CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Sev

A wall of sound crashed into me, sending me tumbling off the grimy cot onto the floor of the cell. The floor shook under my body, then lay still again. Had the rioters blown up another building? It hadn’t been the work of a Talon. A dragon might burn a building, but they could not produce such a cacophony. And they might shake the ground when they landed heavily, but not like that.

I got to my feet and looked up at the window. Bright orange light cast down into the dungeon. That was a fire. But were the two connected? What sort of fire could—

The floor shook again, sending me stumbling against the wall. Maren’s words from the dragon dream came back to me. Tomorrow, she’d said. Was it tomorrow already? Was this what I needed to be ready for?

Something swooped low across the sliver of sky that I could see, then was gone in a flash.

A dragon, I thought. There was a dragon flying across the sky, and though I couldn’t identify it from here, I hoped it was no Talon.

I smiled. Something was happening in Irrad that was outside the emperor’s control. Above me came the glorious sound of running feet. Run, I thought. She’s coming for you.

A door slammed, and I heard footsteps on the stairs. I stood up, bracing myself to face Rafael’s fury.

But instead, the person who appeared on the other side of the bars was Neve.

“What are you doing here?” I said, dumbfounded.

“Breaking you out.” She produced a ring of keys from her pocket and started trying them against the lock. Her hands shook slightly—the only indication that she was nervous in any way. The fourth key turned, and she swung open the door.

“Where are we going?” I said, confusion making me slow.

“Do you want to talk, or do you want to live?” she said.

Point taken. I darted from the cell, and Neve handed me a set of yellow Aurati apprentice robes. “Put these on.” I pulled the robes over my head and followed her. The bodies of four guards were slumped at the foot of the staircase that led up to the main floor of the palace. I stepped over them as Neve led the way back up the stairs—I thought they were still breathing, though I couldn’t be absolutely certain.

Neve held out a hand to stop me as we reached the top of the staircase, and she peered out into the hallway. I could hear footsteps and raised voices on the other side of the door.

“All right, let’s go.”

I pulled the Aurati hood up so that it hung low over my face, and we trotted through the palace halls. Our haste wasn’t out of the ordinary—most of the people we saw were running.

We made it upstairs to her laboratory without being caught. Neve locked the door and pushed a table against it once we were inside. Then she sank into a chair, breathing hard.

My body was beginning to catch up to this extraordinary turn of events. I paced, full of nervous energy. “Not that I’m not grateful, but do you have a plan for getting out of the palace?” I said.

Neve shook her head, and my heart sank.

“Then why—”

She held up a hand to stop me. “The emperor’s fleet has been destroyed.”

Maren. Fierce joy rose in my chest. There wasn’t even time to wonder how. If the fleet was destroyed, the army could not sail. And Rafael would not send Talons across the ocean.

“I know you lied to me about the empress,” Neve said, sending my spirits plummeting. “I thought long and hard about whether to leave you in the dungeon. Perhaps that was just what you deserved. But the emperor will come for you soon. I thought it was only fair to give you a fighting chance.”

“And you?” I said. “The guards will identify you as the person who set me free.”

Neve squared her shoulders. “I’ve spent my life trying to balance what was asked of me against what I believed to be right. Until recently, I thought I could do no better than what I’ve done. But Maren has proven me wrong. She has freed dragons from bondage. Bondage that I helped perpetuate.” She looked around the laboratory. “The time has come for me to act. It is perhaps too little, too late, but I cannot change the past. I can only change what I do going forward.”

She stood up and picked up the chair she had been sitting on. Then she walked over to an open cabinet and swung the chair hard against it, smashing the glass vials on its shelves. Muddled scents flooded the room, overwhelming my senses. I had to put an arm on the table to steady myself.

Neve, the emperor’s Aromatory, was destroying her life’s work. With this act, she was as good as dead.

As was I, now. With no fleet to set sail, there was no reason to keep me alive. If the emperor caught me, he would kill me.

“Can I help you? Do you want to come with me?” I said.

Neve looked up. There were oil stains on her skirt and scratches on her arm from where glass had shattered and fallen. “I have to stay. I must find a way to destroy Milek’s potions. Get out, if you can.”

The expression on her face was final and determined. “Tera be with you,” I said. Then I ran.

I had the advantages of the disguise I was wearing and the chaos around me, but that was it. I didn’t know where Faris was, and I had no further allies in the palace. Given the attack on the fleet, the palace was certain to be locked down—unless there was an assault on the gates.

I could hide somewhere in the palace and hope to avoid detection until all this was over. I could fight and try to catch the emperor distracted.

Maren. I wished desperately I could speak to her. In the dragon dream she had been despondent over the loss of Kaia. She was shaken and clearly heartbroken, but she had still vowed that she was coming.

I walked briskly, keeping my hood up and my eyes lowered as I descended the staircase to the first floor of the palace. From there I bypassed the great hall and made my way toward the gardens. I had to hope that the sword I’d buried in the Garden of Hearts was still there.

I was just approaching the door to the garden when a group of guards rounded the corner. I turned away from them, but it was too late. “There he is!” one of them shouted.

