She almost shook her head. He looked cute like that, sitting bow-legged on the sand, clutching the mango, and grinning at her. But if he was ever going to learn to be true royalty, those manners simply wouldn’t do. In a proper dining hall, among ladies, he wouldn’t be able to sit on the floor and gobble his food like a ravenous pig. But that was for another time, once all this had settled, if the world was still anything like it had been before.
Myrian gently plucked a mango for herself and looked at Zak, who was now chomping away at the poor fruit. Her stomach grumbled. She was as hungry as he looked. But she wanted to set an example. Even in times like these, there was no need to act uncivilized.
She took a small bite, her mouth filling with the bright, sweet juice. It was more delicious than any meal she could remember eating back home at the castle. For a moment, her hunger almost overtook her. But she remained poised, swallowing the sweet meat of the mango like a lady. She looked over the fruit as she took another bite to see Zak staring at her with open affection. He was hungry, but not just for the mango. That was plain enough to see. And she felt the same for him. He wiped his chin with the back of his hand.
Myrian glanced over at Brynn, who stood with her spear jammed in the sand, staring back the way they had come with a strange look on her face.
“Is everything all right?” Myrian asked.
At first Brynn didn’t answer. But then her cheeks relaxed into a smile. She nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “He’s coming. Alone.”
Myrian took another small bite. Gods, it was delicious. Then she looked back up the beach as she chewed. All she saw in the light of the bright sun was the mass of twisted green towering near the shore, covering a huge swath of the nearby island with its sickening gray shadow.
Zak got up and came to stand by her side. She saw that he had already tossed aside the remains of his fruit away and replaced it with a new piece, deep green and gold with a dark blush of red in the center. He took a bite and squinted up at the sky. Then his eyes widened.
“There!” he said, pointing out past the growth. Myrian turned to look and saw the bright green dragon. He was giving the growth a wide berth, flying just out over the sea.
It was happening. Everything was falling into place. Tanglevine was the last piece of the puzzle, and once he and his silver-clad mate joined the pact they would finally be able to confront the demon. Except for this business about the gold dragon. But Magda would make everything clear once they were gathered together.
But as she watched Vander fly out over the clear blue water, Myrian saw movement out of the corner of her eye.
It was the twisted mass. Dozens of vines were shooting out along its length, heading for the green dragon. He didn’t see it at first, that much was clear. He kept flying leisurely along the same path.
Myrian’s body tensed. Her fingers squeezed the mango involuntarily, pushing into the pulp. Juice was running down her hand, but she wasn’t aware of it. Her eyes were transfixed on the green dragon and the wave of ropy vines whipping across the beach towards him. She wanted to cry out a warning, but her throat locked up. There was no way he would hear her from this far anyway.
But Brynn did scream, an inarticulate wail that ripped through the crisp air. Whether he actually heard it or felt it through whatever mental link they had, Myrian could see him flinch and try to roll further out to sea away from the tendrils.
But they were too close. As he turned, three or four had reached him, coiling out around his tail and back leg. For a moment Myrian thought he might break free. The tug of only a few vines could not hold him, but they were enough to slow him down while the others grew out towards him.
Now dozens of slick green ropes whipped around his neck, wings, and body. Vander Tanglevine stopped flying, his wings completely bound. He raised his head and let out a roar that sent a chill down Myrian’s spine.
She dropped her mashed mango onto the sand without realizing it, then turned to Zak, who peered up at the scene with a dumbfounded look on his face.
“You have to save him,” she said. Zak just looked at her, dazed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the frantic movement of Brynn running down the beach towards the towering mass. Myrian didn’t know what the woman with the spear might be capable of. She might simply be spurred on by love, sealing her own fate along with Vander’s. But Myrian did know what Zak was capable of, even if he had never used the full extent of his powers before.
She reached out with both hands and clutched the scaly black armor on his chest, giving him a good shake. She was a white dragon. She might be able to swipe away at a few vines with her claws, but her breath could only provide light and healing. There was no way she could fight that mass of living things, twisted into some kind of singular will.
But Zak could.
“You have to save him!” she repeated, yelling this time. “Take dragonform and use your breath. If you don’t, he’s going to die.”
And without him by our side in the fight ahead, she thought, we might all be dead.
23
ZAK
She was shaking him, yelling in his face, and at first he didn’t understand what she was saying.
He had just been sitting in the sun, eating a delicious piece of fruit. He’d been as relaxed as he had in days, maybe months. Then he had seen the green dragon, flying out over the sea, trying to give the green growth a wide berth. And Zak had seen the thing attack Vander, snagging him with snaking strands.
He had been frozen, unable to think or move. All of this had finally broken something inside him, overloaded his mind. He’d learned his family wasn’t really his family. He was a dragon, and that would have been enough to stagger anybody’s mind. But then he’d found out he was supposed to be part of some group, foretold centuries ago to fight against a demon. And he’d seen that demon at work, holding a black dragon, his father, in place with its will while his sister had carved out Sorian’s heart. He hadn’t wanted to think about any of that. He thought that if he did, he might go mad.
