CHAPTER TEN

ELARA

CROCODILES WERE STOMPING AROUND ELARA’S SKULL.

She groaned back into awareness, every inch of her body alight with pain. Even her eyelids were hurting. For the love of Irie, what had happened to her? She poked at the gaping chasm where her memories should be, slowly piecing together a picture from what little she remembered. The call. The dragon. Signey Soto. The rush of power and the memories and the screaming, so much screaming. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember what had happened after that.

Her cheek was pressed to something soft, perhaps a pillow. From the gentle feel of the cotton fabric covering her, she was in a bed. She could smell herbs and antiseptic, which meant she was probably in a bed in the infirmary—assuming she was even still at Pearl Bay Palace. The ache that throbbed throughout her body with every heartbeat was distracting, but none of the pain seemed to come from an actual wound. At worst, she was just bruised.

Carefully, she opened her eyes.

Elara had spent a week in the palace infirmary after the final battle of the war, released after the first day but staying for the remaining six to stand guard over Faron’s unconscious body. She recognized the mural on the ivory ceiling, which depicted the three gods—Irie, Mala, and Obie—surrounded by Aveline’s ancestors going back generations. Closest to the gods were Aveline’s mothers, the late queens Nerissa Renard and Kimona Castell, with scalestone swords in hand to protect their deities. This mural was just an approximation of what the gods looked like, based on Faron’s childhood interviews with the santi, who had used her to fill in the gaps in their own spiritual knowledge, but Elara found it comforting all the same.

No matter how weak and confused she felt right now, gods and queens were watching over her. Irie was watching over her.

Elara tried to reach out toward them, but her hand was trapped. For the first time, she noticed that Faron was asleep in a chair by her bed, her head tipped back and her mouth wide open. She clutched Elara’s hand as if someone might snatch her sister away in the night. Faron was still wearing the same dress from the Summit banquet, her braids loose and her baby hairs frizzing. Either no more than a day had passed, or Faron hadn’t left this room since Elara had been brought to it. Or both.

Elara smiled, lacing their fingers together. Faron surged awake at once.

“Waa gwaan?” she gasped, blinking sleep from her eyes. She squeezed Elara’s hand a moment later. “You’re awake! I was worried about you. How are you feeling?”

“Confused.” Elara’s dry throat rasped out the words. “What happened?”

“We bonded,” said Signey Soto. “You’re now co-Rider to my sage dragon, Zephyra.”

There were a lot of words in those sentences that Elara didn’t understand. Even the ones that she did understand didn’t make any sense. Signey was lying in a bed two rows over from Elara’s, silver bracelets around her left and right wrists. A closer look revealed that they weren’t bracelets; she was shackled to the bed frame. Elara didn’t need to squint to know that the shackles were made of the same scalestone as the Queenshield’s weapons and the Iryan drakes. Signey Soto was a Rider, after all, and the only thing capable of holding her would be scalestone chains.

Despite the name, scalestone was neither made of scales nor stone; it was the ridges in the metal, so similar to dragon scales, that had made the name feel appropriate. Found solely in the heart of the Argent Mountains, it was the reason the island had been colonized, prisoners shipped down from Étolia to work in those dangerous mines by the droves. Then the Joyans had come, ousting the Étolian militia and turning San Irie from a prison island to an enslavement colony. There was a seemingly endless supply of scalestone to mine and not enough crime to justify the free labor of prisoners alone. The Joyans had soon discovered that scalestone could nullify Langlish dragon magic and slice through impenetrable Langlish dragonhide, but it was the Langlish who had discovered the metal could also amplify Iryan summoning magic.

For an island new to having a national identity at all, it had seemed like a gift for the Langlish to help them craft the first two drakes in order to drive the Joyans out.

They’d been too desperate to ask what Langley might want in return.

“What did you say?” Faron asked, pulling Elara out of her thoughts. No matter how many facts she clung to or how much it comforted her to recite them to herself, her skin still crawled with the unpleasant awareness that Signey had upended her entire state of being. “Neither of us speaks Langlish.”

Elara’s heart stopped. She had forgotten her strange new ability to understand Signey no matter what language she spoke in. She hadn’t even noticed the change this time. What was happening?

“I’m good with languages,” said another voice, this one inside her head, the deep, feminine tone of Zephyra. “But then, all sage dragons are. As long as we are connected, no form of language will be unknown to you.”

Signey smirked but didn’t bother to translate for Faron. Her point had been made so well that Elara’s world cracked in two. Bonded. She was bonded to a dragon. She had a co-Rider.

She… This… Oh, gods.

“That’s Signey Soto. She said that Elara’s her co-Rider and bonded to her dragon, Zephyra,” Reeve said. Elara hadn’t noticed him standing by the door, too disoriented to count all the people in the room. He, too, was still dressed in his clothes from the Summit, and his expression was pinched, as if he wished there weren’t this many people in here so that he and Elara could have a frank conversation. Elara was abruptly glad to have that talk postponed. She couldn’t process any of this, let alone talk about it. Not yet. “The queen and my—and the commander have been waiting for you to wake up. Are you ready to see them?”

“She just opened her eyes,” Faron grumbled. “Can’t they send a medical summoner in first to make sure she’s healed?”

“You’re fine,” Elara heard Signey say clear as day, though the girl was leaning back against her pillow with her eyes and mouth closed. “You’re a Rider now. We’re near invulnerable.”

“I’m fine, Faron,” Elara parroted, numbness spreading through her entire body. “Send them in.”

Commander Gavriel Warwick and Queen Aveline Renard Castell appeared shoulder to shoulder in the doorway of the infirmary. Queenshield stood in the hallway behind them, their faces solemn, their hands hovering by their swords.

