by Jeff Seymour
But to Ryse it seemed as if the dragon had been there, with her, for hours, and its presence in the flesh didn’t feel remarkable at all.
***
They reached the hovel exhausted. Ryse pulled its door back with shaking fingers. The weight of Tomenar on her back—broken, my fault—had grown unbearable, and her legs felt as though they were made of reeds.
Inside, Jen was waiting.
She was sitting by the remains of their fire, and she looked up when they entered. Her mouth opened to greet them, then closed again. Her face twisted, for a second.
Drip.
Drip.
Rationally, Ryse was certain there was nothing dripping now, but the blood—of her brother, of her father—was still there. Still staining her robe—Jen’s robe, the one I borrowed. She and Ren shuffled through the door and set Tomenar against the wall, as gently as they could.
“I’m sorry, Jen. It went wrong. I…”
The words stuck in her throat. Outside, the dragon was ripping Eldan City to shreds, a wildfire of destruction, shattering lives without a second thought.
Ren was talking now, about Tomenar. Ryse had torn his soul from his chest. She’d reached out and plucked it like it was a flower. It had been easy.
An abomination, she thought. Damaging—no, destroying—the most sacred part of a person.
The Temple had long ago killed anyone who could do what she’d done.
So where had the knowledge come from?
Drip.
Drip.
The blood was everywhere. Soaking her clothes. Soaking her skin. She had to get it off. Had to get it all off. Her fingers were shaking but it had to come off, every last thread, every last drop.
She didn’t realize she’d stood up until she tripped and crashed into the backpacks near the door. There were fresh clothes there. She just had to get to them. Someone was sobbing, somewhere, and she couldn’t see because there were tears covering her face, but the tears would help her get clean and then she just had to get out of her clothes and into new ones. Her fingers wouldn’t work right. They fumbled with the straps to the pack, couldn’t get it open. She heard herself squeak.
“Ryse.”
Jen’s voice cut through the pain like a razor parting velvet.
“Ryse, it’s all right. Shh.”
Jen’s arms wrapped around her, and Ryse gave up trying to get the backpack open and curled into as small a ball as she could manage. She gave herself up to the crying, dug her fingers into the arms of the bloody robe so hard they hurt. Every sob racked her whole body.
What have I become?
Everything she’d built her life on, gone.
Yenor… Why…
Jen was talking then, stroking her hair and asking Cara and Ren to fetch her things. They stripped the bloody robe from her body. They washed her. They clothed her again.
Jen held her until the shaking and the tears had stopped, and all that was left was darkness.
***
A voice called to Ryse from the black.
“Ryse.”
Her nightmares were things of horror. Things she didn’t want to think about or acknowledge.
“Ryse.”
Gentle fingers touched the back of her neck. They were warm.
“I have to talk to you, Ryse.”
Ryse shivered and opened her eyes. It was dark and quiet inside the hovel. The dragon had moved on. The flames in the slums had burned themselves out or been snuffed by something. Rain, maybe. Cold autumn rain.
Her stomach felt as though a noose had been placed around it and her chest as if someone had built a house of stone within it.
The voice continued, steady and calm. “There will be light today.”
Ryse took in a shuddering breath and wrapped herself tighter in the blanket. She didn’t know where Jen had gone. To comfort Ren, maybe, on the other side of the hovel.
“The sun will rise, and the people will rebuild. Everywhere. It’s what they do.”
Cara, she thought. “She’s important,” Ren had said. “Aegelden found her a couple of months ago. Said she needed to be protected. He didn’t say why.”
Cara’s stutter was gone, and her voice sounded smooth and sure, like it was coming from a place inside her that no darkness could touch.
“It’s just before dawn, and it’s dark and cold and lonely, but it always is. And things get better.”
Ryse took a breath and released it. In and out. Cool for hot. Clean for dirty.
“All around the world. Nothing is broken so deeply it can’t be fixed. Not you. Not your friends. Nothing.”
Cara’s arms snaked around Ryse’s back and hugged her.
“It always gets better, Ryse. Always, if you hold on and try. Have faith.”
Faith.
The knots in Ryse’s stomach and chest eased.
Cara squeezed her. Her arms felt frail and insubstantial, but they were as warm and kind as a hot bath in the dead of winter.
Ryse looked through the door of the hovel to the darkness beyond it, not understanding how Yenor could love her.
She’d been given many things by her god. Friends. Power. A better life. The love of good people. A chance to help others and defend the world. Family.
And now this.
In the bleakest time of the night, she lay and she thought.
And as she rested in the arms of a stranger, Ryse felt the caress of a god who, in spite of everything, still loved the world enough to start every day with the gift of light in the darkness.
INTERLUDE FOUR
Three hours after the destruction of Emeth’il
Maegan stumbles through the ash.
It clogs her nose, her eyes, her mouth, her hair. It falls from the sky like snow. It gathers around her ankles and compresses like dust beneath her boots. The husks of trees glow or smoke or hiss, broken teeth in the mouth of a dying beast. Where before there were endless green hills, she sees the white-and-black, maggoty body of a bloated forest as it dies. She’s walking down what she thinks was once a stream, but it’s so choked with ash and mud she’s no longer sure.