But then he had set out on this quest with Myrian by his side. At first she’d nearly driven him crazy with her superior attitude. But the more time he’d spent with her, the more he realized his true feelings for her. After flying across the entire width of Xandakar and nearly dying in the Burning Sands, she might have been the only thing holding him together.
Watching the tower of vegetation and twisted bodies lash out at the green dragon had been the final straw, though. He wasn’t sure he could take this anymore.
But Myrian was grabbing him, shaking him. She was in his face, her beautiful silver eyes frantic, her tiny, pretty mouth now screaming something at him as if from far away.
“…use your breath. If you don’t, he’s going to die.”
With his brain not working quite right, he didn’t understand why she wasn’t becoming a dragon and flying up to help Vander. After all, she was the one who had been a dragon all her life. As she liked to remind him, she knew what she was doing, while he was flailing around trying to learn how to be a dragon.
But that last thing she'd said, about his breath, somehow snuck its way into his conscious mind. The words made it through all the fear and doubt.
Her breath heals, he thought. It makes light. It wouldn’t do anything against that, whatever that was. And neither would the green dragon’s breath. It was what had created the tangled mass in the first place. Vander’s breath would only make it stronger. But I’m a black dragon. My breath is literally death.
And that thought, crystallizing in his mind, snapped Zak into action. He reached out and took her by the upper arms, gently moving her aside. A little shiver went through him as he touched her. It was funny, he thought, how the imminent threat of death made every small look, every little touch, a thousand times more powerful. He was about to fight a thing nearly as big as a mountain, and he wasn’t sure if he would ever touch Myrian again. He felt that pang of regret once more that he hadn’t gone further in the cave. But the
re was no time to dwell on that now.
He did take two precious seconds to lean in quickly and put a small, soft kiss on her lips. Then he let her go, missing the smooth feel of her the second his fingers left her arm.
Zak stepped into the open beach, some dark instinct guiding him now. He didn’t have to think about transforming anymore. In only two days since learning, it was now simply something he did, like getting out of bed in the morning and pulling on a pair of well-worn boots.
He grew, feeling the sprouts beneath his shoulder blades unfurl and stretch out into fully-formed wings. His nails became black, curling into dark daggers. And the armored suit he now wore stretched and swelled with the powerful muscles of his expanding reptilian body.
He shifted in less than two seconds, but as he did he heard another distant roar. He looked up with his dragon eyes and saw the flash of silver that was the human woman running down the beach towards the base of the mass.
She’s going to get herself killed, he thought. Then he looked up at the source of the roar and saw the green dragon fighting and thrashing against the tendrils as they pulled him closer to the mass. Having seen the grotesque eyes and twisted bodies inside it, Zak had an idea of what was going to happen to Vander in a few moments. That thing was going to absorb him.
Zak pushed his claws downward, impacting the sand beneath him and launching himself into the sky. He thought about flying to where the thing held Vander, but fought against the impulse. He intended to strike at the core of the mass.
I’m going to destroy it, he thought. As he did, he felt the dark churning of bile deep in his chest. He’d grown up eating his Ma’s spicy frog stew, a rare treat chock full of crimson peppers and fiery powders. He would feel a burning at the base of his throat when he ate it, and for hours after. What he felt now was like that, only a thousand times more powerful. And unlike the food, the deadly concoction swirling inside his chest seemed to be walled off from the rest of his body, as if he contained in an iron box at the base of his throat. He knew the bile was there, and he knew how powerful it was. But it wasn’t hurting him. But he also knew that all he had to do was open his jaws and push in just the right way, and whatever stood in front of him was going to die.
He headed straight for the middle of the thing, breathing in deeply. As he did, he saw a dozen or so of the mass’s eyes swivel to look at him. For a brief moment, he felt the coldness of fear along the back of his neck and tried to shake it off.
Tendrils were now shooting out towards him. The thing finally saw him as a threat. But now it was too late.
Zak pulled up just as the vines were about to wrap themselves around him. He stretched his jaws open wide and pushed, exhaling with everything he had.
The bile felt hot and strong traveling down his throat and blasting out towards the hulking mountain of green before him. A cone of what looked like oily steam shot out and hit the wall of growth. He heard another sound then, like a hundred screams all mixed into a painful chorus.
The vines that had whipped out towards him jolted to a stop, quivered, then went slack. Zak hovered for a few seconds as he unleashed his breath, beating his wings to keep himself in place. The sounds of the wails was horrifying, but it played like music to his ears. Who knew how many plants and animals had been consumed by this thing, from the dragons that had dwelled in the palace to the lowly bugs that flitted between the jungle leaves? But whatever they had been before, they were now a singular monster that needed to be destroyed.
Zak finished his first blast of bile, hovering for another second to observe what damage he had inflicted. He was happy to see a gaping hole in the mass now, the edges an ugly blackish-yellow. Steam rose from its damaged flesh, filling the air with the foul smell of decay.
Zak flapped his wings to fly higher, taking in another deep breath and feeling the black acid replenish itself in his chest. As he did, he glanced to his right to see the green dragon still wrapped in vines, though several had already snapped loose.
