Page 56 of Court of Embers (Dragonesse #2)

Ustrael’s voice was gone. She was nothing but dust, and as I raised my too-heavy, muddled head, Kirana’s clawed foot came down on a dark, quivering lump, smearing it into a puddle of Naga blood.

I focused on another small piece before me. Every cell of her body must be erased.

It felt like shouldering a mountain to crush it from existence under my palm, and I exhaled another flame until it was ashes.

Piece by piece, we annihilated her, and it was only when Kirana’s hands landed on my shoulders that I understood why I was collapsing.

“Gods, Sera,” she whispered.

I stood with her help, and looked down at myself.

No part of me was unmarked. My silver scales were scorched, torn, ripped away from my flesh, and I wore blood like a layer of scarlet.

Once I saw it, the pain hit me, nearly sending me to my knees again.

Circular marks where she’d bitten me limned my shoulder, throat, and chest, but my blood had burned away whatever terrible seeds she might’ve tried to infect me with.

If I’d been alone, Ustrael would have taken me with her. I leaned heavily on Kirana’s shoulder.

“We need to destroy the fragment.” My words came out thick as syrup.

How could I form words at all, with my mouth burned to ash?

But I still tasted blood, and my probing tongue confirmed that everything was whole and unburned.

Even my lips remained unblistered. “We can’t bury it.

Someone might find it again, and this would all be for nothing. ”

“Take a moment. She’s dead. Just breathe for a second.” Kirana forced me to sit on an outcropping of stone, and I leaned forward in a slump, my upper body too heavy to support any longer.

I heard the clink of glass, and turned my head. Kirana had torn away one of her sleeves and set it alight, granting us a small bubble of illumination. She was touching her belt, which held a small pouch, and as I watched, she brought out and uncorked a small glass bottle.

“Drink this.” She offered it, and I brought it to my nose, expecting some horrible healer’s nostrum.

Instead, a mouthwatering scent filled the air, and I almost shattered the glass against my teeth in my eagerness to swallow the contents.

Dragon’s blood.

It soothed my scorched throat, flowing like cool water. Within minutes, my body no longer felt heavy and dim. I still hurt from head to toe, but it was a tolerable pain now. A healing pain.

“You’re the most brilliant healer I know,” I said hoarsely.

She scoffed. “I’m the only healer you know.”

She was standing straighter as well, having emptied her own bottle.

“Please. I know at least two other healers, and you top them both. I didn’t think to bring dragon’s blood.” I tossed the empty bottle aside, stretching my aching limbs.

Kirana rolled her shoulders. “It was a whim. To be honest, I didn’t think we’d make it through this.”

“Neither did I.” My voice echoed in the empty cavern, and I shuddered. The echo made my voice sound dead. “I think I can go on now.”

I moved stiffly, but Kirana helped me up. We moved slowly, finding our way back to the cavern of pools.

The other Naga had done as ordered, and left. All that was left was the rotting carcass of Dynyr, collapsing in on itself as its flesh melted away into a noxious liquid, and the shed skin of Yura.

Kirana’s lip curled at the sight, and her eyes widened as I reached for it. “What in the Nine Hells are you doing?”

“Giving her a pyre,” I said shortly. My skin crawled as I touched it, the skin laying in folds like fabric, the golden hair now nothing more than dried straw. “It was never Yura. It was always Ustrael, before she was even born.”

I tried to think of the shed skin like a dress as I moved it away from Dynyr’s corpse. Like a folded blanket. Something innocuous.

But my body still shuddered, and I clamped my teeth shut against the nausea as I laid her on a crystal hollow.

I knelt there, summoning the energy to breathe fire, and finally Yura’s remains were crackling, blackening and turning to ash.

That was the best I could do for her. I would never know if the true Yura would have approved or cared. She had gone to Aurae before she’d left the womb.

“Aerona can lie here and rot,” I said coldly, standing up as Yura burned away.

Kirana eyed the remains of Yura’s pyre. “She…was infected with the parasites.”

“Yes. Which is why we must move the fragment.” I gestured to the pool of darkness, the tiny fragment infecting all it touched. “Aerona drank the infected water while she was pregnant with Yura, and allowed a part of Ustrael to take a draga body. Nobody must be allowed to do such a thing again.”

Kirana nodded slowly, the skin visible around her scales tinged with green. She understood now. I was glad she was not only a healer, but quick-witted.

“How are we going to move it?” she asked, her voice tired, and I knew we were nearing the end of our strength, dragon’s blood notwithstanding.

