BEFORE ELARA AND SIGNEY MADE IT TO THE NATIONAL HALL, THEY were attacked by dragons.
The soldiers must have contacted the commander the instant they’d left Rosetree, because the Dragon Legion was treating them like approaching enemies. And Elara was rattling around like a marble in a tin can, clinging to Zephyra’s back for dear life.
“I hope you’re always this easy to read,” Signey said, arms tightening around her. “Let Zephyra do what she does best. You try to figure out where your queen might be.”
“It’s not like I have a map of the National Hall burned into my memory,” Elara snapped before realizing that she kind of did. One of the books in the Hearthstone library had given her a history of the place, and she’d gotten an extensive look at most of the halls and rooms during her and Signey’s visits. Even without the bond, Elara could tell that Signey was laughing at her for having forgotten that. The one good thing about their weekends in Beacon, the one thing they’d learned, was the layout of the building.
“Try the North Chamber,” Elara said. “Where we first arrived.”
Zephyra dropped like a stone, so suddenly that Elara began screaming. Signey laughed again, but her arms remained steady around Elara’s waist. Despite the fact that it seemed as if she’d left her stomach in the clouds, Elara felt safe.
They landed outside a line of high-set arched windows that looked down into the great hall. From this angle, Elara could see the commander, the director, and the queen inside. Aveline was dwarfed by them both, but she carried herself like someone who eclipsed them in style, if not in stature.
“Go,” Signey said, releasing Elara. “We’ll lose the dragons.”
Elara slid down the side of Zephyra’s flank, tumbling onto her butt in the grass. Zephyra took off seconds later, chased by fireballs she dodged more easily now that she’d dropped the weight. Elara’s chest ached as she watched them, but she had to trust them to do their job the way they trusted her to do hers. She had to reach the queen.
If, of course, she could get past these soldiers.
Fighting a smile, Elara studied the approaching officers: the way they carried themselves, the swords they had drawn. She took a deep breath and sank into the astral plane, and it was like coming home, like the first breath after emerging from the waves, like light and love and joy all at once. She laughed, pure delight shooting through as her aunts surrounded her, glowing and beautiful, when she had worried that she would never see them again. Two months had made her less wary of Langlish magic, but this? Summoning? She felt whole again. She never wanted to lose this.
She reached for Aunt Gabourey, the strongest of them all, and blended their souls together, trembling only slightly as they became one. She felt Gabourey’s bloodlust as if it were her own. And maybe it was.
The officers raised their swords.
Elara smirked.
She left a small pile of unconscious bodies by the door and ran deeper into the National Hall. Her hands still glowed with unchecked power as she found the staircase that would lead her to the North Chamber. The guards she ran into on her way never saw her coming, and sheer adrenaline kept her from feeling the few strikes that grazed her skin. She could summon an astral and heal herself later. Thank Irie, she could heal herself again.
Elara laughed. Finally.
When she burst into the North Chamber, she was breathing hard. The commander, the director, and the queen were right where she’d seen them through the window, nothing changed except that the Warwicks now stood together. Aveline’s eyebrows lifted.
“Elara?” the queen said. “What in Irie’s name do you think you are doing? Were you the source of all that noise?”
“San Irie is under attack,” Elara gasped.
“I know that,” Aveline said impatiently. “That is why I am here. Why are you here?”
“No, I mean… Not the… San Irie is under attack while you’re here. Right now.”
The queen’s eyes flashed. “Explain.”
Elara told her everything that had happened, from the conversation she’d overheard at Hearthstone to the rising of the Gray Saint, from the imprisonment at Rosetree to the broken dragon bond. The more she spoke, the angrier the queen’s expression got. But the Warwicks made no effort to refute or interrupt her story. They didn’t even look concerned. That worried Elara enough for her voice to drift off.
And then she realized the truth. “You… you never cared if Faron cured the Fury or not. You just wanted her isolated. You wanted her desperate. You knew she’d turn to him.”
Gavriel Warwick chuckled. “I had no way of knowing what your sister would do, but I suspected that her desire to save you might work in my favor if I kept you here long enough. This situation has been out of my control for some time, but I’ve always been skilled at improvisation.”
“You never planned to let us return to Hearthstone. You were just waiting until the Fury took root,” Elara accused. “You wanted us—me—to be the one to start the war. We did everything you wanted, and I’m your scapegoat.”
“You assign yourself far too much importance, Miss Vincent. A long time ago, we made a bargain with the Gray Saint and failed to uphold our end. He could seep through the cracks of his cage, but his power was minuscule. The Fury, that rage? It’s the First Dragon rattling the cage of the Empty, calling his creatures to him. We cracked the lock, but he wanted it shattered,” he said. “All the dragons needed their Riders in order for the Empty to open, and I hoped that Miss Soto would find hers among the dignitaries. I even hoped, prayed really, that it might be the Empyrean herself. Wouldn’t that have been magnificent? Defeating the Iryans with the very hero of their revolution? But, instead, it was you. The Empyrean’s sister. Useless.”
She didn’t care what a man like Gavriel Warwick thought of her. She didn’t. And yet it stung, anyway, to have him throw her worst fears back at her.
