Page 53 of Court of Embers (Dragonesse #2)

Chapter

Twenty-Nine

T he door beckoned. Yura was beyond, and I needed to follow, though every fiber of my body railed against walking into that dark descent.

I pressed my clawed thumb to my palm, digging deep. Hot blood welled, filling my palm and spilling over.

In the silence, the soft drip of blood echoed like thunder. The dark sea rolled away as I stepped forward, carving a path of blood and gold through the inky liquid.

A trail of breadcrumbs for my allies to follow.

I stepped through the door, and there was Yura ahead, already turning the corner of the path spiraling down. The torches guttered low, throwing just enough light to see my path.

“You took so long to answer. I began to think I was mistaken.” Her voice rolled back to me, as cold and flat as ever. She turned her head as she walked, to a degree no normal person could manage. Her lips still weren’t moving.

A chill ran down my spine. “Mistaken about what? Of course I was going to come find you. I promised I would kill you.”

“About the fire inside you. I hoped it would kindle to a rage to rival Larivor’s, but you seemed so content to remain a flickering, dying candle. I’m pleased to see I was wrong. Look at you now, no longer a weakened splinter of the old family tree.”

I spat a hiss through my teeth as my foot landed on something solid, yet soft. I squeezed my palm, dripping my blood to the floor to clear the black liquid. A hand stretched out on the floor before me, and I carefully stepped over the dead.

“Haven’t you eaten enough?” I asked bitterly. “But I suppose that’s a stupid thing to ask of you. When will you be satisfied, when every House is dead?”

“Not all of them,” she said, her voice strangely light. “I did offer you the chance for freedom.”

“Ah, yes, that generous, sisterly love of yours. You were only waiting for your meal. Or to sacrifice me to Ustrael.”

Yura tilted her head, still walking with her head facing backward. “You don’t understand. It was sisterly love, perhaps the only thing left of the Yura-that-could-have-been.”

I avoided walking on another body, a lump on the floor seething with that black liquid coating. “That could have been?”

The corners of her lips twitched upwards. “Serafina, you never had a sister. Yura never existed.”

I almost stumbled, staring at her. Here in the dark, rough-hewn tunnel, watching her white face speak without moving, it was almost too easy to imagine I was facing one of those bogeys of the night, the kind of creatures that kept small dragonbloods cowering in their beds.

“You’ve existed almost my entire life,” I said slowly.

“No.” She swept a hand over herself, started walking again. “ I’ve existed your entire life. What you see, what you think of as Yura …was only the shell.”

My mouth was dry as I followed, dutifully squeezing blood from my palm in an effort to keep that darkness at bay.

“I’ve wanted to tell you for so long. Anyone, really.

Someone who could appreciate what I am.” She hissed the last words, turning a corner and stepping through a doorway.

“The world has never seen something like me before. Like you and the dark prince’s sister, I am unique.

Unlike either of you, I am a singularity.

“So I think you will appreciate this now,” she added. “You, who have distanced yourself from your own kind in your quest for strength.”

“What are you, then?” I followed her into another massive cavern, this one as rough as the tunnel.

It was possibly not even a part of the original eyrie, but the work of Ustrael’s Eyes, digging deep until they found a fragment of their patron goddess, perhaps following her whispering call into the earth below.

I squeezed my palm, shedding another drop of blood. The wound was already closing.

“What did you assume?” Yura’s mouth widened, but it looked more like her mouth was tearing at the corners than stretching in a smile. “That I was a worshipper of Ustrael? One of her Eyes? Perhaps gifted by one of her bodily, corporeal fragments?”

I glanced at her sharply. “Exactly.”

“No.” She laughed breathlessly. “No. That was Yura’s mother. Here she lies, her reward for her relentless, fervent work.”

Yura gestured, and I followed the movement with my eyes, tracking it to the wall to my right.

My stomach leaped and turned. Here, the dark ink no longer behaved as a liquid. The thing plastered to the wall resembled a pulsing cocoon, clinging in drooling strings to the bones encased within.

“You consumed Aerona.” My voice came out flat, almost calm.

I thought she had been dead for a long while now. Her skeleton had been cleaned down to the bone, encased in blackness. It quivered as I watched.

“She never loved me,” Yura mused, looking at her mother’s remains. “How could she? I was not her child. I was a means to an end.”

