Blight take your grain, spite take your wife, and a demon take your toes.
~ A curse
AFTER WE ATE—not much, neither of us hungry—we settled to sleep on our respective benches. I wished Ula had left behind the liquor, something with enough bite to take the edge off the disquiet of this too quiet place. With the carriage shutters latched, our protectors outside calling a change of guard sounded muted, as did Lisel’s brusque command to illuminate the torches. It must be getting dark.
I reached toward the lamp, to turn it down, but I remembered Lady Dyania had asked the night previous to leave it, so I tucked my arm under the blanket against the gathering chill.
“Keeping the lamp lit is foolish.” Though she seemed like she was trying to convince herself, her whisper reached me across the silence. “The amaranthine light everlasting shines regardless of whether there are eyes to see, or so the blessed haloric writs tell us.”
“I’ve seen more foolish,” I reassured her. “I’ve been more foolish.”
Her huff of amusement was softer than her whisper. “Should that cheer me?”
“Not in the least.”
“Just as well, because—”
A warbling cry cut through her words—a strangely musical wail, like a dulcichordia left out in the rain until the strings curdled and then plucked by a careless finger. The lady and I stared at each other across the gap between us, and I think even our hearts stopped beating for a moment.
A shout ripped out, one of our guards this time. “Demons! Take arms! Light the spare torches!”
We both scrambled off our seats to huddle in the middle of the carriage. Suddenly, Tivvo seemed not so terrifying to me.
Another eerie, shimmering cry, this one like the seabirds that sometimes wandered upriver from Maru Deep to Sevaare, starving and despairing.
Then a more hideous and very human scream.
We crouched in the guttering light of our lamp and cringed as the sounds of battle surrounded us—piercing shrieks and gobbling howls and every pitch of wrath and pain and ravening in between. Lady Dyania clamped her hands over her ears, curling into herself as if the sounds landed like blows. Maybe to her refined aura, they did.
A hiss, soft yet somehow most disturbing of all, rasped over the top of our conveyance. The carriage shivered, although not as much as Lady Dyania who let out a choked whimper. I made no noise, not from bravery, my own throat clogged with jumbled blessings. Who’d have guessed I’d memorized some sacraments over the years while begging and/or pickpocketing outside Sevaare’s grand temple?
The hiss and shiver stopped, but all my muscles ratcheted tighter. Lady Dyania opened her eyes wide, her fists dropping to press against her lips. The fighting sounded farther away, though I suspected that was only because I was so focused on whatever was right outside.
“It’s gone.” The lady’s whisper barely passed her fingertips.
I shot her a hard look, shaking my head. Not that I knew better, but—
Before I finished shushing her, I was flying through the air as the carriage tumbled around us. I had a split second to be glad we’d tucked away the remains of dinner and there’d been enough power in the carriage for the toilet incinerator to do its work, and then I slammed into the lady—or maybe she into me. We rolled hard, limbs thrashing, before the carriage finally came to rest.
On my back, I stared up, stunned. The rectangle of darkness above me was streaked with gray smoke and yellow-red sparks.
The door. The carriage door I’d so dutifully locked had been wrenched aside, and at any moment a demon might reach in, like I rummaged around a bag of speridia rind.
Another dead-end alley.
No, worse than dead. Damned. Our auras would be shredded and devoured, only tatters left to blight these ruins with the rest of the lost.
I lurched upright, my mind reeling to orient the carriage’s new position. The worn heel of my boot slid on the silverleaf around the shuttered window that was now our floor. Lady Dyania sprawled in one corner, her braids in disarray and her eyes glazed. Injured, or in shock?
As I stretched toward the open doorway, she fumbled for me. “Feinan, no. Where are you going?”
“We can’t stay in here.”
“But the demons—”
“Will feast on your aura. Not an honored offering to the dragon, just another accursed shade.”
Considering how cramped the interior of the carriage had felt, the door seemed too far above me. I jumped to grab the rim, and my legs flailed uselessly for a moment until hands under my backside boosted me higher.
For a frantic heartbeat, I dangled helpless, exposed.
By the amaranthine light, if I got out of this alive, I would… Neh, I might even voluntarily say a blessing.
Nothing grabbed me, and I clambered up into the burning night.
