Dragon's Fire

by Gwynn White

  Fighting the urge to vomit, he forced his feet to carry him forward to where Nicholas lay. He stopped when he towered over the traitor. “So, Nicholas, another birthday. How does that feel? A whole year of your pointless life wasted in a dark hole.”

  As he waited for some reaction from the motionless boy, Lukan studied his son.

  Body emaciated, face as pale as a ghost, Nicholas was beyond disconcerting. He was inhuman.

  Lukan silently cursed Felix for insisting that he come here today. The solstice was a few days away. They should have been boarding the Dragon’s Fire, a stealth airship twice as majestic as Axel’s Light-Bearer, for the Burning of Oldfort, not wasting time with this wretch.

  Still, it riled Lukan that Nicholas showed no reaction. He goaded, “I see what Morass means. You are feral. Nothing but a stinking animal.”

  Lukan spotted the tiniest flicker of a reaction from Nicholas, more in his eyes than on his blank face. As blue as an electric bolt, Nicholas’s eyes gleamed like giant orbs in his sunken face.

  Lukan resisted the urge to fidget under their glare. “Your eyes, I see, have not changed much. Still shooting defiance and fire.”

  The blue hardened.

  Lukan clutched one of the silver buttons on his waistcoat. “Still playing games? Still challenging? Well, give it another year, and your eyes will fade, too.”

  He expected a reaction. Some abuse. Definitely more than just the staring eyes. But the silence was paralyzing.

  Lukan shifted as if he were the seventeen-year-old and not the emperor. “You can’t win. The sooner you accept that and give up, the easier your life will be.”

  And then he saw it. A real reaction.

  The smile that spread across Nicholas’s face was slow, almost halting, yet defiant. It reached his eyes, making them glint. His words were stilted, almost those of a child trying out language for the first time. “I. Will. Win.”

  Lukan couldn’t stop the shiver of fear that trilled through his frame. Or the pulse in his scar. “And just how do you intend to achieve that?”

  Nicholas’s smile turned to contempt. He turned his head away to face the wall, dismissing Lukan like an imperious master discharging a superfluous servant.

  Before he could control it, Lukan’s boot landed in Nicholas’s side with a sickening crunch.

  The bastard didn’t even gasp! Nicholas’s face, still turned away, remained impassive.

  The traitor’s disdain incited more rage—more humiliation—than Lukan could ever remember. When his father had beaten him, he’d reacted. He’d cried, pleaded, tried to escape. That’s what any normal human being would do.

  But not Dmitri’s wonder boy.

  Despite swearing to never sink to his father’s level, Lukan wanted to yell and scream; he wanted to thrash Nicholas until the traitor’s heart stopped beating. He reached forward, swinging his boot with all the force he possessed.

  A hand grabbed him from behind, and he faltered.

  Morass.

  He spun around in his fury to hit Morass in the face. “How dare you interfere, you sniveling cretin?”

  “I told him to.” Felix stepped into the room and waved his cane at Lukan. “Your son is an enigma, sire. There are few adults who could survive what he has endured. Who could know how he would react today? You, however, I know well. Remember what is at stake.”

  Felix’s words drenched Lukan, flushing away the red haze clouding his vision. He glared at Nicholas for causing such a loss of control. It would never happen again.

  The boy’s face, still turned away, was inscrutable.

  Lukan swallowed. How do I fight someone who is impervious to me?

  “Now, you brought your son a gift,” Felix reminded, pulling Lukan from his torment.

  Nicholas continued to stare at the wall.

  Lukan straightened his back and brushed imaginary lint from his trousers. Only once in full control of his voice and emotions did he turn to Morass for the fiddle. When Morass handed it over, Lukan scraped the bow against the strings. He cringed against the shrieking sound. Felix covered his ears, and even Morass looked discomforted.

  But Lukan’s real joy came when Nicholas screamed in obvious agony.

  Lukan laughed. “Fiddles no longer so appealing? Or is it just my poor execution?”

  He raked the bow over the strings again, but Nicholas seemed keyed this time. He held his body taut, clearly refusing to betray himself.

