Soul of Smoke

by Caitlyn McFarland

  Cadoc glared, flexing his fingers, the fine chains around them tightening. He met Owain’s laugh with a mocking smile. “‘Kings’? Rhys is the only king.”

  Owain’s jaw tensed. “My mother was queen. The mantle was hers. It will be mine. My usurping cousin is no king.”

  A sudden chill bit deep into Cadoc’s fingers, and he gaped at his hands. They grew colder, ice spreading down his fingers and into his palms, blossoming into intense, burning pain. They grew colder still, his skin taking on frightening icy whiteness.

  “It’s been a thousand years, but I haven’t forgotten what a pest you were. Always hauling around some noisemaker or another, blowing on it, plucking at it, disrupting the quiet.” Owain knelt in front of him. “Wasn’t your father a musician? Do you miss him less now? Don’t move.” His last words held the weight of the mantle.

  Cadoc felt bile rising in his throat. He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t fight it. The mantle had never been able to control a dragon’s mind. However, it could control his body.

  “Put your hands on the ground.”

  Like a puppet, Cadoc felt his arms jerk out and down. His palms pressed to the floor, fingers splayed numbly over the stone. Sweat beaded on his brow. The softest of involuntary whimpers escaped his throat. At least Rhys is alive. They’re all alive, and I’ll keep them that way.

  Cadoc bit his tongue and forced himself to look up, away from his hand and into Owain’s frosty, pale eyes. Owain stood and placed one booted foot over the fingers of Cadoc’s right hand. “Where is the cave? You’ve already gotten us close. Kavar has returned from the pointless trip to Cadarnle Rhys commanded him to make—it’s only a matter of time before he senses Ashem. Help me, Cadoc. Twenty miles from where you were captured. Twenty miles in which direction? Help me, and I’ll free you.”

  Tears burned behind his eyes, but Cadoc didn’t speak.

  Owain frowned. “You know, if I only freeze the bones, I think your fingers might even stay on your hand. Let’s find out.”

  Owain brought his boot down hard, then lifted it and stomped again, grinding his heel into Cadoc’s flesh. Hideous cracks and pops echoed in the small room. Cadoc’s hand was numb, so he didn’t scream. It was too horrible for screams, or tears, or knowing.

  Music was lost to him forever.

  “I’ll give you another day to think. You’ve given us enough that we’ll find him eventually. Make it easier on me, and you won’t lose your other hand.”

  Owain left. Alone, Cadoc crawled on his knees and uncrushed hand to a corner and threw up bitter bile. Rhys, best friend and king, was safe. But even if Cadoc lived, he wouldn’t be alive. There was no life without music.

  Chapter Twenty

  Relentless Current

  Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep.

  Juli groaned. Dead tired, she tried to silence the hideously consistent alarm on her watch. Her arm wouldn’t move. With another groan, she shoved at Kai’s limp weight until her friend sighed and rolled off. Juli shuddered at the sudden cold. She turned off her alarm and nudged Kai. “Get up!”

  Kai made a snuffling sound, but didn’t move.

  “Now! I thought you were worried about your cult following us.” Juli crawled from the shelter of the rocks and shivered. The wind had picked up in the hour they’d slept, bringing in a sheet of clouds. It looked like it was going to snow.

  Grumbling, Kai hauled herself out of the space in the stones and rubbed her eyes. Anticipating what Kai would ask, Juli fished around in her pack. She tossed Kai an apple she’d grabbed from those weirdly cold shelves in the kitchen.

  Something was odd about those people, even aside from the fact that they were kidnappers. The white fires that didn’t produce smoke and heat, the way the cave was warm until you passed through a definite barrier out onto the ledge. Of course, there would be a reasonable explanation. There always was.

  They didn’t talk much as they stowed their blankets and took turns going behind the boulders to pee, then shouldered their packs and moved on. Not far from the boulders they came to a narrow place where the river dove down into a wide ravine, the mountains rising like walls on either side. At the bottom, the river ran fast and deep. Before them, a narrow lip of stone hugged the canyon wall.

  “We’ll have to walk along that.” Kai indicated the ledge.

