The point, the edge, the weight. Let the bearer’s be the blood.
~ Inscription on the inherited blade of the l’Thine royals
THE SILVERLEAF CHAMBERS in the High Keep were larger and more luxurious than the carriage, but in some ways not so different. When I tried to sneak out in the morning, the guard at the door—different from last night—thrust a wheeled cart into my path and told me to see to the lady’s comfort. Annoyed, I retreated. The cart was laden with treats and treasures that had Zik’s stomach growling like a canid, and even Lady Dyania blinked at the excess.
“Fêted and fattened for the slaughter,” she murmured.
With an obvious attempt to temper his enthusiasm, Zik crouched to one side but he dove right back in when I gestured for him to help himself. There was too much for the three of us, even if they kept us confined until…
I tried to harden my heart against what I knew was coming, but it felt real now, even more so than when the demons attacked. I helped Zik put away the lady’s belongings that had survived and everything else dropped off with the cart—he was a better lady’s maid than I—but by midafternoon I was restless. While the lady recited the day’s prayers including the names of the dead, as I told her I’d promised our hartier on her behalf, I made another attempt for the door. Only to be blocked by another wheeled cart with more delights.
This time, even Zik seemed overwhelmed. “No more honey buns, ya. I’ll be sick.”
“Why so restless?” Lady Dyania studied me. “You’ll be free of me soon enough.”
I sputtered. “That’s not why…” I plunked down at the hearth. “This is a new place, with new rules, and we should know how to get around it—how to get out of it.”
She shook her head. “I already told you that there is no way out, not for me. There’s nothing else to know.” And even though it was still daylight, she went to the bed and pulled the silkha draperies around it all the way closed, calling to Zik to shut the screen between the rooms.
He frowned at me as he did so, as if I’d done something cruel, but I wasn’t the one who’d Chosen her.
Later, as I mused for a way to apologize—but what could I say that wouldn’t acknowledge she was doomed?—a brisk rap sounded at the door. Lisel peered through.
“I’d recognize your knock anywhere,” I told her with a crooked grin.
She stood at attention in the doorway, only taking a reluctant step forward when the guard nudged the door into her boot. “I came to see if your quarters were to your lady’s liking.” She darted a glance at the shuttered screens as she held out a delicate decanter.
Plucking the bottle from her hand—ambra-wine, as she’d promised—I lifted one eyebrow. “It seems the door to our room opens before we give permission and does not open again at our command,” I said tartly. “Although I’m sure the gracious scion of Sevaare would not be so rude as to find fault with her jail.”
Lisel cleared her throat. “The honor guard is as much for protection as…anything else. The Chosen are more precious to us now than ever.”
Since I didn’t want to excessively annoy one of the few acquaintances I had within the High Keep walls, I didn’t pursue the point. “Lady Dyania has no special requests. But thank you for thinking of us when you have your own tasks and sorrows.”
The hartier clasped her empty hands behind her back. “As to sorrows, the haloria has called for a tribunal. They demand a review of Lady Dyania’s ritual with the candle luring the demons during the attack.”
Zik sucked in a harsh breath. “Are they going to burn her for being a summoner?”
I slanted a quelling glance at him. “She’s not a demon summoner. She only exposed a few drops of her pure aura, and they came, as demons do.”
“Summoner,” Zik said again, as if I’d agreed.
I rolled my eyes to Lisel. But she looked troubled. “That a horde swarmed us in the middle of nowhere, centered on her candle with just a few drops of her blood…”
“But that’s why she is Chosen,” I exclaimed. “How can she be condemned for accidentally summoning demons when it’s exactly the same reason the haloria summoned her?” I curled my lip with derision. “And they can’t punish her anyway, not when they still need her.”
“The haloria doesn’t explain its judgment to those like us,” Lisel said, cutting off the rest of my outrage. “Prepare your lady. I’ll come for you in the morning.”
I followed her to the door, complaining, but she said only, “Tell your lady that tempers are high and fears running deep. She should be ready.” Then the door slammed in my face.
