CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

FARON

THE FIRST DRAGON GRIPPED FARON IN HIS FRONT TALONS AND sailed easily over Deadegg with four powerful flaps of his wings.

It slammed the breath out of her, and, for a moment, Faron thought that she was dying. She expected to look down and see that one of those claws had speared her stomach and the shock was preventing her from noticing that she was bleeding out. But when she did look down, she saw her body tucked tightly between two ivory blades half the size of her body, her legs swinging loosely in the air above her town, her fingers scrambling for purchase on the scales of the dragon’s paw. Still alive, and yet she felt exhausted, drained, empty, as if something inside her had died.

Then she realized she was alone. Truly alone.

Obie was no longer within her.

Gasping, Faron reached out for the gods, but her call fizzled instantly, her soul sucked back inside her body before she could even see a single astral. It felt as if she’d lost a sense that she’d taken for granted; the world looked different, smelled and sounded different, and not just because she was dangling over it.

Obie? Mala? Irie? Can anyone hear me?

“I can,” said Gael Soto, and he sounded amused. This was not the open, fond amusement from his earlier quips. There was something deep and dark in his voice as it echoed through her head. “Though I would advise we continue this conversation when you climb up here.”

Faron tipped her head back and squinted at the muscled form of the dragon. The wind made her eyes water, but she could just make out the black comma of a human form clinging to the sleek line of the dragon’s neck. Gael lifted a hand and waved, and the First Dragon’s grip on Faron simultaneously loosened. Her stomach dropped faster than her body did, and she scrambled up his leg before she fell to her death.

Gael grabbed her as soon as she was close enough, helping her settle behind him. Whether it was magic or physics, the moment she was sitting down, she felt perfectly balanced and strangely confident that she wouldn’t fall. Gael’s body was solid as she slid her arms around his waist for lack of anything else to hold on to. He smelled like earth and morning rain, with an underlying smoky scent that Faron assumed was from the dragon.

The farther they flew from Deadegg, the more she wanted to scream. Why couldn’t she summon? What had the First Dragon done to her? What was going on?

“Where are you taking me?” she shouted over the roaring wind. “What about our plan? My sister?”

“I’m taking you to pick up something I left in the capital,” Gael responded. “And a bargain is a bargain, Faron. I broke your sister’s bond the moment Lightbringer was freed.”

“Lightbringer?”

Gael pressed a hand against the white dragon, his smile fond. “This is Lightbringer. The First Dragon. An imperial dragon, in fact, and the only one of his kind.”

Before she could ask another question, the dragon named Lightbringer shrieked in pain beneath her. The smell of smoke had gotten stronger, and heat flared up her spine in contrast to the frigid sky air. She looked over her shoulder to see Lightbringer’s tail shaking off the embers of a flame that flickered with too many colors to be natural. Closing the distance behind them was Valor, its bright yellow color making it look as if the drake had been sent on behalf of Irie herself.

Gael stroked the dragon’s neck in a soothing motion. “Well, that was unkind. They’ve made him angry.”

Faron’s heart cracked. “Gael, this isn’t you. He’s controlling you. He’s in your head. You have to remember—”

But Lightbringer was already darting straight up, dodging a second blast from Valor with ease. Faron’s fingers turned to talons of her own, digging into Gael’s stomach as if that would stop the dragon, but he pried her grip loose with one hand. “Do you want to die before you can reunite with your sister?”

“Don’t,” she begged, struggling to get free of his hold. “Please don’t—”

Fire gushed from Lightbringer’s mouth, consuming the drake below. Drakes were made of scalestone, impervious to dragonfire, but the force of the blast still caused Valor to dip in the air. The pilots couldn’t see Lightbringer’s spiked tail coming down like a hammer until it was too late. It slapped the drake like a flyswatter, sending it careening to the ground far below. The trail of flame left in its wake turned to smoke the farther it fell. The scalestone shook off the attack. Thank the gods, the pilots could see again. Now they could pull the drake up before—

Valor exploded on impact.

Faron screamed.

