CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

FARON

DEBRIS SHOOK LOOSE FROM THE WALL AS THE BATTLE RAGED ON. Lynwood had said nothing in what felt like hours, and every sound that reverberated through the prison made Faron want to vomit. She tested the give of her chains one more time, but all it did was aggravate the scabs around her wrists. Faron fought back tears, forcing herself into a state of resignation.

She would happily die here if it meant that Iya was gone. She would rather Elara be alive than for herself to be found. Death came for everyone eventually. Hers was just happening five years after the war that made her famous.

Something slammed into the door.

“Fuck you,” she heard Lynwood shout.

There was a sound like cracking wood and the kind of scream that Faron had only heard in radio shows—what hosts thought people sounded like when they fought a battle. Some kind of scuffle was happening out there, and Faron wasn’t sure if this was good for her or bad for her.

She searched the room for a weapon she knew she wouldn’t find, because it wasn’t her first search. She wanted to hope that Lightbringer was losing and someone had come to rescue her, but it could just as easily be the Warwicks betraying him to murder her themselves, or a Joyan or Étolian come to kill her for working with Iya at all.

She’d had plenty of time to stew in despair, but now Faron gripped her anger close like a precious jewel. She wouldn’t make this easy for them. She didn’t want to die. She would fight with everything she had to get back to her family.

There was another crash, followed by a thud, and the hallway went silent.

“Faron? Reeve?” said Signey Soto. “Are you in there?”

Faron cried out, but her throat was scraped raw. She made another sound, hoarse and weak and desperate. If Signey moved on, never knowing where she was—

The wall imploded.

Rocks and dust crackled across the floor. The ceiling rained down more debris, a large stone dropping where her legs had just been. Signey Soto appeared in the dusty hole, searching the dimly lit room until she saw Faron chained to the wall and surrounded by gravel and grime. Her stomach chose that moment to rumble. She would have blushed if she hadn’t been so relieved.

“Did you kill Lynwood?” Faron asked, trying to see around Signey for a body. “Please tell me you killed Lynwood.”

“Forget Lynwood. Fucking saints, Faron!” Signey breathed. The dragon relic she wielded, claw rings extending and sharpening her nails, was still glowing. “I’ll get you out of—”

“It’s scalestone,” Faron managed.

“Ah.” Signey lowered her hand and bit her lower lip. With the wall gone, Faron could hear more sounds of battle: growls and screams, explosions and crashes. The air that wafted in smelled like dust and smoke.

And blood. Lynwood’s blood.

“Okay. Okay, okay, let me just…” Signey stepped farther into the room, staring at Faron as if she were a complicated math problem.

“What are you—” Faron gasped. It was as if she had been underwater and was taking her first breath, as if she had been drowning without realizing she’d been drowning. Her shoulders dipped, freed of an invisible weight, and it was only the rattle of the chains that reminded her that she was not actually free.

“I healed you, but I can also break dragon bonds,” Signey declared, sounding an odd mixture of proud and anxious. “I’ve been practicing—though admittedly I thought freeing you from Lightbringer would be a right bit harder.”

“Our bond has never been as strong as his bond with Gael. I’ve fought him every step of the way. He and Gael… that’s a different story. And now that he’s in Jesper—”

Signey made a sound as if she’d been shot. “So it’s true? He’s inside my brother?”

“Oh,” said Faron, wishing she had broken that news more gently. “I—yeah. He—yeah.”

Signey’s next breath came out shakily. She turned her back on Faron, even though it was far too late to hide the sheen of her eyes. Faron winced, scrambling for some way to make this blow a little easier… But how? When she had lost Reeve to Iya’s influence, it had felt as if she were bleeding out, and her feelings for him had still been new and fragile. Jesper was Signey’s brother. There was nothing anyone could say to make this easier.

Another explosion rocked the building.

All right. Maybe this didn’t matter anywhere near as much as freeing herself right now. She stretched her fingers, took a deep breath, and summoned an astral.

It was like coming home, even though she hadn’t done this since she was small. Yes, it took longer than it should have, about as long as a child first learning magic, but eventually she saw the cluster of her late aunts around her. She felt their love, the bonds of family and blood that tied their souls to hers, and she wanted to cry at how much she’d missed this. Missed them.

They all peered at her as if she were a stranger, and she supposed she was. After all, she hadn’t summoned anything other than a god in six years. Aunt Vittoria settled beneath her skin, the scalestone no longer a barrier so long as the magic she was using was Iryan. She unwound the chains from the wall as if they were made of clay, smoothing them down into the cuffs on her wrists. When she was done, they had turned into a series of scalestone bracelets, ready to amplify her magic.