Squinting against the torchlight, I found no sign of whatever had rolled our carriage and cracked it open like an egg. I spun around on my haunches, dazed by the waving silkha white and the whirling sinister shadows. Two other carriages were tipped, and one was on fire—
“Feinan!” The lady’s shrill call jolted me from my gawking. “Get me out of here.”
I reached down through the hole, my nape prickling—as if demon fingernails tickled at my cropped hair, ready to rip my skull and spine from my skin, slavering fangs gnashing through my grubby aura as it left my body.
I wrapped my fingers around her wrist and heaved backward. She kicked up a heel to hook over the door jamb; some Sevaare dance tutor should be commended for her lithesome grace. As she popped up onto the battered side of the carriage next to me, the stolen knife was already in her hand.
Just as well she hadn’t had the weapon out when the carriage was hit or someone would’ve probably been impaled. I hastened to match her armed stance, but I was a cutpurse, no sword-swinger.
From our vantage, it seemed clear our guards were losing. I caught a glimpse of Lisel wielding her spear, minus the pristine silkha pennant. In stories, only sanctified weapons had a chance against demons, but what did I know? Another guardsman—no, this one boasted gilded armor and must be the captain—fought at her back, but even as I watched, he stumbled and went to one knee, listing sideways.
The enemy…
I’d heard stories all my life of the vicious, vile demons. But I’d never faced them. Even now, I struggled to distinguish monster from shadow and shadow from whispers of nightmares.
Or maybe the difference didn’t matter, only the screams and death.
The torches marking our perimeter were scattered and burning out. Soon there’d be no light but dying embers and the fading glow of whatever auric vestiges the demons left behind.
“Feinan, fetch a candle, please.”
My body buzzed with terror. “A candle? Why—”
“Do as I ask.”
Somehow, her calm tone blunted my panic, and I dropped into the carriage. Wrenching at the drawers that all seemed backward, I found the prayer candle. The sweet scent mocked my sawing breath.
“Lady,” I called. “Here!”
Her pale spread fingers and golden face were like a small moon and sun against the darkness behind her when I tossed the votive. She disappeared, and I hauled myself up again, wrenching something in my arm. No proud dance tutor for me.
The lady’s slender fingers trembled around the candle but her expression was oddly serene as she used her knife to gouge a shallow mark into the concave wax on top.
“Ah, blight and spite,” she mumbled. “I can’t remember how it goes…” Flicking away the curl of wax, she tried to ignite the wick, failed, then thrust the candle my way. “Light this.”
I’d skulked through enough dark alleys that my hands instinctively found the fitted striker. A tiny flame bloomed within the ornate cup, its glow all but irrelevant against the suffocating weight of night and more menacing shadows.
Worse, the spark blinded me, but even my dull aura sensed the furious hunger in the dark beyond.
And even worse, the Chosen One in her white silkha shone all the brighter. Remarkably foolish right now. She thrust her hand at me. “Blood.” Despite the command in her voice, her hand trembled harder. “Not deep or anywhere vital, but…just enough.”
I stared up at her. “What?”
She waggled her fingers in imperious demand. “Cut me. We’re surrounded, but my blood in the candle flame will repel them, hopefully long enough for us to escape.”
Shedding the blood of a scion was punishable by death. Not that we weren’t facing death already, of course. But escape to where exactly? All I could squeak out was, “Blood?”
“I can’t do it myself or it won’t be the same.” Her voice pitched high, making her sound younger. “The brilliance of life’s light surrendered burns back the abyss.” She pointed at my knife, sagging in my hand. “I’ve never done this, but I…I’ve read how bloodfire runes might be anathema to demons.”
“You’ve read?” I repeated incredulously. “Might be? By all means, then, let me stab you for a might-be story.”
“I can’t do it alone. Please, Feinan.” This time, her voice cracked. “Quickly, before the rune disappears.”
Swearing under my breath about reading, with the tip of my knife, I pricked her finger.
A bead of scarlet welled, vivid in the murk. She squeezed more blood to the tiny wound. Droplets fell—one, two, three—to tint the curl of melted wax filling the mark she’d carved. The flame guttered for a heartbeat.
And then flared upward, impossibly high and bright.
Silence spread outward from us like a wave of fog. Even the last sparks rising from the wrecked conveyances seemed frozen in the air. Only the blood-fed flame danced merrily within the etched cup.
The light glinted off a hundred uncanny eyes in groups of twos and threes and eights.
