Kingdom of Ashes

by Rhiannon Thomas

  “An alliance then.”

  “Why would I need to bargain for that? You are already mine. If Finnegan dies, you’ll lose your last friend. Queen Orla will not keep you here, when she can blame you for her son’s death. King John will not let you live, and Rodric cannot protect you. If Finnegan dies, you will come crawling to me, crying for revenge against them all. And I do not bargain for things that I can have if I do not intervene.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “It is only a little thing. I want you to return to the mountain and face one of the dragons there. I want you to take its heart and bring it to me.”

  Aurora struggled to catch her breath. She had been right. All of her theories about Celestine, her bringing back the dragons, her plans . . . she had been right.

  “Bring me a dragon heart, Princess. Place it in my hands, and I’ll save your precious prince.” She stroked Aurora’s jaw line with one long finger. “What is it? Are you afraid to take the heart of a creature that has killed tens of thousands of people, to save your prince? Are you too good?”

  No. She was not too good. She was already bargaining with Celestine. But if she did this, then she would be giving Celestine what she wanted. The ability to control the dragons, like Aurora could.

  But Celestine had only asked her to place it in her hands. Wording mattered in these deals. As long as Aurora placed the heart in Celestine’s hands, her part of the deal would be fulfilled. Celestine had said nothing about letting her keep the heart. “Why not get it yourself,” Aurora said, “if you are so much stronger than me?”

  “I cannot,” Celestine said. “It must be you.”

  The words on the wall of that room. Only her. She had been right. She had been right.

  “And if I do, Finnegan will live?”

  “He will live.”

  “Not just live,” Aurora said. “He’ll be as healthy as he was before. He’ll be completely unchanged by the dragon.”

  “He will be unchanged, although he will remember.”

  If Aurora put a dragon heart into Celestine’s hands, the witch would control them. But Finnegan would live.

  And Aurora could trick Celestine. She could keep the bargain, and then snatch the heart away. She could use it herself. She could use her connection with the dragons, the connection she did not have, to burn Celestine away. The heart might not even work for Celestine. The witch had been wrong about the dragons before, when she had assumed that she could take one of their hearts herself. She might not be able to use the heart, even if it was placed in her hands.

  But Aurora could not be certain.

  “What do you plan to do with it?” she said.

  “That is not part of our deal, nor any of your concern.”

  “I want more. If I get you the heart, I want answers, too. Honest ones.”

  “You already named your price,” Celestine said, “but I am in a generous mood. I will answer three questions. That is a good number, don’t you think? Three questions, and the life of your precious prince for a dragon heart. Do we have a deal?”

  Aurora closed her eyes. In the darkness, she could almost smell Finnegan’s charred skin. She could feel his hands on her waist, his lips against hers, every cell inside her sparking alive. A choice for herself. She would burn down Petrichor herself before she let one of the few good things in her life die.

  “Yes,” Aurora said. “We have a deal.”

  Celestine’s snatched Aurora’s wrist, yanking her so close that Aurora could feel the witch’s breath on her cheek. “Good choice,” she said.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  AURORA WANTED TO LEAVE IMMEDIATELY, BUT exhaustion weighed her down, and she needed her strength if she was going to survive. She had to use this day to rest, and to prepare.

  Her pack still had plenty of supplies, especially for two days of nonstop travel, and a quick message to the kitchens furnished her with fresh bread and water. Her feet were blistered and bleeding, so she wrapped them in bandages, trying to copy the way that Nettle had done it, all those weeks ago. If only Nettle were here now. She would know what to do.

  She found another silver chain in a jewelry box on her dresser, but it was shorter than the last, leaving the dragon to rest below the hollow of her collarbone. It rattled every time she moved.

  She set off before dawn the next day, dressed in a fresh tunic and trousers, her hair pulled back in a sloppy bun. Her dagger was shoved in her belt. The flat of it bumped against her thigh with every step.

