Page 27

V ahly’s memory came racing back.

Her hands couldn’t dig fast enough.

“No.”

Vaguely, she was aware of Arc speaking in a calming tone, but he didn’t stop her from clearing the dirt away from a Lapis blue wing, mottled with splashes of Jade green.

Arc joined her in the grim duty, and together, they exposed the side of a scaled body, a neck, and finally, the wide, dead eyes of Kemen.

She remembered him. Fully. Wholly. She knew about the cider house and her many friends there. Her memory knitted itself back together only to rip her apart.

Vahly’s stomach seized and she turned to vomit.

Kemen was gone. Her fantastic brute of a friend.

Breathing through her nose, she stared at her fingers in the dirt.

Arc’s hands were on her back, and he was whispering, sending warmth and a glow of healing light into her skin.

She touched Kemen’s cold face gently.

Kemen, her friend, her cohort in thieving and in dice. The dragon who kept quiet and remained stoic, but had always been there when she needed him.

A buzzing sound filled Vahly’s ears. The noise transformed into her own heartbeat and sweat trickled down her neck as she began digging again. Somehow, she knew there was more to find. More horror. More tragedy.

“There is another,” she whispered, voice raw. She couldn’t look at Arc. She didn’t want to see the sadness he might feel for her.

The scent of decay and damp earth hit Vahly’s nose again, like it had been saving up for a knockout.

She paused, swallowing bile, then cleared a clump of dirt away to see a leg covered in scales like coins made of emerald and sapphire. Arc swiped an arm over the makeshift grave to reveal the dead creature’s face.

Ibai.

Vahly shut her eyes against the flood of tears suddenly overtaking her vision. “My Ibai.” She trembled under shock’s icy hands. “Do you remember these dragons now?” she asked Arc. “Because I do. I do.”

How had they forgotten their entire journey here and what occurred in the Fire Marshes and in the forest that sat between the marshes and Illumahrah?

“I remember.” Arc, stiff and slow-moving in the starlight, walked around to the rear of another mound.

He shoveled dirt with his large hands for several minutes while Vahly sat and wept silently, her own body unwilling to follow her commands to help him and to find out who else had been taken from her.

A light wind could have carried her off into the black sky.

Arc stopped, then sat back on his heels. “There is another.” His words landed like an axe on Vahly’s neck. “Dramour. I remember him.”

Dramour’s eyepatch and green scales, the black dirt of the mound, the trees—everything turned around in Vahly’s head, faster and faster.

Dizziness overtook her. She fell onto Ibai’s still form and let the tears wash her away.

Her fingers gripped the mound. A coolness touched her finger.

She raised her head to see the edge of a worn, human coin.

The one Dramour and Ibai traded after every bet.

Gathering it to her, she rubbed the smooth gold until it was warm, then held it against her heart.

Arc sat in silence, his hand on the ground beside her as if he wanted her to know she could grasp his fingers if she wanted.

Vahly forced herself to sit upright.

Nix had to be here too.

It only made sense.

The elves wouldn’t have let her live. It wouldn’t have taken much effort to finish Nix off, what with the injuries she’d sustained from the arrow and the fall.

Vahly pulled at her hair, hating herself. How had she forgotten them? Could she have saved them if she’d remembered?

Arc drew her hand away from her tangled braid. “It’s not your fault.”

Trembling, she forced herself to stand. More mounds. More death. Arc’s gentle gaze was like a touch. As soon as she began to dig again, he joined her.

She kept glancing at Ibai, Kemen, and Dramour, expecting them to get up, shake the filth from themselves, and make a joke.

They lay so still. Her head pounded. It wasn’t as if she had never seen death.

But these had been her friends. So full of life.

How could that be them, still and silent in makeshift graves?

In her mind, she imagined Dramour saying her name.

He would never utter it again. He would never say anything ever again.

Pushing her storm of emotion away, she shoved more dirt away, more, more, more.

But there was nothing.

Hope sparked inside her chest. She wiped her face with the back of her dirt and blood crusted sleeve. “Nix isn’t here. We should check that one.” Her gaze flitted to the next mound and her stomach tightened, threatening rebellion.

This mound was not as large, but inside, under the earth, among broken bows and arrows, set out neatly—unlike the dragons—the bodies of three elves lay side by side.

Arc sucked a breath and stood in a motion too fast for Vahly to see clearly.

“Rigel’s son, Pegasi,” he said. “That’s what was wrong with Rigel. He found out that his son was dead. He must have. That was the grief hanging on him. But why did he forget? Why did we all forget? Even the others…”

“You told me, in the marshes, that someone had spelled foul magic on you. That you felt it, like a sticky darkness.” Vahly choked on a sob and squeezed her fingers into the earth to keep from falling off the side of the world.

“And this is Vega. And Leporis. I can’t believe it.” Arc shook his head and his throat moved in a slow swallow. “All dead.”

