Three years ago, they sent Eliza back to the gray lands with the key to unlock the Archimedes Palimpsest and bring it back to Apis.
But Eliza never returned to them.
Instead, there was news of more violence and darkness, of a shining white temple governed by a cruel mistress. News that their people were being tortured and killed, herded to their deaths by armies in gray, and turned into dust by holy men and women in white.
Eliza Wesson was not the child they thought she was.
Heartbroken and defeated, they came to the conclusion that there could be only one explanation.
They had stolen the wrong twin.
Chapter 37
WES COULDN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT Liannan was telling him; it hurt too much even to try. The whole world was burning around him, and somehow the story burned him more. His sister was the High Priestess? Eliza was behind this temple? The one who ordered the white hunt? Who gathered marked pilgrims to this place only to slaughter them? The priestess who worked with the RSA? How could that be?
Eliza was mischievous and delusional, cruel and thoughtless, but she wasn’t a killer, she wasn’t a cannibal.
Was she?
“It’s been nine years, Wes,” Liannan said, standing now and leaning on Shakes’s shoulder. “People change. Sometimes for the worse.” The sounds of fire and fury were only growing stronger. They needed to go.
Wes tightened his fist, but there was nothing to strike. Not here.
“Where is she?” His voice was strangely cold, as if it belonged to someone else. Someone whose sister did not threaten all he loved along with the world they lived in. “Where’s Nat? What does Eliza—my sister—want with her?”
“She went up the stairs,” Brendon said. “We couldn’t stop her. She was like someone possessed.”
Wes moved to the door.
Roark put a hand on Wes’s arm. “This place is burning down. We have to run. You can’t go after her—we can’t lose you, too.”
But Wes shook him off, pausing long enough to grip Roark by the shoulder. “Try to get one of the ferryboats. Wait for me at the dock. I’ll come back with Nat. And I can handle my sister. I promise.”
“Wes,” Liannan said gravely. “Eliza’s not your sister anymore. You have to remember that. She’ll use everything and anything to fight you, to get what she wants.”
He nodded and ran up into the burning building, up into the smoke and flame, to find his love and his shame, his future and his past—at least, the one who held it hostage.
Enough.
• • •
The stairs were black with flame, but Wes kept climbing; he wouldn’t leave Nat behind, and if they were going to die here, they would die together. He found the doorway and burst into the room. The chamber was hewn from the stone, a round room ringed by arched windows and encircled by a wide terrace.
Nat was chained up to the wall, her arms spread out like wings, wrists and ankles shackled.
Powerless as a pinned beetle. A broken bird.
A girl stood in front of her.
Eliza. My sister.
He recognized her bright blue eyes along with her thin nose, her sharp chin, the features that they shared—and yet her face had somehow gone wrong, slightly twisted, the nose too long, the chin too pointed. Even as a child, she had always been annoyed when their mother cooed over his good looks.
“Eliza.”
Her name seemed to rankle her. “You may call me Lady Algeana. And you may kneel.”
Wes didn’t move.
Brother and sister stared at each other. He didn’t recognize this stranger in front of him. He wanted to find his little sister, but she was gone for good: The snow had hardened into ice.
Wes smiled.
If there was one thing he knew, it was how to handle ice. He’d spent his whole life working it. Hard, he knew. Soft, that was more difficult to understand.
Try again.
“You’ve grown up, Lady Algeana.” He clenched his jaw and tried not to glance across the room at Nat, hanging from chains, uncertain if she was alive or dead, awake or unconscious.
“Surprised?” Eliza said with a shrug. She brandished a gleaming blade.
Careful.
Eliza was beyond saving, and he could see that as clearly as the sword she held under Nat’s throat.
THE SCROLL AND THE KEY
SHE HAD BEEN BORN ELIZABETH Alexandra Wesson, sister to Ryan Andrew Wesson, in a frozen city glittering with casino lights. But the name they had given her in Apis was Algeana Penthos, the girl who would take away their sorrow. The Child of the Stars. Daughter of the Earth. Light of the Moon. Dearest Savior. Angel.
On the day that she was to fulfill her destiny, she said good-bye to the two people who loved her the most. By the people of Vallonis, they were called Queen and Teacher. But to her, they were Mother and Father. She would not fail them. She would accomplish what no one in Vallonis had been able to do since its return. She would find and unlock the Gray Tower and recover the missing scroll, the missing spellbook, the Archimedes Palimpsest.
The journey was rough and hard, she was hungry and tired, but she made it up the tower. She placed the key into the lock and opened it.
But the scroll lay behind a wall of impenetrable mist.
She screamed in frustration and unleashed the full force of her rage upon the wall, but it did not dissipate. The mists held.
The scroll, the spellbook, the Achimedes Palimpsest, was out of her reach.
Her failure was devastating and immense. It could only mean one thing. She was not the Queen’s child. She was not Faix’s hope for the new world. She was no one. She had failed them. They would not love her when they found out. They would blame her for being the wrong one.
She could not return to Apis without the scroll.
And in her failure, her anger grew.
She had no idea who she was now. She was not the Bright Star. She was not the Earth’s Daughter. She was nothing, just another marked victim of the gray lands. Just another piece of ice trash.
