Lucinda, Darkly

by Sunny

  Those cold black eyes glittered. “If you are who you say you are, and these two are indeed the legendary drakons, Hari and Ruric, then it makes it even more tempting to kill you. To strike such a heart blow to the High Lord. To kill his daughter as he killed my son. To kill his men as he has slaughtered so many of our people, our women and our children.” Sheer malice glittered from those dark eyes, telling me that I had badly miscalculated. He wanted to kill us now with a deep-seated urge that was almost maniacal.

  I tried to reason with him still. “The High Lord is the one who made it law forbidding the killing of your people. Who prohibited the hunting of Floradëurs and the unsanctioned taking of your blood.”

  “Yet so many still do,” Deon said with chilling coldness. In a swift movement, he unsheathed a short sword. Made of a precious alloy even stronger than demon chains, it gleamed purple under Sumera’s gray light. A pall of silence overfell the multitude as they watched their leader tremble. You could not tell what he trembled from, rage or restraint. If it was the latter—restraint—it was not enough. I looked up into those anger-maddened eyes, and knew that bloodlust was going to overpower good sense. He was going to kill us. Chop us up and throw our pieces into the sea. Feed us to the sea beasts that dwelled in the dark waters at the base of the cliff.

  “We are bound, Talon and I,” I said in one last desperate bid at reason. “If you kill me, you will also kill one of your own kind.”

  Mesa gasped from where she watched among the crowd, but Deon’s eyes glittered with eerie triumph. As if I had just given him the perfect reason to do what he so badly wanted to.

  “By his own actions, he is not one of us,” Deon declared. “He cannot even flow from flower to flower, from growth to growth, but is held down by chains, just like you are. If you are bound together, then even more reason to kill you. To free him of that perversion, that evil condition that enslaves him to you.”

  He raised the sword high above his head, and I saw my death in those black burning eyes. Words that should have spared Talon’s life had ensured the ending of it instead.

  Perversion, he had called our bond. Evil enslavement, when it was far from that. I’d run from it. Pushed it away from me. But no longer. Now bound by chains, with my power smothered by the oil, with not just my death but of all our deaths a moment away . . . I no longer fought that bond.

  I dropped all resistance and didn’t just open myself to it, I ran down that invisible line binding us together, and found it open. Talon had never closed himself away from me; it had only been I throwing a block between us. A barrier that was no longer there, an impediment that I smashed down in my need. I roared down that mental pathway and cried, Talon, help me. Give me power.

  I felt the confusion in him, and then a sea of calm amidst the confusion.

  Take what you need. The words rang clear, so clear in my mind, as if he had spoken them aloud.

  With that invitation, that willingness, I didn’t hesitate. As the sword swung down, as Ruric and Hari roared and fought to break free of the restraints, I took the energy, gathered it all, and thrust it entirely into my voice.

  “Stop,” I commanded. And Deon did, against his will. The wicked, purple sword screeched to a trembling halt a bare inch away from my neck. He fought that command, and fought hard, but could not go against it.

  The power of that compulsion was a familiar use. What I did next was not. Talon drew his power from nature, from the very elements. And in the short time he had been here, he had soaked in much of its abundant force. It seemed to have poured into him, filled him up like a bucket too long emptied. That rich reservoir of power was there, so full and abundant, completely open to me, to my emotions, which were no longer calm and not entirely controlled.

  Rage roared through me and filled me up. That beastly monster that had always dwelt within me stirred and breathed to life, my beast and something more. Destructive fury flashed through me, vibrated my entire being. And this time I did not try to control it. I loosened all restraint, and the heavens rumbled with my anger. The wind picked up, began to moan. Lightning flashed, illuminating the dark twilit sky. The air grew dense and heavy, and a jagged bolt struck the ground a body length away from me. Thunder shook the air with a dramatic rumble, and four more powerful lightning bolts cut down from the sky, striking the ground in a perfect, symmetrical circle around us, sending the guards that had surged inward lurching back, crying out in fright.