  Sensing that the moment had passed, Lukan turned to Morass. “Suspend it.”

  Morass wheeled a scaffold under the crystal-domed roof. Fiddle and a short length of rope in hand, he effortlessly climbed up. He squinted against the brilliant spotlight, beamed through the crystal roof, as he tied the fiddle to an elaborate hook at the apex of the dome.

  Come night time, the spotlight that created the “sun” would be switched off and Nicholas would be treated to two fake moons, moving across a series of paintings of the night sky. Lukan figured that Nicholas would use that rotation to make a grab for the fiddle. According to the building plans Felix had shown him, even if Nicholas broke through the glass, all he would find was a sealed concrete roof, with a narrow ventilation shaft built above the dome. Like the slaughterhouse, there was no escaping this prison.

  Although Nicholas didn’t openly react to Morass, Lukan was almost sure the traitor’s whole being was angled toward the fiddle.

  When Morass finished, Lukan said to Nicholas, “I believe you are quite the monkey with your wall climbing. Let’s see how you go with the walls in this conservatory. Reach it, and the fiddle is yours. Fall trying, and . . . well, a broken leg at the very least, if not your neck. But remember, Nicholas, the choice is yours. On your head be it if you fall and kill yourself.”

  Lukan was certain he had been heard. “So, goodbye until your next birthday or”—Lukan indicated the fiddle—“your funeral. Whichever comes first.” To Morass, he said, “Untie him.”

  Nicholas was docile—corpse-like—as Morass removed the straitjacket.

  Disappointed, Lukan called to Felix. “Come, the airship for Maegkin awaits us.” He loped to the door, knowing Morass and Felix would be two paces behind him.

  Morass closed and locked the door to Nicholas’s conservatory and flicked on the speaker piped into the room. From now on, the traitor would hear every noise the inmates in the asylum made.

  If that didn’t drive him crazy, nothing would.

  Not that any of it mattered. Almost content for the first time since Nicholas’s seventeenth birthday almost a year ago, Lukan left the asylum for the vehicle that would take him to the launch pad. Within a few days, Axel would be dead in Oldfort and Lynx would be back in his hands. He would then be free to rid the world of Nicholas. His nightmare of almost two decades would finally be over.

  And to prove it, Morass could suspend the boy’s corpse from that hook in the conservatory.

  Chapter 50

  Bile threatened to choke Meka.

  Nicholas’s blue eyes were huge in their sunken sockets, his eyelashes stark against his white skin. Matted black hair hung around his face, accentuating his deathly pallor. His legs jutting out from the straitjacket were nothing more than frail bones, shrouded by flesh as thin as onion skin. The straitjacket covered the horror of the rest of his emaciation.

  Someone in the chamber with Meka hiccupped, the sound deafening in the silence. It took Meka a moment to register that it was Lynx. Almost in a daze, he turned to her.

  Tears streamed down her face.

  Like an automaton, Meka’s head clicked around to see the reactions of his new allies and friends.

  The shock on both faces and postures confirmed what he suspected; this was the first time they had seen Nicholas clearly for—

  Months. It would take months to reduce a human to that level of decay.

  It shamed him to think he’d ever complained about being locked in the cage.

  He heard a voice and registered distantly that it was his own. “W
here is he? How do we save him?”

  Axel seemed to recover first. He loped around the rock pool and took Lynx in his arms. She clung to him as if her life—and Nicholas’s—depended on it. Although burning with a need to make plans to rescue his cousin, Meka didn’t have the heart to interrupt them.

  At length, Lynx pulled away from Axel. She turned watery, pleading eyes on Meka. “We need you. Stefan has an ice crystal. A tracker. We want to embed it in you. Before Lukan comes to Burn Oldfort. Felix is also coming. He said he’d imprison you with Nicholas. In that hideous place they have him. We can free you both.”

  Meka wasn’t sure he understood all of that about Oldfort and Felix, but still he nodded. “Of course.” Mind racing, he ran a hand over his face. “Will Felix know I have a tracker?”