A quietest chirrup, like the sunrise complaint of a sleepy chook, drifted to us. It was answered from the other direction by another purling chirp: the call of a cock summoning his flock to a grub feast.
“Are you sure purity repels them?” I whispered.
The lady’s gasp was even softer. “Oh. Oh no…”
The circle of hungry eyes constricted by one unanimous sidling step inward, toward us.
“Run,” I suggested.
The bubble of silence collapsed in a chorus of hisses and shrieks, and we leaped from our perch on the carriage. For one moment, we were engulfed in a rush of darkness. My whole body and being flinched from the gush of violent, bottomless hunger passing by.
But the demons ignored us and pounced upon the bloodied flame, their ghastly cries ringing ‘round the pillar of light. Though the little candle should’ve gone out, I wasn’t lingering to wonder at the miracle.
I snagged the lady’s wrist and bolted toward my last sighting of Lisel—or, more precisely, toward her long spear which seemed a much better weapon than our pocket knives.
The hartier was crouched beside her fallen captain behind the shattered wheels of her chariot. The hart was gone. As we pelted across the square, her eyes flared wide but she stood to make room for us, brandishing her pike.
Lady Dyania knelt beside the captain then flinched away. The palm of her pale hand was soaked in red. Had I pricked her too deep?
She put her other hand on the captain’s shoulder. “You’re hurt.”
“Badly,” he wheezed. “We must call down the night.”
As if it wasn’t dark enough?
But Lisel stiffened. “Another demon?”
Ah… He meant the monster. The Dragon Prince.
The captain fumbled at his side pocket for a small case of quilted white silkha, streaked with an ominous maroon. Within nestled a whistle of bone, the narrow cylinder etched with blackened motifs found in no prayer book. I averted my gaze.
Lisel drew back. “Captain—”
“Summon him. Or the Chosen will die here, in vain.”
I knew this legend too. So it said, the whistle was formed from a finger bone of King Ormonde himself. While fighting the demon dragon, he’d lost his arm—neh, not lost actually, the dragon bit it off and swallowed it—but he’d forced the beast to disgorge the limb, and though the flesh had been stripped away, the bones held together by the lingering might of his aura the dragon had wanted to steal. From the macabre remnants, he’d fashioned an instrument to summon and control the monster.
Over the centuries, the panpipes formed from all the bones had decayed. Now only this gruesome whistle was left, still with enough of the old king’s powerful aura that, when played, forced the demon dragon to answer.
Or so the story was told.
“Summon him,” the dying captain repeated. “Our blessed lor has been killed, and I haven’t the breath left myself.”
When Lisel hesitated, Lady Dyania plucked the whistle from its case. She lifted the bone to her lips, casting me a sidelong glance when I made a faint, inadvertent noise of disgust, and blew across the opening.
It sounded…like a hollow old finger bone. At least to my unsanctified ears, not that I huffed on bones of any holiness. I grimaced. How could even a demon hear that puny note? How could the Dragon Prince get here before the irresistible lure of the Chosen One’s blood in the prayer candle guttered out and the horde pursued meatier game?
Lady Dyania kept blowing. She closed her eyes, and her fingers must’ve found some subtle key holes in the dusty thing, because the faltering whistle slid higher then lower, as if seeking.
Summoning the demon dragon and its prince.
Every nerve in me yearned to flee—where, I had no idea—but I stayed crouched beside the lady, my gaze jumping between her and the wavering golden light of the candle. Against the contrast of flame and shadow, the frolicking demons were weirdly jointed silhouettes, the sullen smoke of burned-out torches whirling around them like translucent tatters of stolen auras.
Out of nowhere, I remembered my father had a poppet show of the Great Gorging. The reenactments were always very popular at the lightkeeps and freeholds where we paused, with much enthusiastic cheering as the poppet Ormonde tamed the demon dragon.
I would never be able to watch such a performance again without the reek of scorched metal and the captain’s blood coming back to haunt me with the shiver of a broken finger bone stroking down my spine.
A tear leaked from the lady’s eye. She was going to run out of breath before the candle died, but either way we’d soon be dead…
A downward draught of icy air pressed upon me, heavy on my shoulders and even heavier on my heart. Some mouselike instinct had me cowering as the dragon plunged toward us.