  I pulled against the restraints. The chains held. I was strong mentally, but not physically. Channeling the energy as I was, I did not have enough power to throw off the blocking effect of the oil and feed both mind and body. Almost, but not quite enough. I knew, though, where I could get that added punch of power.

  My gaze locked upon Deon, still frozen by my command. I gave him another one. “Come to me.”

  His eyes widened, and the fanatical hatred burning there turned to fear as he shuffled forward in jerky motion and bent down to me.

  He resisted. With everything he had, he resisted, pulling upon the deep reserves of his own power. It was enough to stop him. To halt that forward, bending motion. To keep him from me that last final foot.

  I laughed and it was as if the wind took my breath and echoed my amusement, swirling it around us in rough, windy play.

  “Come,” I commanded.

  A powerful whip of wind ripped the sword from Deon’s hand. A second lifting draft picked up his slender form and threw him to me.

  He fell on top of me, his sharp claws digging painfully into my skin as he tried to push away, but it was too late. He was within my reach and I struck hard, sinking my fangs deep into his neck, gulping down his rich blood. It blasted through me, that sweet, singing energy. With a snap, I broke free of the chains and seized his wrists, yanked his claws out of my flesh. Another hot swallow of that hot energizing blood and I pulled my mouth from him. Didn’t rip out his throat like I so badly wanted to do, only because two others needed his blood.

  I rolled to my feet and dropped him between Ruric and Hari. Tore their chains off as they tore into Deon with sharp, ripping fangs. Deon cried out, his dark, slender body jerking and shuddering under the dual impact of their bites, Hari into his thigh, Ruric plunging deep into his neck. I left them to feast on the rich blood as I freed Talon.

  Amidst the confusion of whirling wind and chaotic cries, I heard that warning click, the signal that preceded a unified cry. Turning, I saw that we were surrounded by a circle of Floradëurs. The women and children had fled beneath the moaning wind whipping around us with screaming frenzy, and the sizzling bolts of lightning I had called down from the sky. It was warriors only now.

  The ebony warriors opened their mouths and I had a moment to think, Forgive me, Nico, before I threw up a cone of silence around us. I put all my power into that barrier. So much power that I saw it visible for the first time: a shimmering force that encircled upward, tapering to a point above my head. It flared bright for a moment as the percussive force of all those cries—hundreds of them—hit the barrier.

  It held.

  We heard nothing within, felt nothing inside that protective cone, while miles distant I knew that Nico faltered, cut off from us. Cut off not just from I but Talon, too. No one to sustain him. My fury swelled and burst from me, and that shimmering force, that protective cone swelled out as I released it. It struck our encircling attackers, roared over them. Swept them up and flung them violently away.

  But even as I unleashed it and watched them scatter, I knew it wouldn’t be enough. It would only stun them for an instant. Then they would regather and hit us again, and I would be forced to erect that barrier once more. I ran down that third line that bound us together and found it weak. Only seconds, and how it had weakened him. We needed to escape quickly.

  My beast felt my need and answered it, wanting out. I did not fight it. I embraced it. But what emerged was something other than my familiar demon beast.

  All my life, and the entirety of my afterli
fe, that was what I had fought most: to keep that control so necessary to a demon, or else a bloodbath would ensue.

  But if that’s what it took to leave this place quickly, then so be it upon their heads. That was my last thought before the change took me violently. Not the quick morphing transformation into my demon beast form, but something else. My clothes didn’t just strain and rip, they tore completely from my body as I swelled, grew, and kept growing. My spine enlarged, lengthened and curved, and I fell to all fours. I watched as my skin melted away and scales—gold, glistening scales—took their place.

  I heard Hari’s whisper, “Dragon,” and turned to look down upon him and watch the astonishment slacken his face. To see his tiny body so far beneath me, both him and Ruric . . . big, bulky Ruric looking so little, Talon a slender black curve beside them.

