Page 92

C hilly air scented with the aromas of the first signs of autumn, dying leaves, and fallow ground whipped across Vahly’s face as Yarun and the other dragons soared toward the Lapis palace.

Almost to the palace, Mother, Vahly said to Amona.

Your welcome will be sparse, Daughter. Amona sounded intensely weary. Did she have the plague too? Please do not think it is out of disrespect.

Of course not. It’s a long story, but I have one of the sea kynd.

She could almost feel Amona’s shock and horror through their bond.

He rescued me from the Sea Queen, and my magic is telling me to keep him around. I know. It’s madness. But I have to listen.

I don’t think I can take him into our home , Amona said.

Then keep him caged outside the entrance. But we must keep him alive.

Driven by the increasingly intense prickling push of her magic, Vahly had urged the group to fly hard over the island, stopping only when the dragons absolutely needed a rest. Days of dust clogged the creases of her wrinkled clothing, and her stomach growled with hunger.

Yarun hit the ground roughly, stumbling with fatigue and nearly throwing Vahly to the earth.

As she leapt down, clutching their bags, she noticed an iron cage set beside the entrance to the palace. Ryton’s temporary home. Her stomach turned. She didn’t like this situation. Not one bit.

Shaking off the unease, she faced Yarun. “Thank you.”

The Jade shifted in a blast of white-orange flame, and she jumped back. Yarun’s human form was similar to his dragon shape, lean and short. He had fierce eyes and a scar that ran the full length of his right side.

With a nod of respect, Yarun held a hand out for his bag, and Vahly tossed it to him before turning to follow Arc, Rigel, Haldus, and Ryton up the wide steps of the Lapis palace.

The elves all had a touch of purple beneath their eyes, evidence of their grief and fatigue.

Arc brushed dust from his cloak and hung back, matching step with Vahly.

She gave his arm a quick squeeze, then opened her mind to Kyril.

But it was unnecessary. The gryphon, much larger than Amona now, swooped onto the steps, lion claws digging into the worn stone like they were made of butter.

Vahly’s heart danced as she reached him and pressed her face into the thick, golden fur on his front leg.

He pulled away to dip his head submissively, but she yanked him back up, laughing.

He nuzzled her with a huge but gentle beak, sending images into her mind—the sight of her landing on Yarun’s back, her face flushed and grimy with the journey’s dirt.

She could feel Kyril’s discomfort at her traveling with Yarun.

Don’t worry. I prefer your flying by far, she said, hoping to comfort him.

And she truly must have because Kyril’s presence soothed and empowered her, causing her magic to surge through her veins. She remained in contact with him, her fatigue fleeing away and her lingering injuries dissolving.

As two Lapis guards took a willing and weakened Ryton into the cage and two more escorted Rigel, Haldus, and Ursae inside, Arc joined Vahly. He ran a hand over the gryphon’s tucked wing, smiling.

Kyril lowered his feathered head and remained there, showing submission until Arc touched his beak to release him.

“I blame you,” a raspy voice said, “for all of my new wrinkles, queenie.”

Nix sauntered down the stairs, and Vahly felt as though someone had lit a bright candle inside her heart. Nix was here and alive, and Vahly had at one time thought maybe they’d never speak again. She rushed to Nix and hugged her fiercely.

“Blackwater,” Nix whispered, “I’m so happy you’re still breathing. I thought I’d lost you, girl.”

Nix’s raspy breath tripped, and she held Vahly tighter.

Nix’s many rings pressed into Vahly’s spine and side.

Vahly laughed as Nix fluttered her wings to get them out of the way.

Sighing, Vahly wished they could be at the cider house, running bets and teasing Dramour.

She missed him so much. Ibai and Kemen too.

“That’s quite enough now,” Nix said, backing up and wiping a tear.

She blinked her yellow eyes at Arc. “You saved our Earth Queen.” She took Arc’s hand and patted it gently.

“I am sorry for your loss. There are no words. Would you like for us to participate in a ceremony with you and the others?” Nix gestured to the scar on her palm.

The night they’d mourned the ones Mattin had killed, they’d all offered a blood sacrifice in memory.

Arc touched Nix’s shoulder. “I performed one with Rigel and the others already. But thank you very much for the offer.”

“So you have taken up the crown?” Nix asked.

“I have.” Arc’s lips tightened into a line. “I had little choice.”

Nix gave him a sad grin. “You make a fine Elven King, Arcturus. I have full faith in your ability to bring your kynd to strength again.”

Arc bowed slightly to Nix.

The three of them climbed the steps and walked into the palace, Vahly bracing herself for the pain of seeing her family struck by illness.

The feasting hall had been turned into a hospital, the floors open to the earthblood vents to help the dragons heal.

There had to be a hundred of them—old, young, and in-between—lying around in full dragon form on haphazard beds of velvet, large pieces of pyrite-lined and deep blue lapis lazuli, as well as mounds of shining coins and gold nuggets.

Vahly’s throat closed. Their loved ones had brought their family treasure here to help them heal. She gripped Arc’s arm and Kyril’s fur, her hands shaking.

“So many,” she whispered under the sound of groans and the scrape of tails against the loot they’d gathered over millennia.

Nix took a pitcher of water from Euskal, the narrow-eyed Call Breaker that usually could be found next to bald Miren, having smoke ring blowing contests at the cider house. He carried two more jugs besides, scales mottled with fatigue but not plague, thankfully.

Refilling a cup for a plague-touched member of Lord Maur’s retinue, a large fellow who Vahly thought was named Tuxi, Nix explained the progression of the plague.

“It began with this one’s master.”

