by JD Monroe
“Enough,” Halmerah spat. “I will do this myself.”
“Su’ud redahn,” Tarek protested. He squeezed Gabby’s shoulders. “You have to go back down where it’s safe.”
The chains shook again, followed by two distinct percussive sounds as the white dragon planted its two front feet on either edge of the open roof. Then it let out a deafening roar and fixed its gaze on the gardens below.
White light exploded downward in a blinding column. Gabby had only a split second to react as it struck the ground, liquefying the stone. Lightning bolts exploded out of it. She could only watch, stupefied, as a bolt arced out of it and struck her. It felt as though a fist the size of a watermelon slammed into her chest, throwing her off her feet and into the air. The aftershock rolled over her, her muscles contracting painfully as her back arched until she thought her spine would snap. The world went white, and all she could think was not like this.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Tarek’s scream of anguish surprised everyone around him, himself most of all. Like lightning woven into a net, the white energy rolled over Gabrielle and blasted her off her feet. Her beautiful face contorted as she flew through the air and landed in a tangle of limbs at the base of one of the pillars. She was too still, and the image of Princess Ivralah, dead on a funeral pyre, flashed before him.
“No!” he shouted. He clenched his fists and stared up at the hulking shadow. High above, the white dragon had been joined by two smaller dragons. They flitted around the chains, circling its head. The white dragon roared again, curling its claws into the chain. Then it yanked upward.
For the first time, Halmerah’s fear showed. “It can’t break through,” she murmured, her eyes wide. It was a question as much as a statement.
Tarek threw his hand out in a sweeping gesture. “Get the queen somewhere safe!” If the white dragon managed to destroy the chains, the rest of the attacking force would pour into the fortress, not to mention what it could do with its terrible gaze. He ran to Eszen, who was still staggering from the aftershock of the terrible blast. “Get as many of our forces here as you can. We need everyone. And get the queen away.”
“What will you do?”
“Whatever I can,” he said.
The chains gave a terrible metallic screech as they snapped at the huge bolts holding them at one corner. The white dragon pulled the chain net back, leaving a small opening. The two smaller dragons climbed through and hurtled downward like spears. One of them was a sleek red-scaled dragon, and the other was terribly familiar, a scarred dragon with a gleaming golden hide.
He spared a glance at Gabrielle. If it was within his power, Tarek would have stopped time, stopped the spinning of the world itself to save her. But this was what he had to do.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. He looked up at the descending dragons. With the spark of rage building deep in his soul, he let the dragon take over him. He did not control the transformation or think about how it would burn through him; the man simply imploded as the dragon took form.
He leaped into the sky instantly, targeting the red dragon. It reared its head back to unleash an elemental attack, but Tarek beat him to it. He channeled the air and slung energy out like a sharp blade. The sheer effort left him breathless. The bolt caught the red dragon squarely in the belly, slicing it open from sternum to the base of its tail. Before the red dragon realized what had happened, it twisted its body to whip its tail around at Tarek. The twisting motion opened the deep gash, exposing muscle and bone beneath as blood poured from the wound and splattered the stone below.
Tarek showed more mercy than it deserved. He bore the red dragon to the ground, pinned its head with one claw, and drove one sharp front talon into the base of its skull. The body twitched, then went limp as the fire went out of the red dragon’s eyes.
He looked over his shoulder to see Councilor Netha ushering Halmerah away. The queen bellowed in protest, but Netha ignored her and dragged her toward the healers’ pavilion. Beyond the underground healers’ storage was a secret passageway that led to the inner sanctum of the fortress, a series of secret chambers below the dungeon with a hidden passageway out through the mountains. They would gather Ashariah on the way and ensure that the royal line was protected regardless of the outcome.
As Tarek watched Halmerah’s retreat, something landed hard on his back, crushing him between its weight and the spiny corpse of the red dragon. Tarek roared as claws tore into the side of his neck and raked down his flanks. He whipped his tail around, striking something solid as he propelled himself upward. He spun in the air, freeing himself from the gold dragon’s grasp. There was no question that it was the same one he’d fought before.