“She gave birth to you, which—”

“No. When she knew she was pregnant by the Drakkon, she came down here, to her place of worship. To the place where a small fragment of Ustrael had been long-buried beneath the earth. Come.”

Yura led me across the cavern, and I followed like a dreamer.

I could strike her down now. If my gamble was right, my blood would burn her away.

But I had to know .

Sections of wall had been dug out, but only one opened on another chamber. A natural cavern, joined to this one by a thin wall, and Yura ducked through the rough-carved, chipped entrance leading inside.

“Here,” she said. “The last shrine to Ustrael. A fragment of her being, imprisoned for many eons. Aerona found her, and took her blessing.”

The cavern could have been a beauty, stalactites dripping from the ceiling, crystals woven through the stone of the walls in a natural geode. The floor was glass-smooth, slick with damp, and in the rippled, lacey pools of water before me, there lay something that hurt my eyes to look upon.

The fragment of Ustrael was embedded in the stone, a dark inclusion in the quartz matrix.

It looked like nothing more than a round chip of obsidian rock, sheared off from some unknowable greater whole.

As water dripped over it, plinking into the basin below, the liquid turned as black as night, as thick as blood.

And in merely looking at it, I sensed its absolute malevolence.

My scales prickled, feeling every draft of cool air in the cavern, and I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that something was watching us through that tiny stone. Something with a thousand slavering mouths and a hundred blinded eyes, something screaming in the dark.

“Here is where she did it,” Yura said, staring into the dark pool. “With that tiny seed of life growing inside her, she came to this pool, and begged her mistress’s blessing. And she drank.”

I couldn’t speak. The monstrosity of it was too much.

Yura turned her dark, hollow eyes on me. “I found a warm, comfortable home in the embryo. I slithered inside it, making my nest in its tiny, unformed skull. And when it was born, it was not a draga who emerged into the world. It was me, wearing her skin.”

I tore my eyes from Ustrael’s fragment, staring at her.

Finally understanding. I had never had a sister. Yura had never been real.

“You…were one of the parasites.” My lips were numb.

She inclined her head. Yura’s borrowed head. This was not a draga before me, but a dark worm curled inside the cup of her skull, using her body like a puppet.

I’d never had a sister. Yura had died before she was born.

The breath felt like it’d been punched from my lungs.

“This had never been done before. I am not Ustrael, nor am I Primoris, one of her misbegotten children, a monster without rhyme or reason. I think. I reason.” She considered it for a moment. “There is no word for what I am.”

“What do you want?” I whispered the words, my chest aching.

That terrible smile was back, a mask being moved from inside her face. “You think I want to consume all, like my mother, or destroy mindlessly? I’d assume that’s what you’d think. I am of Ustrael, therefore I am a destroyer.”

“You have destroyed,” I gritted out. “Several Ascendants and two Houses are gone now because of you. Not to mention gods know how many unfortunate others who were in your way at the wrong time.”

“I want what anyone wants, Sera.” Those dark eyes met mine. “I want to live. I want to perpetuate myself. I want to not be alone .”

Silence fell as she bared her teeth in a grin, wiggling loose in their sockets, and all I could hear was the drip of water.

I tried to imagine it, being a terrible thing, a monstrosity, knowing I was the only one of my kind in the world.

I couldn’t.

“I tried with others,” she said, hiding those rotting fangs.

“I tried to implant parts of myself in them. But it doesn’t work.

They are consumed, and they die. They rise as Ustrael bids the dead to rise.

But they are not like me. They don’t think with their own minds.

But it was successful once, was it not?”

She glanced at me sidelong, and I tried not to see how the skin on her face was growing loose, like wet paper shifting on the bone.

“I was born, therefore I am. Unborn is best. I need a host created of Naimah’s fire, before it has taken its first breath of Larivor’s wind. A strong host. This one…was not strong enough. I knew my time was growing short.”

“You want another baby.” My fingers curled, digging into my palms, a fire rising inside me.

“And would yours not be best?” she asked, genuine curiosity in her voice.

“The body I lived in is half of your blood. You, born of two strong bloodlines, your mate of ancient pedigree…and now you have become Naga. Why do you think I wanted your fire stoked high, elder sister? Your children will make strong, glorious hosts.”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not your sister. You are nothing to me, and you will never have me or any dragon of my bloodline.” The fire licked inside my veins, begging me to burn her. To destroy this travesty, this offense against Larivor and Naimah. “How did you infect Rhylan?”