded against the door once more.
“Ella? Are you all right?”
I seized my magic and cast a divining spell, seeking out the marking enchantment worked into the key. The whole world faded to shades of gray. The key should light up in a rainbow shower of radiance, no matter how distant or what concealed it. I blinked when I noticed it shimmering at my feet, a few paces away, discarded against the wall.
What has happened? I cut off the spell and seized the key, quickly unlocking the door and striding into the chamber.
Discarded clothes lay on the floor, the bureau stood half-open, and someone had jammed a chair under the bathroom’s handle.
I flew to the chair at once and ripped it away, destroying it in my haste. “Ella? Are you trapped?”
When I flung open the second door, I found a girl huddled against the back wall, shaking, with her head against her knees. She raised her tear-streaked face to me, choking back sobs, and it took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t Ella.
“Rowan?” I asked. “What has happened?”
“I tried to stop her, my lord Dragon. Please, please don’t harm me. She tricked me.”
Cold fear seeped into my stomach. I went to Rowan and knelt before her, taking her by her shoulders.
“Where did she go?” I demanded.
“I didn’t mean to…” she murmured, shaking her head.
“Tell me now, and I swear no harm will befall you,” I assured her. Controlling my fear and growing rage was a great effort, but if I unleashed my wrath on the poor girl I doubted she’d be able to speak.
Rowan gulped air, trembling under my hands. “I told her how the planar tunnels take time to close. I think… I think she…”
“She’s trying to return home the way she came,” I murmured. “Through the tunnel the Eldritch opened to the human world. That foolish, headstrong girl…”
Rowan nodded, looking miserable.
“Where?” I demanded again. “Think, Rowan. Did she say or do anything that might tell you where the rift was that brought her here?”
“I don’t know,” Rowan said through a burst of fresh tears. “Wait… when I first told her, she looked straight out her window, like she could feel its call.”
West, then. West made sense. Through the Ghostwood, and close to the edges of the Eldritch hives. The cold, sour feeling in my stomach grew. She had no idea how much danger she’d be in.
“No doubt she did feel its call,” I growled. “Just as every dark beast of the wood will be drawn to her spark as soon as she leaves the city. When did she go? How long have you been here?”
“N-no more than two hours, my lord.”
I whirled away from Rowan and ran hard for the nearest palace exit. It might already be too late to save her.
Ella
My instincts about the palace had been correct. If I squared my shoulders and walked with purpose, no one thought to question the hooded woman in the cloak of an Aethling noble. I quickly strode through the shining halls, ignoring the few strange looks from the liveried human servants that I passed, and tried to navigate my way through the maze of passages that led to the palace exit. I must have been wandering into places where nobles didn’t normally tread, but I just tried to channel the same manner that I’d seen Valeria use and seem as haughty and unapproachable as possible. The servants all scurried past while I smiled to myself under my hood.
Was this how all the pretty, popular girls who’d ruled my high school felt? I could see why they liked it. The cloak made me feel powerful and confident, and like it didn’t matter who I was—all they knew was that I belonged here and that I was in charge, as far as they were concerned.
I didn’t pass a single guarded door until I found my way to the ground floor. Two Aethling men in shining crystal armor stoo
d on either end of a large, open archway. They held weapons that looked like axes with long handles, except the axe heads also appeared to made of crystal, and they shimmered with some kind of magical enchantment. I stood back in the shadows of a nearby doorway, studying them. Their wary eyes flicked over every person who passed, most of them servants. The golden city sprawled beyond them, the streets overflowing with milling people.
I chewed my lip. Would they stop me? Could I outrun them? I knew it was only a matter of time before the Dragon chased me down, and I hadn’t seen any other way to escape the Crystal Palace. I’d have to risk it.
Taking a deep breath, I adjusted my canvas bag so that the cloak covered it completely and walked toward the archway, trying to seem every inch a hooded, haughty Aethling.
