Soul of Smoke

by Caitlyn McFarland

  A rock shifted behind him. Rhys brought his tail around, scoring a long line of red down the mirror-like hide of the silver dragon, placing himself between it and Kai.

  The silver recoiled. Rhys darted forward and bit at the dragon’s neck. It reared onto hind legs, and Rhys surged forward, knocking the silver onto his back. Rhys’s claws sank deep into the other dragon’s belly and he dragged them through soft flesh.

  The silver tried to take an awkward, running leap into the air. Rhys opened his mouth and bathed his opponent in flame. The silver dragon’s dying screams echoed through the valley, became human, then cut off. Nothing was left of the enemy but a pile of ash and charred bone.

  Regret clouded the edges of Rhys’s mind. The world held one less dragon.

  His eyes found Ffion, still in her dragon body, still hunkered over Griffith. One of her attackers lay on the ground a short distance away. She favored one side, swaying dizzily and making pitiful keening noises.

  Thinking her weak, one of Deryn’s attackers peeled off and headed for Ffion. Rhys vaulted toward her—when Iain had died, Morwenna had been barely conscious for days—but with a crazed roar, Ffion met the enemy in a flash of silver wings and lightning. She fought like a rabid, mindless beast, protecting Griffith’s body.

  Something whistled past Rhys’s ear. Deryn’s attackers had noticed him. One, a large male Quetzal, raised its foreclaw and shot two more poisoned spurs at him, one right after the other. An hour ago, they would have hit him. But Rhys was heartsworn now; his body reacted faster.

  He dodged then lunged at the Quetzal as Deryn led Demba, her last pursuer, in a spiraling chase. Rhys let the full weight of his body slam into the Quetzal and snapped his jaws, closing them on the Quetzal’s wings. His mouth and eyes filled with rainbow-colored feathers.

  The Quetzal buried long teeth in Rhys’s right shoulder; the same shoulder Kavar had torn to shreds. Rhys roared and grabbed the Quetzal by the feathered frill that ran down the back of his neck. He wrenched the other dragon’s teeth from his shoulder, losing chunks of flesh. The Quetzal hissed and sunk his claws into Rhys instead, gouging them deep into his neck and chest.

  Rhys swung around, ramming his enemy’s head into the nearest boulder over and over again. The Quetzal’s body went limp, claws releasing. Light glittered off him as if shining through a million prisms, and the Quetzal shrank into a dark-haired man, blood pumping from a hideous wound in his head. The gush slowed to a trickle. The sight made Rhys sick. So few dragons. So much death.

  “There you are, cousin.”

  Rhys’s heart turned to lead. Something huge and white slammed into his injured shoulder, sending him sprawling.

  Owain. The Quetzal had been nothing but a distraction.

  Like a lion on a gazelle, Owain smashed Rhys across the face with one huge foreclaw and lunged, clamping his jaws around Rhys’s throat. Owain bit down, cutting off Rhys’s air. Rhys opened his mouth, gasping, but air didn’t come. He tried to breathe fire, but it pooled in his throat. Owain started to twist, straining the muscles of Rhys neck too far.

  The movement exposed the scales underneath Owain’s chin. Rhys slashed, drawing blood. Owain’s grip didn’t loosen, but he stopped twisting and hunkered down. “Stop fighting, Rhys. Our people need a strong king, and I need the entire mantle to be strong. This is the only way.”

  Rhys thrashed, his lungs screaming. “Our people need to survive. You’ll pile human and dragon bodies so high neither race will be able to see the sun.”

  Owain flicked his wings. “I am the savior of dragonkind.”

  Rhys writhed, instinct taking over. He needed air. But his movements only drove Owain’s teeth deeper into his flesh. Memories danced before Rhys’s eyes. Early memories. Owain flying with him. Owain teaching him the first form of the spear.

  Owain sending assassins after him the night Ayen died.

  Black spots appeared in Rhys’s vision. “You can’t win against the humans. All of us will die!”

  Owain’s voice held sorrow. “I would rather kill every last dragon with my own teeth than see our people diminish and disappear, hiding in holes in the ground.”