  Juli swallowed. She wanted to protest, or at least to complain, but it was clear there was no other way. Though she leaned out as far as she dared, she could see no end to the narrow, twisting canyon. “What if the path disappears?”

  Kai eyeballed the ledge. “We try to climb up or we turn back. I may be able to get up the side. We’ve got rope. I can haul you up.”

  Juli glanced back the way they’d come, but unless they climbed out, there wasn’t any other way to go. “Fine. But I don’t like it.”

  Kai shrugged. “It’s this, go up, or go back.”

  Juli’s muscles tensed at the idea of having to turn around. They’d lose all that time. The path had to widen again soon. This would work.

  Light snow started to fall as they edged along the rock shelf. Well, Juli edged. Kai walked normally, strolling down the three-foot wide ledge as if it were a sidewalk.

  It made Juli’s stomach turn. “Will you at least put your hand on the wall or something? I’ve already dealt with your death once this week.”

  Kai didn’t turn, but she laughed and slowed her pace. “Better?”

  Juli frowned. Only Kai could be kidnapped and come through it still laughing.

  An odd, heavy feeling washed over Juli, a kind of tension in the air, like a storm about to break. Juli looked to the sky. In front of her, Kai swore softly.

  “There are better words, Kai,” Juli scolded. “Keep moving. I want to get off this ledge. Those clouds are about to bury us in snow.”

  “It’s not the snow.” Kai tipped her head back, gaze darting across the iron-gray sky. Suddenly, she looked at Juli, her eyes wide with alarm. “It’s Rhys. We’ve got to run. If we can find an overhang or something he might fly over us.”

  “Fly over us? Have you lost your mind?”

  But it was no use, Kai had already taken off. She glanced back. When she saw that Juli hadn’t moved, Kai slowed. “Juli, come on! We have to find somewhere to hide!”

  Heart in her throat, Juli moved faster, hugging the canyon wall. Kai was still looking back at her. “Kai, watch where you’re going!”

  She didn’t listen. “Juli, hurry up!”

  Time seemed to slow as Kai’s heel caught on an uneven part of the stone. She stumbled. Her arms windmilled, reaching, grasping at the air. Before Juli could take a breath to scream, Kai fell.

  With a splash, the dark water parted then closed a mouth of white foam over her head. Just like that, Kai was gone.

  “Kai!”

  Wind tore through the canyon, Juli’s flailing hair stung her face. She dropped her pack. A mountain climber Kai might be, but she was no swimmer. Juli, on the other hand, had been a certified lifeguard since she was fourteen. With ease born of long practice, she leaped from the ledge. Feet-first, knees slightly bent, arms crossed tightly over her chest, braced for the lung-spasming shock of cold.

  She never hit the water. Something vast and black collided with her. It knocked the wind out of her as it caught her around the waist, wrapping her in what felt like thick, rough cables that caught on the fabric of her gloves.

  Instead of falling, instead of saving Kai, she zoomed above the surface of the chill, brown water. Then the river dropped away. Her abductor carried her higher, the air pulsing rhythmically around her. Juli tried to scream, but fear tightened her throat and the scaly cables around her middle made it hard to breathe.

  Far below in the river, a pale oval momentarily broke the dark surface. Juli found her voice. “Kai!”

 
Kai disappeared as the river slipped around a bend between canyon deep, narrow canyon walls. The thing that held her had to climb, tucking her up close to avoid dashing her on the rocks. She couldn’t see the water anymore. She screamed, desperate, reaching for the river. “Kai!”

  Some huge, invisible disturbance shot beneath her. No more than a vast heat shimmer, it had a very real effect on the trees and rocks along the canyon’s edge, sending sprays of rock and dust into the gray air, ripping out the saplings that clung to the edge as it made its way downstream, following Kai. For an instant, the shimmer fell away, and Juli stared at a colossal impossibility with scales as crimson as blood. Then the red monster disappeared behind a ridge of rock.

  Was that—? No. The impossibility of the monster made Juli’s vision go dark at the edges. Just then, the cables around her middle shifted. Juli looked down and realized they ended in claws.

  The thing that held her was alive.