“Do you know where Reeve Warwick is?” Signey asked as Faron got to her feet. Any sign of her breakdown was behind a mask of determination. Instead of a grieving sister, Faron saw only a soldier. “I didn’t find him anywhere in the building, but I assume that Nichol Thompson is guarding him, since—”

“No, he’s with Gael,” said Faron, crossing to join her. “Well, with Iya.” She stretched out her fingers again, this time curling them into fists. “And, trust me, the first thing I want to do is pay them a visit.”

Beyond the inner keep was mayhem. Signey explained that Torrey and Azeal had dropped her off just outside Hearthstone and she had made her way in on foot, avoiding skirmishes and breaking dragon bonds. Iya may have controlled the school, but Signey had walked these halls and navigated these grounds for years. She knew more than one way in, and most of Iya’s Riders appeared to be on their dragons, unable to stop her. Meanwhile, Azeal, Nizsa, and Stormborn were already fighting without Riders on their backs; the former Riders were on the ground, aiding the soldiers, or in the drakes, contributing their knowledge of dragon weaknesses to the drakes’ battle strategies.

Enemy dragons, newly freed, were confused, distracted, unleashed.

“Iya wakened their bonds,” Faron explained as they hurried down the path toward the boathouse, using the trees for cover. “He used my magic to bind them all to him so he could draw on them for more power, which weakened their connections overall.”

Signey looked nervous. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to break the bond between him and Je—and Gael, then. The first time I broke one, it was Azeal’s, and it was so powerful, it knocked me out.”

“We’ll figure something out.”

The dragons, Faron noted, did seem to be fighting with more ferocity than usual. Above Port Sol, they had knocked one another this way and that and spat fire from a safe distance. Above Hearthstone, they tore at one another with teeth and claw. The ground was littered with narrow rivers of blood and wet chunks of scaled flesh. Signey looked as if she were going to be sick, but Faron just noted that none of those chunks appeared to be the paper white of Lightbringer’s skin. He was wrapped around the building from which they had just escaped, but no one had gotten close enough to make him sweat.

Not yet.

“Iya will be in the Emerald Highlands,” said Faron, tearing her eyes from the scene. “Normally, it’s a three-hour boat ride to get there, but thankfully I have my magic back.”

There was a single boat in the boathouse, and it was being guarded by Nichol Thompson. He threw up his arms when Faron and Signey lit up their hands with trapped magic. “Just take it. I don’t care.”

Signey lowered her dragon relic first, rolling her eyes. “You are such a coward without your cousin to protect you, Nichol.”

“Do you want the boat or not?”

“You don’t need to give it to us for us to take it. The only choice you have is if you want to be unconscious when we leave or not.”

Faron, who had no sympathy for Thompson, sent a blast of light his way. He crumpled to the ground. They took the boat.

The combined force of her summoning magic and Signey’s relic magic got them back to the continent in half an hour. They hit the shore so hard that the boat made a worrying creak, but it held together long enough for them to escape it. Faron had thought the Highlands might be quiet, with most of the battle happening at Hearthstone, but she was swiftly proven wrong.

Everywhere, people were fighting, falling, dying. Swords clashed. Magic flashed. Fire sizzled. The sidewalk cracked open, allowing soil to spill free in the shape of a giant hand that dragged four screaming soldiers beneath the earth. A maze of thick mist surrounded another group of enemy soldiers, with only the glint of activated dragon relics visible in the fog. Faron realized, with a roll of her eyes, that she saw very few soldiers wearing Étolian colors mixed among the fray.

“They sent a skeleton army at best,” Signey said, a disgusted curl to her mouth. “The tournesola felt that Iya was our problem to create and defeat and did the bare minimum while fortifying defenses at home.”

The Étolian soldiers Faron did spot didn’t falter, their swords carving a path through the enemies that swarmed them. But it made her profoundly sad how their ruler had failed to help them.

She and Signey made their way farther inland, toward the Snowmelt. Faron had expected more resistance close to the river, but the green field was broken only by the track made by the supply carts and the footprints of marching soldiers. In the distance, she could see the water sloshing along and several figures standing in front of it.

Her heart stopped when she realized that one of those figures was Elara.

“No,” Signey breathed from behind her. “Jesper!”

They both broke into a run.

Elara was unconscious and trapped between Gavriel and Mireya Warwick, who each held one of her arms. Standing before them was Reeve, blocked from reaching her by Iya in Jesper Soto’s body. Faron called out, causing all of them to turn. A malicious smirk crossed Gavriel Warwick’s face.

They were still halfway across the field when the Warwicks threw Elara into the raging river.

And when Reeve immediately jumped in after her.