CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

FARON

HEARTHSTONE ACADEMY WAS ALIVE WITH THE NEWS THAT THE dragon eggs were gone.

Faron skipped planning meetings to hang out with Reeve in the infirmary, but she heard about it even there as the healers gossiped in low tones about the saint’s plan of attack while they gave Reeve’s legs physical therapy. Just over a week in a coma wasn’t enough for his muscles to atrophy, thank goodness, but he had lost enough strength in them that they had advised him against attempting to walk long distances until they were finished. Naturally, Reeve spent most of his time reading whatever books Faron brought him from the library.

It would have been like old times, if not for the gossiping Langlish women and the hand-holding.

Faron was still getting used to the hand-holding, but she had discovered that she really, really liked it. Before, her only experience with this had been when Elara or her parents had held her hand, mostly to keep her from running off and getting lost in the market. It was different with Reeve, much like everything was. It was as if he could tell how much she always longed to be touching him and he was more than happy to make it happen. Or maybe he wanted to touch her just as badly.

Her stomach fluttered with something like nerves, but the good kind. Like the anticipation the night before her birthday or the swoop low in her belly when she climbed the dragon egg that had once been in the center of her town. She wasn’t a fool. She’d heard this feeling described in songs and poems, in books and legends. But it was still strange to apply these new feelings to herself. No wonder people walked around in such discontent, if they had to deal with this annoying longing all the time.

Thankfully, the healers soon cleared Reeve to leave the infirmary and withdrew. Faron waited until she heard their footsteps fade before she said, “He planned to hatch those eggs to add Riders to his army, but that was far from his whole plan. He has my summoning magic and his Rider magic. He has his blood magic. He’s spent the last few weeks burning down the Joyan countryside, eliminating their access to their nature spirits.”

“That leaves the Étolians, and their royal family won’t fight. Especially since their only skill is in healing.” Reeve tugged at the collar of his shirt and sniffed, making a face. “I need a shower.”

“I’m not helping you with that,” said Faron. Mischief curled her lips. “Unless you want me to.”

Reeve’s entire face went red. “I wasn’t—oh, shut up.”

Her laughter followed him out into the hallway, where there was a communal bathroom on the other side of the floor. In his absence, she placed her socked feet up on the bed and tilted back her chair so she could stare at the ceiling. Iya could wield three different kinds of magic, and he had made it difficult for the Joyans to wield theirs against him. Reeve had made a good point: The Étolian soldiers had no magic of their own, which likely meant that Iya considered them less of a threat. The only thing that he respected was power.

She remembered the first time she’d seen him, the real him and not just an increasingly corporeal projection. Using Obie’s magic, she had cracked the dragon egg in the center of Deadegg, which had erupted with smoke and lava. Lightbringer had emerged from that egg, with Iya riding on his back. The Gael Soto who she had been working with had been gone, replaced by this human extension of Lightbringer’s will.

Faron kept her eyes open so that she didn’t see what had happened next when she blinked: Valor’s crash and her neighbors dying in an inferno. But she could still hear the sound of the drake hitting the ground, and her own scream echoed in her ears.…

“I feel better,” Reeve said, returning to the room. “All things considered, do you think it’s wrong for me to be wearing this?”

Faron turned to look at him and nearly fell backward. Reeve had showered and changed into riding leathers: clinging black pants, tall boots, and a fitted vest over a shirt with wine-red sleeves that emphasized the muscle in his lithe form. His red-brown hair was still damp from the shower, and a single droplet of water caressed his cheek and slid off his chin into the collar of his shirt. He was standing in the doorway with his arms spread, inviting her to make a judgment on his outfit, but all Faron could do was stare at him. The sound of the chair’s front legs hitting the floor was louder than her heartbeat. Her entire body felt hot.

Maddening. These feelings were maddening. She would have been perfectly happy never experiencing them.

“What?” Reeve asked, but the curl of his mouth made it clear he knew exactly why she was staring.

“Nothing,” Faron snapped.

