While the enemy’s advance throughout Krovla makes it impossible to station a full riot at Suniva, we offer you four dragons and their riders. In the spirit of our alliance, you may expect a shipment of our most valuable resource—weaponry—to be used at your discretion.
—Official Correspondence of General Augustine Melgren to Queen Maraya
Handed me what? I blink in confusion.
Ridoc glances my way, and I shake my head with a shrug. I haven’t manifested a second signet from Andarna.
“You have weaponized your magic, even your tail,” the tallest irid continues. “You’ve become the very thing we abhor, the horror we fled from.”
He did not. Rage brings my power buzzing to the surface.
“She is not a horror!” I march forward as Andarna’s scales turn black, unable to listen to one more second of this bullshit.
“No, you are.” The male cranes his head in my direction. “She is but what you made her.”
My nails bite into the palms of my hands and my chest tightens.
“I do not understand…” Andarna’s tail flicks over the sand in front of me, and I step back, respecting the boundary. “You will not return with us?” she asks. “You will not help us achieve the peace you worship?”
“We will not.” The male lifts his head, and I follow his line of sight. Chradh and Sgaeyl are back, just in time to witness our complete and total failure. “We have watched some of your journey and feel it is not peace you seek, but victory.”
The male with the spiral horns stares at Andarna but remains quiet.
My heart starts to race. Oh gods, this is really happening. Our last hope is dwindling right before my eyes. We’ve risked everything, and they won’t help.
“Peace requires the Aretian wardstone, which we cannot fire without you!” Andarna snarls.
“I fail to see how that is a mutual problem,” the female replies.
“Do you not care that people will die?” Andarna curls her tail high above her back.
“Perhaps they should.” The tallest male blinks. “Perhaps the corrupted ones should devour the land in its entirety. Only when they’re faced with starvation will they confront the evil they’ve become. Either they’ll die off and the land will regenerate, or they’ll confront the abominations they’ve become and change.”
Change. My heart launches into my throat.
“How do they do that?” Andarna asks, and apprehension trickles down the bond from Tairn as wingbeats fill the air. Xaden and Garrick are almost here.
“Their offspring could evolve, perhaps,” the female muses, watching Sgaeyl and Chradh land near the stream twenty yards away. “Others arrive. We should depart.”
No, no. Panic climbs my spine. We can’t fail. This can’t be it.
Xaden and Garrick dismount on the black sand beach, high above the tide line, and Tairn snaps his head toward Sgaeyl. Whatever he communicates keeps the two dragons from coming our way, but not their riders.
“Is that the dark wielder’s cure?” Andarna asks, her head moving in a serpentine motion. “To evolve?”
My breath freezes in my chest.
The female’s golden eyes narrow to slits. “There is no cure.”
No cure? Her words hit like a physical blow, and my knees threaten to buckle.
“If they trade their soul, surely they can get it back,” Andarna retorts.
“It is not a trade,” the female lectures. “The soul is not kept by the earth as dark wielders steal its magic. The power exchange kills the soul one piece at a time, and death has no cure.”
Xaden and Garrick keep their eyes on the irids as they stride our way without their flight jackets, swords strapped to their backs, the perfect example of warfare.
His soul isn’t dead.
“Will you not at least tell us how the dark wielders were defeated in the Great War?” Andarna asks, her words flowing faster, like she knows her time is short.
“Apparently they weren’t if you’re here asking,” the female replies.
The male with the spiral horns watches Xaden and Garrick as they carefully cross behind Ridoc and me, moving to my right side.
“Our kind must have helped,” Andarna tries again. “I can burn dark wielders. Are we the key to defeating them?”
“Hopeless.” The tallest male backs into the water. “Leothan, I have heard enough.”
The other male flares his nostrils. “I have not.”
“They can hear us through the bond,” I quickly sign to Xaden. “It’s not going well.”
He nods.
“Want to catch us up?” Garrick signs, studying the massive heads lowered in our direction.
“They think Andarna is a weapon, which is somehow a bad thing,” Ridoc signs. “They won’t come back to help us and pretty much think we all deserve to die because we can’t solve mankind’s oldest problem of how to stop killing each other.”
“Got it,” Xaden signs.
“And there’s no cure for venin,” Ridoc quickly continues, and it’s all I can do not to grab his hands to stop him from saying more. “Their souls die, so there goes our save-them-to-defeat-them idea.”
