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N YX LEAPED UPON Daal as he toppled backward. With her bridle-song already raised as a shield, she crashed it down upon Daal.

Her first chorus was denial.

No, no, no…

She fought down her panic and thrummed her shield into strands and sent them deep into Daal. She read the path of the poison. Somewhere writ into her spirit was the dissonance to the venom’s vibration. She had survived this poison before. Her body still knew it, remembered its menacing ice. Fear, more than memory or talent, drew that particular dissonance buried in her bones to her breath, to her song.

She cast it through Daal, fighting the poison on every front, burning it away.

As she did, she fought to hold herself steady, unbalanced between his senses and her own. With one beat of her heart, she was fiery with panic. With the next, she was frozen with her heart clenched into a knot. She worked her gold to warm his body, to melt the ice around his heart.

She managed somewhat, but it still refused to beat. She struggled for an answer, for a heat stronger than her bridle-song.

Then she remembered back at the grotto cave. Before she left, Daal had tried to reassure her. He had offered his hand. Like he had done just now. She had taken it in her wounded grip, wrapped in leather from his own garment, bandaged by his own hand. They had merged briefly. She recalled the intense burn of her blood against his skin. She had felt nothing like it before. Neither had Daal from his reaction. It was as if whatever bond they shared had responded to the raw, unfiltered strength of the gift in her blood.

“My blood…”

She jerked back and used her teeth to rip away her bandage. Scabs tore, pain flared, and blood poured. She did not know if this would work, but she did not care. She pushed her bloody hand over his heart, letting the crimson flow through his thin shirt to reach his skin.

Merging again, she felt her life’s warmth flow into him, a heat far more intense due to its rawness. She used her song to sculpt the warmth into fingers and a palm. Once done, she reached and grabbed that icy heart and suffused it with the life flowing from her wound.

She flashed to that same moment in the cave. Like now, she had sensed Daal’s heart. Only then he had sworn her an oath, one spoken not with his breath but with this very heart: I will not forsake you.

She intended to hold him to this promise and squeezed hard with fingers forged of song and blood. She held tight, demanding and resolute.

“Do not break your vow to me,” she warned hotly.

She waited, holding her breath.

Finally, the fist of muscle in her hand trembled, quaked, then began to beat against her sculpted fingers. She let go but hovered close. At last, his chest heaved under her bloody palm. She kept her hand there, until gasps became breaths.

His eyes rolled back into view, swimming, then finding her.

“Nyx…?” he croaked out.

She sighed with relief. He tried to sit up, to rise to an elbow, but she held him down. “Don’t move.”

While his body tremored from the residual cold, her warning had nothing to do with the poisoning. Instead, she held him quiet for another reason.

Still connected to him by blood and touch, she stared at the weak golden glow inside Daal. The shimmering trace was all that was left of Khagar’s golden ember. Only now it shone brighter, seeming to rise, as if the golden warmth sought to escape Daal’s cold body.

He stirred. “What is—”

“Hush.”

She was afraid to scare it away or break the illusion.

As she watched, his gold swam and whorled, eddying brighter and darker. One stream flowed away, banding into light and dark. The rest swirled into a vague body, which spilled out into a sharp-nosed shape with gold cascading in two tall fountains from its crown.

She knew that outline.

“The dhelpr?…”

Daal searched blearily around, confused.

Nyx struggled to understand the meaning of this. She pictured the cavern behind the Dr?shra ’s throne, the final tomb of the bronze queen’s beloved. Nyx remembered the last sight of the chamber, of the fleet-footed dhelpr?—with its ringed tail and tall ears—nestled at the wings of the wizened king. With its final duty done, it had shed its spirit, lifting away, briefly revealing itself in a phantasm of bridle-song—before vanishing into the darkness.

She had thought it was some form of good-bye, a last act marking a long vigil ended. But maybe it meant more.

Marking a final message.

From the Dr?shra.

Something bridled into her companion.

Though Nyx suspected a greater connection ran through all three— Dr?shra, dhelpr?, and mankra—some merging of purpose and spirit that formed over the long vigil together.

Regardless, she took the message to heart.

Suspecting what was being asked of her, she reached to the golden dhelpr? and used threads of bridle-song to gently break its last tethers to Daal.

He gasped slightly, more of a sigh.

Once the dhelpr? was freed, she knew where it had to be delivered. Back in the cavern, the shining spirit—after it had shed its body—had swept into another, into the dark mountain of its fallen king.

Nyx followed that same direction now. Using a net of bridle-song, she carried the ember’s golden essence over to Bashaliia. With a prayer on her lips, she cast the dhelpr? back home, into the emerald pyre, the last flames of a great heart.

As it struck, gold flashed into a brilliant sun. It held there for a breath, while somewhere far away a faint ululating cry reached out, as if calling someone home.

