FARON WAS FADING.
She had been channeling too much for too long, and even with Valor’s scalestone and the scalestone on her wrists, she was beginning to feel the effects. Sweat coated her body, making her clothes cling to her form, and the heat in her blood was only made hotter by the tiny fires that speckled the broad roof of Hearthstone. Lightbringer refused to stop fighting, and so Faron refused to stop fighting back. But she had no idea how long she could keep this up before she overheated and collapsed.
At least Reeve showed no signs of tiring, but his dragon relic could run out of magic at any time. If they both lost their magic…
“Look out!”
Reeve’s body slammed into hers. They rolled across the roof, stone scratching Faron’s skin as they came to a stop dangerously close to the edge. Faron was breathing hard as her aunt’s astral fled her body, giving her a momentary reprieve. The space where they’d been standing was blackened with dragonfire, so powerful that it must have blown a hole in their shield. Reeve’s face was pressed against her neck, his body heaving with his own harsh breaths. One of his arms bracketed her from the roof edge. The other…
Faron touched his shoulder where his arm had once been. “Does it hurt?”
“Not anymore,” Reeve said. “Are you hurt?”
“Always thinking of me,” Faron teased as he carefully eased off her. Her braids flapped against her shoulders, and she looked up to see that Valor was taking to the skies without her. And standing below it, blond hair rippling in the wind, scalestone sword raised, was Torrey Kelley.
Or rather, Gael Soto in Torrey Kelley’s body.
“They did it,” Faron said as Torrey raced across the roof toward Lightbringer. “We have to help clear her way. Come on.”
She helped up Reeve, wiping the sweat from her brow with a sleeve before she summoned another astral. Part of her wondered how they had gotten Elara—Elara, who had spent enough time with Torrey and Jesper that she surely had objected to trading one’s body for another—to agree to the plan they had explained to her on their way up to the roof. The other part of her knew it didn’t matter, not really, because her only goal now was to make sure that Torrey’s sacrifice was not in vain. They had already lost Aveline, and Lightbringer still breathed. Whether they lost Torrey Kelley or not, Lightbringer would die here.
Faron would make sure of it.
Lightbringer’s tail swung like an axe, but Faron threw a hand toward it, her magic cutting through the air. His tail was stopped by a platform of golden magic that exploded into shards. With a curl of her fingers, those shards rammed into Lightbringer’s side, piercing new holes and making old holes wider. His answering roar was weak, more pain than fury, so Faron clenched her fists. The shards dug deeper and deeper, trying to pierce muscle and sinew, trying to cut down to the bone.
Nobility threw spikes of lightning, bolt after bolt, cracking what was left of the stone beneath Lightbringer. The dragon’s body began to sink into the building, trapping him. Reeve tugged a string of magic from his relic and curved it in ropes around Lightbringer’s neck, pulling them tight, choking the breath from the dragon’s lungs.
And Gael Soto raced through it all like an avenging god.
With a mighty cry that Faron could hear even through the din, Torrey sank her sword into Lightbringer’s remaining eye.
The blind dragon jolted as if he’d been electrocuted. His foreleg came up, talons extended. Gael jumped seconds too late. Lightbringer’s claws tore through his body—through Torrey’s body—seconds before connecting with his own face.
Her body hit the ground, then slid through the cracks in the roof, sinking out of view.
Lightbringer’s own talons had carved a bloody line through his face and gotten stuck. Faron watched him attempt to pull them free, screeching all the while, and slowly she withdrew her magic until her astral dissipated. There was nothing further that she could do. It was all up to Elara now.
Valor landed gingerly on the roof, and Faron was unsure if it was because her sister’s magic had weakened or because she was mourning her friend. Either way, magic erupted from the drake and then poured into the remaining surface of the roof, opening a portal to the divine realm. A black vacuum swirling beneath Lightbringer sucked him out of this world.
He was too weakened to pull himself free. Too blinded to find an escape.
Faron could hear Lightbringer’s panicked cries as he was returned to his own world to face the judgment of the gods. Knowing the gods as she did, Faron did not envy him at all.
Lightbringer’s teeth were the last things she saw before he disappeared completely. Finally gone, with nothing more than a snarl to remember him by.
The world became a blur of color: reds and golds, greens and blues. Dragons flew willingly into the hole, some carrying the limp or bleeding bodies of other dragons. It couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes for them all to disappear, but for Faron it felt like a lifetime. She was seventeen and she was twelve, watching these creatures that she had feared and hated and pitied leave a world that had only allowed them to thrive as weapons to be used against other countries.
A final dragon hovered above the hole, her green wings flapping and her eyes kind.
Zephyra.
Faron bowed her head in respect for all the dragon had done for her sister, even when Faron had treated her like an enemy. Zephyra blew a geyser of fire into the sky with a triumphant roar, then flew down to join her brothers and sisters in returning home.
The roof returned to its black-and-gray state, the channel between realms closing without a sound. Faron collapsed to her knees, her shoulders shaking. It was over.
A broken sob escaped her.
It was over.
But Aveline was dead.
It was finally, finally over.
Her chest and throat burned. Tears blurred her vision and stung her eyes. And no matter how many times she told herself that it was over, she had lost far too much for this to feel like a victory.