Page 42 of Court of Embers (Dragonesse #2)

I screamed, and the scream was cut off by a fresh gout of blood, slipping over my cheeks, and I had no choice but to swallow or drown in fire.

The inferno climbed higher, my bones cracking and burning. Everything that made me Sera was gone. More blood, flooding my mouth, igniting my charred body…

I tried to scream once more, to beg them to release me from this agony, and blacked out.

I opened my eyes, discovering that they were already open.

I was no longer in Jhazra Eyrie. No longer…anywhere, as far as I could see. I floated on a sea of black ink, thick and pooling, tugging at my hair and fingers. Above me, the sky was a dull, dead gray.

A hand reached down to me. “Arise.”

I stared at the slim, feminine fingers, coated in fine amethyst scales. The thick claws, sharp as knives, tipped with iron.

Then I reached up and took the hand, and saw that my own arm was no longer the one I knew. Pale, iridescent scales coated me from shoulder to fingertip, and my claws matched that of my rescuer.

The hand pulled me from the sea, and I stood upright, up to my knees in the inky water, and faced…a Naga.

Slit pupils in metallic blue eyes looked me over. Horns spiraled over her skull, a mane of white hair spilling over her shoulders. And all over, amethyst scales coated her, her tail flicking at the gelatinous water. She wore sheer white veils, soaked in ink.

“Arise, and put an end to this,” she demanded. “Stand on your two feet, Serafina.”

I realized I was hunched over, cradling my stomach and the memory of the fire that had burned me to ashes.

“You see what has become of this land,” another voice said. A Naga with ebony scales, wearing ancient iron armor, walked around my side. Her horns split, becoming a rack of razor-sharp antlers. “They sundered the world, and allowed her spirit to fester and spread its rot.”

She held out a hand, indicating the endless stretch of inky ocean.

I looked down. My legs were scaled with iridescence, my toes elongated into claws. And the ocean…the ink was creeping up my legs, slow and steady.

It was crawling up the Naga, too, threatening to swallow them in its inexorable march.

The sky...was melding with the ocean. I couldn’t tell where the water ended and the air began. Reality wavered around us, and I stumbled, my feet glued in place by the grasping tendrils of ink.

“Stand upright, and hold fast against this abomination.”

I did as the Naga ordered, placing my feet without seeing them, not allowing the ink to drag me down and drown me.

It wasn’t ink. I knew what this was, where we were; in the infected ocean around the World Scar.

I had never laid eyes on it, and yet I knew that this place, where the earth and sky twisted into one, where reality seemed to warp around me, was the place where Larivor and Naimah had ripped the world open.

And this…this ink…it was the blood of Ustrael, her decaying body seeping through the cracks of the worlds, leaking into ours.

“We shield your eyes against the worst of it.” A third voice, this one quiet, soft, yet hard as steel. “This is what you stand against. This is what you, and all of our kind, must fight.”

The last Naga had been behind me the entire time. She stepped forth, the ink clinging up her shoulders now. Her verdigris scales gleamed through tatters of black silk, and a dark blindfold covered her eyes. She kept a hand on my shoulder, her touch so light I hadn’t noticed it at all.

“She seeps into the world,” the amethyst Naga whispered.

The ebony Naga gripped an ancient iron sword. “She gains a foothold with every breath you draw.”

The hand on my shoulder squeezed lightly. “She must be stopped. See her desires.”

We were moving, somehow, without moving our legs. Drifting through the ocean, the tendrils rising to clutch at us, but they dissipated like smoke.

Something thrashed in the water ahead of us. I caught a glimpse of light, bright and eye-watering in this constant murk, and a flash of color.

A dragon with a thousand horns, fighting against the rising tide, drowning in the ink as it swallowed him whole.

I remembered. The dream Myst had given me, the dragon of light and air, drowning in the black sea…

“Larivor,” I whispered. And the three Naga around me…were the Daughters.

“Her substance smothers him,” Aurae said, amethyst scales glimmering in his light. “As she gains strength, he loses his influence in our world.”

Nakasha sheathed her sword, staring sadly at her father. “How can he answer your prayers, if he himself is drowning?”

Sunya had never released me, her claws digging into my shoulder. “He requires his children. All of his children, standing as one against her.”

She turned me away from the dragon who was thrashing against the sea, and losing with every breath.

“Awaken,” she whispered. “Arise. And spread the gift. What is the Law, to a world with no dragons? It is nothing. Bring forth the might of wind and flame, and create what was forbidden. Our blood stands fast against Ustrael. Take it, and make her a prisoner once more.”

Sunya leaned forward and kissed my forehead. My scales tingled where she touched, spreading warmth throughout my body, and the tendrils of ink began to peel away from my body, releasing me from their grasp.

Until they’d released me, I didn’t realize how light I felt. Light as a feather, buoyed by the wind, rising through the air…or was I falling through the sea?

Into a deep and terrible darkness, the empty black pressing in on my eyes, spilling through my ears and nose and mouth, drowning me…

I sat upright with a gasp, clawing at my face, and hands gripped my wrists.

Solid hands. Real hands.

I opened my eyes to light, and looked into Kirana’s burning eyes.

“Did you see them?” she whispered.