“You’re not. I’m going to try.” I took a deep breath, bracing myself. The singularity and her parasites had feared my blood. I had no guarantee that the original body of Ustrael would. She was as far beyond me as Larivor was beyond the Ascendants.

I appreciated that Kirana didn’t argue with me. This was more than the gods could’ve asked of any dragonblood. They had torn the world open, and it should have been on them to fix the mess they made, but I was the one here now.

I stepped closer, hating the viscous thickness of the black water. Just looking at it, I sensed its malice.

One last time, Mother and Father, be with me for this.

A ripple shivered through the air, and suddenly Rhylan’s voice burst into my head, loud and clear.

SERA, DON’T!

But the ripple was no longer just a ripple.

It was the sensation of leviathan coils, of scales larger than a man, of a fan of light and a crown of a thousand horns above me, in me. The fire in my chest burned brighter, hotter, nearly choking me.

Take it, daughter.

In Larivor’s grip, I reached out, digging my claws through the crystal.

Several of my claws broke against the glassine prison that held that tiny black gem, my fingers bleeding freely, but still I pushed, crumbling stone, the oozing liquid pouring over my hands and freezing them, running clear where it touched my blood.

I brought my hands up, cradling an apple-sized chunk of quartz, Ustrael’s fragment embedded in its center like a disease.

No, not merely a fragment—an eye. The round obsidian gem looked back at me .

The sensation of coils squeezing around me loosened, and vanished.

Take it to the Scar. Imprison her , Larivor breathed in my mind, and then his presence was gone.

Kirana had her back to the wall, and if she’d had hackles, they would’ve been raised and quivering.

I tried to smile, but it didn’t quite make it to my mouth. My hands were trembling, the small stone like a boulder in my hands as I held it as far away from my body as possible. “So the gods remain with us. I wish they would’ve said something earlier.”

Kirana barked out a disbelieving laugh.

“I need something to hold it,” I groaned, taking a step and stumbling. There was something in the back of my mind, something that was neither myself nor Rhylan, nor even Larivor’s breath-taking presence.

Something unearthly, screaming and gibbering, begging, threatening, watching. And if it became any more clear, I thought it would erase my mind entirely.

Kirana hurriedly tore away her other sleeve, knotting one end to form a makeshift bag. She held it open, struggling not to strain away from me as I tipped the quartz-imprisoned eye into the opening.

It crashed to the floor, enshrouded in its leather bag, but I could still feel it. Something with a thousand other eyes, an entire world away, all of its attention focused right here on this moment.

“Gods, I could feel it looking at me,” Kirana whispered, her eyes wild.

We both eyed it for a long moment, and I finally reached out, gripping the end of the sleeve and holding it away from my body so no part of the rock came within an inch of me.

Rhylan, I’m alive. I have the fragment.

There was another terrible moment of silence, and I wondered if the army of the dead had brought him down right at the cusp of my victory, and if all of this had been for nothing. If I would have to take this to the World Scar myself, and send myself into the darkness, too.

But his relief was a wordless shout in my mind, and I heard something echo into the cavern.

We’re coming. Never again, Sera , he promised. Never again.

The army of the dead? How—?

He read my thoughts, answering before I could put my fears into words.

They collapsed in on themselves a short while ago , he thought to me. All of them just fell to the ground and started…rotting. Rapidly.

When Ustrael’s avatar died.

Maybe. I won’t pretend I understand how the gods work.

I eyed the bag I held. In terrible ways .

Kirana and I left the cavern, shoulders slumped with exhaustion and pain, both of us sickened by the presence of the fragment.

I walked past Aerona without a second glance. The cradle of darkness was dissipating into black steam, leaving her still skeleton on the ground. She’d had a choice.

Now she could lay in the dark forever, forgotten and unmourned.

When we reached the halls of Talariel, the scuffling sounds were louder. Kirana and I blinked in the sudden warmth of torchlight, our eyes adjusted to black and silver flickers.

Rhylan was there, half dragon, half man, his body covered in scales and his face distended in a dragon’s snout. Mykah was at his side, Cai on the other.

Without a word, Kirana fled into Cai’s arms, and he held her close, unspeaking, his face buried in her hair. Everything they had to say was in their minds.

I reached for Rhylan, my eyes filling with tears that turned to steam and wisped away when they hit my cheeks. I dropped the fragment, my arms open. He was alive, and he was everything I needed.

He held me tight, and I fed him everything. The horror, the pain, the grief for a sister who never was. The burden that we now shouldered, and my anger with the gods, for creating this nightmare and placing it on us to fix it.

He held my thoughts, offering no words but unspoken comfort, and after a time, I felt I had the strength to pick up the burden of the fragment once more, and go on with him at my side.