Dragon's Fire

by Gwynn White

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, either.

  Dmitri smiled. “You’ll figure all this out soon enough. Now come. I have a task for you.” He paused. “You still want to help, I assume?”

  “Talon? Of course. I’ll do anything to help him win against my murderers.”

  “Ah . . . perhaps we should sit.” Before Tao could reply, Dmitri headed toward the trees.

  It fascinated Tao to see the dead oak closest to the cottage, the one he had been meaning to fell for firewood, looking vital and alive in this dimension. He peered at it again, and the hazy curtain shimmered before his eyes. Now the tree looked gnarled and rotten, just as he remembered it.

  Another smile from Dmitri. “You’re learning. By the time I send you back, you’ll be quite the expert. When you’ve been dead for as long as I have, you will see layers upon layers of life and death around you. I’ll admit, that can be disconcerting.”

  The seer sat down on the grass under the tree.

  He sat next to Dmitri and waited for the seer to speak.

  “Tao, your time with Nicholas is done. There is nothing more you can do for him. He is for me to fret about now.”

  Dmitri’s tone filled Tao with dread. “Lukan has him, doesn’t he?”

  “Aye. He has been tagged with an ice crystal that allows Lukan and Felix to read his mind. Almost worse than that, they can also speak into his head.” A shadow of concern crossed Dmitri’s face. “It will take all his strength to resist the things Felix will tell him.”

  Tao may not have been able to feel physical pain, but emotional pain was just as devastating. He waited for the wave of horror to subside. When it didn’t, he whispered, “And Lynx?”

  He loved her like a sister, and the thought of not seeing her again was unimaginably painful.

  “She is with Axel. I am counting on him to take care of her. She has a head filled with schemes to find her son and to avenge your death. But that is not her work.” Dmitri fixed Tao with a sharp eye. “Like you, she has another task.”

  Lynx wasn’t going to like that.

  Dmitri nodded, as if he agreed. Clearly, the seer claimed mindreading as part of his skill set. Would Tao get those skills too, now that he was a resurrected person? Would he need them? And . . . would Dmitri expect him to spend the next sixteen years living in a dog’s body the way the seer had?

  Tao hoped not, but there was only one way to find out.

  “So—so what is my task?”

  “Patience, my friend. Lukan planned to inflict a second Burning on the world today, a deadly gas dispersed from airships. It would have destroyed almost all of mankind.”

  Tao gasped.

  Dmitri raised a hand. “Have no fear. An unlikely ally stopped him. For now.”

  “Thank the Winds.”

  “You do not inquire who helped us?”

  “I am sure if you wish me to know, you would tell me.”

  “Felix Avanov.”

  “You joke!”

  A rakish smile from Dmitri. “You doubt my persuasive powers?” Dmitri’s smile faded. “Every man has a price, Tao. I just happened to know Felix’s.”

  Understanding dawned. “Lukan was going to kill his family in the Burning.”

  “As well as pull his power base from under him. Two things Felix will never endure. He will prove valuable—once he learns to temper his talents toward the common good.”

  Nothing in Tao’s dealings with Felix convinced him that his uncle even understood the term common good, let alone how to act in its interests. “You still have not told me what I must do.”

  “Lynx remains the world’s best security. She needs to be seen in random places to stop any refinements of Lukan’s plans. If he never knows where she will turn up, it will stay his hand. Her task is to take the message of the Light-Bearer to all the world. That will engender vital support in a critical time in the alliance’s history.”

  Tao frowned. “But surely if Lukan captures her, the deterrent goes?”

  “Aye. But if she stays closeted in those mines, Lukan could choose selective Burnings to flush her. In her rage to retaliate, she will be an easy capture. Then he can burn the world.”

  “Of course. Norin.”

  “But these are not your troubles, even if it is good to have another resurrected person to share my woes with.” Dmitri waved both his hands. “It is to your own that you must look. Your sons, Grigor and Meka, grow up wild with shameful neglect.”

  Tao’s unbeating heart lurched. “So Tatiana was right? They are my boys.”