  The dock was deserted except for a couple of fishermen, preparing their boats for the day. The boat waited where they had left it, secured to the dock by some loyal soul after Aurora had run to the palace. She walked across to it. Nobody gave her a second glance.

  “Girl!”

  Lucas strode across the dock behind her.

  “What are you doing, girl? You’re not going out alone, are you?”

  She gripped the rope tying the boat to the dock. “I have to,” she said. “There’s something I need to do.”

  “Out there? You’ll get yourself killed. What help to Finnegan will that be?”

  She stared at him. His shoulders were tense, almost aggressive. Her hand flew instinctively to the dragon pendant.

  “I want to go back to the mountain,” she said. “To see what’s there, like we planned before. It’s the only thing I can think of that might help.”

  “I understand the impulse, girl, but it won’t make a difference.”

  “Perhaps not,” Aurora said. “I have to try.” She continued to stare at him. “What are you doing here? Were you trying to go to the waste?”

  “I was,” he said, as though challenging her to argue. “I thought if I had a little more information, I might be able to figure out a cure. But I’m an expert, girl. I know what I’m dealing with. You can’t go.”

  He was lying. He knew about her power, knew what she was capable of. If anything, she was safer in the waste than he was. Lucas was hiding something from her.

  “You won’t stop me,” she said. “You should stay with Finnegan. He needs your expertise.”

  Lucas shook his head. “I can’t help him right now,” he said. “And if I can’t stop you, I suppose we’d better go together. Two sets of eyes’ll be better than one, and Finnegan’ll never forgive me if anything happens to you.” He untied the knot with a few steady movements.

  She should refuse him. She did not need more complications. But she needed to move quickly, and Lucas knew his way around the waste better than anyone. She would be no use to Finnegan if she got lost. And she was curious. What, exactly, did he intend to do? He had seen her fire magic. He knew he could not hurt her. So what was lurking out there that he needed to see?

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  They walked across the waste in silence, following the path they had taken on their struggling walk back with Finnegan. The world had been quiet then, as though the kingdom had been holding its breath. Or perhaps Aurora had been too focused on Finnegan’s pain and her panic to notice anything that was happening around her. Now the air seemed full of dragons. Their journey was interrupted by screams and shadows. Every time they left the melted ruins behind, limping onto open ground, they broke into something like a run, ducking as though that few-inch difference in height would prevent the dragons spotting them from above.

  For the first time, Aurora saw the dragons and felt truly afraid. She had not been able to control the one in the mountains. What if she had been wrong, what if she couldn’t control them? She could be walking into a trap.

  But no. Celestine wanted a dragon heart, and she needed Aurora to get it. That meant she had been right, that she was connected to the dragons, that they shared blood. She had lost control in the mountains, but she would not do so again.

  She and Lucas did not speak. Hour after hour, Aurora tried to think of how to deal with Celestine, how to deal with Lucas. The scholar complicated things. Celestine might be unwilling to speak with Au
rora while he was there, and Aurora did not know how she could sneak off for a private conversation in this derelict place.

  Perhaps she could use him to her advantage. His presence could create a distraction for Celestine. But Celestine would kill him if he threatened her or her scheme.

  She ran over her plan in her mind. She would let Celestine touch the heart, place it in her hands, and then burn it into nothing. If she had an affinity with the dragons, if they shared blood, she might be able to tap into the heart’s magic, make it burn from the inside. Celestine would be left with nothing, but the bargain would have been fulfilled.

  It was not a good plan, but it was the only one she had.

  And she would get three questions. Three honest answers from the witch. The number was nowhere near enough. She could ask her about the curse, about her mother, about her magic and the dragons and Celestine’s past. She could find out what Celestine wanted, or what she intended to do now. But she could only pack so much nuance into three questions.

  She needed to learn more about Celestine’s plans, before anything else. But there were other things that she longed to learn. Should she sacrifice her one chance for answers, to help people who hated her?

  She didn’t know.