The gold dragon roared and came for him again. They tussled in the air, a flurry of claws and swiping tails. Tarek managed to get another air blade off on him, but it left him tired, trying to regain his flagging energy. The deep gouges in his side sent a searing, throbbing pain through him with each ragged breath.
Metal twanged as another bolt snapped overhead. The white dragon roared, and another bolt of light shot down through the net. It wasn’t elemental energy in the way that Tarek knew it; it was not flame, nor lightning, nor air. It was something altogether different. He felt it crawling on his skin and whispering along his eardrums. It made him want to find the nearest corner and curl up to hide.
The bolt struck the empty stone just as the gold dragon recovered and made a lunge for Tarek. The aftershock caught him, tangling his wings and sending him flying. The gold dragon landed hard on the stone a few yards from Gabrielle and lay twitching, one wing crushed under him. As the net of lightning surrounded him, his dragon form melted away to reveal the dark-haired man who had attacked him in the hospital. Through the crackling light, the man convulsed violently.
Tarek’s instinct told him to kill, to tear out his sorry throat, but a logical part of him answered. A prisoner would be more useful, and there were bigger dragons still to slay. He looked up to see the white dragon starting to push its head through. The opening wasn’t yet big enough for it, but it wouldn’t be long.
Tarek looked around at the gardens. The beautiful tranquility had been shattered. Blood had been spilled in the healing gardens, one of the holiest of places in Vakhdahl. The woman he dared to love lay unmoving, maybe already dead, and his queen was out of sight, beyond his protection. This was all he could do, even if it killed him.
With a deep breath to connect him to the wind, Tarek shot into the sky. As he rose, his heavy wings beating against the wind as hard as they could, he prayed. Let me do this. Let me redeem my shame. Let me die with the honor of saving my love.
The white dragon was monstrous. Up close, it was like nothing he had ever seen. It was not just an oversized version of the Kadirai; it was something else entirely. An eerie shifting light glowed from between its scales, which oozed a sticky greenish substance. It was not the sleek, muscular form of his kind, but a weirdly proportioned body, with odd bulges instead of the beautiful lines of the Kadirai. Sharp spurs of bone protruded from its arm and leg joints. Up close, he could see three eyes; two set in its skull like any normal dragon, but with a smaller third eye that burned above them, forming a glowing triangle. The magical energy pouring off it smelled wrong, rotten somehow. It burned Tarek’s nose to breathe it in.
As he got close enough to feel the hot wind from its nostrils, the white dragon began growling again. Its massive roar began as a growl that expanded to a deafening sound. Its huge size made it slow, and by the time it managed to snap its jaws at Tarek, he was already out of the way. He watched it closely for a moment, then had an idea.
Taking care to avoid direct eye contact, Tarek cut through the sky up and around. Hovering a hundred feet above the roof of the healing gardens, he saw the carnage the attack had wrought on his beautiful home. Smoke rose in plumes all over the city. The sounds of wails and clashing swords drifted to his sharp ears, even this high up.
Everything had changed. The
peace he had known was broken. He could not unburn the city, or rescue Gabrielle from her fate. He could stop this monster before it did worse, and maybe that would be his redemption.
Tarek called upon the wind. Serve me well, this last time, he thought. He pulled the air around him tightly, concealing himself from sight. Sure enough, he heard the white dragon make an odd sound. It looked up, then to its right for him. He spiraled around, then dive-bombed its skull. With his eyes squeezed shut, he felt for the landing. His back legs landed on the hard, spiny scales. A peek through one slitted eye brought the gleaming blue surface of the bigger dragon’s eye into view. Just looking at it made his head swim, and he felt a strange gravity pulling at him.
Fall. Die. You are lost, an insistent voice murmured in his head.
Not yet, he thought.
