30

TALON

I don’t even hesitate to reach with my boon for Darling’s trace. I have it before it occurs to me I should have sought Caspian first.

Darling’s trace flares in my awareness, almost hot and crackling. So easy to find, to connect with. I let that recognition stoke my anger. I know her so well I could track her if she’d been gone for days and her trace nothing but a faint echo. But right now her trace roils, because when she ran out of that guest room and, there, left down the narrow corridor, she was more than upset.

Taking Finn’s wrist, I drag him along after me. My eyes are half-lidded; I’m sunk into the staticky energy, the rope of lightning that is Darling’s trace. It flashes silver and Chaos rainbows, and I follow. Up and over, stumbling in my hurry.

As I cut right into a stairwell, I nearly smack into Elias Chronicum.

“Elias!” Finn says, reaching around me to steady the physician.

Elias focuses on me, mouth set, eyes wide but intense. “Are you looking for Caspian?” They clutch their bag to their chest. “He was heading for the ramparts, and I keep checking, but there are soldiers everywhere. Injured.”

There’s blood on Elias’s vest. Not theirs.

“I’m going after Darling. Come with us.” I push around them.

“I need to find Caspian.”

“They’ll be together,” Finn says, pulling free of my grip to take Elias’s elbow instead. “We might need your skills if she gets to him.”

“What? No.” Elias keeps up as they argue.

Finn says, “Do you have poison antidotes?”

The edge of fear is cutting up at my anger as I continue after Darling’s trace.

“It depends on the poison, of course,” Elias snaps.

“Barb poison?”

“They have at least—eighteen I’m aware of, to varying degrees of—” Elias struggles to speak. I’m taking the stairs two at a time, nearly running around and around. It’s a spiral stair and will let out onto one of the highest ramparts just beside the lookout tower.

Finn growls something back at Elias.

At the top of the stairs is a narrow half-circle landing and an arched doorway. I shoot through it, following the thread of Darling’s trace, and wince away from the sunlight. Out under the bright sky I smell smoke, and cannon fire booms. There’s yelling below me, but I ignore the battle to scan the dark stone ramparts for Darling. Nothing, but her trace keeps going, a jagged path to the tower entrance.

A sharp laugh draws my attention up.

Two figures stand on the open tower. The sun gilds Caspian’s wild hair, and he’s holding something dark in his hand, stalking close to Darling. She doesn’t move at all.

“Caspian!” I yell, sprinting for the tower. Harsh salt wind and smoke steal his name away.

The whistle of a cannonball barely warns me before it slams into the tower. Shards of stone slash at my temple. I stumble forward, coughing. I wipe my forehead with my arm and dive into the shadows of the tower stairs, grabbing the lintel to swing myself in. The stairway is so narrow my shoulders brush the stone wall as I charge up. “Caspian!” I yell again.

Just as I leap out onto the top level of the tower, Caspian puts his hand on Darling and kisses her lips.

My stomach drops. I’m too late! But before I can shove them apart, Caspian pulls back and looks right at me. He raises a bloody hand and waves fingers at me just as Darling ignites.

I’m punched in the chest by a blast of raw power.

Heat throws me back against the parapet. I nearly tip over but manage to twist and fall to my knees against the stone, arms up to protect my head.

Fire roars, and the waves of heat are too much. I lift my face, but the air is scorched. When I look, my eyes water, aching.

Where Darling and Caspian stood is a tall, blue-hot pillar of fire.

No—behind the pillar of fire my brother hunches over, clutching at his stomach. His expression is twisted, and he opens his mouth in a scream. He stumbles back and suddenly arches upright, arms flinging out, and the skin from his chin down his neck and chest flays open to reveal emerald scales.

I see massive fangs, green-black spines, and the monster that was my brother grows in fast fits, scaled flesh blossoming out, and his arms curl into huge fore-claws. Wings burst from him, sharp and jagged.

The dragon in front of me screams.

I clasp my hands over my ears as the cry tears through me.

It leaps into the bright sky, fanning its wings out, blocking the sun. Those wings pump, and it lifts up and up, screaming again. It is so huge. He—my brother—gleams beautifully in the sun.

Then the pillar of fire dims. The conflagration pulls in, narrowing, shrinking. It’s moving. It sways.

And the fire becomes wings.

Feathers like sparks fly toward me, scattering. They burn where they touch me, smoldering against my uniform and smearing ashes on the stone of the tower.

She takes off, too, a great fire-winged bird of red-orange-gold, trailing embers.

The dragon screams for her, and the phoenix opens its beak to return the call. Her cry is just as piercing and raw, but it pulses through me like a clarion note.

I think my heart stops beating, and so does the whole world: every heart stops at the shriek of the Phoenix Reborn.

Then my pulse is racing again, and the phoenix joins the dragon, flying higher and higher. She is smaller than the dragon, who can turn and twist around her with his sinuous body three times over. They reach for each other, spinning in a dance of scales and feathers, just as painful to stare at as the sun itself.

I pull myself to my feet, never looking away even as it hurts, even as I can barely breathe.

The empyreals fly up and into the brilliant sky until they are nothing. Gone.

My ears ring; I’m panting. Pain flickers to life where feathers burned me, where stone shrapnel sliced at my hairline. There are no more explosions, no cannon fire, but distant screaming that is both far away and right beside me.

“Talon,” Finn says.

He puts a hand on my shoulder. I blink, turn my face to him, slowly like my neck is an ancient set of gears.

“Talon.” Finn’s grip is bruising.

I mouth his name. Did he see it? Did anyone? How long did it take? Am I as mad as Caspian?

Caspian.

I sway.

Darling.

“Come over here,” calls an urgent Elias.

Finn and I manage it. Elias stands at the parapet, staring out at the sea.

“Sweet holy Chaos,” Finn breathes.

The sun shines prettily down on the bay, where several ships are floundering, broken into pieces and sinking, dragged around in the clutches of massive red-black tentacles. As I stare, one tentacle lifts a Barghest ship half out of the water and throws it into another. The beast rises out of the roiling sea. It is a kraken, of course.

Whatever Caspian did, it has changed our entire world.