Her beauty didn’t lay in her tangled hair or tattered clothing – still streaked with mud and weeds from when the Grandfather kidnapped her. It didn’t lay in her strong features or slightly crooked nose. It lay in her being Marielle – the one person who always saw true, who would do what was right no matter what it cost her, who would fight to the end for justice. It was a matchless beauty – unrivaled. Perfect.
He slipped past the Grandfather and the whispering Harbingers, and he stepped into the clock with her. It felt almost too personal – as if he’d stepped into her chambers when she was unaware – and he bit his lip apprehensively, careful with each movement.
He leaned in close, awed by her and careful, so careful. She’d been in here for so long. What toll would that take on a body?
Her lips were inches away as the ghostly pendulum swung through them both and he wanted so badly to meet them with his kiss. He ached so much to touch her that his skin tingled with wanting. His lips felt dry with needing to touch hers.
But that wouldn’t be right. Not now. Not like this. Not without her permission.
Instead, he leaned in close, breathing in her breath. It was a caress of its own. A kiss without kissing. As if he could draw her in and keep her as close as he could keep her breath. He closed his eyes and let it fill him, savoring the moment.
Etienne grunted beside him, shattering the perfect shard of time.
“You can have special moments later. We have work to do now,” he said roughly.
Tamerlan wrapped his arms gently around Marielle and delicately as a mother lifting a newborn, he lifted her up, drawing her from the clock as he stepped backward.
In his mind, chaos bloomed as the Legends fought and gnashed against his determination to hold them back, but in his heart were order and peace as he took her from the clock, stepping out onto the street. Her eyes were closed and a white wisp – like a spiderweb but wide as a ribbon – stretched between her and the pendulum.
The Harbingers shoved the Grandfather roughly into the clock the moment he left it and leapt backward as Etienne sliced the cord of spiderweb with his belt knife.
But they didn’t close the door of the clock.
And as Marielle’s eyes flickered open and the color returned to her cheeks, a roar filled the air.
37: Close the Clock
Marielle
She woke in his arms and the smell of him filled her up like a festival meal. Honey and cinnamon and the scent of tarragon swirled through the air in clouds of gold, almost overwhelming the scent of all the magic that was already making her head spin with its lilac scent and turquoise colors mixed with gold sparks. Her eyes fluttered open and she saw him there, like a tortured saint, like a dying man clinging to a last scrap of wood.
There was no Legend controlling him. He was just himself – beautiful, guilt-ridden, desperate, and sensitive. His eye was dark and haunted again. Ever since she’d met him, his eyes had only grown darker with the burdens he carried. She wanted to tell him it would be better. She wanted to soothe away his pain and rub the wrinkles out of his forehead.
Something roared behind him like a powerful wind. He straightened and she gasped.
Behind him, through the door of the clock – white wisps clawed out like the reaching arms of tentacles. One snatched up Liandari, whipping her into the air.
Marielle leapt from Tamerlan’s arms.
“The clock!” she called over the wind. “Close the door! You have to close it!”
She rushed toward the clock, but she could already scent the magic pouring out of it in all its lilac and turquoise intensity. Tamerlan rushed in beside her, shoving the door as hard as he could. She felt Etienne before she saw him – smelled his dark intensity – orange with the overwhelming scent of cloves – as strongly as if he was spewing magic out, too. Together, they pushed at the door of the clock.
It closed an inch. Another inch. But something was holding it.
She turned her head. Anglarok was gripping Liandari with both fists, screaming as the tentacle of white magic throttled her. It was that tentacle that was holding the door – and it was those tentacles that they had to stop.
If this really was a trap – a trap for Legends, then they needed to get it shut before it could trap Liandari, too. If only she could remember what she’d heard Ram saying before she’d left the clock. Something about traps.
She let go of the door and leaned across Tamerlan to draw his sword from his scabbard. Maybe if she cut it the way Etienne had cut the cord that held her. She raised the sword and hacked at the white band of spirit as hard as she could. If it made a difference, she didn’t see it.
“Close it with blood,” Etienne gasped. “Put your leg against it, Tamerlan.”
Sweat ran down his face. All his might was being thrown into the door. So was Tamerlan’s. He grunted, but when he shifted his stance, the door slipped back a span.
“Let me,” Marielle said, sliding her hand down his leg to bloody her palm on his wound. He shuddered at her touch. That wound would need tending. It pained her to take from him again. She was always taking – his body, his blade, and now his blood. She shook her head as she wiped her hand on the door. She owed him better than always taking.
The door of the clock slammed shut with the boom of a sepulcher.
“Liandari! Lieutenant!” Anglarok’s voice sounded panicked.
She spun to see him frozen with his leader in his arms. She lay limp in his grasp, but the tentacle was gone. Her face was white as snow, but her eyes flickered open.
He should have smelled it first. Maybe he was too concerned for her. Maybe it was hope that blinded him.
“Watch out!” Marielle cried as the scent whipsawed through her nose.
Legend! The smell of magic mixed with insanity was clear as a bell being struck. She’d smelled this before. She smelled it every time Tamerlan was possessed. She smelled it every time that she’d fought the Legends for him.