Somewhere in that burning wreckage were the bodies of Elara’s friends, her classmates, her townspeople. Dead, all of them dead. Because of her.

“A necessary sacrifice,” said Gael, and he no longer sounded like himself. He no longer sounded like the boy she had thought she was getting to know. Or had the sinister edge to his voice always been there? Was he consumed by Lightbringer, or had he lied to her? Faron no longer trusted herself to tell. “We have more important things to do.”

Faron screamed until her voice failed her. Then she began to cry.

By the time they landed outside of Pearl Bay Palace in Port Sol, Faron was numb.

Every time she blinked, she saw Wayne Pryor’s smile and Aisha Harlow’s burgundy hair. She heard Jordan Simmons’s snide comments, his feet pounding across the Deadegg streets. Three lives snuffed out in an instant because she had freed Lightbringer from the Empty when the gods had told her not to go near it. Faron’s throat hurt from screaming, and her eyes itched from crying, but she couldn’t feel the magnitude of those three deaths. Her ability to grieve had hit a certain threshold during the war, and the three Valor pilots had simply slotted themselves into the emotional graveyard with the rest of the corpses of those she’d failed to save.

Lightbringer lay down on Pearl Bay Airfield, allowing Faron and Gael to slide off his back before he stood again. Part of her expected the dragon to begin setting fire to the buildings that had just been newly rebuilt after the war. But all Lightbringer did was eye the rest of the landing strip, where Liberty was still parked against the backdrop of the afternoon sky. Faron’s breath caught, but the drake didn’t move to intercept the beast. Its pilots must have been in town, unaware of how close they were to death.

Gael was striding toward the castle. Faron hurried after him, trying again and again to call upon the gods.

“That won’t work anymore,” he said once she caught up to him, startling her out of her own head. He was smiling the indulgent way one might smile at a child who had prepared a mud pie for dinner. “Didn’t you feel it? Haven’t you noticed us speaking through it? You’re bonded to me and Lightbringer now. You’re our co-Rider.”

Faron almost tripped over nothing. “I’m—what? That’s impossible.”

As impossible as him hearing her thoughts when she hadn’t sent them to him.

“It’s the way it was always meant to be. I told you I had knowledge that the gods never wanted you to know, didn’t I? Now that we’re bonded, you can do so much more than they ever allowed you to do. You can become so much more than they would ever let you be.” He stopped within view of the palace doors, gazing down at her with those perilous hazel eyes. “You’re not their Childe Empyrean anymore, Faron. Our souls are the same. Before I was the Gray Saint, before I went mad, I had adopted a different name. Iya. A name worthy of a god bonded to the most powerful dragon in existence. Now we are gods. We are Iya. And, together, we will rule this world.”

“Gael, I—”

“Faron!”

For the second time that day, her heart stopped.

Reeve.

Reeve was coming toward them, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion as he saw Gael—Iya—for the first time. He took them in, read her body language, lifted his hand toward his chest where she knew his dragon relic was hidden beneath his shirt. She imagined loyal, intelligent, and stupidly noble Reeve going up in flames as Valor had, and her blood went cold in her veins.

“Reeve, go back inside!” she shouted. “Please, just go!”

“Cute,” said Iya. “But I couldn’t harm him even if I wanted to. He has something that belongs to me.”

Reeve stood in front of them now. Faron saw him shift so that he was standing slightly between her and Iya, as if he were ready to jump in front of a blow for her if he needed to, and she reached out to cling to the fabric of his shirt. He wouldn’t—shouldn’t—protect her like this if he knew what she had done.

“What’s going on, Faron?” he asked, casting Iya a suspicious glare. “Is this the Gray Saint?”

“You don’t recognize me?” There was a malicious glee in Iya’s eyes, in Iya’s voice, that made goose bumps rise on Faron’s arms. “I’m almost offended. But there’s really no point in being insulted by you when you only live because of me.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Reeve asked, his voice coming out much stronger than his wavering expression would imply. “Start making sense.”