  “That they are. They need your guiding hand. Although Lukan claims to be their father, he feels nothing for them. They would not have survived his Burning.”

  Anger chafed Tao. “And Kestrel?”

  Dmitri shook his head.

  Tao wanted to weep for his estranged wife. “Lukan never valued her.”

  “Yet she adores him. She was always intended for him. Soul mates from before birth. Strange how life works.”

  If Kestrel had been meant for Lukan, then whom was he supposed to have married? There had never been any other girl in his life.

  Dmitri’s eyes glinted. “Back to your sons. Kestrel never bonded with them at birth. They were more than a year old when Mother Saskia gave them back to her. By then—” Dmitri shrugged. “They need you.”

  Joy mingled with sadness filled in Tao’s chest. “Will they know who I am?”

  “No, and it’s not given to you to reveal your identity to them at this time. Befriend them first. They long for a good friend. Especially Grigor. He’s far more sociable than Meka, and the loneliness of only ever being with his brother is slowly destroying him.”

  “And Meka?”

  “Has lost himself in the hunt.”

  Tao’s eyebrows quirked.

  “Fishing. He has no choice in the matter, so he has turned his fishing into an art. A very single-minded boy when he has a goal.”

  Tao liked the sound of both his sons.

  “Once they trust you, you will you discern when to tell them the truth. Use their strengths and weaknesses in your teaching. Stick to the truth in what you tell them, and you cannot fail.”

  “I—I can do that.” So this was his task? To befriend and teach his sons? It seemed too good to be true.

  “I don’t doubt it. Help them understand their rightful place in Chenaya. Tell them of their cousin, Nicholas—the true and legitimate heir to the throne.”

  Nicholas. Not Talon. That wasn’t lost on Tao. He would have to concentrate hard to remember to call his cub by his real name.

  “Can I teach them about your curse?”

  Dmitri thumped his hand onto his thigh. “Most certainly not. They know nothing of the curse. Lukan has made sure of that. If he suspects they do, he will kill them.”

  Tao didn’t doubt that. He frowned as worry tugged at him. “Will we win, Dmitri?”

  “By ‘win,’ do you mean will Nicholas triumph?”

  “What else?”

  Dmitri canted his head. “What difference would it make if you knew the answer to that?”

  Tao looked at him in surprise. “Everyone wants to know the side they support will win.”

  “Would it change how you acted toward your sons?”

  Tao considered for a moment and then shook his head. “I guess not, seeing as I cannot even tell them about the curse.”

  “Aye. Bear that in mind as you go forward.” Dmitri stood. “Your sons await you.”

  Chapter 13

  Axel gripped Lynx’s knee to stop her foot tapping. “Keep still, my love, or I’ll never get this thing off your wrist.”

  Livid purple and swollen, her broken wrist was already making it challenging to pick the lock on her manacle. He knew it had to be done, and promptly too, to get her circulation going again, but he didn’t want to hurt her.

  Lynx glared at him. “I keep telling you, my hands can wait. Lukan and Felix have tagged Talon. Why aren’t we looking for his ice crystal on the
grid?”

  Clay, sitting next to her on a bench in the Light-Bearer, held her free hand in his, his thumb caressing the raw skin where the metal had chafed her. “There’s time enough, Lynx. But we need to get you mobile.”

  “It can get rough up here in a dog fight, and we don’t know what to expect as we leave Cian,” Heron added. He stood opposite them, with Magridal slouched next to him.

  Up front, their pilot powered the craft away from Lynx’s burnt home.

  Lynx grunted. “I guess. But I don’t know how useful my broken wrist will be.”

  “I’ll look after you”—Clay tugged her arm closer to him until she was leaning over him, and he grinned—“in between shooting the bastards out the sky. I got five of the six we shot down coming in.”

  “We won’t be shooting anyone,” Axel said. “Now we run. And we don’t stop until we make it back to Treven.”

  Lynx scowled at Axel. “Treven? Now? What about Talon?”

  This wasn’t how Axel had expected his first meeting with Lynx in sixteen years would go. She hadn’t even responded to his hug and kiss when he pulled her on board the Light-Bearer. He got that she was desperate with grief for Tao and worry for Nicholas, but what had he done to earn her ire?

