21

NAT STRUCK THE EARTH WITH A MIGHTY thump, and something snapped as she hit the forest floor. She felt a broken branch beneath her, but it could have easily been her spine that had shattered. She hurt all over and her head was spinning. It wasn’t the first drakon she had fallen from and she guessed it wouldn’t be the last, but it still hurt. Her ears rang. Above the din, there was a second noise, the sound of metal crunching against dry leaves, footsteps coming closer.

Where’s my sword?

Cold steel touched her neck. She looked down and recognized the steely black edge of her blade. Someone else had found her blade.

Nineveh loomed over her, holding Liannan’s father’s sword. The Red Lands are haunted by the dead, Liannan had warned. Why was the Queen here? Did she know they would come this way? She must have.

Nat was on her knees. She didn’t know if she could stand. The fall had rattled her senses, made all her muscles go stiff. If she tried to get up and face the Queen, she might fall on her face; so Nat wrapped her fingers around the drakonbone blade and tried to push the sword away, no matter that the edge cut into her skin.

The Queen scoffed. “You don’t have the strength,” she said. “Relent.”

Nat shook her head, but when blood dribbled down her hand, she did relent. She was in no shape to fight. I need help. Where’s Wes? Is he all right? Had the Queen hurt him? Nat gritted her teeth angrily.

“Why are you doing this?” Nat choked. “What purpose does it serve?”

Nineveh bared her glistening white teeth. Both hands were on the sword now and she kept it close to Nat’s neck. When she spoke, her voice oozed with mockery. “Once upon a time I believed as you do, that I could fix this world, that I could bring magic back into the gray lands and usher in the third golden age of Vallonis, an eternal kingdom. I was wrong.”

“Because you never made the sacrifice the spell required,” Nat said, though it hurt when she spoke. The sword was still at her throat. “Even if Faix believed you did. He believed you sacrificed your son.” Faix didn’t know, Nat was sure. He believed their child was dead and had mourned him. The drakon had been wrong about Faix. The Queen was the only liar.

Nineveh confirmed it. “Faix believed what I wanted him to believe. If he knew the truth, he would have sacrificed our son! Our son!”

A realization dawned on Nat. “Your son is alive, isn’t he?”

The Queen didn’t answer. She pressed her lips together and drew back her sword as if she was about to strike. Nat coughed and pressed her hand to her throat. It came away wet with blood, stinging wildly. The pain clouded her thoughts, but Nat pushed it away. There was something important here, the secret at the heart of everything.

“If you didn’t sacrifice him, then where is he?” Nat asked. “I think I know. You hid him away in our world. You sent him into the ice.”

“For his survival,” said the Queen. She put the sword to Nat’s chin, but she did not strike her. “So that he could one day meet his destiny.”

“And what is that?”

“The tower. He will succeed where I failed,” rasped the Queen. “He is there now.”

“Your son is Avo Hubik,” said Nat suddenly. Avo did not dye his hair. He only pretended to, to mask his true nature, his true identity.

Avo did not pretend to be drau; he was drau.

He was marked, just like them. Did he know what he was? The scar above his eyebrow, just like Wes’s scar. They were the same. The sword rested on Nat’s chin, but the Queen didn’t strike. Nat understood now that the Queen wasn’t going to kill her. If she’d wanted her dead, she would have struck while Nat was on her knees, reeling from the fall.

“My son will finish what I started,” the Queen continued. “The tower is his. He will shape the world in our image.”

“Your son is a madman.”

Nat’s mind raced. The Queen sought Vallonis’s annihilation; she wanted the destruction of that world to facilitate the birth of the next one. The world her son would command.

Eliza would destroy the tower while Avo would use its power for his own.

Not if I can help it, Nat vowed, even as the black sword was cold under her chin. There was no sign of the red drakon or of Wes.

Nineveh cried out to the dark. “Come out! Let us end this. If you submit, I will spare the drakonrydder!” It was the red drakon she wanted. That’s why she hadn’t killed Nat.

The great beast must have been close. The sound of wings beat nearby. It roared a long and terrible cry as it soared above the trees, coming around in a half circle before burying its claws in the dirt. The creature made a terrible thump when it landed, crying out as blood dripped from its chest, Nineveh’s sword still lodged in its side. It walked with an awkward limp. “I am here, Nineveh.” There was pain in the creature’s voice, and Nat sensed that it was not just the pain of the creature’s wound. She heard the pain of betrayal and years of suffering. She saw in the creature’s eyes a sense of resignation, as if it were finally done fighting, done living, too. It lowered its head to the ground. “I yield.”

Nineveh smirked. She raised her sword, and this time she did not hesitate. She brought the blade down upon the drakon in one swift and remorseless stroke. As the black blade streaked through the darkness, Nat caught a flicker of movement from the shadows, and her heart skipped a beat. She held her breath, hope thrumming wildly in her blood.

Nineveh swung the blade, Nat sucked air through her teeth, and the drakon gave one last fearsome roar.

The blade came down on the drakon, but it did not strike the creature’s scales. A hair’s width from the creature’s neck, something struck the sword and it spiraled out of Nineveh’s grip. She heard the crack of rifle fire. A cloud of smoke crept into her peripheral vision. It all happened in slow motion. The Queen’s strike, the blade hurtling sideways out of her hands. Then there was a rustle in the trees. Nat turned to see Wes, standing to the side with a smoking rifle in his hand. The Queen saw him, too, and she saw the blade lying on the ground halfway between them.

The two eyed each other and both sprinted toward the sword.

Nat held her breath. Though her muscles ached from the fall, though each step forward sent shockwaves of pain arcing through her muscles, she paid them no attention. Nor did she care about the cut on her neck, the way it stung wildly when she’d started to run. There was only the sword. She fixed her eyes on the blade and threw herself toward it. One step, two. Then she leapt for it, stretching out her arms and gripping the handle before the Queen could wrap her long fingers around it.

She had it. Nat tumbled, rolling with the sword in her hand. She recovered, stood, and in one quick and decisive motion, before the Queen could flee, before she could cast a spell, Nat raised the general’s weapon, the drakonbone sword of Alfarhome, and slashed the Queen’s throat clean through.