With his sharp front talons, he slashed the dragon’s eye. His claws plunged through the tough membrane, burying deep into the hot jelly-like substance inside. The dragon roared again, taking on a high-pitched edge of agony. He tore his claws out and did it again, and again.
The dragon twitched its head and rolled it against the stone, throwing Tarek free. One eye was ruined, with gouts of black fluid streaming down its face. Tarek went in for the final blow. Instead of striking its other eye, he wrapped his limbs around the dragon’s face. As he did, he came face-to-face with the third eye burning pure white in the middle of its forehead.
The world froze. He felt as if something ignited inside his brain, shooting fire from his skull, down his spine, and into his limbs. The eye expanded from a tiny orb to a sun to a supernova in his mind. A chorus of voices invaded his mind, shouting, die fall burn.
You have to do this. You have to save her.
Tarek gritted his teeth and slashed his claws across the eye. As he did, a shockwave burst from the dragon’s skull, blowing him backward. His whole body burned as he fell. He tried to extend his wings to catch the wind, but they were shredded, hanging useless by his sides. As the fire burned through him, taking over, all he could think was I did it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
It had been three days since Tarek fell from the sky. It had been two days since Gabby woke up with a contact burn on her chest and a monstrous headache. And it had been an hour since the last time she checked on Tarek.
Nothing had changed.
It was only by Ashariah’s insistence that she had been allowed to stay. Halmerah was overwhelmed with the chaos, and Gabby hadn’t seen her since the battle. But her daughter had emerged from their hidden sanctuary to come visit the wounded warriors in the healer’s pavilion. And when some of the queen’s councilors insisted that Gabby be taken home, hinting that she had overstayed her welcome, Ashariah had wielded her royal influence to insist otherwise. The princess had kept her informed with what she knew, and Gabby picked up the rest simply by being quiet and listening when others spoke.
The city was in an uproar. With two of their three strange white dragons killed, the attacking force had scattered. The Adamant Guard had been on high alert for the third, but there had been no sign of it. The battle had left more than fifty of the Stoneflight dead, and hundreds more of the Vak were dead in the lower city. Many more lay injured, some of them trapped in the catatonic state caused by the white dragon’s gaze.
Their attackers had fled, but the Stoneflight had captured two prisoners. One she didn’t recognize, but the second was the golden-scaled dragon, the man who had first attacked her in the hospital. Upon hearing that particular bit of gossip, Gabby had told Ashariah to have her guards be on the lookout for his white-haired companion. The two seemed to bring trouble wherever they went, and if he was close, then she would likely be as well.
The massive corpses of the two white dragons still lay in the streets; the first had been felled by the persistent attacks of the Stoneflight guard. The second had been felled by Tarek alone. Under better circumstances, she might have been proud of him. She’d already heard whispers of hero, legend as she walked the halls of the citadel. But his victory had come at a terrible cost.
Tarek lay in one of the healer’s beds, his beautiful golden skin gone ashen and his cheeks gaunt. His body was bruised and battered, though it was already far better than what it had been a few days earlier. When she first saw him, his ribs were shattered, protruding from the skin. The healers told her quietly that it was his wings; to take such terrible injuries in dragon form would be infinitely worse upon returning to his human form.
But worse than his physical injuries, Tarek did not wake, just as Ashariah had not woken. If Ashariah had ended up in her state by simply making eye contact, how much worse would it be for Tarek actually fighting the monster up close?
It bothered Gabby to sit and watch him, unable to help. She had tried taking his hand, to enter his thoughts like she had Ashariah’s, but there was no sense of connection. If Tarek was there, he was so deep that even she couldn’t reach him, and she couldn’t help wondering if he was simply gone. He might have magic pumping through his veins, but he couldn’t defy all the laws of nature. His injuries might have been so severe that the essence of him had simply died when he hit the unyielding stone. She didn’t know about magic, but she’d seen the aftermath of nasty accidents that had left patients brain-dead. Could magic bring him back from such a blow?
