Heart of the Dragon King

by J Boothby

  And that's when two things happen.

  First, the old smaug Xerxhos slams his jewel-tipped cane into the ground, setting off a shockwave that crashes outward through the hall.

  “Now!” he yells.

  Out in the audience, a good number of smaug throw off their elegant finery to reveal glittering armor underneath, armor that's carved with pictures of birds, and they push through the crowd towards Uriah.

  Second: all that fire that's been building up inside me?

  It detonates like a nuclear bomb.

  48

  The blast erupts away from me, sending everyone flying.

  The old smaug next to me is blown off the platform—he flies off toward the far wall with a surprised expression on his face.

  The Narrow King’s general is thrown to the ground, with parts of her armor melting as I watch them.

  Max is knocked flat. The sword goes flying.

  The whole rack that Uriah is chained to is picked up and thrown back into the crowd, Uriah with it.

  The Narrow King is blown into the air.

  There’s another blast just behind the first one, and a third behind that. Aether is pouring into me unchecked now and blasting out in waves, and I can’t control it.

  I don’t want to control it.

  Let it all burn.

  Each of my blasts pushes the Narrow King farther away until he spreads his wings and pivots in the air. He shapes some aether into a shield that buffers him from the blasts.

  He stares back at me, incredulously. He shakes his head like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. Then he lets out a tremendous roar.

  His neck grows longer, and his wings take on more substance.

  A great tail stretches out behind him. Spikes rise up along the length of his long spine.

  He’s huge.

  He’s a full-on dragon now, full of fire, screaming down through the air at me.

  The Heart glitters on his scaly chest.

  I react instinctively. As the Narrow King plunges toward me, broad wings of fire push up and out of my own shoulders.

  I push hard with muscles I didn’t know I had. The wings throw me into the air.

  I narrowly dodge him as he speeds by.

  I’d like to say I battled him there in the air, throwing fire back and forth over everyone’s heads, but flying’s apparently a lot harder than it looks. Instead, I crash-land, face first, into a pile of smaug and send all of them scattering.

  A sword swings just over my head. I hear the sounds of gunfire.

  The smaug are fighting each other now, I realize. Forces for the Sparrow against forces for the Narrow King.

  I throw off a blast of fire and push them all back away from me.

  I roll over to see the Narrow King turning in the air, coming for me again. He’s leaving a blazing trail of aether in the air behind him.

  I throw a blast fire at him.

  He stops in mid-air, wings out, and holds up one hand. He catches the aether easily between his two clawed hands and spins it into a ball in the air before him.

  That’s not good.

  He snarls at me, and the Heart flashes. The ball of aether turns black, expands exponentially, and then he throws it back at me.

  There’s nowhere to hide. I throw my arms across my face, and my wings swing around and cover me. I throw as much aether into them as I can, but when that dark sphere hits it detonates and blows me high into the air, spinning end over end.

  I try and catch myself with the wings, but no luck.

  I hit hard, and all of the air is knocked out of me.

  The Narrow King comes in close and hovers over me. “I don’t know who or what you are,” he says. “But this is my realm. There is no way you can stand against me.”

  “She’s not alone,” someone says from behind me.

  I know that voice.

  I spin around, and it’s my uncle.

  He’s holding that huge sword Max almost used to kill him, and it makes a high-pitched whine as it vibrates fiercely there in his grip.

  He hauls it back over his head with both hands, and then he throws it, hard.

  The sword spins through the air and embeds itself deep into the Narrow King’s shoulder.

  The Narrow King screams and peels away, leaving a fiery trail from his wings as he lofts high up into the air.

  And that’s when all of the other dragons awaken.

  Those statues all around the residence dome?

  Apparently, they weren’t really statues after all.

  49

  “The oldmothers! The oldmothers are awake!” someone shouts.

  It's Xyr. She pushes her way through the churning crowd to us. She has her knife drawn and the remains of an elegant smaug cloak over her shoulders.