  It couldn’t be because he hadn’t told her about the ice crystal?

  The Lynxie he knew and loved would never have abandoned Tao—hell, he couldn’t have left Tao alone in the forest, either—so why even bring it up, just to be told to his face that she had again chosen someone else over him? Once in a lifetime he could handle. Twice? He wasn’t so sure.

  And why wasn’t she reacting like they were on the same team? He, too, grieved for their losses. Since their earliest youth, Tao had been one of his closest friends. To have Tao killed so cruelly—so needlessly—made him want to lash out at Lukan, too. But sixteen years of holding the Pathfinder Alliance together had taught him not to go off half-cocked with emotion. Revenge was a drink best slow-brewed and then savored.

  And he didn’t even want to think about the political repercussions of leaving the forest without Nicholas. The monarchs in the Free Nations were becoming restive. For sixteen years, he had promised them a savior who would free them from the constant threat of the Dragon.

  Based on that promise, he had exacted heavy taxes from them to fund his army. Now they wanted to see the results of their investment—they wanted Lukan destroyed. For that, Axel needed more money and resources. The key to getting those assets was Nicholas. Without proof that the Light-Bearer existed, and that the curse was real, he would get no further support from the Free Nations. And no taxes meant no army of mercenaries. The Pathfinder Alliance would collapse before they even planned a campaign to take the palace in Cian.

  That would leave the Dmitri Curse in tatters. If that wasn’t bad enough, without an armed presence in the mountains, Lukan’s guardsmen would overrun the mines. His cousin would get all the ice crystal he needed to tag the entire empire—Norin included. Axel had intended to discuss all this with Lynx when he collected Nicholas from the cottage, but that had all gone awry.

  Patience, he told himself, she has just lost everything. My problems are not important now.

  Another twist of the knife, and the manacle fell free, clattering to the floor.

  Axel wrapped his arms around Lynx, pulling her tight against his chest. He could feel her shaking as he clutched her. He angled his head to kiss her, but she pulled away again—not just pulled, pushed him away from her.

  “Axel, Talon. What are we doing about him?”

  Axel rocked back on his heels. Clearly, his Norin raider was in a fighting mood. He considered how best to defuse her.

  A smile often worked, so he shot her the most derisive one he could conjure. “We will find Nicholas. I give you my word on that.”

  To his bitter disappointment, she lashed out at his arm with her good hand. “Stop calling him Nicholas. Only Lukan calls him that. His name is Talon.”

  That wasn’t entirely true—and they both knew it. Ever since Lynx and Tao had discovered that Dmitri lived in the dog, Lynx had told him that Dmitri always called Nicholas by his full name.

  Axel didn’t need an audience for this confrontation—especially if Lynx intended to get violent. He turned to Clay, Heron, and Magridal. “Clay, check your team manning the guns. Heron, check on the status of Lukan’s defenses. I don’t want any surprises leaving here. Magridal, get some bandages for Lynx’s wrist.”

  The three leaped to their feet, obeying immediately.

  Uneasy about how this unwanted conversation would go, he turned back to her. “Lynxie, I hate to agree with my cousin, but for once the idiot is right. Talon’s name is Nicholas the Light-Bearer. The monarchs in the Free Nations expected to meet a savior, a Son of Prophecy named Nicholas the Light-Bearer, not a forest boy called Talon. And if the Pathfinder Alliance is to survive to wage war against Lukan in Nicholas’s name, then I have to sell the monarchs the whole package that comes with him being Dmitri’s boy.”

  “He hates that name,” Lynx snapped right back. “And he’s not Dmitri’s boy. He’s my son. My flesh and blood.” She paced the small cabin. “And now we’ve lost him.”

  Of course he knew Nicholas was her son. For sixteen years, they had spoken daily and Lynx never failed to tell him about the boy. Axel knew so much about Nicholas that, in truth, he considered the boy his flesh and blood, too. Losing Nicholas to Lukan cut to the quick.

  But that wasn’t the point of this argument.

