by Jeff Wheeler
Something in her broke. Something in her healed. Too soon, Morna released Riona, pressed a kiss to her own fingers, then touched Riona’s cheek.
A mother’s blessing.
“I wish I had known you,” Riona whispered.
Morna smiled. “When we meet beneath the branches of the Underwood, our souls will know each other, and rejoice. Be the better queen. The future is yours to shape.”
Boom. Splinters of wood and shards of stone flew through the air. Shouts echoed from the front of the cathedral.
“Liadan,” Morna grasped her daughter by the cheeks, kissed her forehead, and murmured something too low for Riona to hear. The girl had tears streaming down her face. Morna gave her a gentle shove. “Go!”
Soldiers appeared from the dust. Morna called to her warriors and turned to meet them.
Locking away a suffocating wave of grief for things that would never be, Riona ran for the back of the cathedral, Liadan and Dagny close behind.
Hidden in shadow in the northwest corner of the tower, she showed the other two which of the great floor stones slid aside. With no time for memory, for choking fear that wafted up with the dank scent of the darkness beyond, Riona slid through the hole and splashed into the tunnel beneath. A second later, Dagny’s tall, slender form slithered through. And then, after one too many heartbeats, Liadan’s boots hit the ground beside her. Together, the three women wrestled the stone back into place. Pitch darkness fell. And with it, silence.
“Is there light?” Liadan asked. Her voice was thick, her breathing uneven.
“No.” Riona stilled, as she’d learned to do as a child. Listened. Put the fear aside. It was easier now that she wasn’t alone. “But I know the way. Take my hands.”
They did, Liadan’s small and callused, Dagny’s slender and cool.
For the first time since Makkah had appeared at the coronation, Riona knew exactly what to do.
They emerged from the dark into the frozen dawn half an hour later. The tunnels let out onto an icy pass on the western slope of Storm’s Head. No Andrisi lay in wait for them, nor any winged, preternaturally beautiful women. The wind had blown most of the sparse snow from the ground, so they would leave no obvious tracks.
They had escaped Makkah, for the moment. But below them, Crann Laith burned.
Riona hugged herself, her gaze tracing the column of smoke into the sky. Then she turned from the sight of the city. She could not change what her pride had wrought. But perhaps, in the ashes of her failure, she could salvage hope. Even if she couldn’t wake the myth, perhaps she could find a way. Perhaps it was not too late for the Wildwood.
* * *
By late afternoon the next day—after a day and night and day clinging to rock faces, traversing ravines, and nearly succumbing to hypothermia—Riona, Dagny, and Liadan walked among the empty-eyed remains of an empire.
The stone buildings were oddly shaped, too tall and slender. Too smooth, with thin windows that rose into graceful, pointed arches, their borders carved with things—perhaps they had been flowers and birds—that had faded to unrecognizable lumps. Despite the wear of time and weather, hints of bright paint hid in corners and cracks. Flaking remainders of sunset and sky, meadow and ocean. Dagny trailed her fingers along each with reverence clear on her face. Liadan’s gaze flitted about, her eyes filled with awe.
In the stillness, Riona felt the first, faint stirrings of hope.
The roads were stone, straight and wide, but their boots were muffled by a thin layer of snow that had fallen overnight, once the cutting wind had died. More fell, fat flakes that stuck to the fur of the hood pulled up around Riona’s face.
Despite its thinness, the air was heavy, the past pushing through the broken paving stones like the winter flowers that splashed color against the gray-and-white landscape. It had the feel of a house before dawn, a breath held. As if dragonskin might bustle around the corner, or as if Riona and her companions might come across a thriving market. The city on the mountain was old, but not dead.
It slept.
At last, they passed the last ring of ethereal buildings and faced the Tomb of the Sleeping King. The city’s center was large and circular, paved with pale stones that sank in a series of concentric circles, forming steps. At their center, a waist-high platform rose, covered in a breathtaking, clear crystal dome.