  Her world ground to a halt. “Clearly, I am dead.” Her voice was breathy and high. “This is not what I imagined dying would be like.”

  The monster didn’t respond. Higher they flew, upriver and around the mountain she and Kai had so carefully picked their way down last night. A cave mouth came into view. Juli, who felt like she was barely holding on to sanity, screamed as loud as she could when the beast passed her mid-flight from its back claws to its front.

  “Quiet, woman,” a velvet voice growled in her head. A familiar voice. A voice used to giving commands. Though his flight was steady, the world tilted.

  The black monster flared its wings, and they alighted on the ledge outside the cave. Juli got a good look at her abductor for the first time. It was a dragon, which, Juli thought, was somewhat rude. A sixty-foot spiked monstrosity with luminous golden eyes should not under any circumstances have the audacity to exist.

  In a weird, blinding flash of darkness, the monster disappeared. Ashem had replaced it, anger snapping in his eyes...his golden eyes. Dizzy, Juli sat down hard.

  “I’m dead,” she said, dazed. “But despite being dead, I seem to be going into shock.”

  Ashem scowled, his expressive dark brows drawing together. “You aren’t dead. You’re too busy being a thorn in my side.”

  “I certainly am dead,” Juli snapped. “Or else you drugged me. Yes, that’s probably it. You gave me some kind of hallucinogen. Where’s Kai?” She stood and looked out over the valley, panic rising. Kai’s terrified face filled her mind, her misty green eyes wide with surprise and terror.

  Ashem’s gaze unfocused for a moment, and then he looked at Juli. His voice was tight. “She’s still in the river. Rhys is trying to get her out.”

  * * *

  Rhys ran alongside the canyon, claws leaving deep gouges in the earth, his fear mounting with each second. Kai’s face was a white oval against the dark water, panic clear in her choked-off screams. She swam for the side, but a rime of ice kept her from getting a grip on the wall. The current spun her, buffeting her against a rock.

  “Rhys!” She coughed out water, reaching toward him. He must have dropped the veil. “Rhys, please!”

  She went under. Terror dug icy fingers in to Rhys’s heart. “Kai!”

  He tried to squeeze through the top of the canyon, but the opening was too narrow. Kai bobbed to the surface, but her movements were slow and uncoordinated. She reached for him again, coughing too hard to scream. Her head slammed against a rock, and Kai went under again.

  She didn’t resurface.

  Rhys called the fire and changed in mid-air. The pain came roaring back, wind whistling past human ears as he tumbled toward the black water, momentum carrying him forward.

  He exploded through the freezing surface of the river, spinning and somersaulting. He smacked into rocks and debris, unable to tell which way was up and which was down. Fighting for control, he righted himself and broke the surface, gasping.

  Rhys opened his mouth to call for Kai, but it filled with dirty water. He spluttered. It was all he could do to keep himself up and away from the walls as he fought the relentless current. He didn’t see Kai, but he could feel her. She was close, and she was alive.

  Using his pain as a beacon, Rhys dove beneath the surface. Just as he was about to run out of air, his fingers brushed something soft and cold that sent an electric pulse through his body.

  He hauled her still, cold form against him and kicked until they broke the surface. She was unconscious, her face as white as the snow dissolving in the dark water around them, her lips purple. He held her against him with one arm, using the other to steer away from rocks and debris.

  She was so cold. He’d been worried about her drowning; he hadn’t realized she would go hypothermic in minutes. He couldn’t warm her with magic, not here, and he couldn’t transform for fear of dropping her or dashing them both against the sides of the narrow canyon.

  The river turned, its current too strong for him to fight. Rhys twisted, his body slamming against the oncoming rocks instead of hers. He gritted his teeth and grunted in pain.

  “Ancients, help me.”

  As if the universe had heard, the ravine came to an abrupt end. The river spilled wide and shallow across a small valley. Rhys’s feet hit the rocky bottom, dragging for a minute before he managed to stand. He lifted Kai and limped to the bank, laying her on the snow-dusted, damp earth. She rolled onto her side, vomiting water.

  He smoothed black hair away from her face. She was so pale and cold she might have been carved of marble, but the shock of skin-to-skin contact pulsed through his fingers.

