CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

FARON

ZEPHYRA WAS CHEWING ON A COW. OR, RATHER, WHAT WAS LEFT of a cow.

Luckily, Faron couldn’t see her or the poor creature she’d likely picked up from the Highlands, but she could feel flashes of sensations. The faint taste of raw meat. The coppery smell of blood. Strong bones crushed beneath stronger molars. Her own dinner threatened to come back up, but Faron forced herself to cling to the faint string that connected her soul with Zephyra’s—or, rather, Lightbringer’s soul to all theirs.

It had been four days since her last lesson. She saw Briar Noble’s pale face every time she closed her eyes, and, every time she drew a breath, smelled the blood and bile smeared across Estella Ballard’s jaw. Iya had added two more dragons to his army—Alzina and Blaze—and Alzina, like Zephyra, spent most of her time as a mindless beast. Faron was not as familiar with Alzina’s soul as she was with Zephyra’s, so if she wanted to help them—if she wanted to help any of them—she had to start with Zephyra.

But just like the first time, there was nothing of Zephyra’s soul for her to hold on to. She had one, but there was nothing but instinct driving it. Instinct and sensation, the brief flashes of an animal who could not be directed to act against its nature. Faron had believed, her whole life, that it was a dragon’s nature to destroy, but now she knew better. Without a bond, dragons wanted only one thing: to survive.

And Faron still wasn’t strong enough to override that with empathy.

She withdrew from Zephyra with a sigh, exhausted by her own uselessness. She had tried commanding Lightbringer’s soul and abstaining from his kills. She had tried forcing his Riders to help her and shadowing him to Beacon to ensure he didn’t burn it down. She had given his prisoner a piece of debris that served as a way to guard his mind from his captors. And it all felt like a spectacular waste of time, like trying to sabotage a military base by throwing pebbles at the fence. Nothing she did would make a difference until she found out what Lightbringer was really up to. Where did he go while he had Gael Soto teaching her the magic of the bond? And why did he want her to get stronger at all?

You forget that I was an actual soldier. I know a thing or two about strategy.

Faron tried to strategize. If she got stronger, Iya got stronger. Their souls were connected, and right now Iya considered her pathetically weak. With Jesper’s blood and the right equipment, he could likely assess how strong a threat his descendants were to him. But that didn’t explain the stolen dragon eggs or what Lightbringer was doing while Gael gave her lessons.

The pieces just weren’t coming together for Faron. She wasn’t like Elara and Reeve, who, combined, had read enough books that they were able to piece together a likely plan for Iya. They hadn’t stopped him in the end, because there was only so much guesswork they could do when so much of their opponent was a mystery, but they had figured him out long before Faron had. Now, without them as resources, she felt as if she were groping in the dark, trying to find something to punch.

Had she really been effective only because she’d had someone else—the gods, the queen, even Gael—telling her what to do?

Before she could wade too far into self-loathing, Gael Soto’s voice echoed across the bond: “Your next lesson will be in the gym. See you soon.”

On the first floor of Hearthstone Academy was a gymnasium large enough for even a carmine to hover off the floor. Mats covered the metal floor and the walls, and high windows let sunlight stream in. Between each window was a gas lamp, presumably for practicing long after the sun had gone down. A small door led to what Faron assumed was a bathroom.

Gael waited inside with Marius Lynwood and Nichol Thompson. Her next opponents.

“The empires have united for a declaration of war,” Gael told her as she came to a stop in front of them. “So this will be a short lesson.”

“We’re at war?” Technically, they had been at war this entire time, but she hadn’t thought the empires would actually unite to declare it. “Do we even have time for lessons? Shouldn’t we be having a meeting or—”

“That’s not for you to worry about. Goldeye and Lightbringer are patrolling, and the other Riders are ensuring that we’re prepared for a siege. All you need to focus on is your lesson.” Faron opened her mouth, only for Gael to press two fingers to her lips. “That’s not focusing. If you’re not careful, they’ll actually beat you.”