I had a fleeting impression of a serpentine neck weighed by a thick iron collar and an unfurling tail spiked with bony thorns, overshadowed by vast, beating wings. Dark, leathery scales were pocked and slashed everywhere with ashen scars. But my focus locked on another pale shape, like a fallen sliver of the hidden moon: a contorted face with long, black hair whipped in the fury of the monster’s passing—the Dragon Prince, lashed at the monster’s heart, arms spread in echo of its wings.
The beast leveled out and swept over our heads, its taloned wings ripping the smoke into swirling vortices. The shock of its arrival bowled me over, and Lisel dropped beside me. If the lady was still piping, the sound was lost in the dragon’s howl of rage. It arrowed toward the demons still dancing around the candle.
I almost pitied them.
Distracted by the Chosen One’s blood, they sensed their downfall too late. The dragon tore through its brethren as if they were just more smoke. The horde shrieked like an ossuary’s worth of rotting bone instruments played by deranged musicians. But they had no chance against the dragon.
A monster among monsters, it lashed out with jaws and claws, breathing out something that was not fire or ice but a nothingness—a void swirling with auric ether I glimpsed only at the periphery of my vision. That emptiness swallowed the demons and left nothing in its wake.
The candle went dark.
One more scream echoed, vast as the night itself, and yet hollow as that old bone, hungering still.
Horrible, terrifying, and yet some deep hidden part of me recognized it: a loneliness, unfathomable.
And that part of me yearned in kind to answer.
As if following the candle’s suggestion, the rest of the world went dark.
For a heartbeat, I wondered if my flawed aura had been sucked away with the demons. But then the warm light of a lamp flared to life, hefted in Lisel’s hand. She hastened toward Lady Dyania, slumped against the chariot wheel, and levered the Chosen One upright with her free hand. She turned to me. “Get your lady back to the carriage. The horde might be gone, but it’s not safe out here in the dark.”
I glanced around. “Your captain…”
“Dead.” Her jaw flexed. “Now do as I say.”
I balked. “Our carriage is overturned, overrun by demons.”
Sucking in a long breath as if to replace what she’d exhaled into the pipe, Lady Dyania said, “I’m not going to faint.” Her shaky voice didn’t say much for her steadiness, but she straightened away from the hartier. “Please, look to the others. We’ll await you here.”
Lisel gave us a last doubting look and strode off. The lady braced herself against the chariot and slowly sank to the ground. While I wasn’t thrilled to squat by this upended cart and the dead captain, even less did I want to return to the silverleaf carriage where the horde had converged—until the Dragon Prince had obliterated them in one fell swoop.
I crouched beside her. “You saved us.”
She tipped her head back with a dull thunk. “I almost killed us. The rune was supposed to be protective, and instead I lured them closer.” She thunked her head twice more. “It was the Dragon Prince who saved us.”
“Neh, you gathered them in one place so he could destroy them all. Like a festival hawker calls to muster the rubes for pilfering—except with a massacre.” I cradled my strained arm, only to realize I’d apparently bruised my ribs too. “How did you know about runes?”
She rolled her head to gaze at me. “How do you know which pockets to pick?”
“Experience and desperation,” I answered with only a hint of drollness since it was mostly true.
“Desperation, yes. And maybe my reading counts for your experience.” She looked down at her fingertip, where I’d pierced her. “But obviously I got something wrong. The poor captain…”
It was something of a revelation to hear a noble scion admit a mistake. “Wrong or no, it was better than waiting to die.” Despite my aches, I wrapped my arms tight around myself, the night chill and lingering shock making me shiver. I should’ve grabbed blankets from the carriage.
Across the trashed encampment, more lamps and torches ignited as Lisel gathered up what remained of the guard. We’d left Sevaare with a dozen carriages and double that in protection. Now, four carriages were wrecked, not including ours which seemed merely upended, and only half the guards rallied to Lisel. Maybe some just ran off?
Although that probably hadn’t gone any better for them.
With a last look at the dead man, Lady Dyania shoved to her feet.
I looked up at her. “Where are you going?”
“To help, if I can.”
That didn’t seem wiser than fleeing. But I followed her.
We stopped first at the Maru Deep carriage. Though the conveyance was upright and the shutters still latched, the big attendant slumped outside the door, one hand pressed to his eyes.
The lady glanced at me, rubbing her forefinger and thumb together in a way that made me think she was considering the wave-bladed knife in her boot. She cleared her throat. “Are you injured?”
