Page 5

5

ESSA

A ll one hundred Skrathan lingered in the sacred encampment. Glowing embers floated through the air like untethered stars in the deepening dusk. Near the place where the ground gave way in a steep downward slope, heat rose, its waves making the world seem unsteady—unreal.

This was Kayumal, the dragon womb, the place where legends said dragons first emerged from the molten heart of the earth and where dragons and their riders returned upon their death. And it was where we would return Paemalla and Horban, once nightfall came.

Until then, it was our lot to wait. The huge, dead dragon lay at the lowest point of the crater, on his back. Paemalla had been wrapped and set upon his belly, in the way that mother dragons sometimes held their young.

All around the dragon, riders had set up tents and blankets. Some had brought musical instruments, plucking out sad melodies on lutes or blowing slow etudes on pipes. Still others sat playing cards or reading or talking together in low voices. Fires had been lit, and the smell of roasting food and woodsmoke wafted on the breeze. On the rugged peaks all around, the dragons waited, some spread out to relax their wings, others coiled like serpents, still others sitting on their haunches like cats and chittering to one another, or else staring into the distance at something no human eye could see.

I wandered through it all like a lost ghost.

Conversations hushed when I neared. Riders averted their eyes from me as I passed. They all knew what Paemalla’s fall meant for me. It was like I was dead already.

Though I was hardly aware of having a destination, my feet brought me to the brink of Kayumal, closer than any other Skrathan dared venture, and there I stopped, feeling the rising heat on my face. Below I could see nothing but roiling, sulphureous smoke that choked me and stung my eyes, but here and there through the miasma I glimpsed the orange of boiling lava—Dragon’s Blood, as the old ones called it. Idly, I kicked at the crumbly, dry earth and shale under my boots, sending stones to disappear with a sizzle in the crater below. How easy it would be to inch forward and let the ground give way beneath me, to deliver myself into that womb of fire. It would save everyone so much time—and save me so much suffering. But even as the thought came, I felt the presence of my dragon, Othura, nosing into my mind.

No, Dear Heart. You must live.

I looked up to find her sitting on a peak far above, watching me. Her nose twitched and her huge, bright eyes blinked slowly. She was a relatively small dragon, and unusually dark for a libran. Whereas most of her kind were the color of a puffy cloud, she was darker, more the deep silver hue of a thunderhead. Yet up on that peak, the fading light glinted off her like sun upon the waves of the sea. She was beautiful.

I will live. For you, Dear Heart, I thought to her, stepping back from the edge . For as long as I can, anyway.

“Essa!”

The sound of my name startled me, and I turned to find my Aunt Dreya approaching.

“Auntie,” I hurried toward her and let her sweep me into a hug.

If anything might have wrung a tear from me it would have been her embrace, but I clenched my jaw and managed to keep my emotions at bay.

“Come. We must talk,” she said, hooking her arm in mine and towing me away from the edge of the abyss and the other riders. She took me far down the path, into a stand of aspen trees. There, we sat on a pair of stones. She studied me for a moment and I studied her.

“How are you?” we both asked at once.

What on another day would have elicited a laugh brought forth only the faintest of smiles.

“You go first. I know your feelings for your sister were… complicated,” Auntie Dreya said.

“I think… I’ll miss her,” I said truthfully. Paemalla was always a bully and a tyrant, pulling my hair, mocking me, stealing my treats when nobody was looking. But there were advantages to having a bully for a big sister. She’d have killed anyone who tried to harm me, and everyone knew it. I’d lost an antagonist. But I’d lost a protector, too. Of course, I didn’t have to tell Auntie Dreya any of this. She already knew.

Dreya was my mother’s sister. In Maethalia, aunts were responsible for teaching their nieces, just as uncles were for teaching their nephews. So, from the time I was four years old, Auntie Dreya had been my durram—my mentor. She’d taught me to read, to fix numbers, to ride a dragon, and to fight. And through it all, she’d been the one person who hadn’t taken it easy on me, discounted me, or shown me an ounce of pity, even though I had only one arm. That was the greatest love anyone had ever shown me—simply treating me like myself.

“I think we’ll all miss Paemalla,” Auntie said.