Then the sun collapsed in on itself, snuffing out the emerald fire. While not all of it vanished, it was hopefully enough. Maybe this was one last message to the living: that some fury could never be fully crushed, only lived with.

Regardless, a new gold shone before her, warm and familiar.

“Bashaliia…”

Daal lifted to an elbow, still weak, still trembling from the cold, but alive. His eyes were huge upon Bashaliia.

“He’s returned,” Daal whispered hoarsely.

Nyx drew closer. Bashaliia wove weakly, still struggling to settle back into his body. She reached to his cheek. He leaned into her touch. She sang reassurance into him, while tears of relief streaked her cheeks. He keened softly, his gold shining brighter. He tried rocking on his legs, but the chains rattled. The burn of his torn skin drew a sharper pining from him.

He struggled back from it, only to discover his wings were bound. Panic flared, stoking the emerald embers brighter. She quickly drew his head to her chest, rubbing his ears.

“You’re safe,” she murmured to him.

She cast out calming chords and sent off strands to blunt the pain as best she could. Once she felt his heart slow and the emerald glow die, she dropped to her knees and pulled the pins to free his irons. The chains fell away.

By the time she stood up, Daal had stumbled over, weak but recovering. He had already wrapped his bitten arm with the torn edge of his sleeve. “Let me help.”

She wanted him to rest, but he shifted and started to undo the knots that held the leather ropes. She worked the other side. As the bindings fell away, Bashaliia ruffled his wings.

Nyx drew Daal back, reading her brother’s desire to stretch away the aches and tension. Once they were clear, Bashaliia swept his wings wide and shook their lengths loose, then returned to rocking on his legs.

Daal crossed to a water bucket and carried it over to Bashaliia, seeming to regain his strength with every step. “What happened?” he finally asked. “After I was bit?”

She explained about the poisoning, about the cure buried in her, and about the strength of her raw blood.

Daal rubbed the back of his hand. “I remember that burn back in the Dr?shra ’s cave.” He glanced over to Bashaliia. “But what about his poisoning? Did I hold the cure all along?”

“I believe the Dr?shra must have planted this contingency. Between her love for her winged king and the millennia in which she had to ponder the strength of wyldstrom, she must have sought to leave a key to redeeming Khagar’s heart. A key that could only be triggered after he secured his revenge.”

“Why after his revenge?”

Nyx nodded to Daal’s chest. “All this time that you’ve been carrying the ember’s residual glow, it’s never transformed like it did. Only now, after we defeated the ta’wyn. Maybe it was crafted this way so that Khagar would rage until he either accomplished his goal or was destroyed.”

Daal took a kinder view. “Or maybe it was simply meant as a reward. As you said, a way of freeing Khagar from the corruption, to let him be free and pure in the end.”

Nyx shrugged. “Either way, I think Khagar’s screams while Bashaliia was tied down here was him calling to you. He might have sensed the key in you, the golden part of him that still survived. Even him lashing out might have been an instinctive attempt to reach the ember shining in you.”

Daal sighed, rubbing the wound. “He could have just asked.”

Nyx kept silent about a darker view on all of this. Back in the Dr?shra ’s cave, when the dhelpr? ascended through Khagar’s bulk, it had left its own body behind. She wondered if death was part of the key’s triggering. Was that why Khagar had attacked—not blindly, but purposefully—to free the key? Daal’s heart had stopped for a spell. If not for her intervention, he would have died like the dhelpr?.

She pushed aside these gloomier contemplations, knowing they were likely cast darkly due to all that had happened. Back in the caves, Nyx had never sensed any enmity in the golden queen atop her throne. Only a deep-seated empathy.

Nyx decided to simply accept this as a gift.

A king redeemed, and a brother returned to me.

She crossed to Bashaliia and held him close.

Daal was right.

This definitely feels like a reward.

She bathed in Bashaliia’s golden glow—while not pure, neither was she. The battle still echoed inside her. The deaths and decimation. The wyldstrom had rid the desert of its poison, but it had cost the lives of so many. But she took solace from what those deaths had also gained—a chance for the future.

For the desert, for the world.

A chance to stop moonfall.

As if summoned by this thought, a knock drew her attention to the hold’s door. Graylin opened it and leaned in cautiously. He frowned at Nyx and Daal, then his eyes widened at the sight of Bashaliia freed of the bindings and chains.

Daal explained, but only briefly. “Bashaliia has shed his poison. He’s come back to his senses.”

“Are you sure?”

“It was a final gift of the Dr?shra, ” Nyx answered, too tired and heartsore to elaborate. “But yes, I’m sure.”

Graylin’s eyes remained narrow, but he nodded. “Just as well,” he said, and stared up. “Fenn spotted a trio of bats, of mankrae, sweeping out of the mountain.”

Daal looked at Nyx, trying to judge if she had the strength to go.

She hardened herself, knowing all it had taken to reach this threshold, all that she had risked. She would not back down now.

She nodded to Daal.

“Let’s go face this Dragon.”