Page 36 of Court of Embers (Dragonesse #2)

Chapter

Nineteen

R hylan had given me much to think on. The breadth of what I was fighting for…and what my word would mean when I’d attained the status to achieve it.

Deep in my heart, I still wanted Yura and Aerona dead. Nothing could change that.

But he wasn’t wrong. Dragons held the danger of the Primoris more seriously than any other threat. Not even an invasion by the Eastern dragon-slayers, or a Wildlands Horde, would engender the same collective response we’d have to a Primoris.

By publicly accusing Yura, I’d already put their House on thin ice. If I also claimed Aerona had raised her daughter to be one of these Eyes, and had murdered multiple people in the furthering of her ambitions for Ustrael…

Well, all of Akalla would come together to annihilate Talariel. No aspect of their eyrie would be left untouched. It would be burned to the ground, every stone shattered, to be scorched and returned to the earth.

And of those living there, none would survive.

Down to the babies in their cradles.

I clutched a mug of tea, sitting in the library alone, my stomach churning.

I wanted them dead, but could I be responsible for the deaths of innocent children?

If I were still my mother’s daughter, I would say yes.

I had been raised to think of the greater good over the individual.

Few Dragonesses in history would have balked to destroy an eyrie and murder their offspring if they were found to be treating with Ustrael.

No Primoris could be suffered to live, and neither could anything affected by the Outsider.

It was considered a righteous cleansing, to prevent her taint from touching anything else.

But I’d barely managed to keep my stomach in place watching other riders die, smeared down a cliff of jagged stone. And I hadn’t even touched them myself.

You are not just Nerezza’s daughter, you are yourself, I reminded myself for the hundredth time.

Maybe I’d been trained to be cold and heartless, but there was a heart under my exterior, and it told me no. I could not condemn the innocent for the actions of the draga of their House.

When the time came for justice to be served, I would need to be very, very careful. I could not let the power of a Dragonesse, my all-encompassing word, go to my head.

Yura and Aerona would pay the price for their blasphemy. I would spare all who were innocent of Ustrael’s touch, even if I had to crush the other Houses underfoot to stop them.

I knew you’d come to your senses , Rhylan said. He leaned in the doorway, a faint smile on his lips.

I wasn’t going to Judge them all, I said crossly, standing up to meet him halfway. He looped his arms around my waist and nuzzled his face into my hair.

No, but you were looking towards a dark path. The kind a lot of Drakkons and Dragonesses don’t come back from. The power goes to people’s heads, you know.

I said nothing, burying my face against his chest. I did know. There were plenty of Houses, both Great and Minor, who were led by dragonbloods without mercy, without compassion, without a shred of conscience.

And I was sure, as the head of them all, that it would be all too easy to let those things go in pursuit of the greater ‘good’.

“I don’t want to be like Yura,” I whispered. “Never. I just…wasn’t thinking ahead.”

And that was the sort of lesson that would’ve gotten me rapped across the knuckles a few times. I’d been so blind, caught up in the need for vengeance, that I had forgotten the consequences, how many innocents would have died if I’d opened my mouth without thinking.

“That’s why you’ve got me.” He squeezed me tighter. “We’ll have justice, and we won’t murder the children to get it.”

I nodded, breathing in his smoky, comforting scent.

“Thank the gods I have you. Sometimes I think…I think my mother might have permanently damaged me. Molded me too far into something that the real me doesn’t want to be.”

“You’re not damaged.” He kissed my forehead, holding me out to look at me. “She was from old traditions. A Dragonesse is expected to be…high above everything else. I just don’t want the real you to be suffocated under it.”

I smiled up at him, a heavy weight rolling from my chest, and would’ve leaned in for a second embrace if Mykah didn’t come barrelling through the door, nearly crashing into the map table.

“Horde incoming!” she hollered. Her hair was pulled back tightly, but the puffy bun of curls was windswept, and her third eyelids were still blinked down. “Everyone’s meeting in the eyrie!”

“Kirana,” I breathed. It’d been five days since they left for the Wildlands. She was back so soon?

There was no time to ask Mykah for any details, because she turned on her heel and ran out the door.

Rhylan frowned as the light-crystals began flickering. “Not just a Horde,” he said, his lips curling to show lengthening fangs. “An attack.”

I exhaled a curse as we ran for the eyrie, taking the stairs two at a time, but I was relieved that I’d dressed in leathers for the day, rather than one of the pretty dresses clogging my wardrobe.