Laughter danced in his eyes. “Should I change?”

“We need to deal with Iya before he deals with us,” Faron pointed out, staring at the wall instead, “so you’re dressed perfectly for that.”

“Do you have a plan, or are we just going to run in and tackle him?”

“I have no idea why I missed you so much.”

Reeve slipped between her chair and the bed, so close that Faron’s knees brushed against his leathers. She peered up at him and his stupid wet hair and his stupid flushed skin and his stupid half smile, and she was so happy to see him being him that it was hard to breathe. “He must know I’m awake by now,” Reeve murmured. “Maybe you can distract him by demanding my return to San Irie, and I can try and take him by surprise?”

“And then what?” Faron asked. “Lightbringer knocks down a wall to murder us both with a fireball? Or one of the Generals comes in and locks us up? Or he kills you?” Her throat closed at the very thought. “I won’t let him kill you. I’ll go talk to him, distract him. You should try to get out of here.”

“Faron, we’re on an island overrun by Iya’s forces.”

“You can steal a boat from the boathouse. There’s no one in there anymore.”

Reeve’s eyes flashed. “I’m not leaving you.”

“You have to.” This time, it was her turn to whisper. She reached up, placed a hand over his heart. Once, his dragon relic had hung there, a blue eye with a catlike iris in a silver pendant on a chain. Now the space was bare except for the steady thump-thump of his heart beneath the leather vest. “He cares for me. That’s kept me alive until now. He has no reason to keep you alive and every reason to use you to keep me in line. Don’t give him that chance.”

“Huh,” Reeve said, his voice as low as hers. “You really do like me.”

“I told you I did. Why would I lie?” Faron paused. “Okay, why would I lie about that?”

“I believed you! I did. It’s just… I don’t know.” Reeve rubbed the back of his neck. “I wasn’t awake for a lot of the time I was occupied by Iya, but I remember this… I remember feeling things from him that are… I don’t know. I thought maybe the two of you—”

“No.” She wasn’t ignorant. She had seen the way Gael had looked at her, the way he had protected her, the way he’d spoken to her. He felt something for her, that much was clear. But that was his mistake to make. Faron only felt sorry for him. “There’s nothing between Gael and me. I don’t look at people like that. Only you.”

Reeve held her face between his hands and leaned down. Faron expected him to kiss her, but he pressed his forehead against hers. “When this is over…”

He said it like a promise. Faron had no idea what he was promising, but the possibilities made her shiver. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep and bracing breath, before reopening them.

“Come back to me. I’ve held my tongue through a lot of unfair things, and I’ve had my fair share of losses. But I refuse to lose you. Not before we have a chance to see what this could be.” His gaze burned into hers, a fire not of rage but of passion and raw determination. “I want you to be mine, and I want to be yours. I want us to be us. I’ll leave now because you’re asking me to, because I trust you to do whatever you think is best, but I would swim the Crown Sea, walk through dragonfire, drag myself across the earth inch by painful inch, to get back to you, Faron. So come back to me. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, her heart in his hands. “I promise.”

Faron found Iya in the library.

She’d only gone into this room before to grab books to read to Reeve, so it was her first time taking it all in. It was two floors, with a spiral staircase in the center to connect them. The rich wood paneling lent the library a cozy vibe, and cream-colored armchairs filled the space. There were long tables with chairs she assumed were for studying students, and gilded portraits of white people of all genders hanging on some of the walls. The high ceiling was painted with a map of the world, and the occasional arched window allowed natural sunlight into the space, though there were electric lamps to make up the difference when that sunlight was gone.

Iya stood in front of one of those windows, his hands behind his back. Faron’s pulse jumped, but the view wasn’t of the boathouse, as she’d feared. He was looking out at Serpentia Bay, which stretched between Caledon and the continent. Nova was an uneven line of mist and greenery in the distance, and the water before it was choppy and gray. The clouds threatened rain.

“The final battle will begin soon,” Iya said without turning around. “You can sense it on the wind, can’t you?”