  His irritation rose to the surface. “Lynx, I’m sorry about that, but thanks to Dmitri, Nicholas’s personal feelings don’t really come into it. He’s a symbol, a rallying point for every person in the Free Nations who knows about him, as well as in the untagged satrapies in the empire. They are waiting for him to do great things. To achieve miracles. He can’t do that if he thinks small.”

  Before Lynx could reply, a movement at the door caught their attention. Magridal stood there with a handful of bandages. Her eyebrows wriggled. She stepped away; she must have decided that Lynx’s broken wrist could wait.

  His commander’s timely appearance was just as well—it gave Axel a moment to calm down.

  Lynx, too, looked less angry, as if the interruption had done her good, too.

  He stroked her cheek. “I know this is hard for you. You’ve lost your son, your best friend, and your home all in one day. But please, trust me on this.”

  “Trust you?” She laughed, not a pretty sound. “You kept the truth about my ice crystal from me! How can I trust you?”

  Axel plunked down onto the bench. She could have hit him, and it would have hurt less. But now he faced a tough choice: fess up about how much her marriage to Lukan had hurt him or find some other excuse for why he’d kept the information from her. He looked up at her.

  Face ferocious, she stared down at him.

  He sighed. “I love you too much for this. I didn’t tell you because I couldn’t handle you choosing Tao over me. I’m just not that strong.”

  Lynx bit her lip, and her eyes seemed too big, too bright. She closed them.

  He stood and took her in his arms. She didn’t resist.

  “I’ve cried too, Lynx,” Axel whispered. “Many times. Tears for my men I’ve sent to die in this interminable war. Tears for the Chenayan guardsmen who fight us. Tears of loneliness when you finally fall asleep on me at night, and I’m left alone in my foxhole in Treven.”

  “How do you live with yourself afterward?” Lynx asked, his clothing muffling her voice.

  “Easy. Tears make me stronger because they remind me that I have things I care about, things worth fighting for. I will still cry for Tao.”

  “But not Talon?”

  He pulled back to look at her. “I’m not willing to give up on him. Are you?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Good.” He took her hand. “Come with me.”

  Lynx followed him out the cabin into a gangway through the center of the ship.
“Where are we going?”

  His smile turned derisive. “You’re going to help me find Nicholas’s new ice crystal on the grid. We should be able to track it from the coordinates at the cottage, where it was activated. Once we have his current location, we can launch a mission to go and get him.”

  Relief softened the hard lines on Lynx’s face. “How soon?” She shoved him to make him speed up.

  “Emotion says we should go immediately, but this needs careful planning. Clay, Heron, and Magridal are amongst my best soldiers, but I don’t believe we can do it alone. We will need proper backup for a heist like this. Also, I want to get you to safety first. I can’t risk losing you again.”

  Lynx stumbled to a halt. “No. We can’t leave Talon while I slink off to safety. We must go now.”

  “That’s emotion talking. I know how you feel about Nicholas. Honestly, I do, but we have to plan this properly. My father will no doubt tell Lukan that I have you. Do you really think they will let me steal Nicholas from them as well without a fight?”

  “Then we give him a fight!” Lynx cried. “I can’t leave the Heartland without my son.”

  Axel’s heart sank. It seemed they were headed for yet another argument. He chose his words carefully, hoping reason would sway her to see logic. “It’s not a fight we can win. Lukan has an empire’s worth of military hardware and men he can throw at us. All we have is this very fast, very maneuverable ship and a bit of ingenuity. Those are not good odds. What will it help Nicholas if his closest allies are killed in a crazy, half-cocked scheme to rescue him?”

  Lynx clenched and unclenched her unbroken fist, but he could see from her haunted expression that she was considering his argument. Whether she accepted it remained to be seen.

  Someone cleared his throat. “Sorry to interrupt what is clearly a tense moment, but I have news.”

  Axel turned to Heron in relief. “Are you here to tell me that Lukan’s airships are about to blast us out of existence?”

  What kind of insane world had he stepped into when that was preferable to talking to Lynx? He noticed Magridal at Heron’s side. There were no bandages in her hands.