I abandoned the ruse and sprinted, racing for the palace doors. I burst out into the courtyard—

Fire arced through the air in front of me, and I skidded to a halt. Vix the Ruiner stood before me, bearing Rafael, the Flame of the West. The emperor was dressed for battle in full armor, a curved sword in his hand. Vix was similarly armored.

A chill ran across my skin. Rafael motioned to the guards without speaking. They swarmed around me and dragged me forward, then pushed me to my knees in front of the emperor.

“You have failed in every possible way,” the emperor said, leaning over me. “But you may serve one more purpose yet.” He snapped his fingers and the guards produced shackles. They bound my hands and feet so that I could only shuffle, not run. “You’re coming with me.”

On his dragon, into battle?

Then it dawned on me. The emperor thought that Maren was out there—and I was to be bait.

“You overestimate my relationship to the dragon mistress,” I said quickly.

Rafael only laughed, a frightening gleam in his eyes. “Then it will be just as easy to let you fall.”

At his signal, Vix shifted and rose to its feet, shaking its massive head. I held still as the dragon walked to me and wrapped its claws around the chains that held me. For such a large beast, its claws were surprisingly gentle. Then, with two powerful flaps of its wings, it took off, carrying me into the air.

I had been unconscious the last time I had traveled by dragon. Now I lurched back and forth with every wing beat and felt bile rise in my throat. I forced myself to focus on the horizon, trying to find some balance—and saw dragons flying toward us.

That didn’t make sense. Did it? We’d taken to the air surrounded by the emperor’s full fleet of Talons—thirty strong, at least. Why would there be dragons flying in from the ocean? Dragons that had—I squinted—Seratese riders?

The dragons from the ocean flew down to the harbor. They let their riders off onto the ground, then took off again, turning in the air to face the Talons as we approached. I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

The emperor whispered something to his dragon, who let out a fierce cry and a billow of angry flame. The Talons shot past us in formation. The sky was quiet for one breath, then two. And then the lines of dragons crashed into each other.

The world went sideways and upside down, and for a moment I clenched my eyes shut, giving up on trying to keep track of what was happening around me. The scent of something harsh filled the air. Then the emperor pulled his dragon up, flying free of the combat. I opened my eyes, and the city spread out before me. A pillar of flame on the docks drew my attention, and I grinned. Neve had told the truth. The emperor’s war fleet was burning.

I had never seen anything like this dragon battle. The dragons twisted and twirled in the air, colliding and breaking apart. We were high enough in the sky that I wasn’t too concerned that one of them might accidentally torch a structure, but I could still look down and see the dumbfounded faces of people in the city below, looking up. What would happen if one of the dragons was knocked from the sky? At this height, they would probably demolish a building on impact.

These new dragons were better at air combat than the Talons, from what I could see. This made sense, since the Talons weren’t trained in air combat. And their method of training, using oil to direct the dragons, did not work well in quick-response situations. But the emperor’s fleet still had one advantage: there were simply more Talons than Seratese dragons.

Vix avoided close combat, instead dodging and diving and letting loose plumes of flame. The emperor then pulled his dragon back around and flew down, level with the roofs of the buildings. Logically I knew that I wouldn’t collide with one of them, but that didn’t stop me from craning my neck as far away from the roofs as possible.

What was Rafael doing? Vix was the largest of the emperor’s fleet. They should have been closer to the battle, even if the emperor was focused on keeping himself safe. But instead, they were sweeping across the sky methodically—searching. They were searching for Maren.

“Dragon mistress!” the emperor yelled into the open sky. His dragon mimicked him, shrieking out across the city. “Come out and face me directly! I have your prince!”

Maren was too smart to fall for something like that, if she was here at all. She had to know that one life was nothing against the power that she wielded, to singlehandedly change the course of the empire. She would not give herself up just for me. There was no way.

But still I looked for her as we passed over the streets of Irrad. On the ground, there was another battle raging, though it was less flashy than the one in the air. There appeared to be a force of Seratese fighters—where could they possibly have come from? I had not thought there were so many Seratese people in the entire empire—systematically advancing from the direction of the docks toward the center of the city. Most civilians didn’t seem to be giving them trouble—in fact, it looked like most of the protesters had joined forces with them. The army was putting up a half-hearted defense, but they were outmatched—or they had decided to switch sides. The soldiers were soon overwhelmed, and the Seratese advanced. And there—there to the north, another small force converged on Irrad’s outskirts. The Dragons had come!

Now I understood why the emperor had panicked. The problem with a military force composed primarily of dragons was that the emperor could not control his own city without burning it to the ground. The dragons were fierce because their power was huge and ferocious—but that meant that they could burn entire town squares, not arrest one person. I didn’t know how the Seratese had managed, but they had exploited this weakness by taking the fighting into the city, which Rafael wasn’t yet willing to destroy.

Then I saw them.

At first the emperor did not. He was still looking down at the city. But Maren was coming from the south—and she was riding on the back of a dragon. The dragon kit rode with her, a flash of bright blue against the larger dragon’s deep green. Maren’s hair was loose around her face, she was wearing Ruzian clothing, and she looked unimaginably fierce as she raised her arms and sang.

Maren. Here, in Irrad. And the emperor was turning his dragon toward her.