The sun emerged, casting a sparkling glare that hid the dome’s occupant, but Riona could make out the silhouette of a man in repose. Dagny came to stand next to her, and Riona tried not to look as though her stomach had just tied itself in knots. “Is there something I should know?” she asked the taller woman. “Something I should do?”
Dagny didn’t take her eyes from the shadow of the man beneath the glass. “Pray.”
The sun dipped behind a cloud again as the three of them descended. Riona stared, transfixed. She’d known about the Sleeping King her entire life, but the knowledge had been distant. She’d only half believed it.
But there he was, golden scaled and golden haired, his chest rising and falling, as real as Makkah and her night-black wings.
He wore dark boots, fitted pants, and a sleeveless tunic in sapphire blue that belted at the waist. Everything, from toe to shoulder, was embroidered or inlaid with some kind of gold. A dusting of golden scales covered the backs of his hands from his fingertips and ran up strong arms to broad shoulders.
His face . . . Riona swallowed. Dusty ancient, he was not. He was young. A thousand years old, and he didn’t look more than two or three years her senior. A furrow creased his brow, as if his sleep was not peaceful. Even so, he was breathtaking. Life suffused cheeks and lips with a pink glow of health.
And yet, for a thousand years, he had not woken.
On either side of her, Liadan and Dagny each took one of the golden handles and lifted the dome. It opened on silent hinges, and the scent of summer rolled over them. Of sun and heat, leather and sweet hay. Of something namelessly masculine that clung to Riona’s nostrils and made it hard to look away from the man laid out on the platform of stone.
Beside her, Dagny muttered what could only be a dragonskin curse. Or maybe it was a prayer.
“Well?” Liadan asked when Riona made no move.
This was ridiculous. It could even be a prank—some beautiful dragonskin man crawled beneath the crystal dome once a generation or so to fool another Wilding queen. The whole situation was just too stupid. A legend had destroyed Riona’s home, and to combat it, she had to wake a man who’d slept for a millennium. With her lips. “Souls.”
Something dark passed in the corner of Riona’s eye, and she heard a sound that might have been wings. Her head snapped up, and she craned her neck, whirling around. Liadan and Dagny did the same.
Nothing. The sky was empty.
They exchanged looks. Dagny tipped her head toward the sleeping man.
Riona’s gaze followed the motion to his face. To his lips. She licked her own.
He won’t wake.
He will, but it will be a joke.
He won’t, and you’ll have to find some other way. She, Liadan, and Dagny would go back to the Wildwood and do their best, but in the end, they would all die. What else could they hope for against Makkah? At least, in doing this, she could say she’d tried everything.
Feeling more foolish than she had in her life, Riona leaned down and pressed her lips against the Sleeping King’s.
He was warm. She’d never kissed anyone before, and she’d expected kissing to be . . . squishy. But his lips, though soft, were firm.
For a single, long second, nothing happened. Then the rhythm of his breathing changed. The sleeping man inhaled a sharp, long breath through his nose. His eyelashes fluttered against her cheek. Riona gasped and tried to straighten, but strong hands grasped her elbows, pulling her into him. His lips parted, hands traced her upper arm and neck, burying themselves in her hair.
She was kissing a myth, and he was kissing her back. Warmth bloomed in her chest, spreadin
g until it felt as if she were lying in the sun on a summer day.
He released her. She stumbled back, catching herself on the edge of the platform.
The Sleeping King slept no more.
He watched her, lips still parted, chest heaving, staring with eyes the color of molten gold.
It had worked.
Riona touched a finger to her lips.
It had worked.
In one, graceful movement, the king—Torsten—pushed himself up, pivoting so his legs hung over the side of the slab. He blinked like a lost child, then shaded his eyes with his hands and looked around. His eyes swept the city. Liadan. Dagny.
Then he looked to Riona. His gaze clung to her, as if she were a rope and he was drowning. Hope cracked the hard shell of despair that had formed around her heart. It was painful. Beautiful. It had worked. The Wildwood didn’t have to fall. Her people didn’t have to die.
Morna and Eilis had not died in vain.
The Sleeping King—Torsten—opened his mouth, but nothing came out except a rough noise. His knuckles whitened on the edge of the platform.