She had trained Paemalla, after all, just as she’d trained me. She had been the one to help my sister become the greatest Skrathan of us all—before those cursed Admite machine riders had slain her.

Auntie was in mourning, too.

“And now…” Dreya sighed.

Now, things were complicated.

Her daughter was Laynine, my cousin. My mother, being her aunt, had mentored Laynine. And she was the second highest-ranked dragon rider behind Paemalla.

That meant I’d have to take all the training Auntie Dreya had given me—and use it to fight her daughter. To the death.

“What are you going to do?” Auntie asked.

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“About the challenge,” Auntie said.

I shook my head, confused. “I must enter the challenge and fight Laynine. There’s nothing else I can do.”

Auntie’s brows knit and I thought she was going to cry, but no tears welled in her eyes. Instead, they became hard. She took my hand in hers.

“There are other possibilities, Essa,” she said. “You could flee.”

“Flee?” I said shrilly.

She glanced toward the other riders back at the encampment and put a finger to her lips. “Yes,” she said.

I continued in a hiss. “You would have me run away? To what? Go off to the Doramant and live in some fisherman’s shack for the rest of my life? Abandon my dragon? Live in shame, until Lord Natath and his law-bringers find me and put me to death for treason and dereliction of duty?”

Auntie’s eyes flashed with emotion. “We could find some solitary place for you, Essa. Somewhere that’s pleasant, where Othura could be with you.”

I snorted, shaking my head, and started to stand.

We should at least listen to her, Othura urged in my mind, and I let Auntie grasp my arm and pull me back down.

“Isn’t it better to leave and live than to stay and die, Essa?”

I looked hard at her. “You’ve trained me my whole life. Don’t you think I have any chance at all of winning?”

“Against Laynine?” her hesitation felt like a stab, and she seemed to mark the pain on my face, because she quickly added: “Of course, if you did win, it would be a tragedy for me, just as it would be a tragedy if you lost. But let’s be honest, Essa. Your mother has trained Laynine well. You know how good she is. Even without your…” his eyes ticked to the place where my arm would have been. “You couldn’t defeat her.”

I surged to my feet, my face warming with anger.

“Why say that to me?” I demanded, my voice uneven as I held back tears. “Everyone knows I have to fight her. Everyone knows I’m going to die. Can’t you at least let me believe I have a chance?”

“You do have a chance,” she said quietly. “You can leave and live.”

She’s only trying to help, Othura thought into my mind.

“Shut up!” I shouted pushing her out and wheeling on Auntie Dreya.

“Essa—” she began, but I brandished a finger at her.

“You were the one who taught me duty. Who taught me what it is to be a princess of Maethalia and a Skrathan. To have honor. I thought you believed the things you taught me. I thought you believed in me .”

“Essa…”

“No!” she tried to take my arm again but I pulled away from her. “If this is your council, I don’t need it. I’ll train for the challenge myself. Without you.”

“Essa…” she started again, her voice soft and consoling.

“Am I interrupting?”

We both looked over to find Laynine standing a little way away, watching us. The breeze rustled her cloak and pushed back her short, dark hair. She was taller than me, a fact that had always annoyed me. And in conflicts between cousins, she’d always been the one to remain unnervingly calm—whereas my fieriness had always gotten me in trouble. I could feel the same dynamic repeating itself now as my emotions teetered on the edge of a blade and she stood watching me with perfect posture and the poise of a Torouman.

“I’ll leave you two to chat,” Auntie Dreya said. “Think on what I said, Essa,” she added, and departed.

Laynine approached me slowly, watching me with her with shrewed, analytical eyes framed with dark lashes.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said.

The only response was the whisper of the wind through the crater and the low crackle of magma below. I made myself meet her gaze.

“I know you. I know you’re going to challenge me,” she said. “But I wish you wouldn’t. There’s no glory for you in dying. And there’s no glory for me in killing my own cousin. Especially one who isn’t whole.”

Her gaze settled on my missing forearm.

I felt my face reddening, my teeth going on edge.

“You’re right,” I said. “You’ll get no glory by killing me.”

And I stalked past her, back toward the pit of fire.