“Not I.” He looked up and realized who he was speaking to. “No, my lady. Our Chosen is safe within. But my friend, Torbar, heard the call to arms. He’d served on the Maru wall so he took up a pike.” The despondent man let out a shaky breath. “But the demons…”
“Blessings upon your friend.” Lady Dyania closed her eyes in sympathy. “Killed? Or taken?”
He recoiled, as if he hadn’t even considered the bad and the worse. “Killed. I stayed with the Chosen and couldn’t reach him.”
The lady pressed her hands together in a prayerful pose. “Torbar will be remembered for his bravery.”
How could she sound so compassionate, considering the same was coming for her? Except instead of being torn apart by the horde, she’d be sacrificed to the demonic beast that had saved us.
He took a deep breath before nodding. “Blessings, Chosen One.” The words seemed to remind him why we were all here—well, not me particularly. “At least our protective runes held. For now. But seems the sacrifice will be even dearer than we’d known.”
How the lady managed to not sneer, I did not know. As we moved on, I asked, “Protective runes? Is that what you wanted? Why don’t we have protective runes on our carriage?”
“Because that man hopes for false comfort from wishful thinking. According to everything I’ve read, the runes alone aren’t enough.” She sighed, a sound of regret and vexation. “Even if you spell them rightly, which I didn’t. The runes must be revived regularly with blood, freshly drawn and freely surrendered, then set alight, or they have no force against even the least demons.”
I sputtered. “Re…vived?”
“Blood doesn’t last. The potency wanes as its luster fades.”
“Why so much blood?” I shuddered. “The demons want auras.”
She fisted her hand, stained with the captain’s death. “Our auras emanate from our bodies, so of course it’s in our blood.”
“If our bodily fluids can lure in the demons, we could just spit on them—”
“Feinan! These are sacred deeds.”
“Neh, if you’d rather carve yourself dramatically than piss into the demonic wind…”
She ignored me and my agitated blasphemy, and I didn’t blame her. She clearly blamed herself for the bloodrune failure.
We stopped at another carriage, the one from Xabhad. It had been smashed to gilded kindling, and two High Keep guards were wrapping not-quite-people-sized packages in silkha pennants. Everyone in the carriage—the Chosen One and three companions—had been savaged by demons.
One guard shook his head. “What a waste of a Chosen.” At my hard look, he slammed his mouth shut.
We spoke to a few attendants, each one shaken and shocked. As dismal as this cavalcade had been from the start, with the overwhelming implication of a Devouring, we’d not expected to be attacked on the way. If so many demons were gathering in such a remote place, what did that bode for other corners of the kingdom?
I tagged behind the lady, watching her with the guards, attendants, and a few of the Chosen who peered from their carriages. She had the right serious smile or sorrowing glance for everyone, no matter their rank, and though she must’ve been sore from being tossed about the carriage—I certainly was—she moved with grace and serenity. It was a waste, sacrificing her to a dragon’s empty belly.
Her brother, who’d ruled Sevaare for some seven years since his father’s death, had other siblings and numerous cousins, and it seemed to me he should’ve given up a different one. The dragon might take only the most refined auras for its Feast, but shouldn’t a ruler conserve his most useful nobles and courtiers? Did it speak to the severity of our need? Or maybe there was some less noble reason that he’d sent this sister.
Not that it said much for me, forfeiting the lady’s kin in her place, sight unseen. But I’d never claimed to be noble.
With no consecrated lor left, Lady Dyania said prayers over the dead, and just as practically set aside one of the carriages to hold the captain’s body and other remains. When we found a pile of gory bone shards in shreds of the High Keep vortix, I gagged, but she ordered a pyre to burn whatever was too gruesome to return with us.
“Leave no droplet of blood and shed no tears lest other demons creep back to consume and corrupt,” she commanded while I averted my gaze to the wreckage of another carriage, the unmarked one from Osiroon, poor wretches. “Burn the earth itself down to stone if you must. The light remembers. But so does the dark.”
I had no shining aura to spend courageously on my kingdom and no one would follow my commands, but I could gather firewood. No trees rooted in these ruins on the leas, but unspent fuel from the scattered torches kindled the demolished conveyances into a blaze that Lisel and a few other guards stoked even higher.