  She points, and I see each of the statues shake itself, spread its wings, and leap into the air. There are screams and shouts of amazement as they beat their wings and circle low the courtyard, and then head up into the swirling sky.

  They're following the Narrow King's blazing trail. He's high in the air now.

  They swarm into a cloud around him.

  In my mind's eye, I can see them too. Each of the dragons is pulling in aether directly from the Heart. Fiery lines leap from the stone to each of them, and they burn brighter by the second.

  The Narrow King throws back his head and roars.

  Uriah pulls me to my feet.

  “That?” I say. “That's my father?”

  Uriah shakes his head. “You see why I didn't mention it?”

  “You should have told me.”

  “Perhaps a discussion for another time?” Xyr says.

  Up above us, the Narrow King screams again, and his cry is echoed by the oldmothers. He's far up there, but I can tell: he's staring straight down at me.

  He points.

  “This is going to be a problem, isn't it,” I say.

  “Take cover,” Uriah says, pointing. “Under the platform. We'll figure something out.” He looks at Xyr, who tosses him a sword. He holds it up high in the air and calls out something in another language, and the sword flares bright. Xyr throws a blast of lightning into the air at the same time.

  Soldiers in Sparrow armor start pushing their way to them. The old smaug with the eye patch echoes Uriah's yell, too, and shoves through the crowd in Uriah's direction.

  “Kylie!” someone else shouts. “Over here!”

  I know that voice.

  It's Devon.

  He's already under the platform. He dodges a smaug who swings a sword at him and kicks the woman back into the crowd. He's also wearing the torn remains of a fancy smaug outfit over his Blackstone suit.

  Next to him is a familiar-looking wolf, the size of a car. She’s wrapped in a wolf-shaped Blackstone suit too. She snarls at another smaug who drops his weapon, turns, and runs.

  “You got this?” I say.

  Uriah nods. “Go!”

  I pull my wings back and jump into the air while pushing with them at the same time.

  I think the secret to flying might be just stopping myself from falling, over and over again?

  But it's going to take a lot more practice.

  I hit hard under the platform. Devon pulls me to my feet.

  “You're all ok?” I say.

  Devon nods. “Orrex took out the mirror. We had to improvise.”

  I want to hug him, but there's no time. “Get down!” I say.

  The oldmothers plunge down over the crowd and open their great jaws.

  Rivers of aether pour out of them, hot and liquid and fiery.

  Aether rolls across the crowd, melting smaug from both sides of the fight, indiscriminately.

  Whose side are they on, anyway?

  I throw aether into my wings and wrap them around Devon and Zara. The aether washes harmlessly up and over us, crackling across my wings.

  An oldmother lands near us, huge, slitted eyes on me. It lurches toward me on ungainly legs, sucking up aether, and it opens its
jaw again.

  Its throat burns bright.

  But before it can let its fire loose, I react instinctively again.

  I step in front of Devon and Zara, spread my wings wide, and roar at the oldmother.

  My voice echoes around the courtyard, over the sounds of the battle.

  The oldmother jerks as if slapped. It ducks its head submissively and backs away, and then jumps away into the air.

  I throw my wings out even wider, blast aether from my hands, and I roar one more time as loudly as I can. Behind me stretches a long, glowing tail.

  The fighting stops.

  All the smaug turn to look at me.

  Then Narrow King drops in to land in the space the oldmother just vacated. Fire drips from his shoulder wound, but he stands tall and spreads his wings higher and farther than mine.

  “What are you?” he snarls in a voice like thunder. “Who are you?”

  “I'm Kylie,” I shout back at him. “Kylie Walker. I think you knew my mom.”

  The Narrow King stares back at me, shocked.

  His aether drops and scatters, confused, into the air.

  His wings go flat to the ground.

  He takes a step back in disbelief. “Kylie,” he whispers. “You are …you're alive?”

  “Definitely,” I say. “Hey, Dad.”

