CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

FARON

YOU SEEM TROUBLED,” GAEL OBSERVED MIDWAY THROUGH THEIR training session. “Are you well?”

Reeve was awake, which meant that Reeve was in the library. Unable to face him after her confession, Faron had summoned Gael Soto to make sure her newfound powers weren’t a fluke. Gael circled her on the patio, and, for once, his eyes on her weren’t making her skin crawl. It was easy, now, for her to sink into a state of concentration and feel every living soul moving through the surrounding area. If she wanted to, she knew she would be able to take control of them just as she’d taken control of those men. But she was no closer to helping Elara than she had been before she’d mastered this technique, and all she could see was Reeve’s unfathomable expression as he kept his conclusions to himself.

Had Gael already led her down a path away from the gods? Was she fooling herself into thinking she was using him instead of the other way around? Was she a monster or a saint?

“Those men,” she said. “The ones I… Are they all right?”

Gael stopped in front of her, tilting his head. “You ordered them to leave you alone. You’ll never see either of them again. What does it matter if they’re all right?”

Faron gaped at him, but that only seemed to confuse him more. He came to her as a teenage boy, thoughtful and charismatic, so it was easy to forget that he was a god… or close to it. As much as Irie, Obie, and Mala hated him, it didn’t change their obvious similarities, their obvious lack of empathy for human affairs. She was asking them to care about disputes between crabs, between fish, between dolphins.

The difference, as far as Faron could tell, was that Gael seemed willing to try.

“I don’t agree with the way they’re processing their grief, but I can’t blame them for it, either,” Faron said. “Reeve is okay now. I want them to be okay, too.”

Gael resumed walking. Faron let him sit with that and slid back into her mind, searching for the souls of Roger and Jarell, to see for herself if they were healthy after what she had done to them. She stopped only when a hand covered her cheek, pulling her attention back to Gael. He was fully solid when he came to her now, no longer translucent as a ghost, no longer limned with divine light. Maybe that should have unsettled her, but instead she found herself relaxing into his touch. She had given him a piece of his life back, in this way. She’d done at least one good thing.

Besides, like Reeve, he had seen her at her worst. Unlike Reeve, he could not judge her. His reputation was far worse than anything she had done to this point, and she found that comforting today. They were both monsters. Maybe that was why they would save each other.

“The men are well,” he said softly. “Your kind heart is a credit to you, but you’ve wasted enough of your energy on them. Shall we keep working?”

Faron opened her mouth to respond to his question and gasped instead. A soul both vast and celestial was close, and she recognized the impossible force of it from that night in the Victory Garden. It was a dragon’s soul, hurtling toward her island, and she could feel its rage as surely as she could feel her own heartbeat. She’d never felt it so strongly before and never from so far away. Mastering Gael’s teachings had enhanced her awareness… and clearly not a moment too soon.

“Empyrean!”

She was already heading for the door seconds before a servant burst through it. “I know. Take me.”

Faron found her shoes and dashed through the manor. Reeve was already waiting in the front yard, where Nobility was parked, its door slowly lowering into the grass. Clearly, Aveline had sent for her. The sun reflected off Nobility’s silver gears, nearly blinding Faron, but she couldn’t concentrate on anything but the pounding of her heart.

This was it. This was her chance to prove that all her training with Gael had not been in vain. That she had done the right thing learning from the one god who knew his way around dragons. That this power was good because she would use it for good.

Everyone would expect her to summon the gods, but Faron would instead wield her new magic. Gods, she wished she’d had more time to practice.

A man appeared at the top of the exit ramp, his smile at odds with the urgency of the situation.

“Oh good, you’re together,” said the head pilot, whose name Faron could not remember. He dipped his head in a polite bow and then gestured for them to hurry aboard. “Her Majesty was very clear that we not leave that one alone in her mothers’ house.”

If Reeve was offended by being referred to as “that one,” he didn’t show it as he led the way. Faron tried to absorb some of his innate confidence as she followed, but her heart still felt close to giving out.

Nobility took off as soon as the door was closed. While Reeve retreated to one of the upper suites, Faron remained in the open room around the center cockpit, watching the clouds pass. Her skin was clammy as she reached out to check the status of the dragon speeding toward the island like a massive ball of ire. She had barely taken down the dragon at Pearl Bay Palace. Who was to say that she could even do it again?

You can, Gael assured her without actually appearing. You’re stronger than they’ve ever led you to believe.

I’m the Childe Empyrean, she told him. No one is stronger than me.

His voice was amused. Perhaps even fond. So you are. And yet you’re also so much more than just that.