  “No. He doesn’t want Nicholas freed.” Face a mix of guilt, rage, and grief, Lynx squeezed his hand. “I won’t lie to you, Meka, what we’re asking for is dangerous. You’ll need to antagonize Lukan. That’s the only way we can be sure they’ll imprison you.”

  Meka glanced over at Tao to assess how much his father had known of this. Tao had moved into the circle with a troubled expression. This had to be news to him. Or perhaps he was just as moved as everyone else by Nicholas’s plight. Tao loved his cub, and seeing Nicholas like that must have shocked him to the core. Meka considered holding a quick, private discussion with his father, but decided against it. Tao trusted these people and had already given Meka his counsel: to be wise.

  “Antagonizing Lukan’s the easy part, but what stops him killing me?” Meka frowned at himself for voicing his cowardice. “I’m not scared. I’ll take the risk, but it would be a . . . a waste. It won’t help Nicholas if Morass axes me.”

  His grandfather patted his knee. “You’re a brave boy, Meka, every bit as worthy as any raider to wear feathers and beads. I assure you, having found you after so many years, it’s not my intention to have you killed. Your uncle Felix is a slippery ally, but as much as it galls, we find ourselves having to trust him. He has good reasons of his own to protect you. His wife’s life is at risk. You saw how much Lukan fears his son. That conservatory is the safest place Felix could hide you, because it is unlikely Lukan will ever step foot in there again.”

  “At least not until Nicholas’s next birthday,” Lynx said bitterly. “And not even Lukan is stupid enough to believe that my son will accept another fake birthday.”

  Thorn nodded his agreement. “Meka, with you in that conservatory, your tracker will lead Axel to Nicholas. At most, we envisage you will be imprisoned for a few days—as long as it takes a high-speed airship to reach you.”

  Meka gnawed his lip. It wasn’t lost on him that his newfound family manipulated him. But if it freed Nicholas from that jail and gave Grigor his life back, then it was worth a bit of emotional blackmail. “We’ll come back here?”

  “Yes. Both you and Nicholas.” Radiating calm and confidence, Axel knelt in front of him. It was reassuring. “And then we’ll prepare an assault on Cian.”

  “You have enough troops?” Meka asked, suddenly doubtful. Surely, if the Pathfinder Alliance was that strong, they would have attacked Cian already.

  “We’re gathering them. We invited the kings of the Free Nations to a conclave over the solstice. An important part of the meeting will be devoted to discussing you and Nicholas. I—we—believe the kings will throw men at the alliance once they understand the full picture. With those additional troops, and Nicholas as our symbol, we will have the strength to take the palace. Dmitri decreed that.”

  There had to be a great deal Axel wasn’t telling him about that campaign. He glanced over at Stefan, hoping for clues. A sudden vision of Stefan Zarot at the High Council meeting took Meka’s breath away.

  He paled and clutched the bench. “My brother! If I do this, what will happen to him? And . . . and will I ever see him again?”

  It surprised him when Stefan, instead of Axel, answered in his measured tone. “Your brother is the crown prince, Meka. The High Council will never allow Lukan to harm him. And Lukan knows that. Felix and I both have a great deal of influence on that council. While we support Grigor, he’s safe. But I won’t lie to you, you will be separated from Grigor until we overthrow Lukan.”

  Meka appreciated Stefan’s honesty. He gnawed his lip until it throbbed. Could he risk that separation without knowing more of Axel’s plans? The dread crushing his chest said no.

  “Axel, I’m not an idiot. Maegkin is thousands of miles from Cian, both by sea and land. How are you going to get close to Cian without Lukan’s airships blowing you out the sky?”

  “Because I own that sky.”

  Meka almost shuddered at Axel’s predatory grin.

  “I am building a fleet of airships faster and better than anything Lukan owns. Trust me, Meka, waging war is what I do. And I’m very good at it.”

  Meka looked at Tao. Is that just bravado?

  Tao shook his head. “Arrogance and Axel go together like bread and honey. But when it comes to all things military, he’s got a lot to swagger about. If he says he can take Cian, then I believe him.”

  That was good enough for Meka. You’ll explain this to Grigor for me?