“Thanks for your confidence,” Lynwood sneered. Unlike Noble and Ballard, he didn’t seem inclined to show Gael any respect just because Gael shared a body with his saint. “Just promise me again that we won’t be in trouble if we put her in the infirmary.”

Thompson, as usual, said nothing to either back up or stop his cousin. He just watched Faron with a furrow between his dark eyebrows.

Faron tried to spark the anger she’d felt with Ballad and Noble, the anger that staved off the empty hopelessness that gripped her when she thought of how long she’d been among these people and how little she’d actually done to help anyone. How even the empires had managed to mobilize quickly enough that Lightbringer was concerned, while she was no closer to figuring out his ultimate plan. She had nothing but her will to live, and, when Lynwood and Thompson attacked her, every move she made felt automatic. She barely had the energy to reach for their souls, and they fought her off easily.

“What’s wrong?” Gael asked. He stood with his hands behind his back and his head tilted curiously. “You’re not even trying.”

Faron ignored him to duck out of the way of a fire-wrapped kick. Saying everything felt far too dramatic, even for her. After the first real time she had wielded her power to command living souls, on the two Iryan men who were just drunk enough to beat Reeve to death if she hadn’t stopped them, Gael hadn’t understood her concerns. He’d questioned why she would worry about two men she didn’t know and would never see again, and she’d had to explain to him that it was normal—even encouraged—for her to care about other people.

With the world against her, Reeve trapped, and Elara far away, Faron didn’t have the energy to have that conversation again. Her own faith in humanity was too weak.

Her faith in herself was too weak.

She yelped as the side of her face exploded with pain. Jumping back, she touched her cheek and flinched at the burn already twisting her skin. Lynwood grinned, all teeth, so proud of getting past her guard.

“Power is wasted on people like you,” he said, fire winding around his arms in tendrils of red and gold. “You have no idea how the world works. You want it to be ‘fair,’ which just means you hate it when anyone stands out.” The fire traced his shoulders and surrounded his head like a halo of flames. “But you need to realize that some people were just born better than others. Stronger. More powerful. There are things you can never grasp, no matter how hard you work for it, because it’s an inherent skill. Like the right to rule.”

“I hope you’re not talking about yourself,” Faron spat, falling back into a defensive stance on the mats. “You’re not even fit to rule a nursery.”

Lynwood chuckled, though there was no humor in it. “My family goes back generations. We can trace our lineage to the first dragon Riders. There has never been a Lynwood who wasn’t chosen by a dragon, as long as there was an open dragon to bond with. The blood of rulers runs through my veins. And you? You are nothing and no one.”

“And whose fault is that?” Anger finally cut through the numbness like a hot knife through butter. It was easy for Lynwood to be proud of where he came from—who he came from—because he knew. Faron didn’t even know what her family’s name had been before they’d been taken to San Irie to be enslaved. An entire history had been erased by imperialists like him, who bred all over Nova like rabbits. Faron, her eyes narrowed, snuffed out the flames that wrapped around her fist. “Of course you don’t respect hard work, if everything has always come so easily to you. My ancestors worked and bled and died for me to be standing here today, and that doesn’t make them lesser than you or me. Their hard work made them strong. It made me strong.”

She reached for his soul with the force of what felt like generations of rage. Existing in a world built by people who thought like Marius Lynwood would always leave a stain, an anger that could never be healed. She wielded that anger against him now, submerging his soul beneath her will. He twisted, his face growing redder the harder he tried to fight her off, but Faron’s fury was as uncontainable as a dragon’s.

“You’re the one who’s nothing,” she hissed. “Say it.”

Blood dripped from his nose and then from his eyes. He gritted his teeth, but the words still fell out of him. “I’m nothing.”

From behind him, Thompson ran forward, but Faron threw up a hand. A circle of flame surrounded him, keeping him busy until she was ready for him. Lynwood was on his knees now, screaming. His soul was still fighting, but she was stronger; she was so much stronger than he had ever imagined, and she would make him regret making her sister ever feel small. Making her ever feel small.

