The Heartstone Thief (Dragon Eye Chronicles Book 1)

by Pippa Dacosta

  “Curtis, I am sorry.” Her gaze stayed on the window, her escape.

  “Sorry for what, exactly? Sorry for branding me with a mystical mark, almost getting me killed, or sleeping with me?”

  She lifted her head. “It is best if we stay apart. Perhaps you should leave Brea as you wanted to.”

  “Leave?” I retrieved the rest of my clothes and tugged them on. “I’m not leaving. I’m just now discovering who I really am. With Fallford’s help, I will expose the Inner Circle and resurrect the truth right out of his history books.” I headed for the door.

  “Books?” Her voice held a note of curiosity, enough to give me pause. She could decipher Fallford’s texts. She could confirm whether his scholars’ assumptions were correct.

  “I’ll show you,” I offered. “That is, if you can stand to stay?”

  She followed me out the bedchamber, down the hall, and into Fallford’s library. She immediately saw the spread of books and hurried to the table. By the time I’d checked the hallway for any prying eyes and joined her side, she had spread the parchments before her, organizing them in an order, of sorts. It occurred to me that Fallford had worn gloves while handling them, but Shaianna’s wide, joyful smile stopped any rebuke from leaving my lips.

  After a few moments, she laughed. Just a light, little skip of laughter, but enough to summon a smile from me.

  “Oh, thief. Such wonder in such fragile things.” She pushed a parchment toward me, the one depicting the faded image of a ship. “I remember this day.” Sadness returned to her eyes, but her smile stayed, turning her expression wistful. “The day was bright. Sunlight shattered on the ocean. I watched the people row in from their ships. I remember … I remember the taste of salt on the sea breeze and the warmth of the sun on my back. I remember the expectation, like a sweetness in the air.” Delight warmed her face. She ran her hands over the texts and then reached for the books. “Ah, but these are so old and fragile, like the memories of those alive today.”

  “You were there?”

  “Yes. Her guardian. Her advisor. It was my duty to protect our city.” She opened a large moth-eaten tome, but her eye was pulled back to the parchments. Slowly, she brushed her fingertips across the text. “The new people were so filled with reverence. We did not understand them at first. They spoke differently, but we learned quickly. When they witnessed our magic, they called the queen’s people gods. They wanted to learn. Together, we learned many things, but not enough.” The light in her eyes dimmed.

  “What happened?”

  “I counseled my queen to be generous and trusting. I was wrong. They stole from us.”

  “What did they steal?”

  “They saw our power, harvested from the earth, and they wanted it for themselves. They stole the first Eye. They lied and misled us. We offered them hospitality, and they sought to take everything—treacherous beasts,” She paused, wet her lips, and looked again at the parchments, her eyes settling on the images depicting the battle. “Justice was all-consuming.”

  “Shaianna, tell me … the justice you speak of, has it returned?”

  “Yes, thief.” She closed her eyes, and on opening them again, a darkness had gathered, drowning their color. “And she is hungry.”

  In a blink, the blackness was gone, and I doubted whether I’d seen it at all. “The spire … the beast inside? That is the justice?”

  “Few survived her before.” She gazed at the parchments, sadness weighing her expression once again. “It feels like yesterday. So many lives were lost, and all for greed.”

  “The spire …” I moved closer. Soon, she’d lose herself to the past and stop answering my questions. I needed to know what we were facing. She knew everything. All I had to do was ask the correct questions. “The beast inside. It’s the queen’s wrath. The wrath of the earth?” It’s you, I silently accused. It was always you.

  “Wrath?” She paused. “Yes, she was her wrath. She is the shadow that consumes the land.” She touched an image of a swirling dragon, so faded by time it barely made any sense to look at. “She is the whisper in the wind, the rise of ocean waves, the stirring below still waters. She is the beginning of the end, and I cannot stop her.”

  “The Eye?” I tried to swallow past a rising sense of panic and failed. “Why did you destroy it? Surely with that, you could have stopped it—her?”