  Sounds and movement whipped my head around to see the fallen Floradëurs regaining their feet, to hear their frightened cries as they gazed up at me. That click, that annoying, ominous click sounded again, and wrath like I had never known before burned hot within me, churned my gut. It grew and grew and built like quicksilver within me until it spilled out, could not be contained. I opened my mouth to scream, but what came spewing out was not sound but heat and fire. A roaring flame that flashed toward where that hateful click had originated. Floradëurs screamed and scattered beneath the fiery blast, the stench of singed hair and burning flesh mixing caustically with their cries. My tail, a weighty rear appendage, swept out behind me and knocked even more Floradëurs down like pins, flinging them wide into the air.

  I bellowed my savage glee, stamped my feet, shook the ground, and toppled more of them over—my own men, included, unfortunately. I stopped, and another click sounded. Another stream of fire shot from my mouth, burning them. Another shift and scattering swipe of my tail. But as fast as I dispersed them, they reassembled around us like an unending wave. My tail whipped up and down, catching a few, pounding them, dispersing them. But I knew it was only a delaying action. We had to escape. I arched my back, and the tightness there along my back unfurled. Wings expanded, so long they extended beyond the punishment circle.

  I dipped my head down to my men. “Climb on board,” I said in a booming grumble so deep that the words were almost unrecognizable.

  They did with a hop and a spring, Hari onto my back, Ruric astride the base of my neck along with Talon who the big demon had grabbed.

  “Hang on,” I growled. Another scattering sweep of my tail, and I pounded toward the edge of the cliff. I could see the ground fall away, and gathered up even more speed. I leaped, soared in the air, and the waters spread black blue beneath us. Rushed up at us as I flapped my wings desperately, slowing our fall, but not stopping it, burdened and unbalanced by the weight I carried.

  I felt a shifting of the heaviest weight atop me and knew what he intended to do.

  “No,” I roared, a stream of heat hissing from my nostrils. “Do not jump, Ruric, or I swear I will dive into the water after you.”

  “I am too heavy,” he said.

  “No! Do not!”

  Madly I struggled to keep us aloft, beating those virgin wings with desperate strokes. By my will, my almost maddened will, we lifted and dipped. Lifted and dipped up and down. The cold sea water splashed my feet, soaked my dragging tail. My wings surged, a powerful beat, and we rose up into the air, out of the water. Another powerful beat of those wings and we flew higher. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to shout. I wanted to trumpet my joy to the entire realm as I cut through the air. Up and up, higher and higher, soaring through the air, the wind rushing by—what I had always yearned to feel and never had as a Monère. What I had dreamt of in my deepest, most secret dreams.

  But my floating joy was short-lived. A cloud of dark wings swarmed down after us like a hive of angry bees, pursuing us.

  “Protect your ears,” Talon warned us. He shifted around, gathered himself, and let loose his fearsome cry. It spread out above us and hit our pursuers, stunning them like a hammer’s blow. A few recovered enough to continue flapping, but a dozen fell into the waters below, where they floated, dazed or unconscious. I looked down, glimpsed large moving shadows in the water.

  Two floating Floradëurs were suddenly yanked down beneath the surface. Jaws yawned wide as another creature broke up through the water and chomped down on a third Flower of Darkness. More creatures broke the surface. More frantic splashes, more screams suddenly cut off.

  And then complete, dead quiet. Utter calm. The violence occurring in a heartbeat suddenly gone beneath the waves. Nothing. Only the blood that swirled the surface of the dark waters with crimson stains.

  Our winged pursuers fell away, returning back to the safety of land, and we flew on.

  “I didn’t know,” Talon said, shaken. “I didn’t mean to kill them.”

  “They would have done that to us,” Ruric said. “Chopped us to pieces and fed us to those sea beasts, or downed us with their cry had you not struck first.”

  Ruric had known what had awaited him down in the sea; he had been willing to jump to his sure death to lighten my burden. But he hadn’t because he had heard my conviction. I would have followed him down into the cold depths of the waters and tried to save him. I would have done the same for Hari had that handsome, sullen demon toppled into the sea accidentally . . . and it would have been by accident. No self-sacrificing, that one.