At three paces away, both men straightened. I froze as their stance changed, their armored boots clanking and the hafts of their axes scraping on the ground. The hood of my cloak covered my eyes completely, and I couldn’t tell what they were doing. I didn’t want to risk them seeing that I was human. I waited half a second and then forced myself to keep walking, striding past like I owned the place. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I’d passed out from under the archway, reached the crowds on the street, and released the air from my lungs in a long, shaking exhalation. When I stole a glance back at the guards, they were locked in position, one hand each raised to their brow. They’d been saluting me.
Apparently I could be downright queenly when I tried.
I hurried on through the streets of Alkazar, keeping my face concealed beneath the hood and following the faint tug of home that pulled me onward. I couldn’t believe this was actually working. I was going to escape! I was going to see Matt and Nick and Katie and my parents, maybe within the hour, and all I had to do was keep moving. My feet practically flew along the gold-brick road of the wide, well-trafficked boulevard, and burnished yellow buildings that blazed orange under the red light of the strange sunless sky faded past me on both sides. Citizens stayed out of my way, Aethling and human alike, and the crowds thinned as I walked further.
When the gold road finally gave way to a dirt path amid what looked like stiff, brownish-orange grass, I paused and peeped up from my hood again, surveying my surroundings. I was well beyond the line of buildings that marked the edge of the city. The translucent edge of the enormous dome that rested over Alkazar stretched up in front of me. I remembered seeing it when Rhys had first flown me in. It looked like an impossibly tall and wide curved pane of glass, as thin as the skin of a bubble and just as fragile. Rhys had passed through it effortlessly enough, but I wasn’t sure what would happen if I tried to walk back out.
I reached a tentative hand out and brushed against the edge of it. My fingers pierced it without resistance. It was almost like an illusion. The only sensation was a slight chill that shuddered through my hand wherever the dome’s thin line fell, and I yanked my hand back. It seemed safe enough to walk straight through.
I could see the thick forest of milky white crystals jutting out of the dirt and grass beyond the dome, crowned by vibrant fuchsia foliage that cast the underbrush into shades of blue and violet. I stared into the depths of the strange wood, marveling at how much more ominous it looked from down here than when Rhys had flown me over it. Someone had driven a golden pole into the ground at the edge of it, and an open flame burned at the top. More of these torches fanned out to both the left and the right, stretching as far as I could see in either direction along the treeline. I watched the red and yellow tongues dance uneasily.
It’s just your stupid fire phobia, I told myself. It doesn’t actually mean anything bad will happen. Sometimes a torch is just a torch.
I wished it was that easy to settle the creeping fear that slid across my shoulders, sending shivers down my back. I cast a longing glance over my shoulder at the warm, golden city. I was pretty certain that all of this was real by now. I wasn’t reading one of my stories or wandering around in some kind of dream. Was it really a good idea to run off by myself into this forest?
Obviously not. But thinking I’d be any safer in the city was foolish. The only place I’d really be safe was back home, alongside people who cared about me. I wanted to wake up in my own bed and forget this had ever happened. I wanted to finish out the semester and have a great summer with Katie and go off to college in the fall. None of that would happen if I turned around now. I needed to follow the insistent tugging at my heart, and that led me into the wood. Was it just my imagination, or had the tug grown even fainter since Rowan had first alerted me to it?
Time was running out. I set my jaw and stepped through the dome’s edge. A sudden shock of cold poured over my body, like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on my head, and then I was through. I gasped and threw back my hood. A sudden gust of wind swirled through the line of torches, whether from the wood or the dome I couldn’t say, and they guttered and danced angrily. I gave them a last uneasy look and then followed the path on into the forest.
I’d never seen trees like the ones that crowded in around the path. I called them trees, but really they were exactly what I’d thought they were at first: blocky, white chunks of crystal twisting into the shapes of many-limbed trees, like an amateur sculptor had tried to carve an oak from a block of cloudy marble and given up before smoothing his rough edges. Bright fuchsia leaves poured out of the branches, and vines of the same color hung low all around me. No underbrush sprouted up beneath the purple canopy, but the limbs hung lower and the trees grew thicker the further I walked. Purplish-blue shadows lengthened.