  I step forward, and before he can react, I rip the Heart off of his chest.

  And then I blow open an incursion right there in the air between us and I'm gone.

  50

  “What’s in this?” Devon sputters.

  He’s sitting at the bar at Poe’s.

  There’s sweat pouring down his face and a spoon in his hand.

  “Jalapeños mostly,” I say. “And maybe a few scotch bonnets too. I’m upgrading Uriah’s old recipe. Do you like it?”

  “I think I’m going to die,” he groans.

  He looks down at the bowl of green chili in front of him.

  It’s only his second bite.

  On the stool next to him, Sam watches with a worried look on his face. In front of Sam is a plate. On the plate is the crust of a grilled cheese sandwich, sitting next to an untouched pile of salad.

  I swear I’d just put that in front of him a second ago.

  Upstairs, I can hear the repair guys the insurance company recommended pounding away with hammers, fixing the walls in the apartment.

  “Die, like spontaneous combustion die? Or like slow and lingering, say, fifteen minutes tortuous death?”

  He tries to think about it but coughs again. “Five minutes,” he sputters, dropping his spoon and grabbing for the huge glass of water I set there. “And then I’m a goner.”

  “Perfect,” I say. “I call it the Widowermaker.”

  I flick my uncle’s switch under the counter that turns the traffic light mounted up on the wall to green. An old British air-raid siren next to it sounds off a quick blast.

  Sam jumps and grins. Devon groans again.

  Zara comes out from the kitchen, drying her hands on her Poe’s apron. “Did he like it?” She studies Devon’s sweating face as he drains the whole glass. “I think he liked it.”

  “He definitely liked it. It’s a keeper.”

  Devon puts down the empty glass. “Holy crap,” he says. “That’s good.”

  He digs in again with the spoon.

  “So you’re sure your uncle’s going to be ok?” he says, around a mouthful.

  We’ve been back a week now.

  Two days were spent mostly sleeping at Zara’s parent’s house, while each of us took turns keeping watch.

  The next two were spent on edge, watching the news.

  But the incursions seem to have stopped.

  No Narrow King has shown up at the door.

  After that, we came back to Poe’s. This morning there was a note from my uncle outside of the mirror in the smaug refugee houses.

  I pour him more water. I nod. “That’s what he wrote. Elohan and Xandro too. Xandro was in bad shape, but they were able to patch him up in time.”

  “Yeah, he didn’t look good,” Devon says. “Glad to hear it.”

  “Where do you think he went?” Zara asks. By ‘he,’ she means the Narrow King.

  “You mean after Kylie bailed on us?” Devon says.

  “I needed to get the Heart out of there!” I say. “Without it, I figured he’d be easy to beat.”

  Devon wipes more sweat away. “If by ‘easy to beat’ you mean he would simply disappear, you got lucky there.”

  He grins, but he’s right. Once I took the Heart, the Narrow King flew off alone in a dark cloud of aether. But he could have stayed, and fought longer. I like to think the shock of seeing me, and realizing I was still alive, had something to do with it, but there’s no way to know for sure.

  Without the amplified aether from the Heart, the oldmothers had gone back to being statues. My uncle and his allies were quickly able to get everything else under control.

  “And the guy with the eye patch will rule now? Not your uncle?”

  I nod. “Xerxhos was next in line for the throne. He’s apparently a decent guy. Besides, my uncle is full human.”

  “Aren’t you technically next in line for the throne?” Devon asks. “You are the Narrow King’s daughter.”

  I gesture down my front. “Do I look like a ruler of a dragon kingdom to you?”

  My apron is splattered with chili from the stove. Underneath I’m wearing my second-favorite old black t-shirt, which has a rip in the shoulder that shows some of the new birds that are spread all over me now. The jeans I’m wearing haven’t been washed since Burning Man, and my Doc Martens still have gunk on them from the Blackstone lab. The blue dog figurine is around my neck on a chain, and the Whisperlands key is too, though I keep that firmly under my shirt now where no one can see it.