As we burst into the eyrie, Gaelin was already launching through the dragon door, Maristela on his back; Solace perched on the edge, Mykah buckling into her harnessing as the wyvern leaned over to look down at us.

Rhylan slithered under the saddle and shifted immediately, and as I hurriedly buckled him in, Mykah shouted down to me.

“Kirana and Cai are coming! The Iron Shards are in pursuit, but they’ve got—they’ve got boats in the sky !” She sounded ecstatic, not at all like we were facing potential imminent death.

But…boats? In the sky?

“Stay out of the fighting,” I ordered, leaping onto Rhylan’s back. “Try to redirect allies if any enemies come up from their flanks.”

She nodded, and nudged Solace with her knees. The wyvern leapt into the air with a shriek, wheeling out of sight.

Dragonships , Rhylan thought to me. You’ll love them . They’re how Hordes travel over long distances .

He climbed upwards, shaking himself once before spreading his wings and bursting over the edge of the dragon door.

I blinked down my third eyelids, leaning over the saddle. What do you see?

Horde , he said briefly, followed by: Fuck, that’s Yura!

I mentally shifted, looking through his powerful eyes, and was temporarily shaken.

The Horde was incoming, what seemed like hundreds of dragons spread in a vast cloud across the sky, but they didn’t fly at random like a flock.

Instead, there was a strong semblance of order, and in the middle of their formation were what looked like longships, only…sailing through the air.

The five ships were carried by long, thick chains, hooked to harnesses around massive, bulky dragons. And with Rhylan’s eyes, I could see the crews of draga aboard the ships, firing iron-tipped bolts from ballistae at the pursuing enemy.

That’s genius , I breathed, as Rhylan raced towards the Horde.

The ships were defended by the free-flying dragons, some with riders, some without. Many were marked, tribal tattoos carved into their scales and washed with ink.

A massive bronze dragon broke from the formation, a white-haired rider on his back raising a bow as he barrelled towards their pursuers.

Uncle Roark and Aunt Ivoire , Rhylan thought, but his eyes were focused on the incoming attack.

The Iron Shards were coming up from behind, and in force. Twenty full-grown dragons of their House, wearing armor over their already-thick plated scales.

And at their head flew the gleaming steel dragon I’d once been arranged to bond with. Tidas, with Yura on his back, her lips peeled back from her teeth.

Cai was among the Horde dragons, Kirana on his back, harrying at the invaders. Rhylan plunged toward them, inhaling until his ribs creaked, the dragonfire within him warming his scales.

He gained altitude, flying above the Horde as it passed below, and angled into a steep dive towards Yura and Tidas.

My sister looked up. We locked eyes, and time seemed to slow.

She smiled at me, all teeth and dead eyes. Then she reached out and patted Tidas’s back, the same motion I made to Rhylan when we flew.

Ice prickled down my spine.

Especially when I saw that Tidas’s back was full of raw, circular wounds. Exactly like Rhylan’s, only these looked fresher, and infected, weeping greenish pus and clear fluids.

Yura shaped her lips into words, and as time resumed its normal pace, and Rhylan exhaled a blast of obsidian flame at them, Tidas veered with a scream, avoiding the flames and speeding back behind the Iron Shards.

Flying away from the battle, and leaving their allies to be surrounded by Horde dragons.

The great bronze dragon plowed into them, his rider sending razor-tipped arrows into the eyes of the Iron Shards. More than one rider jerked in the saddle, an arrow sprouting from her throat or chest.

The Horde annihilated them, twenty dragons slaughtered in the span of a hundred heartbeats. The Horde dragons came in every shape and size, from the brutally-muscled heavyweights to slimmer, quicker assassins, and the Shards had no chance against them all.

Rhylan spat fire at a falling draga, the rider incinerated in an instant. I looked away.

He wheeled around, flapping until he was side by side with the bronze dragon, and guided them back towards Jhazra.

My heart was still pounding furiously as I took in the sight: the dragonships had been set down in the valley around Jhazra Eyrie, and the draga crews were already setting up campfires and unloading their cargo.

Many of the dragons also chose to remain in the valley below, some perched on the cragged mountains to keep watch.

Will they not stay in the eyrie? I asked Rhylan, who was leading his aunt and uncle to the dragon door.

No , he said, fury still coursing through his veins from that single sight of Yura. The Hordes prefer the freedom of open sky. Aunt Ivoire once told me the eyries were no better than prisons.