  Kai gasped and coughed, her teeth chattering. She reached toward his face and ended up wrapping her fingers around his pendant. “Rhys. Hypo...hyp...river. Cold.”

  “I know.”

  “Donwannagoback.”

  “You have to get warm.” The valley was as open as a bowl. There was nowhere to build a fire, nowhere to lay her out of the elements. He pulled her into his arms, where she shivered like a leaf in autumn wind. He opened his senses to her. Her temperature was still dropping, so cold that a blast of heat from him would shock her system and do serious damage.

  Her eyelashes fluttered. “Juli...?”

  “She’s safe.”

  “Don’ you tryda kiss me.”

  “I won’t.”

  She took a shallow breath. “Pro...mise...”

  “I swear.” He would lose her if he didn’t get her warm. Humans were so fire-blasted frail.

  He laid her down, not realizing until it was too late that she was still clinging to his pendant. The chain snapped, the rhombus with its citrine sun still wrapped in her hand. He tucked it into the pocket of Kai’s hoodie, underneath her coat; he’d get it later.

  He jogged a few dozen feet away and transformed. As small as she’d felt in his arms, she looked even smaller now. The white halo of a heartsworn mate glowed diffusely around her, dimmer than it had been.

  “Stay with me, Kai. Stay awake.”

  “Tired...”

  He gathered her up, holding her close to offer some protection from the freezing wind. He leaped into the sky, wings beating hard as he made steady, one-sided conversation. “Come on, George. Don’t sleep. Not yet.”

  Flight had never seemed so slow. He soared over the river, the twinge in his shoulder turning into a scream as he pushed himself harder, forced his wings to move faster. He banked around the mountain, and the cave finally came into sight. He flared his wings, grasping the ledge with his back claws.

  Inside, Juli crouched against one wall of the cavern, watching Rhys with terrified eyes as he hobbled inside on three legs. She made an odd, strangled noise, like she wanted to scream but wouldn’t let herself.

  Rhys laid Kai on the ground. He released the dragon body, sliding into human shape. When the fire of his transformation cleared, Juli was l
eaning over Kai.

  “She’s unconscious and hypothermic.” Juli’s voice quavered, but managed to sound brisk. “She needs to get out of these clothes and get warm. I’ll need—”

  “No.” Rhys scooped Kai from the ground, settling her against his chest. “I’ll need something warm, soup or a drink.”

  “Give her back!” Juli shouted, her eyes full of tears. “I will take care of her!”

  With Kai in his arms, Rhys’s pain had all but disappeared. “I can warm her up faster than you.”

  Juli grabbed him, teeth bared and eyes wild. “You can’t have her!”

  Urgency made his voice rough. “I won’t hurt her.”

  “You aren’t taking her out of my sight,” Juli snapped. “You don’t know what to do. She needs to shiver—”

  “I know.” Rhys shot a look at Ashem.

  With a longsuffering sigh, Ashem approached Juli from behind, as if she were a dangerous animal. A second later, she crumpled, and Ashem caught her. Like Kai, Juli wore one of Deryn’s old coats and Ashem’s old gloves, her body swathed from head to toe in layers. Cadoc must have shown Kai the hoard.

  Cadoc.

  Rhys swore. He had to take care of Kai first.

  “What do I do with her?” Ashem looked from Juli to Rhys as if he’d been handed a bomb.

  “Take care of her.” Rhys didn’t have to look back to know Ashem was scowling. He carried Kai through the sleeping room, where the others were waiting.

  “Kai!” Ffion pressed forward to look at her. “She’s soaked. Is she all right?” She looked at Rhys. “Are you all right?”

  He didn’t stop. “Get something warm for her to drink.”

  Ffion ran off. Deryn followed him through the archway. “I’m glad you’ve both survived,” she said, her voice deceptively mild.

  Rhys shot her a look. Deryn would like Kai better for this escape attempt. “So am I.” Rhys laid Kai on the stone floor, pausing briefly to conjure a large ball of flame and set it hovering a foot over her chest. It gave off enough heat to help a little. “Owain has Cadoc.”