Despite the wretchedness of the hour, Lady Dyania stood tall as she spoke funereal words over the flames, and somehow her white trousers had only one smudge near the knee. She hadn’t even wiped her bloody hand on the hem of her tunic. Maybe that was what it meant to have a pure aura.
As much as I yearned for the light and heat, I slunk beyond reach of the disturbing smell. But when I took my last step from the pyre, an icy draught prickled the tiny hairs on my arms under streaks of grime and sweat. I glanced around, angling one foot forward so it would be easier to grab the knife from my boot. It wasn’t the cold that raised my hackles; I’d worked too hard to be chilled yet.
No, something else prowled the night.
“May the amaranthine light everlasting find them, let it lead them through the shadows,” Lady Dyania was intoning, “and let them find the peace they deserve. So may we all.”
Those gathered murmured their reply, but I was too enthralled staring out into the darkness. That wind whispered a warning I strained to hear…
And my questing gaze locked on him. I’d caught only a glimpse of him, bound at the dragon’s heart—did it even have a heart?—but I recognized him instantly.
The Dragon Prince.
The warped expression on his face, furious and famished, told me to flee toward the burning pyre. I should wrap myself in that light, even if it meant immolation, choosing death over the unfathomable eternity I saw unraveling in his yearning eyes.
But I was frozen in place, breath and blood turned to something like the earthbone that had bubbled up from the demon-torn dirt, surging with a dangerous power that would take me away from everything I’d known…
How long did I stare? It felt like forever, although probably it was rather less than that.
For his part, he didn’t move at all. Even the drifting smoke from the pyre seemed to avoid him. He had to know I was staring—I faced him, my jaw absurdly agape—but I couldn’t tell what he was looking at. Those eyes were a strange silvery gray, not just the irises but all over, as if cataracts had congealed with the pearl of old scars. Against the bulk of the dragon, he had seemed slight, almost fragile. But I’d been wrong, so wrong.
Here on the same footing as me, with the emptiness of the ruins behind him and the bloody light of the fire flickering across the sharp blades of his cheekbones, he was clearly a prince: tall, broad shouldered, and lean, with the length of bone and mass of muscle that came from good feeding and refined by a swordsmanship that was his by right of heritage, not merely a way out of poverty or a penchant for violence. I would’ve known him for noble get even if I’d encountered him roaming Sevaare’s back alleys, even with his long, dark hair tossed and knotted like this, his eyes blank as the aftermath of a lethal dinzah dream.
And yet, in his stillness, I sensed something beyond my most perilous encounters.
Without my conscious will, both knives were in my hands.
Heyo, now I knew where his focus lay. I would’ve rather faced every stalking canid on the walls of Sevaare and all the guardsmen’s pikes. My pulse had been less panicked as the carriage flipped end over end, and I would’ve invited all the demons of the Lost Lands to my table for herb water and fruit rind to avoid standing here facing him. Which seemed a reasonable choice to me. He and his beast had destroyed a horde in one pass, so what chance did a lone street stray have against that?
“Bury your blade in my heart or sheath it before the aura triggers an attack.” His timbre was as peculiar and mesmerizing as the rest of him, an eldritch melding of harmony and half-strangled discordance, as if his vocal cords were shared with an otherworldly voice.
“I have no aura,” I told him. “Or I do—everyone has an aura—but nothing pure that would entice a demon. Besides, you slayed them all.”
“I didn’t say it was any of the horde that would attack.”
Oh. He meant he was the one who would—
“And it isn’t you who tempts me,” he continued. “It’s the animdao blade. It has some hex upon it.”
When he flicked a finger by way of gesture, I glanced at the knife in my left hand. It was an old thing and had trouble holding an edge, which was why no one had ever bothered to steal it from me.
It was also the only belonging I still had from my people. My father had given it to me when I’d been pestering him for a blade of my own. Of course I’d been too young to carry anything of value, but he’d given me this knife with great solemnity. “This was your great-great-grandfather’s,” he told me. “Maybe. He’s been dead a long time, so maybe not. We forget. But the metal doesn’t. Even melted and remade, it remembers what it was and dreams of what it may be.” He kissed my forehead. “Like my hopes for you.”
My thumb rubbed a soothing circle in the shallow hollow on the haft, where maybe a long-lost—or sold—gem would’ve lain. Who I’d been was lost, and what I might be was still undecided. But this particular moment appeared fraught indeed unless I did as the prince commanded.