  They reached a village that was half-intact as the sun began to set. A few buildings still had their roofs, at least, and a small pool of water waited in the middle of the central square. Aurora sank onto the ground and scooped the water in her hands. It tasted of ash, like everything else here, yet it was still cool to the touch. The stars glistened, and fire wove across the sky.

  “We should stop,” Lucas said. He sounded out of breath. “It will be too dangerous to go on tonight, and this will be the safest place to rest until morning.”

  “We need to go as quickly as we can,” Aurora said. Her whole body ached, but they had to keep going. “Finnegan can’t wait.”

  “It’ll be better for us to wait one more night than for us to not return at all.”

  “We can rest for an hour,” Aurora said. “But then I’m moving on, with or without you.”

  Lucas sank to the ground beside her, letting out a sigh. “It’s risky,” he said.

  “So is staying here.”

  She let her fingers trail in the water as they sat, staring at the sky. Dragons were all around them, flashing in and out of view.

  “Were they what you expected?” she said. “The dragons? You studied them for years before they came back. Were they what you thought they’d be?”

  “No,” he said. “No, they weren’t.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “I didn’t expect them to be killers,” Lucas said. “I didn’t expect them to destroy the kingdom. I knew that the dragons killed and burned, it’s not hard to figure out, but there’s a difference between knowing it and really accepting it. Taking it in. I didn’t really know it until I saw my first smoldering village. The creatures can’t be the same after you’ve seen that.”

  “No,” Aurora said. “No, I suppose not.” An itch ran through her legs, and suddenly she needed to walk, to leave this haunted town and finish what she’d set out to do. She scrambled to her feet. “You can wait here if you like,” she said. “But I’m going on now.”

  Lucas stood without a word, and, together, they continued across the waste.

  The sun rose, and the mountain grew before them, until it was all that Aurora could see, blocking out the sky, filling the world above and ahead. A few dragons circled the jagged mountain top. Aurora climbed, her legs aching, gripping outcroppings and boulders to drag herself farther up the mountainside.

  Then the ground sloped away, and the cave engulfed them, all sound muffled. This time, Aurora did not dare to create a light. They would stumble blindly downward, and the dragons would light the way.

  Perhaps it was the shaking of the earth that warned her, the sound of someone walking too close to her back. Perhaps it was the sound of Lucas’s frightened, heavy breathing close to her ear, or the whisper of I’m sorry as he leaned in. Perhaps it was the anticipation of the cold glint of steel as it moved toward her throat. Pain sliced under her chin, and magic slammed out of her.

  Lucas yelled. The knife fell out of his hand, burning red. It clattered onto the ground, and Aurora kicked it, one arm outstretched to shove him away, the other reaching for her own dagger. Light flickered between them, illuminating Lucas’s panicked face.

  “What are you doing?” she hissed.

  “I had to,” he said. “If you understood—”

  “Had to what? Try to kill me?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t let you go down there.”

  “Why?” she spat. “Because it’s too dangerous?”

  Her fist tightened around the dagger. She stepped forward, forcing Lucas back against the wall. “Why did you attack me?” she said.

  “You don’t understand.” He glanced down the tunnel. His whole body shook now. “You’re fools, you and Finnegan both. The dragons already destroyed most of the kingdom. Who knows what they’ll do if you interfere with them? What if you make them cross the water? I can’t let you do that.’”

  Farther down the tunnel, a dragon screamed.

  “So you came all the way here to kill me?” Her hand shook around the dagger. “Why not stab me on the docks and be done with it?”

  “I hoped you’d turn back,” Lucas said. “I didn’t want it to come to this.”

  “But you tore off my necklace,” she said. “You thought it would stop us; you knew it would upset the dragon. This is your fault. You got Finnegan hurt.”

  “No,” he said. He did not flinch. “You did.”