  I sleep with it on too.

  “Yes,” Devon says. “Yes, you do.”

  “Definitely,” Zara agrees. “Your highness.”

  I snort, but Sam nods along with her. “You looked pretty badass, all dragoned-up at the end there.” Zara says. “You were huuuge! With a tail and everything!”

  “Thanks,” I say. But I shake my head. “I’ve got enough to do trying to get Poe’s going,” I say. “Besides, who’s going to watch out for Sam?”

  Sam grins.

  “It’s a little sad those weren’t his real parents,” Zara says.

  I nod. I had made a stop for Sam on my way back to Earth.

  Though intellectually I know it would be better for Sam to find his real family, part of me was glad to see that the two people in the nursery were just two random humans who’d been under the Narrow King’s thrall, along with Sam. They didn’t recognize each other once the Narrow King was gone, much less Sam.

  “We’ll find them soon, though, right buddy?” I say.

  “Right,” Sam says, nodding firmly. He was under the thrall as well, but seems to have recovered just fine. He slides his plate toward me. “More, please?”

  “Salad first.”

  Sam sighs. “On it,” he says, resigned. He picks up the whole pile of salad in one hand, crams it all into his mouth, and tries to chew.

  It’s not pretty.

  “And just where did you hide the Heart?” Devon asks.

  “I’m sure the Blackstone Institute would like to know the answer to that,” I say.

  “You know I’m not going to tell anyone.”

  To his surprise, Devon had gotten credit at Blackstone for stopping the smaug incursions, single-handedly. When he tried to turn in his resignation, Blackstone had countered with a letter of commendation from the President himself. They offered him his own team of agents, and he could run the team any way he saw fit.

  As long as he kept an eye on Sam and I, too.

  He was still figuring out what to do about it. Personally, I was keeping my opinion on all of that to myself. But he did have a point: Blackstone was going to watch us one way or another anyway. It wouldn’
t be bad to have a friendly face there.

  Particularly a face that’s as good looking as Devon’s.

  “I’m not telling anyone either,” I smile. “Xyr helped. It’s somewhere safe for now.”

  “For now?”

  I shrug. “The Narrow King knows about me now, right? He knows I have the Heart. I’m sure he, or someone, will come looking for it. Nobody saw what happened to Max, either, after I exploded out of there.”

  “What do you think happened to him?” Zara asks. “To Max?”

  “I wish I knew,” I say. “I know he was under the Narrow King’s thrall when he was about to attack my uncle. But I really want to know if it was more than that. Maybe he’s been under the thrall all along. Like, most of his life?”

  “Or maybe he really believes the Narrow King’s story,” Devon says. “But it doesn’t sound like you did.”

  I shake my head. “I’m not going to believe any guy who takes control of my mind like that. Even if he is my father.”

  “Good thinking,” Zara says. “But what about what Xyr did, with the sparks? Wasn’t that some kind of thrall?”

  “They’ve got to be related, I guess.” I frown. “Though it wasn’t nearly as strong. And it felt more like she was helping me find parts of myself, instead of erasing all of me at once.”

  “Maybe you need to keep an eye on all of them, just in case,” Devon says. “Even your uncle.”

  “Fair point,” I concede. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  “What will you do if the Narrow King tracks you down?” Zara asks.

  I grin. “I’ll be ready. I’m huuuge, remember?”

  “They should also know you have friends.” Zara says. “Strong friends.”

  “Powerful friends,” Devon agrees. “Assuming you don’t kill us for real with your scotch bonnet peppers.”

  “So, you guys will stick around?” I say.

  I think I know the answer. I hope I do.

  “Definitely not,” says Zara, frowning. She shakes her head and looks away.

  “No way,” Devon says. “I’m totally out of here too.”

  I look at them both with a stricken expression.

  Inside I feel my stomach drop.

  “You,” Zara says, rolling her eyes, “are so freaking gullible sometimes!”