  Shaianna smiled the very same smile she favored when humoring me. I’d seen it often enough and knew it well. “The Eye had become a mere trinket. It’s magic already consumed.”

  “By who? The mages?”

  “No, thief.”

  By her, at the tomb, all those weeks ago. “Then did you know this would happen? That she would rise again?” I asked.

  Her face immediately revealed the answer. She’d been able to hide her thoughts once, but not anymore. She knew. She’d taken the Eye’s power for herself, and now we had no defense against the beast inside her.

  “You can stop her, but you refuse to? Is it fear?”

  She turned away, prompting a tear to slip down her cheek.

  It broke my heart to see her cry. “Shaianna, please, tell me.”

  A howl barreled in from the street outside. I’d heard it before, on the road through the Draynes.

  I ran for the window as volleys of screams started up in the wake of the howl.

  “Wargs!” Wargs had never ventured far from the moors, never mind inside Brea. “Shaianna, you can stop them. You—”

  Fallford stood in the doorway, rifle shouldered and aimed true at Shaianna’s head. Though she faced him, I could see the stern press of her lips. I tensed to lunge forward, but Fallford’s trigger finger twitched, freezing me still.

  “Do not move, Curtis,” Fallford ordered.

  “She’s here with me. She’s a friend—”

  “I know exactly who she is. I’ve known about her for years, since the early days of the mines and the miners with their tales. But I could only dream this moment would come.” His gaze flicked down. “Hands high, my dear. I know you are proficient with your weapons, whatever form they may take.”

  Shaianna lifted her hands. “Who are you?”

  “You might say I am a collector of legends. And you”—his lips pulled into a thin line—“are the finest legend of all. The last legend, the Forgotten One.”

  “I could kill you where you stand,” she replied without a quiver of doubt.

  This was absurd. Howls echoed through the streets, and Fallford had chosen this moment to lose his mind. “Fallford, by the restless gods. What are you thinking?”

  “I had to know if you were real. The cup, the parchments. Lie upon lie, and yet here you are, so very real and so beautiful. Although, unlike the thief, I have yet to see the truth of you. The truth in the lies, if you will.”

  “The truth is your death, my lord,” Shaianna replied lightly, yet she still sounded as though she were about to deliver his death sentence.

  “I have no doubt.” He stepped into the room and shifted his angle, giving him a direct line of sight across the table to me. “She has you fooled, Curtis. Do you think she cares for you? This was always about her. Every moment since you met and before then, it has always been about her.”

  “Fallford. Lower the gun.” I stepped closer. I’d left my dagger in the bed chamber, but Shaianna had hers, and I had seen her release the blade in the blink of an eye. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill him at the first opportunity.

  “There is timeless beauty in the pattern of deceit she weaves you.”

  I might have thought him insane had he not looked upon her with an admiration I was guilty of myself. These weren’t the words of a madman. Fallford was the most reasonable man I knew, and his reasons were solid.

  “Fallford, don’t hurt her.” Without her, I have nothing left to lose.

  Shaianna turned her head just enough to catch me in the corner of her eye. “Stay there, Curtis.”

  Fallford’s gaze flicked to me then back to her. “Your q
ueen and her people are long dead, faded from memory and relegated to myth. Your duty is redundant.”

  “My duty is all I have left.”

  He considered that and drew in a breath. “Then why haven’t you yet fulfilled your duty? Vance here tells me you destroyed the Eye.” His eyes narrowed. “What are you waiting for?”

  “I …” She paused.

  Fallford’s frown deepened. He chanced a step closer. “As wonderful a treasure as you are, it would be a mistake to let you live. You will not leave this room.”

  “You cannot stop me, my lord.”

  “There is always a way.” He smiled. “What others forgot, I believed. And here you are, after years of research and discovery, standing before me. The queen’s wrath. The Shadow who consumes all. A forgotten legend. I am truly sorry it has to be this way. It was an honor, my lady.”

