Page 143

A s a gentle snow fell outside the windows of the great hall, Vahly threw the bone dice across the round table. “Sevens!”

The small crowd of family and close friends shouted in laughter, and Vahly gave them a triumphant smile.

“Queen Vahly wins again!”

“Well, that’s your scorchpepper-dyed quiver, King Arc.” Nix shook her head and clicked her tongue. “I really don’t think you should be betting against your queen.”

The room glittered with Frostlight decorations.

Candles set into clear crystal sconces danced along the stone walls, illuminating the carved names of those lost during the War of the Balancing.

Twine-lashed boughs of pine held tiny spheres of light that had been cast by Arc and his and Vahly’s second born, Cygnus.

Cygnus looked like his father, but he didn’t possess much in the way of magic.

He was, however, the best swordfighter Vahly had seen.

“Nix,” Vahly chastened. “Don’t ruin it. This is the only night he ever does play against me. It’s my chance to claim all that should already be mine.”

Arc raised an eyebrow, his lips quirking up at one side.

The horns that had grown up where his new crown spun light and shadow reflected the flickering light of the candles.

“You know all I have is yours, my love.” He might have been older than the hills, but he was still ebony-haired and painfully handsome.

She gave him a gentle kick under the table, her heart swelling with gratitude for the century they’d had of peace and good health. Arc thought perhaps they would continue living for another century before time saw fit to age them. “Stop being wonderful and roll the dice.”

“Of course.”

He chuckled and threw the bones, which clattered up against Arrosa’s goblet.

As their eldest, Arrosa lorded over her twenty siblings.

She was as bossy as her Sourceparent, Nix, and every bit as kind and flirty.

Vahly hadn’t known what to expect from her half-elf children when they were born.

Now, she’d realized they grew quickly, but had long years where the growing slowed when they remained young adults both physically and mentally.

She tried not to worry about it. There was no reason to think they wouldn’t push past this maturity level and develop into healthy adults.

Arc thought perhaps they would live nearly as long as he and Vahly.

He said this was the typical life of a full elf.

Arrosa pushed her silvery hair behind her ears—ears that were rounded like Vahly’s—and sipped delicately from her portion of Nix’s dropcider.

Vahly was surprised Arrosa hadn’t borne any children yet considering she’d been wed for well over a year before her husband died.

Like all of Vahly and Arc’s children, she did seem destined for a very long life, since she was ninety-five and looked the same as she had at nineteen.

Perhaps she used Helena’s potion and cared not for children.

That was fine, but Arrosa did seem to enjoy her younger siblings in all their varied glory.

Arrosa spent many days walking trails through Illumahrah with the twins.

The fourteen-year-old boys had flaxen hair like Vahly’s and pointed ears like Arc’s, and they loved nothing more than showing off their particular blend of earth and air magic—a connection to nature that involved communicating with wolves and basking in the respectful bows of flowers, trees, and grasses.

Tiny horns were just beginning to show, possibly meaning they would pass on the strongest of Arc’s royal elven blood.

Arrosa used to race their third eldest child, the red-headed Zuzan, when he was young and less angry with the world in general. Currently, Zuzan narrowed his dark eyes and glared across the table like he wished he were anywhere but here.

Vahly wasn’t sure what to do about him. He claimed anything and everything bored him, and it made her wonder what fate had in store for him with such a tolerance for danger and excitement.

He built crafts that could move across the sea and visited the small, uninhabited islands off the eastern coast every chance he had.

“Queenie, you’re not paying attention to the dice.” Nix raised her scaled eyebrows at the table while Cygnus and Arrosa told the old donkey joke to the twins and Lyra, the youngest of the bunch.

Five-year-old Lyra scrunched her tiny nose and scratched her round ear as she laughed. The bowl of porridge next to her exploded and sent clumps of oats and syrup-sweetened berries across her siblings’ surprised faces.

Lyra looked the most human of them all, but magic flowed through her blood, rich and thick and powerful. So far, she’d been unable to control the strange blend of air and earth magic she’d been born to.

“Sorry.” Vahly scooped up the bone dice. “Last round before the moon singing.”

She threw them and landed a ten and three fives.

“How do you do it, wife?” Arc pulled her chair out for her, and they started toward the door with everyone else.

A step behind, Nix sauntered beside Aitor. Several other dragons followed them, mostly jealous males who probably hoped Aitor would perish by some miraculous disease.

“I taught her how to play, King Arcturus,” Nix said, hooking her arm through Aitor’s, then adjusting her thick, woolen cloak.

The winter wind blasted through the palace’s front door where the next generation ambled through, laughing and shoving candied brazenberries—their potency reduced by the palace cooks—into their mouths.

The cold air stung Vahly’s cheeks, but she liked it, inhaling the scent of snow and woodsmoke. Frostlight was her favorite holiday.

Arc was talking to Nix, and Vahly strained to hear them over the chatter of everyone gathered in front of the palace.