I sheathed the blades again. I had to crouch, and the back of my neck tingled with fear—and a touch of anger. It felt too much like supplication to someone who’d just threatened to kill me.
But even after the obstruction I posed to him—admittedly an insignificant obstacle, considering who and what he was—had been withdrawn, he didn’t stride past me to join the others.
Instead, he lingered, so I kept staring, intrigued despite my umbrage.
He was dressed all in scale armor of darkest gray and black, in grim opposition to the scions who usually clad themselves in purist silkha white or the brightest hues of the spectrum. But of course he wasn’t like them. Though his silver eyes reflected the flames, somehow that only made them look colder, like an ice age that, given the chance, would swallow the world.
My fingers itched for my knives again.
We stood there for what seemed like another miniature eternity, with the survivors of the demon attack blessing the dead to rest, praying for their own hope, while their savior—who took his power from the very same forces that bedeviled them—stood just beyond the reach of their light and words. And I was caught between.
But of course I could never leave well enough alone.
“Where is the dragon?” I craned my neck to peer past him. “What if it escapes while you are lurking about here?”
Again I sensed his focus lock on me. “The dragon can’t escape me.” The peculiar melding of arrogance and anguish in his voice reminded me of the last man in a tavern, calling for one more round of drinks when everyone else was headed home to warmer and sweeter pleasures. “Nor I it.”
“You have it on a leash or something?”
He made another sound, and this one I couldn’t decipher. Definitely couldn’t be a strangled laugh. “No chain could hold a demon, not even one somnolent after consuming so many auras.”
I blinked. “It killed demons, not people. And demons don’t have auras.”
“Demons hoard the scraps of auras they seize from us.”
I recoiled. “And the dragon keeps what it steals from other demons? But that’s…” Appalling? Evil? The very thing that a prince of the realm should protect us against? I settled weakly for, “That’s wrong.”
His mouth twisted. “How does this shock you? Did you not know what we face?”
That accusation struck a little too close. “Forgive me, sir Dragon Prince. I’ve never fought demons, only cold, hunger, and wicked men.”
Perhaps a rash tone to take with a noble of the realm, savior of our kingdom—and possessor of a demon dragon, if not right at this moment—but he reacted with neither anger nor amusement. He just inclined his head. “Perhaps we are not so different.” The weight of his regard felt like a canid’s teeth on the back of my neck. “You even sling words like a dragon breathes, laying waste.”
And to think my father had a whole poppet show exalting the monster’s exploits. “Actually, my people are inspired storytellers,” I informed him archly.
“Ah. Liars and frauds, you mean? But this story is not for you.” While I sputtered my indignation, he continued, “Tell the captain I patrolled to the foothills and found no further signs of the horde. The last stage of your journey tomorrow should pass unscathed.”
“The captain is dead.” I wanted to add something about wishing he’d patrolled a little more diligently before the attack, but apparently even my intemperate tongue wasn’t quite so heedless.
“Then tell whoever is in charge now.” He jerked his chin toward the fire. “Whoever has the next biggest sword. Or the one in white.”
I clenched my teeth. Maybe he spent most of his time circling high above us, but since he was charged with saving us people below, shouldn’t he know their names?
“That’s Lady Dyania l’Hazan a’Sevaare,” I told him. “She is one of the Chosen to be sacrificed to your dragon.” I observed him closely for a reaction.
But there was nothing to see. “You’ll reach the High Keep tomorrow night if you waste no time departing in the morning. This attack was nothing compared to what’s coming.” He pivoted on his heel.
“Wait,” I said. “If the dragon can feed on other demons, why do you need the Chosen? Why not just satisfy the monster with what’s already been lost?”
The scarred silver of his eyes flashed. Not a reflection of the pyre or even some mystical light of stars through the smoke; this was a more visceral flare, like the jolt of nerves when looking over the edge of a tower while creeping through a rich man’s window in search of his jewelry box.
Not that I’d know how that felt.
“Satisfy the monster?” The Dragon Prince stared at me for another endless heartbeat. “The tatters of the lost would be enough for her. For a while. But as she glutted herself on the pain and the grief, the desolation, my hold on her would fray. The pure auras of the Chosen are the lure and leash that tie her to the Living Lands. Without them, I would finally lose control of her. At the last, she would turn on me. And then everyone would die.”