Tears fill her eyes.
They’ve left her. Soren and Tsu’min both. She awoke when the dragon’s breath consumed half of Emeth’il in a heartbeat, and they were gone.
Alone, she thinks. All alone.
When the dragon turned its anger on the forest, she hid in the only place she could think of—a spring near Mi’ame’s garden.
And like an idiot, she kept the book with her.
She holds its soggy pages against her chest. Maybe the lines of ink won’t run too far. Maybe some of it will be salvageable. Maybe the stories, somehow, will survive.
She cries. Cries for the loss of so much. Cries for the waste of her life.
Emeth’il is gone now. The dragon has cracked it open like a bone, sucked the marrow out, left the broken husk behind. She feels like an ant, cornered by the hands of a cruel and grasping child, then left to live.
It’s time to give up chasing stories and go home.
One of her boots crunches through the corpse of a still-burning log beneath the ash, and the coals touch her ankle. She leaps up, but the fire is in her boot now, burning. She reaches down to free herself, but the pain is maddening. She falls, and there are more coals waiting for her on the ground. They singe her hair, burn her neck and back. She rolls out of them, in agony. Worse than she has ever hurt before. Her boot finally comes off. The coals drop out and puff into the ash like angry, swollen tears.
Her ankle is seared, the skin red and wet. It hurts. It hurts so badly.
Alone, all alone.
She is going to die, in a bone-white forest earning its name in a way it never has before. She’s going to die with everyone else, and what’s left of her book is going to burn up with her. It will all be for nothing. She should never have left home.
A tree creaks.
She looks up.
It’s falling toward her, and she knows it will end her
life.
“Girl!” a voice shouts. “Move!”
A pair of hands hurls her out of the path of the tree. She shuts her eyes. Her body crashes to the ground, and her chin bounces. There’s more pain, but it disappears into the whirlpool of the burns. The sound of something enormous coming down fills the world.
And then everything goes quiet.
She lies in the ash, wondering if the pain has driven her mad.
The voice spoke Aleani. It carried the rocky cadences of Du Hardt.
She rolls over and looks behind her.
An enormous broken tree lies at the bottom of the streambed, still burning. Its heart, spilled across the ground, is red and pulsing.
A ghost stands before it.
He’s covered in ash from head to toe. His dreadlocks are filled with it. It coats his eyebrows, his cheeks, his lips, his clothes. He walks toward her, leaving deep boot prints on the ground.
She knows him. It’s the eyes, she thinks. She’ll never forget those eyes, as long as she lives.
The ghost kneels in the ash and asks if she’s all right. He touches her ankle, gingerly. She recalls a day when she fell and twisted that ankle, and her father—her father—knelt and touched it gingerly and asked if she was all right.
“You—” she says. She’s shaking. The ghost slips his arms underneath her and lifts her as though she’s still that child. He begins to walk, leaving the choked streambed she’s been following. He takes a faster route toward the sea, where perhaps there will be safety from the fire.
“Ha,” he replies.
She drapes her arms around his neck. He’s strong. So strong. Just like she always thought she remembered. His eyes are wet and red, swimming with tears from the smoke.
“Am I dead?” she asks.
The dam hemming in his tears bursts. They slide over his cheeks. Beneath the unnatural white of the ash, his skin is as dark as hers. As dark as she remembers. As dark as it has always been.
“No,” Len Heramsun replies. “I am alive.”
EPILOGUE
Six days after the destruction of Eldan City
A vibration ran through Quay’s body.
He sat on a slab of unyielding stone, cross-legged and straight-backed, swimming deep in the darkness. Cold collars and chains of iron bit his ankles, his wrists, his neck.
He chose not to care about those things.
As often as he could, he left his body behind. Its scars and hurts existed elsewhere, scratches on the surface of the vessel that contained him, and of no more importance than that.
He felt warmth within the darkness, a tiny egg of light. He found it, swam into it, let it cover him, and knew peace. The world outside did not exist. The world outside did not exist. The world outside did not exi—
The vibration rumbled through him again.
He opened his eyes, the meditation broken. Pain flowed back in, along pathways carved by the awful things that had happened to him on the Folly of Man and in his imprisonment since. He shivered, did his best to fight off the hurt and keep hold of the warmth and light.
He could see, just a little. There was a sound. Voices, footsteps. Bright light flared in a stone corridor beyond iron bars. There were many of these subterranean prisons in the world. Too many, he realized now, and he suspected that those who buried people in them had little idea what they were doing.
He prepared to return to the light within himself. He could close his eyes, drift back into peace.
No, his mind whispered. Not this time.
There was something different in this visit from his jailors. A change in the steps. They were quick-paced, nervous, the breathing of the guard fast and frightened.
“Prince,” a man’s voice hissed. “Prince!”
Quay let his mind retake his body, felt the weight of his wrists on his knees, the tightness of his muscles. It hurt; he was sore in his hips and his ankles and his shoulders from the chains and the stone.