I jumped back with a huff, clutching the flagon.
Zik stared at me wide-eyed when I whirled back. “They’ll burn her,” he whispered. “Like the corpses in Velderrey, ya. And likely us too after so long in her presence.”
“We did not come all this way to die,” I told him, then amended, “I didn’t anyway.” I tapped the bottle against my thigh, but when Zik’s gaze dropped there, I realized the too-quick tempo betrayed my misgivings, and I forced myself to stillness. “The lady will tell them how she knew what to do, even if it wasn’t quite what she’d intended. Anyway, they still need her to sate the dragon. They won’t waste a Chosen One on countrified superstition, not when they must sacrifice her for their own survival.”
There, I spoke with confidence because that had served me more than once when actual knowledge and prospects had been lacking, and also I had to think self-preservation was an instinct as strong in the High Keep as anywhere else.
But in the quietest hour of the night, I slipped away from Zik who was curled on the hearth and padded to the door.
I had an entire speech prepared to explain my departure—something about how the haloria needed my insights immediately, because no one would dare question such auric mysteries. But when I eased the door open, I found the guard wedged against the wall with his own pike and snoring away. How obliging.
Saving my speech for another night, I pried the makeshift latch blocker from the lock where I’d surreptitiously jammed it before Lisel closed me in. Without glancing back, I sped down the hall.
I had no real intent to my escape, but the days of captivity in the carriage and then in the Chosen One’s quarters had left me feeling excruciatingly confined. What my life in Sevaare had lacked in food and steadfast friends had been balanced by freedom. A wander around the High Keep would at least hint where my new path might lead.
I stayed to the servant corridors, narrower and dimmer then the main halls, and found my way to the laundry, two smaller storage areas—though one was locked, insufficiently—and a few guardrooms which I avoided as much out of habit as an abundance of caution. At this time of night, the palace staff were either focused on their tasks or actively avoiding them, so those I passed made only the briefest eye contact or not at all. The High Keep palace was grander than Sevaare’s noble residences, of course, and the confines of the mountains had forced it into a more vertical configuration than the sprawl of my last lightkeep. But though my legs and lungs ached from the climbs and descents, it didn’t take me long to feel like I had a decent map of the place stamped in my brain as well as burning in my overtaxed muscles.
Finally, the only locations that remained hazy to me were the private royal wing tucked into the deeper part of the mountain, a barred and padlocked descent to what I assumed were the dungeons which I’d rather avoid anyway, and one of the towers that stood at a slight remove from the rest of the spires.
That last tower, if I recalled aright from the glimpses during our approach to the lightkeep, would be the highest of them all. I hadn’t been inclined to add yet more steps to my night, but I was intrigued.
The tower wasn’t accessible from the servant corridors, which was odd. Who tended those heights? I backtracked through the main hall, hustling along lest I be caught even though I wanted to admire the tiled mosaics in every hue that adorned the walls and floor, even the vaulted ceiling. Strangely though, I encountered no one at all. Just as well, since I had no good reason to be here, no excuse I could give even to myself. This lovely dead end held nothing of use, being so out of the way, and obviously would provide me no means of escape.
And yet…
Sulking along, I almost missed the passage leading off the hall. The wide arch was bordered in glossy black stone etched into simple flower petals, nothing like the vivid tilework elsewhere. Within the archway was only shadow, no lamplight to show the way.
But something whispered there, calling to me through the darkness.
The torch across the hall cast just enough illumination to reach the first measure of a ramp pitched at a steep incline. Maybe there was a kinder ascent of stairs or a pulley system elsewhere in the tower, because I couldn’t imagine even the most browbeaten servant hauling breakfast tea and biscuits up such a path. Or maybe this was just a watchtower, with sentinels who would come and go. Because who else would stay in this cold, high, lonely place?
Bracing one hand on the stone to peer upward, I gasped and recoiled.
On my hand, the thinnest line of red seeped from a diagonal line across my palm. At the knuckle joint and heel, where I’d pressed a little harder, blood beaded heavier, like red pearls.