She held out Tamerlan’s blade but the world beneath them rocked wildly, shaking them so that they stumbled and had to focus on their footing. And then a shadow blocked the sun and as she looked up, her belly seemed to drop within her as a massive head – a dragon head – curled up and over the city.
It looked down at the clock positioned between its wings like a man might look at a dagger in his back. The blackened ruins of the city opened up, houses and roads falling from them like scales from a dead fish, and a red eye glared at Marielle at the same moment that Liandari leapt to her feet and out of Anglarok’s grasp.
“Dragon!” she cried, taking off at a sprint toward the University District.
Toward the head.
“Liandari!” Anglarok called. He sprinted forward but was flung off his feet by another lurch from underneath them. What was left of the masonry of the nearby buildings fell in chunks around them.
Tamerlan reached out to help Anglarok up on his feet.
“She’s possessed,” he breathed in horror.
There was something wrong with the sun, Marielle realized. Something wrong with where it was on the horizon.
“Possessed by what?” Anglarok asked through chattering teeth.
“I think,” Etienne paused to cough or maybe choke. “I think that perhaps the dragon we are standing on is flying now. Are those mountains closer than they were a moment ago?”
He was right. The mountains were closer.
The sun hadn’t moved.
They had.
“Possessed by a Legend,” Tamerlan said to Anglarok and at his look of horror, he continued. “Ram the Hunter, if I had to guess – though it could easily be one of the others.”
“Mer preserve us!” Anglarok said and his hands shook as they moved to cover his mouth. “That means that we opened it. We opened the Bridge of Legends!”
Tamerlan and Etienne exchanged a guilty look.
And Marielle knew why. It wasn’t Liandari who had opened the Bridge – or at least, not the first time.
&n
bsp; “Mountains fall on us! World swallow us up!” Anglarok screamed, looking up at the sky as the dragon screamed, too – a piercing sound like a gull crying along the shore. “We have opened death! We have brought our own destruction on our heads!”
“Now, who is crazy?” Tamerlan muttered. But his hands were compassionate when he took Anglarok by the arm and led him to the edge of the steps to help him sit.
“Take a moment. Take a breath. We’ll go after her in a moment.
“There’s no point going after her until the city lands somewhere,” Etienne said, trying to keep his feet under him as the city rolled again beneath them.
“She could be gone by then,” Tamerlan said calmly. “And who knows what she might do with a Legend possessing her.”
“You would know,” Etienne said grimly. “So tell me, Legend Boy – where will she go? What will she do?”
Queasiness washed over Marielle. With the immediate urgency of leaving the clock past, her body was calling in debts one at a time. Her scent and vision wavered, and her legs trembled beneath her. Hunger roared through her like a hurricane. Whatever magic had sustained her through her months in the clock was gone and with it, her strength.
Tamerlan noticed. He reached for her with a kind smile and eased her into a seated position beside Anglarok. Tamerlan’s leg was still bleeding. Little pools kept forming around his foot.
“Let me tend that,” she said, fighting the urge to vomit as she felt his injured leg.
“Thank you.” Who thought a word could be so full? But from him, it spoke a thousand things at once. Things implied by his smile, but the glint in his blue eyes and by the fact that he was here – here saving her instead of anywhere else.
But after that brief smile, he turned to Etienne. “It looked like she was going after the dragon. So that means the palace, right? The one place where there’s a chink in its armor.”
Etienne nodded grimly.
“We have to go after her,” Anglarok said, head in his hands. His voice sounded strange.
“Of course,” Tamerlan agreed.
“Wait!” She tore his trousers around the wound. “This is bad. A sword cut. Who cut you?”
“Someone who was trying to help,” he said mildly, his eyes lingering on her as if just watching her could give him something. She felt her cheeks growing hot under that gaze. It felt more than personal. It felt like she was his salvation. Again, he ripped his gaze away from hers. “And now we need to help her. The leg will have to wait.”
“Don’t you want the dragon dead?” Etienne asked with a look that suggested he was weighing Tamerlan and finding him wanting.
“Of course.”
“Not until this is stitched,” Marielle interrupted. Her head hurt and she felt like she might vomit, but he was bleeding worse than he thought he was. She wasn’t going to let him bleed to death while he tried to heal the world.
“Then why go after her?” Etienne demanded as Marielle opened her belt pouch and took out the needle and thread she kept there. It was clear he wasn’t going to wait. Maybe if she hurried, he’d at least let her stitch it.
Tamerlan looked haunted as he answered Etienne. “She isn’t herself. And I don’t want her to have to pay the price of being an avatar for a Legend. She’s no friend of mine, but no one deserves that.”
They nodded together and Etienne held out a hand. “Agreed.”
Marielle stabbed the needle into Tamerlan’s leg and started to stitch as he took Etienne’s hand. He barely flinched as she worked. He really was crazy. And tough as an ox.
“We’ll need a way to hold her once we get to her – and if there’s a way to destroy this dragon, we should take it, too,” Tamerlan said. “And we have to find Jhinn.”