  His words crept beneath my denials and ignorance, peeling them apart and revealing the truth inside. I knew who—what she was. Perhaps I’d always known but didn’t want to believe. How could I believe she was the one, the nightmare, the watcher in the dark, the creature from my nightmares who could have stopped it all but never did.

  She reached for her dagger. Fallford’s finger twitched. The rifle fired, but his aim went wide.

  The dagger punched into his eye socket and threw his head back. He collapsed, dead and convulsing against the floor.

  Shock cocooned me inside its protective bubble. As the howls rose outside, rolling into another and another, Shaianna turned to me, her face a mask of concern. She said something, perhaps my name, but I didn’t hear. Casually, Shaianna strode across the room and pulled the dagger from Fallford’s eye.

  Fallford’s fingers jerked. His remaining eye was vacant, his face slack.

  “Tell me it’s not true,” I whispered. “What he said. Those are lies?”

  She sauntered back around toward the window, dagger dripping. “You know the truth in your heart, thief. You always have.”

  “You were the queen’s wrath?” It sounded like my voice, but I didn’t remember speaking. This was all happening to someone else, wasn’t it?

  “My devotion was faultless. I lived for her command.” Her shoulders slumped. “She summoned me to kill her enemies. I turned them all to dust.”

  “You killed everyone?”

  “I …” She touched her forehead with trembling fingertips. “You do not understand.”

  Anger boiled away the numbness. “How can I understand the killing of thousands of people?!”

  Shaianna recoiled from my words. “I followed her commands.”

  “You didn’t need to kill him,” I said, drifting toward Fallford’s body. Her presence felt too loud behind me, too close. “You don’t have to kill. You’re powerful, more powerful than I know. This—” Twisting to look at her, I saw the truth. The laughing woman was the mask she wore. The real her was the nightmare. “You are wrong.”

  Her pulse fluttered in her neck. “I do not know any other way.”

  I rested my hand on the fallen rifle. “Someone needs to stop you.” A pressure was building inside, threatening to break me apart. I had to do something, I could stop her.

  “What I am, it is not something that can be stopped, thief.”

  I stood, rifle loose in my hand, and lifted my chin. “You lied. At Agatha’s, that was you. At Calwyton, you set the blaze that destroyed the village.”

  “The mages—” She backed toward the window.

  I strode forward. “You’re everything the mages said you were. They’re trying to stop you. They aren’t the monsters. You are.” I’d been wrong about everything and looking at it all from the wrong side. How could I have been so blind? My grip tightened on the rifle. "I have to know … I have to be sure.”

  She searched my eyes for something her face betrayed as hope, but the truth had dashed any hope I’d harbored. There was good in her—I had seen it—but there was also a darkness so deep she had no hope of escaping it. I wanted to help her, and I would have, had I not believed it too late.

  “In the spire …” I swallowed and delayed. Once I asked, she would answer, and I’d know my fears. The truth in the lies. “The images on the parchment, the art on the tomb walls, the statues, the dearmad—the dragon. You told me you needed the Eye to make yourself whole.” And here, now, the truth would come out, and the answer could change everything. “You used me. You are my nightmare.”

  She closed her eyes. I raised the rifle, nestled the stock against my shoulder and hooked my finger over the trigger. I could end it now. Everything she had done, the bodies left in her wake, more would follow. My aim wavered. But a small hope remained. A hope that the flicker of light in her might prevail.

  “I am the last of my kind,” she whispered, and when she opened her eyes, they sparkled in my sights, as deep and rich as the Dragon’s Eye.

  I’d brought her to life, just as the mages had said. She wouldn’t stop. I wasn’t even sure a rifle could stop her—not now she had taken the Eye’s power.

  “But I am no longer like them,” she said. “Here, in this city, in this time with you, I am changed. The dearmad were revered and with good reason. We commanded the skies as protectors, defenders, and weapons of destruction. None existed who cared for more than duty or commands, but I do … I care...” She took a single step forward but stilled when I backed away. “I care when I should not. You, a thief, showed me how to feel. And now I am something else entirely—two creatures in one soul. I do not want to do these things. But it is in my nature to follow her commands.”