“Why didn’t Eux or any of the Jades come? I know we sent three messengers.”

Nix shrugged, her gaze touching on all of Arc and Vahly’s children. They outnumbered the dragons. “Since Amona’s passing, many of the dragons have felt as if their lives were meant to go on elsewhere. They don’t feel as at home here as I do.”

“Or as I do,” Aitor said, giving Vahly a wink.

Vahly’s stomach twisted, and grief tugged at her chest, almost an opposite feeling to how her magic encouraged her.

She’d lost Amona to a slow decline a decade ago, but the pain remained sharp.

Vahly held on to it, cut herself on it from time to time, just so she would always remember her mother.

It seemed ridiculous that something as simple as age could rob them of such a powerful being.

“Don’t make that face, Queenie,” Nix whispered. “It’s nothing you or Arc have done wrong. I swear it.”

“I miss her.”

“Believe it or not, I do too.” Nix’s sad smile soothed Vahly’s pain a fraction. “I’ve heard talk that the Jades have retreated into their ancient homeland. I could go with you and pay them a visit if you’d like. King Arc, you up for a journey?”

“Certainly. It’s important that we keep up communications between the kynds,” Arc said, breaking away from Vahly to pick up Lyra, who was still covered in porridge. He wiped her cheek with his sleeve and settled her head on his chest.

Vahly’s heart surged as she watched them. She’d never grow tired of seeing the love he had for their children. And she knew well how worried he was about Lyra’s inability to control her magic, a magic that seemed to follow no elemental rules and only swung this way and that according to her whims.

Vahly leaned close to Nix and put a hand on Arc’s arm. “Eux has to be under a tremendous amount of stress,” she whispered. “No Jades have been born with the Touched mark yet, have they?”

Nix shook her head. “Not that I’ve heard. And Eux is fading.”

Like Amona had, age leeching the color from scale, wing, and talon.

Kyril flew from the snowy sky and landed beside Vahly.

He showed her an image of the palace from above, white-laced with frost and bordered by the Forest of Illumahrah and what had once been the Lapis territory.

It was bittersweet living in what had once been the Lost Valley, where the last of her people had died, where Amona had rescued her from her birth mother’s arms.

Vahly set a hand on Kyril’s chilly beak and checked a scratch he’d suffered during a boar hunt yesterday. It was healing nicely thanks to Arc’s ministrations. “If Eux dies and the Jades have no one to lead them, what do you think they’ll do? Simply pick a dragon to make decisions?”

“Pick?” Nix laughed. “More like fight to the death.”

Arc nodded. “I’d have thought they’d grow more like the Lapis and your Call Breakers after the war, but perhaps not.”

“Not from what I hear,” Nix said. “They are more brutal than ever.”

“We definitely need to visit Eux and see if there is anything we can do to ease their struggle,” Vahly said.

Arrosa came up, her cheeks flushed and her silver hair like a second cloak.

A tiny bit of Lyra’s porridge marred the front of her dress, but it didn’t seem to bother her.

“You have to stop discussing serious things. It’s time for the song lights.

” She took Lyra gently, then linked Vahly’s and Arc’s arms properly.

“Nix?” She raised her eyebrows until Nix linked her arm in Aitor’s.

She nodded approvingly and spun around, murmuring to Lyra.

Vahly set her head on Arc’s shoulder. “I knew our lives wouldn’t be a stroll through the meadow, but I didn’t think about how such a limited population would affect our children. I was a fool.”

Arc kissed her forehead, his mint and sun-warmed earth scent blending with the lovely woodsmoke from the bonfires set around the oaks and pines. “You aren’t a fool, and you know it. It’s not as if we had a choice.”

The largest of the pines, a great sprawling thing with needled boughs that stretched wider than five dragons across, reached upward to pierce the star-strewn sky.

Euskal and Baww had tied clay dishes set with beeswax candles to twelve branches, symbolizing one for every moon cycle of this year.

It was good those two were finally getting along, their past arguments over a lover forgotten.

Euskal’s closest friend, Miren, had died in the war, and Baww had been the one to pull the proud Euskal back together.

Beyond the pine, the Call Breakers—only eleven remaining—and the rest of the Lapis gathered near Vahly and Arc’s other children. Haldus stood among them, grinning and sharing a wineskin. Moonlight washed their limbs and faces, scaled dragons, elves, and half-elves alike.

“Oh, there’re Rigel and Ursae.” Vahly pointed to their forms on the edge of the crowd. They now lived in the eastern mountains near the most northern sections of what used to be Lapis territory.

Arc nodded. “They will feast with us tonight and stay the full three days. Rigel said he’s willing to try the experiment with the brazenberries and Lyra’s magic.”

“Brave man to face our daughter.”

Arc’s low laugh vibrated through their touching bodies. Warmth spread through Vahly, but her magic sent a twinge of warning through her chest. She pushed the feeling down, focusing on the happy moment and determined to enjoy herself.