“Lord Maur has it?” Vahly hated the dragon, but she didn’t wish eroding scales and a painful death on him.

“He did. He passed yesterday.”

Vahly’s mouth hung open. He’d been such a huge presence in her life, and now he was dead. Just like that.

Nix continued. “Just after I arrived back here, he collapsed when I was dining with Amona and the rest of the Lapis. That’s when Helena noticed the brittle edges of his scales.

The next day his eyes went poppy red, and the following day he left this world.

Soon, ten more had the plague, including Aitor. ”

Vahly’s stomach turned. “No.” Aitor was Nix’s primary spy and a friend to them both. Scarred badly over his mouth and throat, he’d survived a wild battle between the Jades and the Lapis before he’d broken the Call and started working for Nix.

“Aitor is alive. He is actually in my bed at the cider house.” She rolled her eyes. “He is quite enjoying the attention of nearly dying. It seems he will survive, although his ego may slaughter the rest of us. A few have survived this thing. All is not lost. It does feel that way at the moment.”

A youngling, pale blue, slumped beside the doorway.

Vahly knelt and took the dragon’s limp head into her hands, shock chilling her skin. It was Ruda’s younger brother, Zori.

Stones and Blackwater, he looked more like her every day.

Ruda, an older youngling and proud sister, had often helped Helena the healer upstairs in the apothecary chamber.

She held a special place in Vahly’s heart, as they’d spent time picking lavender for Helena in the meadows.

Ruda was the one who’d spoken up when others didn’t ask the tough questions.

And Ruda did a fantastic job with medicines and with rounding up the other younglings when it was needed.

Ruda loved Zori dearly. He was incredibly shy, Ruda’s opposite, and he rarely left their family’s chambers.

Ruda had talked endlessly about Zori’s knack with jewelry.

Zori’s pulse beat sluggishly, and his normally bright, sky blue scales had gone brittle around the edges. Arc gently lifted one of his eyelids. The youngling pulled away weakly but not before they’d seen his eyes. They’d gone completely red, like red hat flowers but bloodied and leaking.

“No…” Vahly clutched the dragon to her and shut her eyes against it all. This had to be killing Ruda.

Kyril clicked, feet shuffling behind Vahly, the bulk of him still in the corridor. He showed her an image of Ruda working alongside Helena.

Vahly and Nix helped Zori into a more comfortable position in one of the only spots left in the great hall. Arc removed his cloak and set it under Zori’s head. Love suffused Vahly at the tender way Arc made certain the clasp didn’t scratch Zori’s ailing, fragile scales.

Nix gave Vahly one more quick hug, then hurried off to help with another dragon across the hall.

Arc stood over Zori and locked eyes with Vahly. “We won’t be able to heal this. It’s…” He glanced at the room of dragons. “It has a deathreach.”

“I’m not familiar with the term.” But she didn’t like how it sounded. At all.

Arc sighed heavily. “Some illnesses, some conditions…they reach right into death. There is no… I don’t know the right word to use in dragon.

When we use our magic to heal, we separate the living flesh and blood from death’s decay.

There is no separation in this plague. We can treat symptoms, but only the strongest will survive once they are taken under. ”

Was that scene from today? she asked Kyril. Is Ruda with Helena on the upper levels?

Earth magic hit Vahly’s chest like a giant fist. She doubled over, not hurting exactly but stunned at its insistency.

“Vahly?” Arc put a hand on her back and Kyril squawked, startling the dragons.

Vahly’s magic was demanding that she run from here with Kyril and get to the Lost Valley. Now.

There were dead and dying Lapis everywhere. She couldn’t leave them. Not until they had this plague under control. She just couldn’t.

Taking a deep breath, she imagined her magic easing into a calm rhythm. “I’m pretty sure I’m being torn in half,” she said, only partly joking. “My power wants me at the Lost Valley, at my birthplace. Kyril too. But I can’t just go…”

Staring out over the bodies, she swallowed, her throat tight.

Arc nodded, his face grave. “It’s your decision.”

But it was no decision at all. Her heart was here, in the Lapis palace with her dragons.

The next hours were filled not with a happy reunion with the Lapis, but with crushing moments that left Vahly gasping with new pain.

They found Linexa, the younglings’ nursemaid, dead in a corridor on the seventh level.

Ruda appeared in Helena’s apothecary, and they had to inform her that Zori had the plague and was currently resting in the great hall.

Since the sea kynd had once had a similar sickness, Vahly questioned Ryton about a cure. But there was none.

“We lost folk by the hundreds.” Ryton leaned against the bars of his cage as the moon rose into the cloudy sky above Red Meadow and threw Vahly’s shadow over his small prison. “And the ones who survived were often infertile.”

Vahly left him, no words in her to ask anything else. She’d worked her hands to bleeding feeding the sick, moving the dead to the burning place on the upper level beyond Amona’s chambers, and twisting the pestle in the mortar to make more poultices and salves.

At last, Vahly found Amona outside the apothecary. Her mother’s eyes were drawn and her face wan. Thankfully, Amona was not sick, but she certainly looked tired to the bone.

They didn’t speak. They only held on to one another under the Lapis symbol carved into the lintel.

The night bled on, a blur of meeting old friends and watching them hurry here and there to help their loved ones. Vahly felt raw, turned inside out.

She collapsed in a heap beside Zori and Ruda. She needed to leave now. Astraea would come for her. And for the Lapis. Vahly had to take Kyril and get to the Lost Valley and find her birthplace. Her earth magic shoved against her breastbone and tugged that particular spot below her heart.

But she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer.

Sleep dragged her into a dreamless void.