It was eerie here in the forest. Back at home, I’d enjoyed taking long afternoon walks in the woods near the Denton house. Listening to the chirp of the birds and the burble of the streams cleared my head and helped me when I’d return home to work more on my latest compositions. But no birds chirped here, and no streams burbled. The silence was deafening, quieter than my wood in the heart of winter. As I pressed further in, I even stopped hearing the rustle of leaves in the breeze. No wind blew, or if it did, I was too far beneath the dense foliage to notice.
Eventually the dirt path dwindled to nothing and I was reduced to wandering beneath the trees directly. I forged my way forward in a zig-zag pattern that quickly robbed me of all sense of direction. There was no way back to Alkazar now even if I wanted to return—all I could do was follow the gentle tug at my heart which I insistently tried to tell myself wasn’t growing fainter, even though I was really afraid that it was. I had no idea what I’d do if I got lost.
Probably I would starve. Actually, dehydration would get me first without any water. I felt like I’d heard that humans could go seven days without water before they died, and it didn’t sound like it was a pleasant way to go.
Nice thoughts, I told myself. Maybe you should focus more on hurrying and less on the many ways you might end up dying out here.
I followed my own advice and moved faster, hopping over sprawling crystal roots and dodging vines as I hurried along.
The uneasiness I’d felt at the edge of the wood nestled between my shoulders and wormed around at the base of my neck. I felt like something was watching me, but I wasn’t sure if I was really being watched or if that’s just the normal human response to being all alone in a weird, spooky place. Whether real or imagined, it grew worse as I pushed deeper, and I could swear I’d started seeing flashes of something in the shadows out of the corner of my eyes. But whenever I’d turn my head, nothing was there.
“Okay, crazy, stop scaring yourself,” I muttered. I regretted speaking at once. My voice sounded muffled and small amid the trees, and the oppressive silence seemed to rush back in to fill the space as soon as my voice died off. Sound of any kind didn’t feel right here. I practically jogged through the forest now. I shrugged off the cloak and discarded it so that I could move more quickly. I wasn’t cold, despite the shivers that periodically ran down my spine as I swept my gaze across the gloom. My bag bounced at my side, and I was
grateful that the skirts of Rowan’s cotton dress were large enough to allow me a wide, loping stride as I clipped along.
Finally the woods broke. I rounded an enormous chalky trunk, and emerged in a small clearing, about half the size of a football field. The trees formed a perfect circle around a strange silvery tear in the air. My brain struggled to process it. The tear looked like a ragged hole cut into the fabric of a canvas painting of the clearing, an opening into a three-dimensional space that shouldn’t exist. I recognized the effect from the night the smiling man had kidnapped me.
My heart soared. I’d found it. My path home. My way back to Nick. My way back to my family. I let out a cry of relief and ran towards it.
Instead of the yawning tunnel I’d been carried through, the tear was now barely a foot wide. I could see that the tunnel widened past it, though, so if I could squeeze through I might still be able to make it back home. But as I got closer, my excitement turned to desperation. To my horror, the opening of the tunnel was covered by a filmy gauze that I could only describe as a thickening of the air around the tear. I pushed against it and tried to break past it into the tunnel. My hands sunk into it, and it bulged under my pressure like soft rubber, but no matter how hard I pushed I couldn’t pierce it. I noticed the edges of the tear were very slowly pulling back together. They’d moved another centimeter in while I’d struggled.
“Katie!” I screamed into it. “Katie, can you hear me?”
I put my ear to the rubbery covering and listened. I heard nothing.
But then, very faintly, a voice called back to me. “Ella? Ella, is that you?”
Katie. That’s Katie’s voice.
“Yes! Yes it’s me. Oh gosh Katie hang on! I’m trying to get back to you.”
Again I heard Katie, almost too faintly to make out. “I can’t hear what you’re saying, Ella! Where are you? We’ve all been worried sick!” Even as faint as the sound was, I could hear the emotion behind my sister’s words. She was crying.
Flame Bound (Seeking the Dragon Book 2) Page 4