“But in war, one must use all the resources at one’s disposal. I simply had to figure out your use. That’s why I brought you to the capital, and it was there that I figured it out. You were clearly communicating with the Empyrean. She would do anything to bring you home. Anything. Even open the Empty for us. And so you see”—he tilted his head, unbearably smug—“the Empyrean’s failure to cure the Fury is my scapegoat. The pressure of your own people to return to war after your attack is my scapegoat. You? You were never more than a hostage.”
“How dare you?” said Aveline, stepping between the commander and Elara as though she weren’t the queen of a nation in peril. “What about your people? What about your country? How could you condemn them to more endless warfare? How could you risk them based only on the dark promises of an imprisoned god?”
“The Gray Saint is more powerful and dangerous than you can imagine,” said the director, and, instead of smug, she sounded almost sad. “If you fight him, you will lose.”
“I am leaving,” Aveline snapped, “and I am taking Elara with me.”
A ball of flame appeared in the air above Director Warwick’s palm. It cast an infernal light over her sharp features. “We must insist you stay with us for now. At least until our god safely returns to Langley.”
Aveline lifted her hands and the windows behind them shattered. Elara jumped, but the glass just shot into the air like a hundred tiny knives all pointed at the Warwicks. “I am the queen of San Irie, and no power in this world can hold me somewhere I do not want to be.”
The director’s fireball launched, but Elara was quick. Her own hands lifted, a translucent shield appearing that absorbed the blow. She curved the magic into an even larger ball and threw it back, aiming for the commander. He dodged it with ease, but his gaze was severe. Assessing her as a threat.
Good.
Burn it down, niece, Gabourey told her, her bloodlust rising and mingling with Elara’s own desire for justice. Burn them all down.
Gladly, Elara replied. She sent a wave of magic toward the wall and watched it crumble as if she’d flown a drake through it. The stone and wood disintegrated into a misshapen heap, revealing the hall to the open air. Part of her considered collapsing this roof on top of the Warwicks’ heads, but then she remembered there were innocent people in the building. None of them deserved to suffer for what Gavriel and Mireya Warwick had done. Not again.
“We’ll be leaving now,” Aveline said. A line of glass daggers embedded itself in the ground before the Warwicks as an added threat.
Commander Warwick tilted his head. Then he laughed. “You can try, but you won’t get very far.”
No sooner had he finished speaking than the sky beyond them filled with dragons. Elara saw an ocean-blue ultramarine, a bloodred carmine, a golden medallion, and at least three forest-green sages flying toward them, none of which she recognized without her easy access to the wealth of Zephyra’s knowledge. She froze, even as Aunt Gabourey encouraged her to get ready for the fight, promising that even if they couldn’t take all the dragons, then they would certainly go down trying.
The queen held the remaining glass shards suspended over the Warwicks’ heads. “Elara, can you handle that?”
Could she? It seemed like the worst kind of hubris to say yes. She was not her sister, the Childe Empyrean, able to channel the power of the gods to pull whole dragons from the sky. Even if they weren’t under the commander’s control, the Dragon Legion was still loyal to him.
But Faron wasn’t here, and Elara was. Elara had to handle this, or San Irie would fall.
And Elara would never let that happen. Never.
Orbs of pure magical energy sizzled into being around her hands. “Yes, Your Majesty. I can handle this.”
Before she could throw one at the nearest dragon, a deep roar split the air. Irontooth, the Warwicks’ carmine dragon, appeared as a long shadow before his crimson body sailed into view. His teeth were bared in a snarl. He would fight the hardest of them all; Elara would have to take him down first before she fought the rest.
Irontooth’s shriek of pain surprised Elara so much that one of her orbs disappeared. He swerved away from a sudden burst of incoming flame, but the ultramarine dragon swung its spiked tail at Irontooth and knocked him off course. Behind him, mouth still smoking, was Azeal, and Elara could make out Jesper and Torrey clinging to their carmine dragon’s back. Combat professor Petra Rowland and her daughter, Hanne Gifford, were on their ultramarine dragon, which must have been Alzina. Together, they dragged Irontooth out of view in a collision of fire and fang.
Signey appeared then, clinging to the top of Zephyra’s head. The sun haloed her dark waves, making her look like a saint. “Sorry, Commander, Director, but these dragons aren’t here for you. We called them here to help Elara.”
“We’ll be escorting Elara and the queen back to San Irie,” said none other than history professor Damon Smithers, sitting side by side with his husband, Rupert Lewis, on the back of their sage dragon, Nizsa. “We’ll submit ourselves for disciplinary action when we return.”
Elara tipped back her head in an effort to keep tears from falling. Signey had already surprised her by showing up for her. So had the den. But the professors whose classes she’d aced, the handful of students who didn’t bully her in the hallways—she would never have expected anyone’s help, and yet here they were.
A tear slid free. She would do everything she could to avoid a second war—not just for her island, her sister, and her queen, but for all the Langlish people and dragons she had met who were unafraid to question their empire’s actions. For all the Riders who had showed up for her, and the other citizens across the empire who had been and would become collateral damage, thanks to the commander’s bad decisions. For the peace and progression they could all achieve together if the empire stopped for a second to realize that land was not to be owned and cultures were not to be assimilated.
Elara turned to the Warwicks, pleased to see that their smugness had cracked right down the middle, pleased to see the wariness in their eyes and the frowns on their faces. She smirked in return.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” said Aveline with a polite smile. “But we will be leaving now.”
She released the glass and calmly strode toward the wreckage that had once been the manor wall. Elara tried not to laugh as she followed.