She hated who she was and hated everyone who was like her.
Her birth parents had been afraid of her, and her adoptive parents in Vallonis had only loved her for what they thought she could do.
But what if Nineveh and Faix found out she could do nothing?
That she was no one?
That they had been wrong about her?
Would they still love her then?
Impossible. No one had ever loved her. Or if they did, they did not love her enough. Not her mother, who died too young, or her father, who was too tired to make an effort. Not her brother—she would not think about her brother—no. Not him. She would forget she even had a brother.
She hated this world and the hope that the White City had instilled in her, the hope that had died in her heart that day.
This world was nothing, and one day, she would destroy even the hope they held for a new one.
• • •
For Eliza had seen a vision in Avalon’s Mirror, a relic from the second age.
The Resurrection of the Flame that will light the world. A vision of drakonfire covering the earth. A baptism of remaking, golden and bright.
Eliza vowed to make that fire her own.
She would burn down the Gray Tower that held the scroll so that all hope was lost forever.
Chapter 38
NAT’S HEART SOARED AT THE SIGHT of Wes, his uniform burned at the edges, his face flushed with heat and fear. It was unnerving to see him picking his way around his sister. And strange to see their two faces, so alike and yet so completely opposed.
Two mirrors, she thought. Not mirror images. Mirror opposites.
His eyes flickered from Eliza’s to her own. Nat tried to lift her head, to smile, but she found she was shaking a
nd her body would not obey.
“What do you want with her?” Wes asked. “Leave her alone, Eliza. Leave my friends alone.”
“My dear brother, just like when I was little, I want everything you have and more,” she said as she placed the drau’s blade right below Nat’s chin.
“I have nothing. You have everything.” He edged nearer to them. Eliza pressed the blade forward, and he froze.
“True. I have everything. Now.” She smiled. “Now that you have foolishly brought me the drakonrydder, and for that you have my gratitude, brother.” Eliza’s mouth twitched. “And her fire is mine to command.”
That was it. That was what Eliza wanted all along.
My drakon.
With Wes in the room, Nat felt her anger grow. Her blood began to burn until her chest caught fire.
You took Faix.
You stole his heart.
You spilled the blood of Liannan.
You will not have my drakon.
Nat closed her eyes and drew from the fire. She felt her power return, flooding back to her, making her almost sick with joy. “Your drakon? Your fire?”
The Lady Algeana took a step back as the metal on Nat’s wrists began to bubble and smoke.
“Think again, bitch,” Nat said, and burst from her shackles, hurling Eliza across the room with a single great roar of flame. “That was for Faix,” she said. “And this one is for me.”
DRAKON MAINAS.
I CALL YOU FROM THE EARTH.
RETURN TO YOUR RYDDER AND VANQUISH OUR FOES!
The fire is within me.
I am the drakon and I am the flame.
She could call her drakon from anywhere on earth and it would answer. That much she understood now. It was only a matter of time.
And fire.
Orange, incandescent flame appeared outside the temple window. The clouds churned, forming a vortex in the sky, and in the center of the swirling clouds, she saw a hint of black, a dark shape growing larger. Nat recognized the churning maelstrom. It was a door, a portal. She had used such a portal when she and Faix traveled from Vallonis to the black ocean. She recalled his words: In the gray lands, the doors to Vallonis are few as we must protect our country, but a door from Vallonis to your world can take us anywhere.
Now her drakon was coming through one such door, heeding her call, traversing the portal to reach the mountain base. The black spot at the center of the vortex grew and grew, a dark center that quickly obscured the gray clouds.
It had healed completely; it was back to its full strength now and able to travel through time and space to get to her and not a second too soon.
The drakon sprang from the vortex; flame issuing from its maw. The creature’s white-hot fire shattered the windows of Eliza’s chamber; it vaporized the door. Flames danced across the walls and Nat fled, Wes at her back, through the place where the door had stood, out onto a terrace, on the top of the mountain, where the drakon hovered in the air, its dark wings unfolding, its green and gold eyes flashing. The drakon roared and its fury made the mountain tremble.
The creature raised its wings, descending on a plume of air, its talons gripping the terrace stones as it landed.
The creature howled, tucked its wings to its sides and craned its long black neck.
My drakon self.
“There you are,” crooned Nat, stroking its hide, marveling at its scales, their surface mottled like coal, rocky and sharp. Black, translucent wings unfurled from the creature’s back, blocking the sky, casting eerie shadows on the ground. Rents and jagged scars littered the beast’s wings. This was a creature of war, its body scarred from combat, every inch of its hide armored and gnarled, but it had healed. Its claws raked ribbons in the stones. The creature huffed and breathed, its every movement a tremor. Sulfur and ash swirled in the air. Nat felt the flame’s heat engulf her, and it was good. It felt like the sun, like a thousand suns rising at once, warming her.
Eliza was out on the terrace and she had backed away against the far wall. But instead of cowering before the great beast, she only laughed louder. “You think you can burn me, rydder? Let’s see how you fare against your own kind.” Then she took the necklace from her neck, a charm held by a golden claw, and smashed it to the stones.