Liadan took an eager step forward. “How do we defeat the Crow?”
The dragonskin man looked at her in confusion.
“He’s been asleep for a thousand years,” Dagny murmured. “He doesn’t speak the Wilding tongue. Not as it is now.”
As if to prove Dagny’s words, he suddenly covered his face with his hands. Rocking back and forth on the edge of the stone platform, he whispered, “It’s over,” in the same ancient language Makkah had used. “It’s over. It’s over.”
Riona’s brow furrowed. Waking the Sleeping King was supposed to be glorious. Lights were to shoot across the sky, the horns of the ancient dead to sound. He wasn’t supposed be so confused, so . . . haunted. So broken.
“What’s over?” she asked.
He didn’t drop his hands. “The nightmare.”
A chill shadow fell over her blossoming hope. This was not the hero she’d been expecting.
“Riona,” Liadan whispered. “The sun is setting. We either need to find a place to sleep here, or see if we can find a dragonskin family to take us in for the night. They live in caves all around here, do they not?” she asked Dagny.
Dagny hesitated, then nodded.
Riona thought she knew why the dragonskin hesitated, and she agreed. By now, Makkah could be hunting them, and she didn’t want to endanger anyone else with her presence. “These buildings are well maintained. They’ll offer shelter from the wind. You two see about firewood and something to eat.” Torsten had not shifted. “I’ll . . . see if I can get him to move.”
They nodded. Though Dagny looked as if she wanted to protest, she went with Liadan.
“How long has it been?” Torsten’s words took her by surprise, and Riona started. His voice was still rough, though not as much as it had been. He held Dagny’s waterskin. Riona hadn’t seen her give it to him.
There wasn’t a point to sugarcoating things. “A thousand years.”
He paled beneath the golden scales on his cheeks and dropped his gaze to his hands. “You will never understand the depth of the debt I owe you.” He slid from the platform, knelt, and placed the tips of his fingers to his heart, then took Riona’s hand in his free one. His palm was warm and callused. “What is your name?”
She swallowed. “Riona. Riona nich Brannon.”
“I swear on the soul of the Dragon, Riona nich Brannon, I will do everything in my power to repay you.”
A spiral of flames leaped from their intertwined fingers and up their arms. Riona gasped as the skin beneath her collarbone burned. She pulled her hand from his and pulled aside her coat to see a golden, flame-shaped mark just to the side of her heart.
Magic. Souls. The man could do magic.
He hadn’t taken his eyes from her. His gaze unsettled her and filled her with heat. He gestured to the feathers in her hair. “I knew a woman, once, who wore feathers like that. I think there’s more to your name than you’ve said.”
Riona wasn’t sure if there was, not after the way she’d failed. “I was—am—Queen of the Wildwood and Mountain Reach.”
His brow furrowed. “The clans are united?”
Riona realized they were still holding hands, and she released his. “Much changed while you slept.”
He looked to the horizon, where smoke from the burning of Crann Laith still smudged the sky. “Some things remain.” A terrible knowledge filled his eyes. “Makkah remains.”
Riona nodded.
“Is that why you’ve come?”
She chose her words with care. “The Lady of War and the Andrisi have destroyed Crann Laith. According to the histories, there was a prophecy that said you would wake when needed and fight—”
“Of course. The prophecy.” He laughed without humor, then ran both hands over his face and pressed his knuckles into his eyes. “I’m sorry, Queen Riona nich Brannon. You have come for nothing.”
Ice crystalized in her veins. “What?”
“I cannot help you.”
She leaned close, her voice a low growl. “Are you so embittered by the fall of your own people that you would see mine destroyed as well?”
He dropped his hands, expression furious. “I would give my life if I thought I could save a single person from Makkah. I would die a hundred times if it meant she would die too. A thousand.”
“Then why do you refuse to help?”
Torsten breathed deep once, then again. “The prophecy did exist, but not for you. It was for my time. The people I was supposed to save were my own.” He dropped his gaze. “I’ve already tried to kill Makkah, and I failed.”