Faron moved to the windows, the same windows that she had stared through what felt like a lifetime ago, and watched the clouds bob outside as she considered her next move. The drake would get her close enough to the dragon that distance would no longer be a barrier to her powers—if that weakness even still held now that she had gotten stronger—and then what?

She pressed her hands to the window and rested her forehead against the backs of them, letting her eyes slide closed. Her soul slipped beyond the boundaries of her body, but, instead of calling the gods, she reached out to that otherworldly soul.

Calm down.

It was easier this time. Tethering herself to the dragon’s soul was still like leashing herself to a comet, but she knew that she was stronger than any of them now. She knew her will was stronger than theirs; she just had to make sure they knew it, too. As she shoved her way in deeper, submerging herself in this light and this power to control the dragon completely, she realized that she recognized this particular soul. The dragon bending to her orders was the same one from the Victory Garden. It was Elara’s dragon. If Faron pressed hard enough, she could feel the flicker of her sister’s soul bonded to this one.

Once she felt the fires of the dragon’s anger dim to embers, she was able to open her eyes to stare dizzily through the glass. Her soul dropped back into her body like a boulder, begging her to rest, but the sight before her was more effective at keeping her awake than the strongest Iryan coffee. She recognized this mud-brown farmland, these squat buildings, that recognizable hunk of scales that acted as a town landmark. Nobility was hovering over Deadegg.

She was home.

“They were headed here,” Gael said. His reflection appeared in the glass next to hers, but while she could see that she was worn down, bags under her eyes that hadn’t been there before she’d left Seaview, he looked lively and bright-eyed. “Of course. I should have seen it before. The universe can never resist this kind of symmetry.”

“What are you talking about?” Faron asked around a yawn. “What kind of symmetry?”

“There’s a reason the dragon was drawn here. It’s the same reason that I appeared in San Irie in the first place. The entrance to the Empty is in Deadegg. It seems our connection runs far deeper than I imagined.”

A chill raced down Faron’s spine. She pushed herself away from the window, swaying only slightly. Gael was still staring out the window with covetous eyes, but her sudden silence soon drew his attention. Except, this time, she saw his innocent confusion for the sinister act that it was.

“Is all this happening because of you?” she asked, voice trembling with anger. “Did you lie to me again?”

“I haven’t lied to you. I’m not lying to you now,” said Gael. “Don’t you see? All this is happening because the door between realms has been closed for too long. The Empty is a realm between the divine plane and the mortal one. With the door closed, dragons are cut off from the divinity that created and sustains them, and they’re starting to feel the effects of that. Opening the door means curing them.”

“But that’s where the First Dragon is. Right? I’m not strong enough to—”

“You are.” He took a step toward her, lifting a hand and then dropping it when she backed away from him. “Faron, you are so much more than they have ever allowed you to be. You have become stronger still under my guidance. The First Dragon is beyond that door, but so am I. And you are now the only person in the world who can destroy him. The only person who can save me.”

Faron turned away from his sharply beautiful face so she could think. The gods had told her the same thing, she realized. The Fury was the result of dragons overstaying their welcome in the mortal world. Their solution had been to eradicate the dragons. Gael’s was to cure them. Could there be a middle ground where she cured them of the Fury, freed her sister and Gael, and then sent the creatures back to their world?

“How do I open the door?” she asked, still staring at the walls partially lit by the pulsing glow from the center cockpit. “Assuming I can even find it, that is. Deadegg is small, but it’s not that small.”

“The door to the Empty can be opened only by the same thing that sealed it in the first place: the magic of the gods. A power only the Childe Empyrean can wield.” Gael had moved silently closer, his breath warm on the back of her neck, his voice low and hypnotic. “The commander never knew that you were the key to his plan. The key to everything. He’s still trying to figure out why the First Dragon has not yet risen. If you open the door first, you can save the world and your sister at once. What you do after that is up to you… but I hope you choose to help me, too.”

Faron closed her eyes, fighting to ignore him. He made it sound so simple, so easy. But nothing was ever that easy, and, if he wasn’t the person who she thought he was, then what he did after his release would be on her head, too.

She thought of Elara. The soul of her dragon was almost too distant to reach out to now, but Faron remembered the feel of their connection. Gael was right. She was stronger now. She felt stronger—certainly strong enough take down any dragon. The First Dragon was the danger. Not Gael. And if Gael was a problem, she was the solution. She was the Childe Empyrean. There was nothing she couldn’t do.

And she was Faron Vincent. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for her sister.

It was time she stopped letting people dictate the kind of saint she was. She would prove to her gods, to her island, and to herself that she could still save the world—whether she remained the child they remembered or not.