He shivered, memories gnawing at him like rats.
It was hard, living.
The light in the corridor illuminated his cell, a few feet by a few feet, a bit of straw, a bucket in the corner. Not much of a throne room for someone who’d been Prince of Eldan.
Beyond the bars, a disheveled man with a long, drawn face fidgeted. “Prince!” he hissed again. He darted a look over his shoulder, toward more light that came from down the hallway. “I have a message!”
No one had called Quay by his title in months.
Quay didn’t respond except by rattling his chains slightly. He’d been keeping up the appearance of having lost his grip on reality since the Folly of Man. At first, it had been a way to diminish the likelihood of his captors hurting him—he’d wanted them to see him broken and think they’d done all they could. Now the threat had receded, but he still wore vacancy like a cloak. It was easier if his jailors thought his mind was gone.
Still. A message.
The guard darted another look down the hall. He tapped a small, folded piece of paper against the bars. “Quickly! From your cousin!”
Quay lifted his head. He could do that much without breaking the illusion.
“Misha! Of House Galeni!”
Misha. His cousin. His friend.
It could have been a trick. It could easily have been a trick. Aesith Lord Pendilon was more than clever enough to lure Quay out of his shell that way.
Quay eyed the guard. His uniform was old, but it fit well. The stains on the trousers matched the ones in the beard, which was real and greasy. His eyes were nervous and darting. Quay had seen him before.
If he was an actor and this was one of Aesith’s schemes, the acting and the scheming were both very good.
Quay shuffled forward, held out his hand. Didn’t speak. Didn’t need to.
The paper dropped into it. The guard fled down the hallway. A door slammed.
There was still enough light to read by near the bars, if you were used to the darkness farther back in the cell.
Quay unfolded the note.
Quay,
I hope this finds you. This guard is known to me, and I believe he can be trusted. If not, I suspect Lord Aesith will do terrible things to me, and I take comfort in the knowledge that my sisters will find the man and tear his eyes from his skull.
The beginnings of a smile formed at the edges of Quay’s mouth. That much would have been for the guard, in case he decided to open the note. An attempt to control the damage he could do if he betrayed her.
But it was also a way to prove her identity. The handwriting was difficult to recognize in the poor light, but the wit and the acid—those were Misha’s, hard to fake, and even harder to know to fake for a man like Aesith Pendilon.
She was smart, Misha Galeni. Very smart.
The rest was hidden beneath another fold.
In truth, I suspect this correspondence is being watched, if not read. Aesith is a clever man and will find a way to use it against us, but there are things you need to know. Eldan City is in ruins. Ense Pendilon is missing. Your father is dead. I’m sorry.
The news of his father’s death hurt, but not as badly as he’d expected it to. He’d known it was coming since the day he was taken. Had made his peace with it, as much as it was possible to.
Eldan City in ruins, though. That pain was deep. His nightmares made reality.
The dragon came, Quay. We were unprepared. The city needs you back. Your people need you back. When Aesith comes to you, and I believe he will, I want you to take him up on his offer, whatever it is. We can outmaneuver him, you and I. He is not invincible, and the loss of Ense and the appearance of the dragon will have unbalanced him.
A faint flutter of something stirred in Quay’s heart. Hope, perhaps, after so long in the darkness without it.
I am here, Quay, with you. I learned things about Aesith and let him see it, until he had to make me disappear. As I hoped, he brought me to you. You were hard to find and it was the only way to get close.
Tog
ether, we will find a way out. Have faith. Be strong. I am with you.
Always,
your Willow
Willow. The name his brother had given her in their youth, for the way she moved and her incessant tickling.
Quay took a deep breath. The darkness of Aesith’s dungeons was deep and cold. But even here, there was light.
Misha’s. And his.
He tore the note into small pieces, put them in his mouth, swallowed. Aesith probably was aware of the correspondence, would be using it to coax Quay into motion again, would have some plan to employ him as a means by which to take or consolidate power.
But that plan could be subverted. All his life, Quay had been underestimated by those at court. He was small, not a great warrior or strategist, not charismatic like his brother had been. Aesith and the rest of the Seven looked at him and saw weakness and opportunity.
He had allies, however. In many places.
And that knowledge broke him free of the darkness, revealed him, and set in motion many things.
Read on for the author’s note, acknowledgements, and more. But first!
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book took a dark turn that, to be honest, I wasn’t entirely expecting. And Ryse’s story, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, turned out darker than the rest. I want to take a moment to address that.
Ryse’s rape made a lot of early readers of the book uncomfortable. They didn’t want it to happen. They didn’t want to see Ryse be overcome. It didn’t seem fair or right. She’s so powerful, so why couldn’t she fight off her attackers?
Because in real life, not everyone fights off their attackers.
I did a lot of research about rape and sexual assault as I wrote this book (if you want to dig deeper into the subject, I highly recommend Lucky by Alice Sebold and After Silence: Rape and My Journey Back by Nancy Venable Raine). And one of the things that jumped out at me was how damaging that question was.