A faint memory of attacking Queenshield soldiers flickered to life at the back of Elara’s mind. Irie help her. They might be here to arrest her. They might be here to execute her. Surely, there were some things that being the sister of the Empyrean couldn’t save her from.

But the queen closed the door on her guards as if they were no more than wall decorations. The commander observed the way that Signey was chained up without expression. Reeve had shuffled almost to the corner of the room, but he was close enough that the resemblance between him and his father was unsettling. They had the same paper-white skin, the same light eyes, the same thick brows, the same sharp jaws. They even stood at a similar height, towering over the women in the room, and carried themselves in a similar way, as if it were their right to occupy so much space.

It wasn’t that Elara ever forgot where Reeve had been raised. But it was the first time in a long time that the sight of him sent a chill down her spine.

She dropped her gaze to the sterile sheets. “Is… everyone okay?”

“We managed to fix the damage in the garden,” said the queen. “And the soldiers you fought are no worse for the wear. But perhaps the commander can fill in some blanks as to why we are even having this conversation?”

Commander Warwick swept past her to Signey’s bed, tugging on one of her chains to test its give. Elara felt the odd sensation that he was stalling, but she had no basis for that assumption. If anything, he was being protective of a student he had inadvertently put in harm’s way. “Perhaps we can have this conversation as a group of equals? I promise that Miss Soto is of no danger to anyone in this room.”

“She and her dragon tried to set fire to the palace,” Faron pointed out.

“An explanation for that will come in time. But for now, please trust me when I say that we really are as dedicated to maintaining peace between our countries as you are, and what happened tonight was not Miss Soto’s fault.”

“Technically last night,” said Zephyra. “It is long after midnight.”

Elara ignored her. It was hard enough trying to keep up with what was going on around her. Reeve was as still as a statue in the corner of the room, observing. Signey still hadn’t opened her eyes. The commander and Aveline stood stubbornly near Signey’s bed, as if waiting for the other to relent first. And then there was Elara, still holding hands with her sister and ignoring the signs that her life as she knew it was over. Maybe Commander Warwick wasn’t the one stalling. Maybe it was just Elara who wished this moment would last forever so she wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences.

But Faron clearly had no such reservations. She stared down the commander of the Langlish Empire as if he were a tree she wanted to fell. “Why would we trust you when you say anything at all?”

“Empyrean,” Aveline said around an exasperated sigh, her silent confrontation with the commander coming to a tense end. “Enough.”

Faron scowled as the queen knocked on the door and spoke to the Queenshield who opened it to attend to her. A soldier crossed to the bed, channeling the power of an astral into the chains. They snapped open and slithered down the mattress like garden snakes, curling up in a pile at the foot of the bed. Signey sat up, her back against the brass headboard. From that position, she could see everyone in the room.

“Commander Warwick,” said the queen with barely enough diplomacy to keep the words from slicing. “Before anything else, please explain why a feral dragon was loose outside the Summit when all your dragons were supposed to be stationed at San Mala.”

The commander traced the bed frame absently. Scalestone shackles were still attached to it, found by his curious fingers. “What I am about to tell you cannot leave this room. This is a matter of national security for the Langlish Empire, and I would hate for it to be wielded as a weapon against us when we have come to you in peace.”

“One of your dragons tried to ‘peacefully’ burn down our Victory Garden,” said Faron. Elara squeezed her hand lightly and she settled, tucking her head against Elara’s shoulder.

“Shortly after the insurrection—or, rather, your revolution—our dragons began to act strangely. Feral.” As he spoke, the commander’s fingers danced over the shackles, back and forth, back and forth. “One dragon set fire to a small fishing village off the Emerald Highlands. Another attacked a professor at Hearthstone, who was then forced to retire. Yet another left the capital of Beacon under the cover of night and attacked a military base. We had our leading dracologists study this phenomenon, and they coined the term ‘the Fury.’”

“You needed a researcher to tell you that dragons are feral?” Faron said. “Any Iryan could have told you that.”

“They’re not, normally,” said Signey, her tone icy. “The bond between dragons and Riders is meant to, in part, temper the dragon’s natural aggressive instincts with the human’s empathy and logic. Once a bond is formed, a dragon should be no more or less feral than their Riders are.”

“Indeed. But, instead, the Fury seems to drive the dragon into a state of rage that infects their Riders, as well. At first, it will last a few minutes. Then, a few hours. Then…” The commander finally lifted his restless hands, his jaw tightening. “Then it becomes permanent for both dragon and Riders.”

Faron sat up so suddenly that she nearly collided with Elara’s skull. “Wait, so what happened to Elara in the courtyard—?”

“Was merely the first step in a downward cycle.”

Elara’s pulse raced, and her throat felt as if it had sealed itself up. She still barely remembered what had happened in the garden. The idea that it was just the start of something worse was more than she could deal with right now. Faron’s hand in hers was the only thing that kept her from drowning in her own panic.

“So how do we stop it?” Faron asked. “Have your dracologists found a cure?”

“If they had, I assure you that this incident would never have happened. Whatever you did in that garden was the first time we’ve ever seen an episode end without having to harm either the dragon or its Riders. So why don’t you tell us what you did so we can replicate it?”

Faron’s hand trembled. “I… I don’t…”

Commander Warwick approached them both, his hands in his pockets. In his midnight-black suit and tie, he looked like a living shadow. But his face was open. Genuine. If, of course, this man was ever truly genuine.

“Empyrean, it appears as though you’re our only hope. I come to you on behalf of my country and my people. Please—help save us from the Fury.” Something in his eyes hardened. “Or I’m sorry to say that your sister will be its next victim.”