“Reeve Warwick,” Iya said like he was savoring the words, “you were dying of some human disease or other when you were a child. Your desperate parents used that very dragon relic around your neck to make contact with me, weak and trapped though I was. They promised me freedom in exchange for your life restored and their power returned. For the chance to rule this world beneath us.

“You were supposed to be my vessel, a human form I could use to move through the world, allowing me to find the Empty and release myself. But you forced me to make other arrangements. I didn’t realize how much free will would be left in you. I didn’t realize I would be too weak to do more than linger in your form like a droplet of rain in an ocean. But that’s all right. Everything worked out as it was always meant to.” His eyes flicked over to Faron with a satisfied smile. “Though he didn’t know it, the boy standing in front of me right now is still an incarnation of will, meant to protect my only connection to this realm and to push the Childe Empyrean toward her destiny. Toward this moment. Toward my freedom. And now that I have my power back, you have served your purpose.”

“What—?”

Iya disappeared in a flash before Reeve could finish the sentence. Faron began to say something—though she wasn’t sure what could explain any of this—but Reeve grunted as if he had been shot. He stumbled back as his limbs splayed out like a pinned butterfly’s, his eyes glowing gold. His skin had always been pale, but now it was translucent, shimmering, gleaming. It looked as if Reeve were holding the sun inside of him and now it was fighting to get out by any means necessary.

And then it was over.

Reeve dropped onto his knees. Heart pounding, Faron searched the surrounding area, but she could see no sign of Iya at all. She quickly kneeled by Reeve’s side, sliding an arm around his back. “Are you okay? Please be okay. Tell me you’re okay.”

“I’m better than I’ve been in centuries.” The same cruel slash of a smile that had seemed so at home on Iya’s face now stretched across Reeve’s. He shook off her grip and stood, flexing his fingers and cracking his neck. Then he laughed. “My form, my true form, long decomposed in that prison. How I appeared to you all this time was little more than a memory made flesh by the proximity of my relic.” He gripped that relic now and laughed again. “Thanks to you freeing me, I now have the power to make Reeve Warwick a true vessel. I have all I need.”

Somewhere behind them, Lightbringer roared.

What did any of this mean? Reeve was… what? Dead? Devoured? Erased from a borrowed existence? Though she had heard Iya’s words and seen them merge into one, Faron couldn’t believe that the boy she had come to know had been overwritten by the monster that had manipulated her.

Reeve Warwick, who had distracted her with international gossip to calm her down during the Summit. Reeve Warwick, who had called the Queenshield to get her through the crowd of santi at Renard Hall when she was hobbled by her social anxiety. Reeve Warwick, who had kissed her as if the world might end if they ever stopped. Eyes the color of the ocean she rarely got to see, and soft-looking hair the color of chocolate.

I loved him, she realized as her eyes burned with a fresh wave of tears. Gods, I never even told him.

A hand appeared in her blurry line of sight. Faron sniffled as she looked up to see Reeve bent over her. No, not Reeve. Just Iya, in the vessel that Reeve’s parents had promised him. She remembered, suddenly, when he had offered to possess an injured Reeve to get him back to Renard Hall, how she’d thought he had bent over Reeve to ask permission to share his body. In light of what she knew now, he’d probably never asked. He’d probably just been glad to have the opportunity to test out his new form under the guise of a favor to her.

For all she’d claimed to be the queen of lies, she’d never seen this one coming. He’d played her like a tambourine while she’d convinced herself she was in control.

“You—look what you’ve done,” Faron managed around the anger that was slowly taking the place of her pain. She clung to it tightly, because anger was active, anger would keep her from falling into the open grave in her chest. “What do you want?”

Iya’s eyes darkened. “I want everything. I want all that I was denied when they locked me in that timeless, endless pit, everything that was mine before your gods and my own generals betrayed me.” He leaned closer, so close that for a moment she feared he would try to kiss her with Reeve’s lips. It took everything she had not to flinch. “When I am done, Faron, you will be the saint of nothing more than ashes, and I will be god of all that remains.”