  But she would not back down now. She had to do this. “Go,” she said. She gestured down into the tunnel with her dagger. “You can lead the way.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  THE PATH FLATTENED OUT, BECOMING SO NARROW that no more than three people could have walked side by side. Now she understood why they had only encountered one dragon while climbing down here. Most of the creatures would not fit. There must have been many similar tunnels, a hundred paths into the heart of the mountain, vast entryways where dragons flew.

  They turned a corner, and Lucas stopped so suddenly that Aurora almost slammed into him. She had to drop her hand at the last moment, her dagger narrowly missing his back.

  The tunnel ended in a huge cavern, a dome of heat and stone. The walls gleamed with jewels, and the ceiling was so high that Aurora could barely see it, except for the points where dragons skimmed it with their burning wings. Their shrieks echoed from wall to wall, magnified a hundred times.

  For a moment, all she could do was stare, taking in every inch of it. There were so many dragons. So much fire.

  She began to walk to the center of the cavern, weaving around stalagmites that glistened as though magic had been caught in the stone. She ran her hand along one, almost expecting it to scorch her palm. It was cool and rough to the touch, tugging on her skin.

  She craned her neck, watching the shadows swoop around the stalactites.

  Come, she thought.

  The air swelled with heat, and Aurora’s magic pounded in response, making her dizzy. Come here, she thought again, and this time she sent out magic, too, a ball of flame that darted around her.

  Behind her, a dragon roared. Aurora turned as it thudded to the ground, its neck writhing, eyes gleaming.

  Aurora took one shaky step forward. It would not hurt her, she knew. They were alike, fire and blood and Celestine’s magic pounding through their veins. The dragons would not hurt her.

  She stretched out her hand, palm turned upward. Heat sank into her skin.

  She glanced at the dragon’s chest, searching for a weakness, for some hint of how to take its heart. But she could not harm a creature that was so fearsome, so awe-striking as this. She could not pull out its heart and place it under her thrall.

  The dragon continued to watch her.

  But neither of them was watch
ing Lucas. He snatched Aurora’s wrist, twisting it until the dagger fell from her hand. She yelped, magic sparking within her, but Lucas had already grabbed the weapon. He slashed at her side as she jerked away. The tip of the knife sliced her skin. Blood stained her tunic red.

  Lucas lurched forward with the dagger again, and she scrambled away. The dragon rose onto its hind legs. Its scream shook every stone in the cavern. It twisted its head, nostrils flaring, eyes staring at the wound at Aurora’s side. Its head snapped to Lucas. He stumbled backward, dagger shaking in his hand. And Aurora knew that it was going to kill him. The blood had set something off in the creature, and it was going to burn them away.

  She moved on instinct, all of her fear for Finnegan, all of her fascination, all of her need for answers swelling inside her and driving her forward. Her free hand snatched at the dragon’s chest, and she reached for the connection, for the way their blood sang together, her dragon pendant burning at her throat, hot enough for its wings to imprint on her skin.

  And her hand slipped, brushing against the dragon’s smooth scales and then sinking deeper, slipping into pure heat that pulsed and writhed and caressed her skin. She bit back a scream. Her hand snatched at the fire. She wrenched it backward, and the scream escaped her throat.

  She held a heart, no larger than her own. A fierce red thing that glowed in the darkness.

  The dragon looked at her. She looked back. And she felt the sadness in its eyes as though it were her own. It tore at her, the pain searing through her own veins, so intense that she almost shoved the heart back, almost abandoned Finnegan, almost left all the answers she wanted in this cave, to give the murderous creature its life again. To give it the freedom she had wanted for herself.

  But then the instant was over, and the dragon began to smolder. Not the air-bending heat she had seen before, the steam rising from its nostrils, but a crackling and burning, smoke rushing from its scales, singeing the air. The dragon opened its mouth, but nothing came out except a strangled shriek. Then its scales, its powerful wings, its cavernous eyes were all glowing red, crinkling into black like burning paper, the fire spreading from the inside out, until it was consumed by its own heat. It crumbled, skin and scales and fire all blackening and falling to the ground as the heat pushed out and out and out.