  Thirty yards away, the ground boomed with the impact of another body. Ashem had fallen from the sky. Dozens of slashes covered his belly, and his entire body glistened darkly with blood. Gwaladr... He dragged himself toward Rhys, but Kavar slammed down on top of him. Ashem roared, claws and teeth flashing. Fighting. Dying.

  “Rhys...” Ashem’s mental voice was little more than a whisper. “Hang on, they’re almost—Juliet, no!” Juli had appeared from a thicket of trees, running for Ashem.

  “Rhys...?” Kai’s horror flowed over him as she regained consciousness and realized what was going on. She sat up.

  “Kai.” Her presence brought comfort and grief. Consciousness flickered. “Run.”

  She was running. He felt her legs pumping, her body flushed with adrenaline, her lungs sucking in the oxygen that his were denied. But she wasn’t running away; she was running toward him, fumbling with magic she had no idea how to use.

  His dimming brain registered her power, spinning inside her like a burning tornado. All there, all within his reach. He just had to...

  With a mental lunge, he shoved into her mind and grasped the whirling core of heat and power at her center, pulling it toward him, drawing it out through channels too unready, too weak for such a huge flow of magic.

  She stumbled and cried out in pain, falling to her knees in front of Owain.

  Rhys thrust an image into her mind. With a sharp cry of pain but no hesitation, she raised her hands and pointed her palms toward Owain. Rhys yanked on her fire with every ounce of strength he had left. Jets of flame shot from Kai’s fingers straight toward Owain’s face.

  Flesh popped and hissed. Owain released Rhys’s throat and roared in agony. Rhys gulped an enormous breaths of sweet, cold air one after another.

  Fire still flew from Kai’s hands. She was screaming. It was too much magic, too soon. She was burning.

  Horrified, Rhys shoved his way into her mind once again.

  Terror. Absolute, mindless panic. She fought, pushing him back, but he had to stop her before she killed herself. He pushed deeper, finally shutting off the flow of power. Kai collapsed.

  Owain was roaring swiping his claws back and forth in blind agony, a bloody, melted mass where his right eye used to be. He lunged at Kai, who scrambled out of the way.

  A red mist rising before his eyes, Rhys caught Owain’s back foot and hauled the white dragon away from Kai. Bone crunched between his jaws. Scales sheared from flesh. Blood ran over his tongue, and Rhys reveled in it. Vengeance. Justice. Hurt the one who hurt the ones you loved.

  Rhys released Owain’s back leg just as a midnight-blue body slammed into the white dragon, knocking him away. Owain shoved the blue dragon off and pulled himself up, favoring his back left leg and slashing at the newcomer.

  The red mist cleared, and recognition snapped Rhys back to the present. “Evan?”

  “Sorry, boyo! We came as fast as we could!”

  Rhys was still taking great, heaving breaths, terrified of the pleasure he’d taken in hurting Owain. Above, a dozen new dragons had joined the fight.

  The Invisible had arrived.

  Owain backed away from Rhys and Evan, hissing a cloud of ice. Evan stopped.

  A shadow passed overhead, and Morwenna landed between Rhys and Owain, as well. “We outnumber you, Firelost,” she hissed.

  Owain exhaled more of his icy mist. Evan drew back. Touching it would have the same effect as plunging a hand into liquid nitrogen.

  Owain’s white lips drew back over whiter teeth in an expression that was part grin, part snarl. He leaped into the air. “Withdraw! Kavar, leave him!”

  Around them, Owain’s dragons rose into the air. K
avar went last. As he took off, a bleeding Ashem collapsed to the ground.

  “We need to leave, too”. Evan blinked coal-gray eyes at Rhys. “He may have reinforcements in the area. He could come back.”

  Rhys needed to be human, to go to Kai, touch her, make sure she was all right. He needed to hold her before the grief he’d held off during the battle crashed down, crushing him.

  “Griffith is dead,” he said, unable to contain the words.

  Evan went still. Morwenna let out a keening cry. “Who killed him? I’ll blast them to char and eat their bloody heart!”