He heard a sound from far below and looked down to see that Brynn had reached the base of the growth. She stopped just short of it and raised the three-pronged spear in both hands as tendrils snaked out to greet her. They were much slower now, though. He had already hurt the thing badly, and now it was being attacked from below as well as above.
He kept his eyes on her as he flew in a tight circle, ready to hit the thing with another blast. Just before he did, he saw an arc of blue-white light jump from the tips of the spear, hitting the green mass. Half a second later, he heard the thunderclap. The whole thing shuddered, and out of the corner of Zak’s eye he saw that it had finally let Vander go.
The green dragon slipped from the tendrils, falling. Zak thought of flying after him, trying to catch him. But he was still over the water, and Zak wasn’t sure he would be able to reach him in time.
Besides, he wanted to make sure that while they had this monstrosity off-balance, that they could finish it off before it recovered. He flew close again, drawing in another massive breath. As he did, he smelled the rot of his first blast mixed with the ozone tang of the lightning strike from below. He saw a huge black hole smoking at the base where Brynn had struck it, and now the whole thing was beginning to sway.
Zak pulled up over the spot where he had breathed on the mass before, so much of it already bubbling and rotting away. He opened his jaws and almost screamed the breath out of his throat, letting loose a violent torrent of black mist.
As he did, he saw the splash out in the ocean as Vander hit the surface. And then he saw something else, the white flash of a dragon flying out to where the green dragon had plunged into the water. Myrian was going to rescue him. That was a relief. It allowed Zak to focus all his power and rage at the abomination.
The screams rose to a fever pitch as Zak unleashed death itself from his throat, the poison drilling deep into the center of the mass. He heard another thunderclap from below, and that was that.
Just as he emptied the last of his bile into the thing, it wobbled, then began to break apart like a rotten piece of fruit dashed against a rock. Great chunks of it began to slough off, crashing down to the ground and sending up plumes of green mist as they disintegrated.
Zak flapped his wings to rise up a little higher. He watched with satisfaction as the thing broke apart and tumbled down. He lost sight of Brynn and hoped that she had made it clear from the avalanche of vegetation. Some of the pieces were as big as boulders, and he could easily imagine her being crushed.
He scanned the shoreline and spotted Myrian, back in human form, dragging a man out onto the sand. The air was filled with clouds of green spores and a horrible dank smell like a mountain of spoiled cabbage.
But the screaming had stopped. The monstrosity that had been created by the breath of dozens of green dragons on the day the sun had gone black was now dead.
Zak descended through the smelly green haze, dispersing it with his wings as he flew. He landed near where Myrian had pulled Vander out of the surf. The green dragon had shifted back into a man in shimmering green armor, though his eyes were closed, his blond hair soaked and caked with sand. His face was bluish white. He looked dead.
But Myrian, still in dragonform, crouched over him. She opened her jaws, and Zak saw the white glow around her sharp teeth, as if the sun were dawning from inside of her.
He could do no more in dragonform himself, so he folded his wings and shrank back down into a young man. He heard the swish of footsteps in the sand behind him and turned to see Brynn running down the beach clutching her spear. Her eyes were red with tears, furious and alarmed in equal measure. She looked like a fearsome goddess storming out of the green mist, and Zak found himself glad that she would be on their side in the battle to come.
He reached out as she ran towards Vander, wrapping her in a hug. She struggled against him, stronger than he would have thought.
“Let her work,” he said softly, trying to calm her. “If he can be saved, Myrian can save him.”
He felt Brynn relax in his arms. He let her go and together they watched as the white dragon loomed over Vander’s still body and breathed.
24
MYRIAN
She felt the warmth rise up through her throat as she sighed out her healing breath over the green dragonlord. She wasn’t sure this was going to work. He looked as if he were already gone. His face had no color, a stark contrast to the bright green armor he wore. His eyelids and lips were a dark bruised purple, and his body did not so much as twitch.
The breath of a white dragon could light the way. It could also heal grave wounds. But it could not bring back the dead. Her father had taught her as much. She just hoped that there was some tiny spark of life left in Vander, that he was not entirely gone. They needed him, and they had come so very far to find him.
Myrian closed her eyes and pushed, feeling the glow pour out of her. She tried to suffuse it with as much power, as much life, as she possibly could. Once every bit of her breath was spent, she opened her eyes. Her heart sank.
He lay there just as before, still as a stone and seemingly just as dead. Myrian could feel the eyes of the two standing behind her, but mostly Brynn. Myrian imagined the roles reversed. If she were looking down at Zak, dying on the beach in front of her, the pain would be too much to bear.
She thought Vander was surely dead, but she also knew she could not give up. Not yet. And as she pulled back her head to draw in another deep breath, hearing Brynn’s choked sobs behind her, she thought she saw the faintest blush of pink return to the king’s handsome face.
Myrian felt the warm light swirl inside her, then she closed her eyes and exhaled once more, bathing Vander in her breath. She heard a choked cough and thought at first it was Brynn again. But when she spilled out the last of her healing glow and opened her eyes, she saw that the man beneath her had rolled onto his side. Water spilled from his open mouth onto the sand as he coughed, his body shuddering.
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