CHAPTER SIX

FARON

FARON HAD SAT THROUGH HER FAIR SHARE OF WAR MEETINGS.

During the San Irie Revolution, they’d had them wherever they could find shelter and privacy: loaned barns and patrolled clearings, cramped inns and roadside food shacks. Three children—Faron, Elara, and Aveline—sitting in places of honor, surrounded by uniformed officers, discussing things like supply lines, access points, artillery stock, and army sizes. Of course, Aveline had seemed, to her, like another adult, but now that Faron was the same age as the queen had been back then, she knew better.

They’d all been too young to be there. They were still too young.

Iya’s war meeting was worlds away from the ones that Faron remembered. Instead of gathering between battles, alert to smoking skies and well-armed Langlish soldiers, they met in the Hearthstone dining hall. The world map that Iya had stolen from Pearl Bay Palace was unfurled before him at a long table that easily seated Iya’s officers. Faron sat beside him, eyeing all the officers she didn’t recognize, the ones who had defected from Langley to follow the commander into this madness. Their names didn’t matter to her, but she would never forget their faces or the way they gazed at Iya with that terrifying fervor in their eyes. As if it would be an honor to die for him.

Faron had never felt that way about anyone, except perhaps her sister. And, even then, she knew that Elara would never ask her to. Iya would sacrifice these people in an instant and forget they had ever existed.

“Why,” Marius Lynwood asked, “is she here? She’s a spy.”

Iya shrugged. “A spy with no way to escape and no means of reporting to her handlers. What does it matter if she’s here or not?”

“She’ll sabotage our plans, my saint,” said Nichol Thompson in a more measured tone than his cousin’s. He was the shyer of the two, Faron noted, content to let Marius lead and generally unwilling to challenge him. “It might be safer to lock her up during war meetings. The less she knows, the better.”

“She may look free,” said Iya, “but I assure you that she is in a prison of her own making.”

“She’s also sitting right here,” Faron pointed out, glaring across the table at the two Riders. “If you have something to say about me, say it to me.”

Lynwood sneered. “Our saint may trust you, but I never will, you gru—”

Faron slammed her hands on the table so hard that the clay figurines on the map shook from the force. Magic swirled around her hands, pulled from the bond, a yellow-orange light that made the map edges flutter. Power that answered only to her rage. “Finish that sentence, and it will be your last.”

“Now, now,” Iya said mildly. “There will be plenty of time for infighting later. For now, may we begin?”

Lynwood said nothing. Faron stared him down as the magic retreated, silently begging him to give her a reason to attack. When he didn’t, she clenched and unclenched her fists under the table, trying to work out her now-restless muscles.

“Thank you all for your prompt attendance,” Iya said as though nothing had happened. His glacial eyes swept from one end of the table to the other. Though he appeared only eighteen, this group blossomed like flowers under the light of his attention. Faron shuddered. “I expected to have this meeting in the National Hall, the whole empire at my command, but for now this will do.”

Commander Warwick’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. His original plan—to burn San Irie to the ground five years ago, revealing the entrance to the Empty so he could free Iya, and to return home as the war hero responsible for resurrecting their most famous saint—would have done exactly as Iya had expected. Instead, his son, Reeve, had alerted the Iryans to his schemes, Langley had lost the war and control of the island, and he had been forced to wait and improvise. Now here they were, with Langley torn between those who supported Iya and those who didn’t.

Faron hid a smile.

“Our first move should be to unite Langley,” said one of the officers, a man in his sixties or seventies with silver hair and ruddy skin. “If the rest of the Riders join our cause, the people will, too. Have you had any response to your message, my saint?”

“I don’t anticipate we’ll hear back for at least a week,” Iya said. “They’ll need to meet about it, assess the seriousness of my threat. A show of power may be necessary. But I am confident that they will fall easily enough that we can turn our focus to Étolia and Joya del Mar for now.”

He stood to bend over the map, using those little clay crown figures he’d also stolen from Pearl Bay Palace, to outline his plan for an initial volley that would test the strength of the other empires’ defenses. Faron kept half her attention on the plan, but the other half was on observing Iya and how he seemed in his element here, leading humans into battle even in unfamiliar territory. The officers, the Riders, and his Generals chimed in with their knowledge of the terrain, of the people, of the magic they wielded, and he easily tailored his plans to incorporate their suggestions. There was a magnetism to him, even in this young body, that made the people around them eager to impress him.

Which meant they would not be easy for her to manipulate with her own charm. She’d have to resort to extreme measures.

That night, she snuck out of her room again, noting that Lightbringer was both awake and aware of her movements. He did nothing to stop her, as usual, because her small rebellions remained beneath his notice. Hopefully, he would keep thinking that until she’d done what she needed to do.

The sky was a cloudless spill of ink overhead, stars splashed across it like glitter. It was different here after dark than it was in San Irie. Even in Deadegg, there was noise, whether it was the snuffling of sleeping stray dogs or the chirping of hidden tree frogs. Here, the silence was broken only by the occasional sigh of a dragon, the occasional slosh of the water over the shore, the occasional whisper of footsteps across the lawn.

Tonight’s perimeter patrol was being done by Estella Ballard, Briar Noble, and their ultramarine, Ignatz. The Luxtons rode their medallion, Cruz, in a circuit around the archipelago, handling the air patrol. And then there was Lightbringer, his green eyes forever on the sky, while Reeve’s body slept in a dormitory in Hearthstone.