  “Those commands are long dead and buried with your queen. Arach is gone. There’s no reason to continue your crusade. Shaianna, leave Brea. Go somewhere you’ll never be found. Duty is just the whispers of the dead. Can’t you see that?”

  “I am sorry. So sorry. I wish I had a choice. But I do not.” Turning, she exposed her back and headed for the window.

  The trigger gave a little under my finger. I drew in a breath, held it. I knew what I should do, but no matter the intention, I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger.

  She rested a boot on the sill and paused. “Kill me, thief, and you kill yourself.”

  The bond. If I shot her, I’d feel it too. Would it kill me?

  In my hesitation, she dropped from the window and was gone.

  The truth coiled its way around my heart and choked my rising fear and distrust at her actions, and my own. Fallford lay dead, and none would believe I had tried to save him. I had to leave, and this time, there was only one place I belonged: inside the Inner Circle.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  With dusk came city-wide panic. City guards piled into the streets, and I took to the rooftops, rifle slung over my back and my dagger safely tucked away. Fallford’s murder, and likely my subsequent blame, would hopefully be lost in the confusion. If not, then it was just another reason to leave Brea. The opinions of the likes of Tiber didn’t matter to me. The only person I regretted who wouldn’t know the truth was Molly. She had shown me a kindness that now twisted in my gut like a knife. Just another regret. I had plenty of those.

  I returned to the spire—the source—not entirely sure what I expected to find. Shaianna was too clever to let herself be found inside, and with the meager gloom of torchlight as a guide, I knew within a few steps she wasn’t inside. Rats were the spire’s only occupants now. The guards no longer stood sentry at the passage opening. I stepped out onto the cobbled street and walked alone through the blanket of mist muffling all signs of life. The windows I passed were lit from inside. The Inner Circle slept, unaware of the chaos unfolding outside their high walls.

  I reached Anuska’s quarters as the city bells struck three in the morning and broke in with a quick elbow-jab to the window glass.

  Considering the scene in the spire, Anuska was a heavy magic user, but not yet turned mage. She had likely survived Shaianna’s attack in the spire and healed herself. I needed to know if what I had learned about the mag
es, Arach, and The Shadow was true. Anuska was perhaps the last person alive who could confirm it—if she would hear me out without attempting to drive her sword through my chest or burn me alive.

  She wasn’t inside her quarters. Orange gaslight bled in through the grimy windows, illuminating the mess of papers on Anuska’s desk. She would return in the morning, and I would be waiting. I rummaged through stacks of reports, searched drawers, and found references to more instances of magic users and more burnings. How could she watch people burn, knowing she too was one of them?

  I pulled a chair into a corner, wedged my boot on a low bookshelf, propped the rifle on my knee, and aimed it at the door. I was done asking. Done with riddles, and myths, and lies, and with people believing I was the fool.

  Eventually, sunlight poured in through the window. Tiredness was tugging at my wits, when she finally opened the door. The civilian clothing fooled me for a few seconds, but her stature and stance were unmistakably Anuska.

  I cocked the rifle, enjoying the mechanical click and her subsequent alarm. She froze.

  “Vance? How did you—?” She spotted the broken window.

  “I have been beaten, lied to, cursed, attacked by wargs, stalked, attacked by mages, almost buried alive in a tomb, and nearly burned at the stake. I’ve seen the insides of those I called friends steaming in the snow. Creatures I didn’t know existed until a few months ago are hunting me. I’ve been told our history is a lie and seen for myself that magic is real.” My heart beat faster, but my voice remained steady. “I’ve seen forgotten treasures and find myself enamored with the most dangerous one of all.”

  She waited, hand resting on the door handle, her attention focused entirely on the rifle cocked and ready to end her life at the twitch of my finger.

  “You, Anuska, are going to tell me everything you know, or I will shoot you dead. Don’t think for one second I won’t. You’re burning innocent people alive. My killing you is the only thing in my life that makes any sense.”