Fuck.
Xaden’s head snaps forward as Andarna’s talons flex in the sand.
“You are magic,” the female says, a note of sadness in her tone. “And yet all you seek to use it for is violence.”
“You preach peace while only having known its privilege,” Andarna hisses in retort. “You are all a disappointment to me.”
“In that, we find common ground,” the tallest male says.
What an ass.
Tairn growls, rumbling the sand and vibrating the trees, and Andarna’s scales ripple to the darkest black as she retreats to his right foreleg.
“We have a long flight ahead, and there is nothing to be gained here,” the male continues, retreating another step into the water. “The world was not ready for you, and though it is no fault of your own, we cannot accept you.”
I gasp and clutch Xaden’s hand.
“What’s happening?” Garrick signs.
Maybe it’s best they not hear this.
“Leothan may feel differently”—the tallest male glances at the other one—“but our majority has determined you are irid in scale and name only, Andarna. You will not be allowed entrance to our isle nor instruction in our ways. We part here and wish you peace.”
Peace? My grip tightens on Xaden’s hand.
“I wish I’d never met you,” Andarna growls.
The tallest male crouches in the water before launching into the air, his scales shimmering for a heartbeat before he becomes the sky itself.
“What just happened?” Xaden asks.
“I think we lost,” Ridoc whispers.
Andarna’s snout dips, and bone-splitting agony courses down the bond, but it’s the shame that hits in the second wave that pricks my eyes.
“Andarna, no,” I whisper. “You are fierce, and smart, and brave, and loyal. None of this is your fault. You’re perfect.”
“I am…not,” she snarls, whipping her head toward me.
“You did not know she was a juvenile when you bonded her?” Leothan asks, his golden gaze studying the four of us humans.
“I didn’t,” I answer out loud. “I should have, but the hatchlings and juveniles are kept hidden and safe within the Vale until after the Dreamless Sleep. Nobody had seen one for centuries, so we didn’t realize that they’re all golden feathertails until adolescence.”
“What is going—” Garrick twitches. “Fuck, that hurts!”
Xaden grimaces, lowering his head and squeezing his eyes shut.
I’m guessing they just got the slide-whistle treatment.
“The uniformity assures all hatchlings are cared for without deference to breed or den—” Leothan startles as Xaden looks up.
The female recoils, baring her dripping teeth. “How could you align yourselves with this?”
Weird way to say “bond,” but whatever.
“Again, I didn’t know she was a juvenile,” I argue. “Blame me, not her!”
“Abomination.” The female hurls the insult, her eyes narrowing.
On Xaden.
My head snaps in Xaden’s direction, and I gasp. The rims of his irises shine bright red.
“Your kind is beyond redemption.” The female glares at Sgaeyl, then disappears.
Leothan studies Xaden for a heartbeat longer, then fades, and waves rush in where they’d been standing. Wind from invisible wingbeats gusts against my face, and I squeeze my eyes shut as sand blows all over us, their presence slipping from my mind just like before. When I open them, Xaden’s eyes have returned to normal.
Or rather, his new normal. There are still spots of amber within their onyx depths.
“Fuck.” His tone could cut scale as his fingers slip out of mine.
“You’re not an abom—”
He slams his shields down, blocking me out.
Something heartbreakingly close to a whimper sounds to our right, and I look past Garrick to find Andarna retreating into the jungle, her scales shifting to gold.
“Andarna.” I start toward her, but she blocks me out, too.
“I’ve got her.” Tairn rises over us, and his tail takes out a tree to the left as he stalks into the jungle after her. “Teine and Molvic approach.”
“I can—”
“Only one of us is fireproof,” he reminds me, disappearing in the vegetation.
My fingernails dig into my palms. I’ve never felt so helpless.
“I’m guessing he’s why you’ve been so hung up on finding a cure.” Ridoc’s accusation hits me like a bucket of ice water, and I snap my gaze to his.
Oh. Fuck.
“Yeah.” He nods at me. “I saw his eyes turn red.”
“Ridoc—” Xaden starts.
“Not a single word from you, dark wielder,” Ridoc grits out, his eyes locked on mine. “Vi, you’ve got one chance to come clean and tell me what the actual fuck is going on.”