“It’s not too late to stop it.” Faron stood beside him, keeping him in her peripheral vision. His new body was easier to read than Reeve’s had been: Jesper Soto had a certain openness and expressiveness that even Iya couldn’t hide. He was oddly at ease. Or maybe it wasn’t odd. Gael Soto had been a soldier, after all. Iya was likely comfortable on the battlefield. “You must know by now that your goals are unrealistic. The world is so much larger than it was when you were forced into the Empty. You can’t possibly win.”

“Oh, Faron.” He chuckled. “I don’t need to win. I just want them to lose.”

“I don’t understand.”

Iya lifted a hand, gesturing out the window. “These people have spread throughout this realm like vermin, and they don’t know what it is to suffer. They tell themselves whatever they need to in order to sleep at night, knowing that they are good and heroic. They don’t care about what was done to me or how my story has been twisted. I’m a myth. A legend. A villain. But when this war is at its end, whether I win or lose that final battle, they will remember me.” His voice lowered, even as his hand hovered in the air almost uncertainly. “The victor writes the story, but they cannot write this one without me. Not again.”

“You’re free.” Faron knew she was doing the verbal equivalent of punching a brick wall and expecting the wall to be hurt, but it didn’t matter. This was no longer just about distraction. It was about the pain woven into Iya’s voice, their shared fear of being forgotten, their shared anger at the tatters of their reputations, their shared thirst for vengeance. All those thorny, complicated feelings that kept them irreparably bonded together. All those thorny, complicated emotions that Faron understood better than anyone else. “You could do anything. You could be anything. It’s not too late to—”

“Are you still telling yourself that?” Iya turned to face her. “That it’s not too late? That they’ll welcome you with open arms after what you’ve done? That you can make up for the lies and the devastation?”

“Maybe they won’t forgive me. Maybe I’ve caused too much harm. But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying to make it right.” Her mind drifted to Reeve, who thought the world of her even though she’d hated him for most of their time together. She thought of her sister, who was so good that the gods had chosen her as their next Empyrean. And she thought of Aveline, who was a royal pain but never, ever gave up on her people, even when they were furious with her. “That’s who I am. Someone who never stops trying. I may have forgotten that for a while, but that’s why we’re not the same. You gave up. You’re giving up. And I won’t. I can’t.”

Iya’s lips twisted into a scowl. “I see my former incarnation has gotten into your head.”

“He didn’t tell me anything I shouldn’t have already known.” Faron risked a step forward. She reached for Iya’s face, slowly, waiting for him to push her away. When he didn’t, she settled a hand on his cheek, staring up at him with all the gentleness she could muster. “If there’s hope for me, then there’s still hope for you. Iya—Gael—please don’t do this.”

Iya tilted his face against her hand. She felt the rough scratch of his stubble, felt the warmth of his breath on her skin. His eyes closed, and for a moment she was back in the throne room at Pearl Bay Palace, making this same plea of a man who had just slaughtered so many of her people. Hoping against hope that she could stop him from killing any more just by appealing to his better nature.

And just as in that throne room, he pulled away.

“I’ve given you far more chances than you deserve.” Iya’s hand gripped hers and blazed a sickly green. Shackles of the same color appeared around Faron’s wrist, so tight that they began to bruise. “Now, I can no longer risk you interfering.”

The library doors opened and Gavriel Warwick entered, Reeve unconscious and slung over his shoulder. “I found this one sniffing around the boathouse, my saint.”

“‘This one’?” Faron snarled. “That’s your son.” She turned back to Iya, even as chain links appeared from each shackle, winding around her arms and snapping them together. “Please, don’t do this. Let him go. At least let him go—”

Iya shoved her to the floor. Faron landed hard on her side, pain striking up her spine. Iya’s boot pressed against her cheek, keeping her down, keeping her where she was sure he thought she belonged.

“Leave him here,” he said, pressing even harder. His boot reeked of mud and sand. Black spots danced in Faron’s vision. “I’ll deal with the girl.”