The arch was obsidian, sharper than glass.
Only then did the pain strike, belatedly.
I closed my fist on the wound. I’d lived through worse. Just recently, in fact. As always, my curiosity was stronger than my caution.
Then my foot faltered at the first step up the rise as comprehension finally caught up with my questioning. The obsidian was carved not with depictions of flowers but with delicately saw-toothed scales.
This was the dragon’s tower.
And the monster was waiting.
I knew it like I somehow always knew which pocket a rich man carried his purse. Like I could sense when a cartman was about to look away from his undefended wares. The part of me that was impure instinct, an ignoble tangle of need and greed.
I wavered with one boot in the hall and one on the dark rise. The obsidian of the arch continued within, a black maw gaping to swallow me whole.
Neh, what kind of mad architect shaped such a precipitous ascent out of slippery glass?
“Go no higher.”
The unexpected snarl from behind made me jump. Of course I jumped upward, whirling as I did to look back.
The dragon might be waiting above, but the Dragon Prince was right here. So much for my clever intuition.
He stood below me, one arm outstretched—to yank me back. Or was it to catch me if I slid down the glass? But my worn soles caught, and I stayed just beyond the reach of his fingers. “Prince…Your Radiance, sir,” I squeaked, searching my array of speeches, excuses, and distractions that I kept at the ready for being caught in places where I ought not to be.
But I had nothing for a situation like this.
Not speaking, he let his hand sink slowly to his side. I cast a quick glance that direction, lest he be grasping for a sword to remove my inquisitive head from my intruding body.
But he carried no weapons, and he’d stripped down from the scale armor to a plain black tunic. His unfathomable silvery eyes still sent a shiver through me.
“Don’t call me that.”
I poked the tip of my tongue through my suddenly dry lips. “Call you…prince?”
“Radiance. The light has no claim on me.” When I only responded with “huh”, he let out an impatient sound. “Why do you trespass?”
I might not have an excuse for my presence, but I could at least object to his unsubstantiated judgment. “I am not trespassing. I was brought here with the cavalcade from the lightkeeps.”
That silver stare glinted at me even though the illumination in the corridor was behind him. “I remember,” he said in a growl, still rough but lacking the eerie subharmonics that had broken his voice after the demon battle. “You thought I should satisfy the dragon on the tatters of lost auras.”
The way he said satisfy made me shiver again. Crossing my arms over my chest, I muttered, “Nobody’d told me that would make the beast strong enough to escape your command.”
“She would not escape me. She would enfold me, closer than ever, her dark power would woo me, and I would succumb to her with pleasure.”
His voice dropped into a deeper octave as he spoke, a seductive, pulsing cadence that seemed to echo with my own throbbing heartbeat, and I blinked at him in dismay. “Heyo, don’t do that. Perhaps best you forget all my demon-related propositions.”
He just stood there a moment before repeating, “Why are you here?”
“The cavalcade from the lightkeeps—” I started again, because truthfully, pretending to foolishness had probably saved me more times than being clever.
But he interrupted, “Here. Why are you here at the mouth of my lair?”
Had I been wrong that this was the dragon’s tower? Or did he think of the creature as one with him? Closer than ever, he’d said.
“Lost,” I said, my own voice breaking. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I got lost.” That excuse was believable enough, wasn’t it? No one else would willingly come this way.
Wooed by dark pleasures, you won’t escape me, succumb…
No, he hadn’t said that, not that way. The garbled echo of his words made me shift my weight away from him, and the sole of my undependable boot suddenly lost hold on the glass.
Trying to catch myself again, my knee buckled, but the awkward contortion didn’t stop my slide. Landing hard on my backside, I slithered to a halt in a humiliating heap in front of him.
I glared down at the metal-tipped toes of his black footwear. “Lovely boots,” I muttered. “Such fine leather, and yet not a scuff on them. I suppose flying keeps them so pristine—”
His big hand wrapped around my upper arm and hauled me upright. I lurched into him without grace or gratitude.