“Except Nix. Where is she?” Vahly paced the length of the mounds. “Can you track her? Surely there will be evidence of her escape or her death here.”

Arc, his face pale as moonlight, scoured the ground, bending and tilting his head, whispering and frowning. “She was here. Recently.”

Vahly was at his side in a blink. The dark of the forest stared at her, its unknown depths pressing against her eyes.

“Nix arrived here after the dead were buried. She may live still. There are footprints over this mound’s turned earth. And they aren’t ours. She is barefoot.”

Barefoot. She hadn’t even had time to put her boots back on before her life had veered painfully off course. Vahly’s eyes shuttered, scared to the core that Arc might be mistaken that Nix was alive. “Can you follow her tracks?”

He nodded, and they started into an area of oaks growing so close that their branches intertwined to block out what little light had been trickling through the canopy.

Arc raised an orb of light with his left hand and released it with a flick of his fingers.

The light floated, riding a breeze that was also born of Arc’s air magic, illuminating their way.

They followed a game trail, its line narrow, obviously not used by large animals.

A head-high branch had been broken and Arc gestured to it. She had been here.

Vahly had to talk her feet into walking instead of running. Nix was out here, somewhere, hurting and alone. But rushing Arc’s tracking work wouldn’t be a good plan. They had no time to waste on getting lost.

“What kind of animal runs this trail?” she asked.

Arc glanced her way and paused, his lips parting slightly as if he were about to ask why she wanted to know, right now, in the middle of this horror. His gaze lighted over the tears that wet her cheeks, and he held back his question.

“A small, slim deer that keeps to the plateau,” he said. “They have one horn in the center of their foreheads and their coats are metallic in look. The hairs reflect and refract light and mimic the look of golden steel.”

“Sounds lovely.”

They walked in near silence. Arc made virtually no sound as he crossed the ground. Vahly’s boots crunched on a leaf or stem here and there, but she too knew how to be quiet when it mattered. Whoever killed the dragons and the elves could still be out here.

“She listed away from the game trail,” Arc whispered. “See?” He pointed to a large fern someone—possibly Nix—had snapped along its spine and smashed. “And there is a footprint.”

Vahly cupped a hand at her mouth. “Nix?” she called into the dark forest, daring to make a sound loud enough for Nix to hear. “I remember now. We are here to help you. Nix?”

What was Nix going through? Had she been forced to watch Ibai, Kemen, and Dramour die? Had she been witness to whatever foul creature had murdered their entire party?

Vahly drew her sword, the feel of its weight a comfort.

Arc pursed his lips. “Whoever did this is long gone. I don’t smell anything but dragon here now.”

They stepped around a clutch of what might have been scorchpeppers. The air held the slight peppery scent of them and it reminded Vahly of the cider house.

“Do you have any guesses who did this?”

“It was Canopus,” Arc said.

Vahly remembered the elf, tall and fair, with that vicious-looking mouth of his. “King Mattin’s right hand.”

“The elders reprimanded him for using foul magic in the past. He wanted a maiden for his own and she didn’t care for him.

She was one of Cassiopeia’s nieces. He tried to cast a spell on her while her father and mother were out hunting and gathering.

But her younger brother saw Canopus enter through their back door and he ran to the King’s guards to get help.

Mattin publicly thrashed Canopus, a punishment the King had not carried out in an age. ”

“Why would Canopus wish to do all of this?” she asked. “What was his motivation? He killed his own kynd and they had captured us. Where was his head in this scenario?”

“Perhaps Vega or the others had information about him,” Arc said. “Maybe they knew of a plan of his to gain power.”

Vahly frowned. “And when they showed up on the border with us, he decided this was as good a time as any to take care of the problem? With four dragons to deal with too? I don’t know.

That doesn’t sound right. Seems like there would be easier ways to off a group of scouts.

Besides, wouldn’t he at least want to know why we, the dragons and I, had come here, to the forest to find elves? ”

“He may have questioned the dragons before slaying them.”

Vahly tensed, stopping. To think of them being tortured, used against one another. Dizziness took her and nearly threw her to the ground.

“I am sorry for your loss, Vahly of the Earth.” The corners of Arc’s eyes seem to turn down in his sadness.

Swallowing, Vahly worked to find her voice. “I’m sorry for yours as well. I could tell you respected Vega and Leporis, and that you loved Pegasi like he was your own.”

Arc turned away. When he finally spoke, pain cut his words into sharp syllables. “He was a good lad. A strong and good lad.”

They stood there, quiet and grieving, with the glow of Arc’s magic circling.

Vahly touched Arc’s sleeve. “Wait. Didn’t Leporis tell Vega and Pegasi to leave Nix because she was injured?”

Arc’s face cleared. “Yes. That’s why she escaped the massacre. But I do think she is here now. Somewhere.”

Arc regarded Vahly, his gaze mournful, before he headed deeper into the wood. Vahly whispered to the Source, her heart aching, begging for Nix to be alive.