Riona reeled as if he’d struck her. “Failed?” Perhaps she was misunderstanding the ancient tongue.
“I should have died. Instead, she cursed me to sleep. For a thousand years, I have relived the nightmares. I have watched my friends’ murders a thousand times. Ten thousand. The deaths of everyone I loved, the destruction of my entire civilization. They are burned into my brain. I see them when I close my eyes . . .”
Hope died, its demise so painful that Riona pressed a hand to her chest. She’d been right all along, and Morna had been wrong. Hoping magic could save them had been wrong. Thinking that she, Riona, could be any better than Eilis—could be any sort of leader—had been the greatest error of all.
At the same time, she couldn’t help feeling a terrible empathy for Torsten. Like him, she had failed her people, watched them die.
At least she had only lived it once. “So . . . this is it? Nothing can defeat Makkah.”
His returned his face to his hands. “I’m sorry.”
The sun set. Liadan and Dagny returned to tell them that there was food and fire, but Torsten didn’t leave the platform, and so Riona remained. Something about him pulled at her. Something familiar, something lonely. Perhaps it was only the knowledge that he had failed far more spectacularly than she had—Riona had lost a city. Torsten had lost a civilization.
But whatever the connection, it felt like more.
As the first stars were rising, the wind snatched back Riona’s hood. Her hands went up to catch it and brushed the band of feathers woven into the wind-whipped strands. With a cry, she snatched them out and tossed them away. As her hands dropped, her fingers brushed the raised skin of the silver feather marked on her neck.
She laughed—or maybe it was a sob. Riona nich Brannon, Queen of the Wildwood and Mountain Reach. Her fingers curled, nails scraping skin, but there was nothing to grasp. This reminder she could not pluck out.
Riona left the silent dragonskin and walked all the way to the edge of the city. From its perch, high in the Spire Mountains, she could see the whole of the Wildwood spread out below. Crann Laith was hidden by the bulk of the mountain. From where she stood, the Wildwood seemed at peace.
Another sob tore from her throat. This cannot be how we end.
Morna Brannon’s voice whispered in her mind. There are other ways.
There were better queens. Be the better queen.
Riona thought of Nessa’s vitriol, and her loss of control. Are you necessary? Eilis’s mocking, and a life lived in fear. Run, girl. She touched her cheek, remembering Makkah’s fingers, remembering Morna’s final blessing.
A silver feather she had missed fluttered to the ground, loosened from Riona’s braids by the breeze, and she stooped to pick it up.
The past was part of her. The loneliness, the pain, the failure.
The future is yours to shape.
Life had made her into a bone-shard blade. She was not perfect. Even with her intelligence, her determination, she could fail. Had done so, with horrifying consequences. But in the days since Eilis’s death, Riona had learned. She was teachable, and flexible enough not to break.
“This is my time. I will not let it go to waste.” She returned to the tomb and stopped before Torsten. Quick as thought, she took his hand and yanked him to his feet. “I will not stop trying.”
The dragonskin man blinked. He was tall.
“Whether or not you failed in the past, you woke.” Riona touched the little flame over her heart. “The magic is not what I expected, but it’s alive, and so are we. Even if there isn’t hope, we can’t just give up.”
Torsten’s fingers tightened over hers. He looked over her head to the horizon, where the waters of Sythespine Bay would be gleaming orange and crimson in the setting sun. He seemed to wrestle with something inside himself. Finally, he dropped his golden gaze back to hers. “If you go to fight Makkah, I will go with you, and tell you what I know.”
“Thank you.” Riona looked to the warm flicker in one of the ancient building’s windows, where Liadan and Dagny had built a fire within. Even if there was nothing she could do to stop Makkah, she would give her life to try.
And now she knew she didn’t have to try alone.
About Caitlyn McFarland
Originally from the Midwest, Caitlyn McFarland currently lives in Utah with her husband and three young daughters. She has a Bachelor’s degree in linguistics from Brigham Young University. When she’s not writing about dragons or running around after her daughters, she can be found hunched over a sewing machine making elaborate princess costumes.