  “You have decided this is what you want to do?”

  It’s the only way I can live with myself.

  “Then I salute you. And I will watch over you both, as always.”

  Despite the heavy silence, Meka wasn’t about to share his dead father with them. He looked at Axel, the man who held the real power here. “I know Stefan thinks I’m a manipulator, and maybe I am. But I have a request. If you can’t help me, then it doesn’t change anything—I’ll still wear your ice crystal.”

  Axel gave him a derisive smile. “If ever there was a time to make demands, Meka, this is it.”

  “When I get back here with Nicholas, I want to learn how to work with informas. You must have people who do your programming. I want you to let them teach me.”

  Axel’s grin broadened. “I’m not so sure that’s such a good idea, given how easily you let them turn your head.”

  Meka grinned back. “I can’t help it that Vasily is a chump.”

  “You saying that I will just have to be smarter?”

  “Something like that.”

  Axel mussed Meka’s hair, just the way Tao always did. It surprised Meka how much he liked it. “Having you work with my programmers will be an absolute pleasure. Any more demands before we take you to meet the team building the effigies?”

  Effigies? Meka rolled his eyes. “I won’t even ask what that means. But I do have another . . . request.” He turned what he hoped was a fierce expression on his Axel. “My brother is being forced to be crown prince. He hates it as much as I do. Protect him when your armies take the palace.”

  Thorn answered. “Trust me, Meka, Grigor is also my grandson, and while I don’t know him personally, he’s my blood. I make you an oath that he will be safe.”

  Meka didn’t know much about oaths—or trusting people—but he believed his grandfather. “Thank you.”

  Lynx touched his hand. “We are not the only people who can see and hear Talon’s”—she glanced at her father and grinned sheepishly; Talon had to be a nickname—“Nicholas’s thoughts. Felix and Lukan can, too. Whatever you do, don’t mention to Nicholas that you have a tracker, or Felix will hear you.”

  That would mess everything up. Meka nodded. “I won’t say a word—to anyone. Not ‘til we are safe on Axel’s airship.”

  Stefan touched his shoulder. “I don’t want to alarm you, but I think it is important that you have the facts before you confront Lukan.”

  “If you are trying to say he’s insane, don’t worry. I already have that figured.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. Lukan has a fleet of airships loaded with gas that he has stashed around the world. The trigger to those ships is hidden in his flesh, in his side, I believe. He can launch those ships with a thought, if it suited him.”


  Meka slumped back in his bench. “Okay. That is certainly something to bear in mind.”

  “Indeed it is. But do not dwell too much on it. Such thoughts can debilitate a man.” His grandfather stood, pulling Meka up with him. “Now, if we are done, you can tell me about your mother while we drive to the effigy-building workshop.”

  Meka discovered something new about himself as he sat in a small vehicle headed deep into the mines: He suffered from claustrophobia. He kept it at bay by telling his grandfather about his and Grigor’s lives back at the palace. It wasn’t difficult to see that, all claims to blood put aside, Kestrel wasn’t winning any points with her father.

  Thorn slung his arm around Meka’s shoulder and squeezed him tight. “Tough as it was, you’ve turned out well, and that’s all that matters.”

  Part of Meka wanted to admit that he’d had his father’s help, but he said nothing. Tao’s presence was not just his secret; it was Grigor’s, too. As it was, Meka already felt he’d betrayed his brother by not going back to Cian. He wasn’t going to make it worse by blurting out to everyone that Tao kept them company.

  “And if I wanted them to know, I’d show myself to them.”

  Meka sent a mental hand wave at his father.

  The vehicle drew to a halt outside a chamber carved out of rock. Young people’s laughter spilled out the stone doorway, tensing every muscle in Meka’s body. He wasn’t good with people his own age, and certainly not when they came at him in packs.

  His grandfather must have seen his hesitation, because he leaned over and whispered, “I promise, they don’t bite.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Meka hopped off the vehicle and was about to offer a helping hand when Thorn brushed him away with a snort. Meka guessed being a grandfather didn’t make Thorn old.