“You don’t deserve anything you were born with,” Faron continued, reaching as far down into his soul as she could. There was a tangle of light there, the part of him that was connected to Iya and the other Generals, the part of him that was connected to Thompson and Goldeye, and the part of him that was commanded not to help her contact her sister. She couldn’t get close enough to even touch that part of him, not without losing herself in the process, but she pressed a command of her own into his very being: Suffer. Every second of every day, I want you to suffer.

She withdrew just in time for Lynwood to collapse on the mats, his head covered with blood.

Faron dropped the flames that trapped Thompson and stared him down. His eyes jumped between her and his cousin, and she wanted to take him down, too, so badly, it was as if someone were commanding her. But Lynwood was the bigger pain in her ass. Thompson was just as dangerous, thanks to his inaction, but that same inaction meant she had nothing specific to punish him for. She lowered her hands and nodded once; he raced to his cousin’s side, calling Lynwood’s name and checking his pulse.

Gael came up beside her. “Your methods are getting more brutal.”

“I suppose you like that,” Faron muttered, not taking her eyes off Lynwood. Even his ears were bleeding. Had she pickled his brain? “I was just angry.”

“I understand. Believe me, I understand better than you might think.” He looked down at his hands, clenching one into a fist. “When Lightbringer and I first bonded, my temper grew. I’d saved the world, and it felt like everyone was ungrateful because of how I’d done it. My family was wary of the bond. The people were wary of the dragon. The gods refused to speak to me. I’d won, and in so doing, I’d lost everything. And it made me furious.”

Faron swallowed. “Is that why you became a tyrant? Because you didn’t get thanked enough?”

“Realizing that caring what people thought was holding me back from my full potential isn’t tyranny, Faron,” Gael said with a small smile. “Being bonded with a megalomaniacal dragon who decides that if we cannot be loved, then we can certainly rule through fear is, however.” His hands dropped to his sides, and he turned away from the carnage she had wrought within Marius Lynwood. “I never wanted to rule over anyone. I just wanted to be powerful enough that no one could hurt my loved ones again.” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “It’s a slippery slope, isn’t it?”

Faron felt as if she’d been punched. Wouldn’t she have made the same choice? To give in to a power stronger than any she had ever known if it meant keeping Elara safe?

Wasn’t that what she had already done?

“Now, look at yourself,” Gael continued. “Look at how you suffer. You don’t know how frustrating it is to watch you tear yourself apart to satisfy people who only care about what you can do for them. No one cared about Deadegg until you became the Childe Empyrean.

“No one cares about you now that you’re not the Childe Empyrean. If you’re not perfect every second of every day, then you’re their villain. Don’t you find that maddening?”

She wanted to clench her eyes shut. She wanted to run. She wanted to cry. She felt flayed open, her nerves raw and open for him to see. Emotion erupted from her like the hot lava of a volcano, devastating every other thought.

“Of course I find it maddening,” she snapped. “I find it infuriating, actually. I go to bed and wake up screaming. I go through my day biting back a scream. I know there’s no winning. I’ve lived it. I’m living it.”

Her breathing came in harsh pants. She had made mistakes, ones she could never make up for, but Elara and Reeve were the only ones who hadn’t immediately thought the worst of her. And Iya, she supposed, but every mistake she had made had helped him in some way, so she didn’t think to count him.

Faron wanted penance. She wanted absolution. She wanted Lightbringer stopped. She wanted her sister back. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a small, cruel part of her that raged against this new box they had wedged her into—that raged against how easily she had been discarded by people she had risked her life for at the tender age of twelve. She hated that Gael was the only one who saw that. Who felt it.

A sting of pain made her realize she was clenching her fists hard enough for her nails to break the skin. She flexed her fingers, swallowing back a wave of shame so thick, it could drag her under.

Gael had the nerve to smile. “Temper, temper.”

“Piss off.”

He chuckled as he walked away, pausing just long enough for Thompson to drag Lynwood’s unmoving body through the entrance.

Once they were gone, Faron sat down right where she stood. She didn’t recognize herself these days, and she feared that Elara wouldn’t, either.