He shivered and Marielle felt a shared burst of horror. If the dragon was in the air, would there be any water left in the whole city?
“How long do you think Liandari will be possessed for?” Etienne asked. The ground still shook under them. It was a wonder that the two men could stay standing with the very city under their feet swaying as the dragon flew. The sound of falling masonry and crumbling buildings made talking over it a chore.
Tamerlan shook his head. “This is different than ... well, you know how different it can be.”
They were both silent, looking in the direction that Liandari had disappeared.
It wasn’t until she was almost done stitching that Marielle realized Anglarok was gone.
“Where’s Anglarok?” she asked as she finished the last stitch in Tamerlan’s leg.
She looked over at where the other Scenter had been. He wasn’t there. Somewhere in the distraction and noise, he had slipped away, leaving a single word written on the stone in blood – scrawled messily as if the owner of the finger that wrote it had been wrestling for control of his own hand.
It read “help.”
Marielle felt the blood drain from her face as she met Tamerlan’s working eye.
“Did the swath of magic touch him, too?”
Tamerlan shook his head – not a denial, simply confusion.
“I don’t know,” Etienne gasped.
Marielle swallowed as she put the thread and needle away and found her weary feet. “The Legends were determined to find new avatars and to do what they’d always hoped for – live again in this world. I think they’ve found two new avatars.”
“We’ll just wait until it wears off,” Etienne said sensibly. “And then, Tamerlan, you will destroy every scrap of that Spice you have, do you understand?”
Marielle swallowed, but it was Tamerlan who spoke first.
“They didn’t smoke,” he said, turning in a circle to look in every direction as if he was searching for Anglarok.
“What?” Etienne’s voice as all edge.
“They didn’t smoke. This isn’t temporary. Don’t you see? I think that one of them – or maybe both – is permanently possessed by a Legend.”
“And what does that mean?” Etienne asked.
“It means the Five Cities of the Dragonblood Plains are doomed,” Marielle said. “It took everything Ram had to quell the Legends – every trick he could find. And if they’re out there now, it will take every trick we can find, too.”
Epilogue
Tamerlan
They’d found clean clothing for Marielle and dried meats in one of the buildings that was still intact. It wouldn’t be enough to help them for long. Wherever the dragon was headed, it was a place colder than the Five Cities. Already, they clutched cloaks around them against the cold as he flew ever onward and the day bled into the dark.
Jhinn had not been where they left him and there was no water in the canal when they checked. That alone had left them grim faced.
“We could set up camp,” Etienne suggested halfheartedly when night fell, but no one bothered to reply. There was nowhere safe to stand still. Every one of them had survived a close call with falling buildings or been swept off their feet by a sudden movement from the dragon beneath them.
Crossing the city was harder than they’d imagined it would be. And when they finally reached their destination, there would be two Legends to fight. Tamerlan touched his oilcloth frequently to check it was still there. There were six rolls in there – or there should be. Six left. Would it be enough?
It will be.
One thing was certain. Neither of the Legends that had taken the Harbingers was Ram the Hunter.
I trapped them once. I can trap them again. But first, we hunt dragons.
He reached out and took Marielle’s hand, desperately grateful when she let him. He needed to remember why he’d fought so hard to open up that clock – especially now that there were twice as many Legends free because of his choice.
Twice as many Legends to dance havoc across the Dragonblood Plains. Twice as many Legends to destroy everything.
Winterfast
Book Four
“They came down like a flood. People, people with purple eyes and wild tales of salvat
ion. And we took them in and made them one with us until the first dragons came down from the mountains. We realized our mistake too late. Realized the folly of our mercy only after our children lay dead and our homes burned. But we could not remove the people of the dragons, because we needed their blood to quell the scourge.”
- Tales of the Dragonblooded
“Swim, swim, boat in the sea,
Swim, swim, dragon in the sky,
Swim, swim soul in the stars,
Swim for me tonight.”
- Songs of the Retribution
1: Too Silent
Marielle
“I think it’s time to realize that the Legends – all of them – are enemies,” Tamerlan said through chattering teeth.
“They aren’t enemies or allies. They are just ... things. Tools. Options,” Etienne said, half distracted as he searched a closet and came out with a long fur cloak. He was fastening it around his neck and pinning it with a cloak pin before he was finished speaking. “Can you smell more fur in the house?”
“On the floor above us,” Marielle said. The way the house swayed and the boards above them creaked made her nervous, but the air was growing colder by the second and if they didn’t find proper clothing they’d die of the elements before the dragon could finish destroying the city by flying with it on his back. “I’ll go. I’m lighter than either of you.”
“I don’t think that you should,” Tamerlan objected, but his overprotectiveness wasn’t helping. He’d stayed right beside her in the hours since he freed her from the clock, his gaze barely leaving her – as if he was afraid that she would evaporate if he looked away. The sweetness in his eyes was almost too overwhelming. She shied away from it, afraid of what it could do to her while there were still battles to fight and cities to save. While he was still deeply addicted to a deadly magic habit.
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