  I would have gone in after them because they were the last of their kind. The last of that ancient blood, the drakon.

  As was I.

  Tears welled up in my eyes and blurred my vision for a moment, because in the surest, most telling way, dragon blood flowed in me, too.

  “I didn’t know you could become a dragon, Princess,” Talon said, hugging my neck tight, his claws delicately anchoring his hold.

  I had not known, either, and the discovery was a momentous joy, altering everything in me, changing my world.

  I felt the pieces of me that had been broken, broken by my mother’s falsehood, being mended now by truth. And I felt myself becoming whole once more. The fabricated burden I had carried for so long drifted away from me as my beating wings lifted us up.

  “Why didn’t you and Hari take dragon form, also, Ruric?” Talon asked.

  “Because we cannot.” In his deep bass, Ruric explained the miracle that had just occurred. “Once we become demon dead, we lose the Monère ability to shift into pure animal form. We have only our demon beast shape.”

  “But Lucinda changed—”

  “Because of your bond,” Ruric said.

  “And likely because of the Monère included in your bond,” added Hari.

  My thoughts went to him, Nico. And to my other Monère, Stefan, as we drifted in flight.

  What required over two moons to walk, took only an hour to fly. Oh, the freedom of the air. But exhilarating as it was, by the time Darkling Hall spiraled up before us, I was feeling the weariness in my wings and along the muscles of my back.

  Shouts were heard as they caught sight of us. We could have landed nearby and walked in, but we sailed in boldly because I was anxious to see how Nico fared. We landed under the eyes of the full troop of royal guards, which had sprinted out en masse. Were it not for Ruric and Hari’s presence on my back, some, no doubt, would have unleashed their weapons upon me. But Ruric’s bulk and Hari’s wiry form were perched aloft, along with Talon’s dark self. And not only was I a dragon, a creature of the High Lord’s blood clan, but my scales were golden. That distinct coloring alone would have made some of them wonder at my identity, unlikely though it might be.

  The High Lord himself watched, standing on the steps of Darkling Hall, and my heart ached with both sadness and happiness. We landed and it was a rocky touchdown, with a few stumbling steps before I steadied. If my riders were jolted, at least they did not fall off. They sprung down, and with a shimmer of energy, still abundant, I changed back into upright form.

  Pure shocking silence met me, broken by Winston’s t
all gaunt form moving forward in silent approach.

  “Welcome back, Princess,” the butler said, his mirror-dark eyes twinkling with amusement and relief, pride and other unnamable things. He swung the High Lord’s cloak around me, covering my nudity, which I had completely forgotten about.

  Then the High Lord made his way down to me, and I met him halfway. I ran to him, feeling as if my heart had squeezed up into my throat.

  “Father,” I said, standing before him.

  Those eyes blinked, grew moist, and the air vibrated with a wave of emotion he could not fully contain.

  “Lucinda,” he said in a voice that trembled. “I had given up all hope of ever hearing that word from your lips again.” Then I was in his arms and we both were crying, red tears rolling down our cheeks.

  “Father,” I said again, tasting the word with joy. “I truly am your daughter.”

  “You always have been.”

  “She lied.” The malice of it was hard to comprehend. My very own mother. She had chosen a lie that could not be proved or negated. Even my long years of existence had proven nothing because my mother descended from the phoenix clan, another long-lived line.

  “Yes, she lied,” Blaec said softly, then put aside the hurtful past and concentrated on the future. “How can this be, that you can take dragon form?”

  “My bond with Talon and Nico.” I looked around for Nico and did not see him. “Where is Nico?”

  “I am here.” He came out of the house and down the steps, alive and well, his skin stunningly white amidst the guards’ darkness. “I could not stay inside,” Nico said to my father—how sweet those words were upon my lips, and in my heart. My father.