  There was no time. He leaned into the weight of duty, using it to prop himself up. “Vengeance will keep. Get Griffith. Protect Ffion. Evan is right. We need to gather what we can from the cave and leave.”

  Still keening, Morwenna lifted off. Evan followed, and Rhys could finally turn to face Kai. At some point, she’d taken shelter behind a cluster of small boulders.

  She sat up, hugging herself. Tears streaked her face. Like the fall of an ax, she slammed a mental shield over her mind.

  Rhys staggered.

  “Don’t you ever force your way into my head again!” Tears threatened to strangle her voice as she pulled herself to her feet. “My mind belongs to me. I will not be violated by dragons anymore. Stay out, or I swear I will find a way to end this.”

  Rhys felt as if the ground had dropped out from under him. “Kai—” A void gaped where her mind had been, an emptiness populated by nothing but a cold, howling wind.

  “No! Ffion said it wouldn’t be like Kavar.” She hugged herself, her face gray, like she might be sick. “It was worse. Stay out.”

  He started to change so he could look her in the eyes, make her see reason, when a shrill voice rent the air.

  “Rhys!” Juli ran toward him, her eyes wide. “He’s losing too much blood. I think he’s dying. Help him.”

  Beyond Juli, Ashem was on the ground, human. Blood pooled around him.

  Griffith dead. Cadoc cursed. Ashem dying.

  Sunder me.

  Later, there would be time for grief; there would be time to make things up to Kai. Now, tired to his soul, he called the change, diminishing into his human body. He’d failed Griffith and Cadoc. At least he could help Ashem.

  Chapter Thirty

  To Save You

  Wind whistled in Kai’s ears from her place on Tane’s back, but it didn’t cool the scorched feeling that had settled deep into her bones. Nor did it help the throbbing headache, or the burning pain in her forearm, though that was mostly gone, now.

  Dragons flew in a vee formation around them, making it obvious where they had gotten the name for their military units. Tane was on the inside of the vee, protected by the others because he carried Kai on his back. Now that she was heartsworn, Kai could see through the veils the dragons pulled over themselves. There was still a sort of shimmering in the air around them, but it no longer hid what was inside.

  Tane’s skin wasn’t like the others’, she observed numbly. It was smooth instead of scaled, more like an amphibian than a reptile. He was Mo’o—a dragon from the Pacific islands—and one of the reinforcements who had saved them.

  She glanced toward Rhys, who flew next to a sleek red female. If Kai was right, that dragon would be Morwenna, the haughty-looking woman from the camp. There was something possessive about the way she flew so close to Rhys. Something intimate. Their movements didn’t have the strange synchrony that Ffion and Griffith’s had, but they definitely knew each other well.

  Rhys turned her way, and Kai was assaulted by the memory of him forcing himself deep into her mind. For a minute, she thought she might throw up all over Tane’s dappled skin. She hadn’t thought a mental invasion could get worse than what Kavar had done.

  Wrong.

  She checked the shield over her mind, trying to ignore the feeling of being alone in pitch darkness on the edge of a cliff. It had only been hours since she’d heartsworn. This feeling would go away. It had to go away. Because there was no way in hell she was letting Rhys back in.

  They flew over pine-covered mountains and snowy wilderness, tense and on edge. Ashem, who had insisted on flying himself, was doing his best, but he struggled to keep up. Kai could see Juli clinging to his back, her face buried against his sinuous neck. For someone who’d only known him a few days, she was utterly undone by his injuries.

  Heartswearing was kind of sick that way, Kai decided, shooting another glance at Rhys. He stared straight ahead, sometimes turning toward Morwenna, as if they were talking. Her heart wrenched, fear battling with idiot longing. Things had been going well, but he had hurt her. In hurting her, he had kept himself alive. Did that make what he had done less awful?

  She couldn’t decide.

  She laid against Tane’s neck, trying not to think of Rhys, watching the Mo’o’s wings. They reminded her of lionfish fins, frills streaming in the wind if his flight.