Her? He meant the dragon, of course. I didn’t want to think of it as a…being. It was just a preternatural evil hole into hellish emptiness, wasn’t it?
“I will stay close tonight,” he said into my unnerved silence. “Tell those remaining not to panic if they hear her crying in the dark. Running only makes her want to chase.” And with that he faded back into the shadows.
He was supposed to be our guardian yet he had to warn us not to flee in terror.
The funerary rites were finishing, so I waited until Lady Dyania stood aside with Lisel before I approached. Her silkha tunic was not actually as white as it had looked from a distance. Apparently even a sanctified aura couldn’t ward off the ashes of the demon-touched dead.
I told them of the Dragon Prince’s appearance and his admonition that we move on at first light.
Lisel blanched. “Prince Aric is watching us? Now?”
I frowned back at her. “Isn’t that why we have him? To watch over us?”
“The captain always said it was better to keep such protection at a distance.”
“Too far to save us from the demon attack,” I pointed out.
Lady Dyania sighed. “Too close, too far. The demons are all around us now, it seems.”
Lisel and I glanced at each other ruefully. It was one thing for us to debate the relative proximity of the Dragon Prince, but it was far more dire for the Chosen.
“Keep the pyre burning all night,” the lady ordered. “As Prince Aric says, we’ll leave as soon as we can see the road.”
Lisel gave her a bow just a little deeper than strictly owed to a lesser scion. “As you command, lady.” Then she glanced at me. “Did the prince…give you anything before he left?”
“Besides nebulous words and an ill feeling and a threat or two or three?”
She didn’t smile. “A gift or the like. The demon-touched know our darkest temptations, so it’s unwise to accept their offerings lest the gift become a trap.” She hesitated. “And a prince poses his own enticements.”
I tilted my head. “Why would any prince, demon-touched or not, give me a gift?”
Lady Dyania made a stifled sound. “And don’t take anything either.”
I slanted a glance at her. “Even I would not be so bold.” Her return look was so incredulous, I had to add, “Now that you’ve warned me.”
But now I conjectured upon these alleged gifts—and what exactly he had that they thought I might want.
Lisel stayed to nurse the flames while I accompanied Lady Dyania back to our conveyance. Someone—or more likely a dozen burly someones—had righted the carriage, and someone else with crafty fingers had rigged to the door to stay mostly closed. Though the interior was a mess, we had the place straightened in no time since the lady was not above busywork even when there was no one around to admire it, and some thanks, maybe, to her previous attendants for leaving us with less to set right. As we collapsed onto our benches after cleansing ourselves as best we could, I turned on a second lamp.
She made no movement and almost no sound, but maybe I was ready for it, because I heard the half-smothered shudder of her indrawn sob.
I rolled to my side. “Lady? Are you all right? Were you hurt? Other than your finger.”
She snorted, a damp sound. “No. And no.”
I winced. “What’s wrong?”
“Do I really have to tell you?”
“Neh, the list is rather long,” I admitted. “But if you want to be particular, you can tell me. Otherwise I will assume as seems most likely.” I hesitated. “Since it is all rather unfortunate.”
This time she let out what was definitely a laugh. “If I believed in omens, this wouldn’t be an auspicious one.”
“I don’t believe in omens and I still think this is not auspicious.”
She rolled to face me across the gap. “Are you sure you didn’t receive or thieve anything from the Dragon Prince?”
“I may not usually confess when I take something that doesn’t belong to me, but I’d at least remember it.” I tucked my hands under my cheek—sweet-smelling from the soap. “Why are you wondering?”
“It’s said Prince Aric rarely comes down from the monster. Except for a Feast. That he spoke to you, marked you with his attention…” She bit her lip. “The Dragon Prince enforces command over the demon with the clarity, virtue, and nobility of Chosen auras. If the dragon takes too many flawed auras, it might wield that tainted power to break free.”
She meant my impure aura; her own virtue would satiate the monster. I huffed out a breath. “As weapons go, the dragon seems too much trouble to justify waving around.”
“But it is the only weapon we have against the horde. Stay away from the temptation and you’ll live.”
Did she put just a slight emphasis on who exactly would live? “Temptation?” I scoffed. “What temptation in darkness and death? Anyway, I never grasp what I can’t hold. I’m not so reckless or greedy as that.”
I rolled the other way to put my back to her, emphasizing my resolve.
And at the time, I truly meant it.