In the days that she had watched, it had occurred to her several times that she had been gone from home for over a week now. And yet, it seemed like a distant concern, literally worlds away. Where she had once been desperate to return home, now she only wanted to see Tarek wake.
It was on the fifth day after he fell that something changed. As she had done each day since the fighting ended, Gabby ate a small breakfast in her room. The queen had allowed her to stay in her old room, although she suspected that the gesture was less about hospitality and more that she was too busy trying to care for her battle-scarred city to even notice that Gabby was still around. She allowed Raszila to braid her hair and help her into a comfortable dress. Her eyes lingered on the bed, which had seemed too large for the last few days.
As Gabby headed down the corridor, the windows looking out over the city were still barred, showing that while things were quiet, they were far from normal. The beautiful landscape of Farath was marred with charred buildings and shattered stone, protruding from the cityscape like broken teeth. Though she couldn’t see the activity down on the streets from on high, she could see the patrols of dragons circling the skies. Smaller formations of birds of prey flew at angles to the patrols.
Councilor Eszen had sent a messenger to request her presence, so Gabby went to the library first. The room was packed with Kadirai working intently to research the nature of their attackers. The bookshelves were in disarray, with towering stacks of books strewn across worktables.
As soon as she entered his office, Eszen set aside the enormous white dragon scale he was examining and ushered her in to explain his findings. His studies had been interrupted by the attack, but as soon as it was appropriate, he got back to work. He had determined that Gabby’s resistance to their compulsion had come from Ashariah. The princess had pushed her memories into Gabby’s head with such force, that it had been like an infection that prevented other compulsion from taking effect. He’d been confused at first, but when Gabby explained an immune response to a disease, he’d enthusiastically agreed. However, the effect seemed to have worn off over time, and she’d made a mental note to be cautious about making eye contact with dragons she didn’t know. Eszen had still been musing enthusiastically about how to best take advantage of that effect, and she’d left him to his books.
Gabby hurried down to the healing gardens. Each day, the healer’s ward was less crowded, which she supposed was a good sign so long as the patients had been leaving on their own feet and not wrapped in death shrouds.
She settled herself on the low stool next to Tarek’s bed. “Hey,” she said. She gently touched his cheek, then kissed his forehead, as she had done every day since
she had awoken to find out what happened to him. “You should wake up. You’re missing all the excitement.”
She told him about the messenger from the Ironflight and his provocative message. The words had been carefully crafted to thank Halmerah for her wisdom and mercy in setting the Prince free, while carrying a very clear insult and threat of swift vengeance should such an offense be repeated. The message had pointed out that there were unexpected lights of wisdom and mercy in the Stoneflight, where one might least expect it. Gabby had no doubt that the message had been written by Zayir and signed by his sister. According to Ashariah, Halmerah was furious but begrudgingly accepted that the thinly veiled insult was better than the bloody war some of her councilors had expected.
Gabrielle told Tarek about the efforts to remove the giant dragon corpses, and the way Halmerah’s councilors had argued over burning them as opposed to studying them. As the arguments raged, the smell of rotting flesh filled the city, and the complaints from the Vak increased.
She was telling him about the odd substance Councilor Eszen’s scholars had collected from one of the white dragon’s scales when Tarek’s finger twitched. If she hadn’t been watching so closely, she would have missed it. “Are you listening to me?”
His finger twitched again. She took a deep breath and grasped his hand. She didn’t dare let her flicker of hope grow stronger. She had to be logical and practical. It could have been an involuntary twitch. Happened all the time even in critical patients.
Screw it.
She squeezed his hand. “Please come back to me. I’m right here waiting for you.”
A current tingled between their palms as she entwined her fingers in his. Then the sensation intensified, and she felt the same gravity pulling at her as when she had helped Ashariah. Fear bubbled up in her, but she gritted her teeth and squeezed his hand even harder. He had to come back to her. She would drag him out of the dark all by herself if that’s what she had to do.