Ballard noticed Faron first. She stopped midstride, her eyes narrowing. Her short sandy hair and freckles lent her a youthful appearance that wasn’t matched by the hatred in her brown eyes. “Don’t try anything. I’m bored, and I’d love to make that your problem.”

“Your posturing is unnecessary,” said Faron, folding her arms over her chest. “You aren’t allowed to hurt me.”

“We’re not allowed to kill you,” Ballard corrected. “There are all kinds of ways to hurt people.”

Noble approached from the opposite side of the island, coming to a stop before them just in time to hear the end of his co-Rider’s threat. He bared his teeth in an unfriendly smile. “I, for one, would love to try, Empyrean. You murdered my mentor.”

Faron glared at him. “I don’t know your mentor. For Irie’s sake, I don’t even know you.”

“Sebastian Edwards,” Noble continued, his voice wavering. His black hair was pulled back into a ponytail at the base of his neck, and, when he shook his head as if to clear the bad memories, it snapped like a whip. “He and his sister, Kenya, were the Riders of Raisel—a dragon your army drowned in the Ember Sea, and their Riders along with him. Sound familiar?”

It didn’t, but Faron knew better than to say that much when it was two against one. She didn’t think they would care, either, that it was hardly her army, that she had only participated in the final year of the revolution. But though she hadn’t come out here to argue with them, she couldn’t stop herself: “That was war. They were attacking our island!”

“They were following orders, you savage bitch,” said Ballard. Noble put a quelling hand on her shoulder, but Ballard shook it off. “Sebastian and Kenya were just following orders, and so are we. Whatever you’ve come out here to do, Vincent, it’s not going to happen on our watch.”

Faron looked from one hard face to the next and sighed, her indignant anger sliding away. They would never agree with her, and she would never agree with them. The tally of lives lost and crimes committed would only rise as they entered a second conflict. At least this circular argument had bored Lightbringer enough that he’d retreated from her mind—and that was the opening she needed.

This is war, she told herself, stomach churning. Then she reached out for their living souls.

For most of her life, Faron had been taught that Iryan summoners could command only the souls of the dead, and even then, only the souls of their ancestors, the dead with whom they had shared a bloodline. Gael Soto had shown her that she could impress her will upon living souls, as long as she was stronger than those whom she was trying to control.

The first time she had used this power, she had done it to save Reeve’s life—but she had been saving him from her own people. She still felt conflicted about that and what it said about her that she had done it so unrepentantly. Now, however, she was skimming the edges of Langlish souls—souls brighter than usual thanks to their connection with Ignatz—and she refused to feel guilty about it.

Give me your relics, she commanded. Let me call my sister.

Unlike her first two victims, Noble and Ballard weren’t drunk and pliable. They fought against her influence, as angry as a disturbed flock of ducks. Faron fought back, pushing harder against the force of their defiance, the force of their dragon. A dark tear ran down Noble’s cheek, and it took Faron a moment to realize that it was blood. A vessel in his eye had popped from the strain of shielding his mind. Beside him, Ballard’s nostrils bled, and red smeared above the thin line of her lips.

Stop fighting, she commanded. You’re only hurting yourselves. And Ignatz.

Faron couldn’t see the dragon, but she knew that what she did to the Riders would happen to the dragon and vice versa. If they were bleeding, then somewhere in the bay, so was he. Noble and Ballard seemed to realize this, too, because it was this that broke them. Faron’s own soul withdrew from theirs as blankness curtained their faces.

She was breathing hard, but that did nothing to stop her triumphant smile. Even with the added magic from Iya, she had worried that she had grown weak since the battle. Or that she could command dragons but not the solid combination of dragons and their Riders. Worse, she had worried that Noble and Ballard would prove stronger than her will, that they would control her—and, through her, control Iya.

But she was strong. She had won.

Pain exploded across the center of her face. Faron saw red and then black, staggering backward and blinking spots away from her eyes. She shouted, but the sound was weak compared with the sudden ringing in her ears. She touched her nose. Her fingers came away bloody.

“What the—?” she asked sluggishly.

Standing before her was Margot Luxton, holding her own fist. Crimson stained her knuckles—blood. Faron’s blood.

She blinked. “Did you just punch me?”

“What did you do to them?” said Oscar Luxton, joining his daughter, his face slack with shock. Behind them, Cruz was still folding his golden wings from a sudden landing. “I’ve never seen magic like that.”

“Faron? Are you injured?” Iya sent through the bond. His voice was a fuse waiting to be lit. “WHO DID THIS TO YOU?”

Her senses expanded. Just as Iya was attempting to see and feel through her, so, too, could she see and feel through him. The throbbing in her head doubled as Iya suffered from her broken nose, from the fatigue of her attempt to control Ballard and Noble. She felt a cool breeze on her face, as if she were standing at a window, and his anger pulsed through her until it became her own.

Whatever they saw on her face made Oscar and Margot Luxton take a step back.

“He’s coming,” she managed, breathing hard. Black spots danced at the edge of her vision. “Leave.”

Faron didn’t wait to see if they obeyed. She turned and took a step toward Hearthstone. One single step.

And then she collapsed.