“Just because you haven’t the sight to perceive the damage doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” he rasped. “The dragon keeps my wounds from bleeding out, but the scars remain.”
For a heartbeat, I hung in his grasp, half swaying against him. The heat of his hand singed through the sleeve of my tunic, sending an incongruous shiver all the way to my bones. The demon-touched were set alight on the fiercest funeral pyres so that nothing came back to haunt the Living Lands, and his touch burned as if already engulfed in flames though he walked among us still.
And yet those silvery eyes were like winter’s ice. I stared up at him, unblinking, utterly failed by my curiosity, caution, and cleverness alike, wracked by conflicting waves of shivers and a strange, feverish hunger…
Abruptly, he shoved me out to arm’s length—and though he had not quite the reach of his beastly half, he set me far enough away that my tied tongue revived like some vermin that had been only playing dead.
“I’ve seen more than you guess,” I rejoined. Why I spoke against him, I couldn’t say, considering he was a prince and I a street-sneak of no particular repute.
“You are not Chosen,” he said flatly.
That shut me up. For a moment anyway. Then I said, “Speaking of, my lady expects me back, so…” With my free hand, I pried at his fingers locked around my upper arm tighter than an iron manacle.
“You should never have been here,” he said, as if I didn’t know that.
“Which is why I was just leaving.”
“If you were leaving, why were your steps facing upward?”
“If you’re trying to banish me, why are you still holding onto me?” I gave him a smirk that was both witless and clever, and probably more likely to get me killed than either response alone.
But it did make him unlatch his relentless grip. “Go,” he ordered.
And I should have. But I’d always struggled with demands. So instead, I gave myself a little shake to set my togs aright. “Might I ask a question?”
“No.”
I ignored that answer. After all, he hadn’t killed me yet. He hadn’t even walked away from me. “When the demons attacked us in Velderrey, my lady burned a few drops of her blood and”—I grimaced—“accidentally summoned them. But that distracted the horde long enough for you to swoop in with the dragon and slay them all. Except now the haloria has commanded her to face a tribunal.” I swallowed back a few profane words about the sacred order. “I fear they will judge her wrongly. But you were there. Can you speak with them before the tribunal tomorrow morning?”
His eyes glinted at me. “The lors are sworn to annihilate anything demonic. What makes you think they would listen to me?”
I stammered for a moment. “Because…because you’re a prince?” As if he didn’t know that.
His lips twisted, not in amusement. “The Dragon Prince.”
I frowned at him. “Yes. You saved us too.”
“And the haloria hate and fear me more because of it.” He closed his eyes. “They would end me if they saw any other way.”
“And then we’d all be dead.”
When he looked at me this time, his eyes were shadowed, black as the obsidian. “One of the haloria’s endless debates since Ormonde’s time is whether it would be nobler to perish in purity than wrest our continued existence with the aura-stained claws of the monster.”
Give up when any other choice remained? I couldn’t restrain a dismissive sniff. Easier for them, maybe, their union with the amaranthine light already promised to them. Which made me wonder suddenly… “If the lors are so resolute in their noble purity, why don’t they sacrifice themselves instead of the Chosen?”
“Once within the monster’s grasp, they wouldn’t be nobly pure anymore, would they?”
Such resignation, with no particular resentment; it made me grumble. “Rather than condemn dirty fingers, perhaps they should say a cleansing prayer for the demon beast, offer some pretty floral soap for its talons. That’s what Lady Dyania makes me do before we eat.”
“When I said monster, I wasn’t talking about the dragon.”
His hold on me had been unyielding but clawless. Maybe that changed—maybe he changed—for a Feast.
At long last I backed away. But I couldn’t stop a parting entreaty. “Lady Dyania saved us. And now you can save her.”
“I cannot.” His rasp was harsher than incised glass. “I am the last one who ever could.”
I recoiled from the strangled pain and fury sharpening the edge of his voice. Since there wasn’t anything more I could do—he was a warrior and a prince, and I was…nothing—I hastened away from the black tower. Still, despite my frustration and the futility, I found myself glancing back over my shoulder.
But he was gone.