A white flash shot through the air.
Smoke and ash formed a swirling white cloud, a cone of light and frost gathering around the broken pendant.
A figure emerged from the cloud, a scaly, glistening creature.
In the place where the red pendant had smashed against the terrace floor, a white drakon unfurled its translucent wings.
The creature’s neck unwound from its torso, revealing jagged scales and a thorny mane.
Pink eyes glared through nictitating membranes.
The white drakon bared rows of silvery teeth.
A beard of horns disentangled from the creature’s jaws, the spikes swaying as the creature’s neck extended.
It grew larger and larger, rising against the gray clouds, casting shadows over Nat and her drakon. What was this? A drakon in a bottle?
But Faix had said his drakon was dead . . .
There was no time to argue, for the white drakon was very much alive, and hissing.
Eliza laughed and swung into its saddle, brandishing the drau’s sword. “Call your drakon, rydder. Let’s see how you fare against Gria.” Then she flew up through the smoke and into the sky. The white drakon roared at his new freedom, beating his wings faster and faster.
Nat and Wes watched it go.
“Wes,” she said, pulling him close. “You’ve got to get out of here.”
“Did you miss the part about the other drakon?”
“This is not your fight,” she said gently.
“She’s my sister.” He looked down at Nat. “Or she used to be my sister.”
“That thing is no one’s sister.” She shivered.
“I can’t leave without you,” he said. Nat knew it was true. She knew she had to make him go.
“Eliza . . . ,” Nat began.
Wes touched her lip. He understood, in his soldier’s heart.
She did not need to explain it, not to him.
“Go get her,” he said, and he knelt so she could use his knee as a stirrup as she leapt upon her drakon’s back, gripping its black hide, pulling herself to the nape of the drakon’s neck. “Come back to me.”
She smiled. “I will.” The scales shifted beneath her. The drakon tensed its leg muscles; it hunched close to the ground before springing upward, bounding into the sky.
Fire swirled in her chest, in her throat. She was whole again and astride her drakon as they flew high above the temple mountain, above the city of towering hotels. Nat gloried in being part of everything once again, the cool air, the wind rushing against her cheeks as they soared over the city. A white flash cut through the sky. The air darkened; she saw scales. The white drakon shimmered in the clouds, then vanished. Nat pursued, Drakon Mainas pounding its wings.
She heard a crash, the sound of glass fracturing. Nat jerked her head upward. Beyond the lip of the nearest tower, the white drakon soared into view. Its claws broke the white stone and shards shot through the air, tumbling out of the sky.
What had just happened? Faix had a drakon hidden in his charm? A white drakon?
And how did Eliza know to break it?
Nat blinked, and her drakon pitched right, turning, craning its neck, folding its wings to avoid the debris. The white drakon whipped its tail, scattering rubble from the building in all directions. Mainas turned away just in time, dodging a shower of steel and glass the drakon had torn from the building and tossed toward Nat. The sky was a blur of white scales and frantic motion.
A sudden roar nearly shook Nat from her seat.
Dive, Nat cried. We must flee.
Nat fled and the white drakon pursued. She flew low over the streets of the market, then rose, pivoting, diving through the city of glistening towers, hoping to find cover, a place to hide. Nat heard a crunch, the whining of steel bending beneath the white drakon’s claws.
Looking back, she saw Drakon Gria lift a couple of armored trucks and toss them into the air toward them. The drakon had picked up the heavy trucks with no effort or exertion, throwing them into the air like snowballs.
The first crashed into the street below them, a miss. The second sailed so close, Nat felt its wind against her face.
Faster. Faster.
Her drakon rolled and dove, soaring between the towers, struggling to evade the pursuing white beast. She looked for narrow streets, places the larger drakon could not pass, but it was no use, the creature was closing in.
Stop running, she thought. Fight. You twice bested a drone army, armadas fell beneath our flames; we can beat this creature.
Nat and her drakon changed course and met the white drakon head-on, breathing fire, turning one of the towers into a black ruin. The building collapsed and Nat rolled away from its path. The white drakon, close behind, turned too late. The creature crashed through the tower’s crumbling frame, its wings tucked above its back to protect its rider.
The white drakon screamed, its rage doubling as steel and glass pelted its scales. Drakon Gria pierced the cloud of debris, rising above the fallen tower, strips of flesh torn from its wings, boiling metal dripping from gleaming scales. The creature shook off the wreckage, clearing molten metal from its skin. Drakon Gria spread its wings, revealing Eliza, alive and unharmed. Drakon Mainas moved to pursue, but Nat held back her mount.
She spied something in the distance. Not a drakon, something smaller. She saw a lone figure dashing through the streets—a boy, dodging the wreckage, seeking cover. Wes.
What is he doing? He’s going to get himself killed.
While her attention was distracted, the white drakon recovered; its wings sent furious winds rippling toward her. Nat forgot about Wes; she forgot about everything except her mount. Nat sent her drakon spiraling toward the safety of narrow streets, hoping again to evade the drakon’s pursuit, but when she flew into an alley, a building began to collapse right ahead of her. It was too late to turn back. The crunching of steel and glass rang in her ear. No time to dive, to evade.
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