  A town passed beneath them, breaking the monotony of forested mountains. Eventually, the mountains sank into dry, brown, eastern Washington with its scattering of towns and farms. A couple hours later, the land rose once again into forested hills. They landed, according to Tane, about an hour outside of Seattle, Tane setting down in a stretch of mountainous forest between two towns like gentle rain. Several cars were parked in a lonely garage painted the same grays and greens as the trees around them.

  “What is this place?” Kai looked at Tane, who had become a large, Polynesian-looking man with tattoos on his cheeks and a short, gray-streaked black ponytail.

  “We can’t just go flying into the city.” Tane smiled at her, though it looked small on his broad, brown face, like he was more used to laughter and giant grins. It didn’t even crinkle his tattoos. “We keep cars here, become human and drive into town. Less mass hysteria.”

  Kai wished she could return the smile. She wished she could feel anything at all. But if she let the tsunami of her suppressed emotions crash down on her, she would drown.

  The dragons pulled four dark SUV’s out of the garage and onto the narrow, gravel road that led away into the forest.

  Kai followed Deryn and Evan to the closest one. In a rare display of dragon strength, they yanked out the middle seats. Someone produced blankets from the garage, and they laid them on the floor of the SUV before they put Griffith’s wrapped body inside.

  Ffion had spent the trip unconscious, cradled in the claws of dragon who looked like it had escaped an ancient Chinese painting. Awake now, she crawled in with Griffith. Weeping and clutching her stomach, she curled up and put her head on Griffith’s chest.

  Ashem came over, his face drawn, and pressed two fingers to her forehead. “Sleep. We’ll get you both home.”

  Ffion’s tear-filled eyes drifted closed.

  Grief clawed at Kai, rending her heart. It wasn’t fair. Though Griffith had been the largest of the dragons, he’d been the least frightening. He’d been kind, and smiling, and so obviously in love with Ffion.

  Hot tears dripped down Kai’s face, and she covered it with her hands, remembering what Rhys had said that night he’d first held her hand. It’s normal people—people who want nothing but peace, family and happiness—who die because some idiot wanted some grand thing.

  No one had deserved peace and happiness more than Griffith and Ffion.

  “Kai?” Evan was watching her from the driver’s side of another SUV.

  Kai wiped her eyes. “Yeah?”

  “Ashem wants you to ride with me and Deryn.”

  Kai nodded. She looked around for Ju
li, wanting to make sure her friend would know where she’d gone.

  Juli was hovering behind Ashem, watching him with worried eyes. Ashem had one arm clamped over his quickly-bound abdomen and was pulling himself into another car, pain written on his face. Juli looked up met Kai’s eyes, and nodded, as if Kai’s concerns had been spoken aloud and Juli had heard them.

  Maybe she had.

  Kai climbed into the back of the SUV Evan indicated then leaned against the seat. Deryn climbed into the passenger seat and slammed her door. As soon as it was closed, her silent tears became audible weeping. Evan reached over and wrapped her in a hug, kissing her hair. They held each other, and Kai felt her own tears run hot down her face, leaving trails of salt across her lips.

  Griffith. Gone. Just gone. As sudden and shocking as the snap of a rubber band, leaving Ffion alone. Kai covered her face with her hands, crying as quietly as she could so she didn’t intrude on the others’ grief.

  The SUV rocked and the side door slammed shut. The seat dipped beside her. Surprised, Kai took her hands from her eyes and jerked back. “Rhys.” She’d thought she’d seen him get into a car with Morwenna.

  His scent washed over her, at once strange and familiar. Evan put the SUV in gear, and they followed the vehicle that held Ffion and Griffith down the bumpy road.

  Rhys didn’t look at her. Bruises ringed his neck, black and purple already fading to yellow. His eyes were red, though his face held no evidence of tears, only tight control.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. His voice was barely audible above the rumble of the SUV’s engine.

  Kai didn’t respond, torn between the repulsing fear of being invaded and the deep, unrelenting need to be close. Closeness won. Tentatively, she reached out and touched his cheek. As if the touch broke some invisible spell, Rhys crumpled. He wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her stomach, shoulders heaving.