“Bri?”

  The coldness that had remained between them since the incident with the dravym filled the air once more now that Jadi recognized her.

  Bri didn’t say anything.

  Jadi’s mouth worked. Her jaw tightened. “Is this Dahra’s decision? Did she make you do this?”

  “It was my decision,” Bri said.

  But there was no time to talk further. A call rang through the cavern, summoning the riders to their dravym. The games were about to begin. Bri’s gaze went to the hole in the ceiling. Sunlight poured through it, and the sounds of an impatient crowd filtered down. Her heart beat fast.

  “You’re going to get yourself killed,” Jadi snapped. She turned on her heel and stalked away.

  Bri found her dravym and recognized it with relief as the calmest and smallest of the red team’s. One of the stable hands hoisted her into the saddle, and she grabbed the reins and slid her feet into the stirrups, feeling strangely calm.

  Another dravym shouldered into hers, and her mount hissed and flapped its wings angrily. The other dravym hissed back, snapping its jaws, and its rider did nothing to restrain it.

  Alarr.

  “Best watch yourself, rat,” he sneered at her before he passed. His dravym let out another angry squeal, and he wrestled it back this time with a yank of the reins.

  Bri paid a palm against the neck of her dravym to soothe it. Her mind itched as she touched the creature. She had a flash of irritation that was not her own. It was wilder, instinctive. The sensation tunneled through her thoughts and was gone, leaving a hollow feeling in its wake.

  She wondered.

  Then, Dahra was at her side with a key in her hand and a bunch of open manacles dangling from chains at her belt. She bent over the ankle manacle around Bri’s leg, and Bri felt pressure, and then air rushing over her exposed skin where the manacle had been.

  She kept her face neutral.

  “Ride well,” Dahra said before moving on to the next rider.

  Another call sounded, and the riders closest to the center of the room urged their mounts toward the sky.

  Wings beat the air, and then Jadi was beside her again, leaning to the side to yell into her ear.

  “Keep to the top of the arena,” she cried. “Don’t try to play the game, don’t do anything except ride the circle and dodge the others, and for lords’ sake, stay away from Alarr. Do all this, and you might survive.”

  Then, Jadi wheeled her mount around and vanished through the hole in the roof with a furl of leathery wings and a flash of oiled leather and bronze.

  Bri lifted her palm from her dravym’s neck, and held tight to the reins, and then her mount leaped into flight and soared through the hole after the others and into the blinding sunlight.

  ~

  “I don’t know where she went,” Abis said. “She punched a man who came to examine her, and the captain had her taken away. That was the last I saw of her.”

  Kael was still, containing his disappointment with effort. He felt as though he were falling.

  Auberon was less restrained. He rose with a curse and paced to the rail that edged the tier of seats. He braced himself against it and put his head down a moment, and then he stalked back to the bench and threw himself down on it.

  Abis rose nervously. “If you please, sir, I must be getting back.”

  “Thank you,” Kael said, and paid her generously.

  “It was her,” Auberon said hoarsely. “It was her, but we have no lead after this unless we find that foul captain. How can you be so calm? Here—someone in this arena must know something. I’ll search every mind until—”

  Kael seized Auberon’s wrist. “Sit down,” he ground out. “Control yourself.”

  “Then give me a sword, if you won’t free my hands,” Auberon hissed. “I will go to the docks myself and make someone talk.”

  “Impetuousness will get us nowhere,” Kael replied. “Control yourself.”

  Auberon glared at him. “Give me a sword and say that again.”

  “I certainly don’t trust you with steel right now,” replied Kael coolly. “Now, sit. I’m expecting an informant.”

  Trumpets sounded, and riders on the backs of lizard-like creatures appeared from a hole in the sandy floor like wasps swarming from an underground nest.

  “What are those creatures?” Kael asked a man sitting near them. “They aren’t dragons.”

  “They’re called dravym,” the man answered, giving him a baffled look as if Kael had asked him something a child ought to know.

  The trumpets blared again, and a booming voice began to narrate a story.

  “What’s this?” Kael asked the man, who sighed heavily.

  “A pageant before the games begin,” the other man said with a bored wave of his hand. “Something about the legend of the Austrisian dragonslayer and the Sighters.”

  “Dragonsayer,” Auberon said. “Seekers.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” the man responded with a sniff. He leaned back in his seat and sipped his goblet with an air of irritation.

  “Quiet, please,” a woman sitting below them commanded. “You’re being too loud.”

  Kael and Auberon exchanged a glance.

  The legend of the dragonsayer?

  Ironic.

  “The vile Seekers appeared, spreading their poisonous magic across the land,” the speaker’s voice boomed as the story continued to play out before them. “They thought they were the most powerful mages in the world, but they were no match for the dragonsayer and his dragon fire!”

  A rider detached from the rest and landed in front of the actors in the gray cloaks. The rider dismounted and threw a fistful of red powder at the Seekers, who collapsed as the colored dust bloomed across the sand like smoke from a bomb.

  “The Seekers died in agony at the fire that leaped from the dragonsayer of Austrisia’s mouth!” the speaker cried.

  The crowd cheered as the rider portraying the dragonsayer lifted his fists in triumph.

  “Well, isn’t this delightful,” Auberon muttered with a roll of his eyes. “And so accurate. Can we leave now? We’ve talked to the girl.”

  “Hush,” the woman beside them hissed, giving him a look of annoyance. “I’m trying to listen to the story. Some of us still appreciate culture and history.”

  “Madam,” Auberon responded. “This is utter nonsense. You would be better off listening to the sound of piss against a wall.”

  She drew her cloak more tightly around her body, her look aghast. “Sir, this is no fiction. This is a historical reenactment!”

  Auberon’s fingers twitched, and Kael laid a restraining hand on his wrist.

  “Indeed,” he said to the woman in a kind, calm voice. “So instead of quarreling, let us return our attention to it.”

  She huffed and shifted away from them on the bench, and Auberon shook off Kael’s hand with a scowl.

  “It isn’t as if I was going to attack her,” he grumbled.

  Kael appeared unconvinced.

  The trumpets played again, and the play was over. The woman threw them another wrathful look as the riders circled the arena in tight formation before the beginning of the game.

  “I’m growing impatient, Monarchist,” Auberon muttered.

  But Kael wasn’t listening. He was looking at one of the riders with his brows drawn together and his eyes narrowed.

  ~

  Bri scanned the arena as she clung to the dravym’s reins and followed the rider in front of her. The wind blowing in her eyes made them water, and she was up much higher than she’d been when she’d ridden inside the launching room during Jadi’s lesson. Looking down made her stomach tighten, so she kept her eyes up. The crowd surrounding them was a blur that she ignored. Her attention was on the net over the top of the arena—could she somehow hack her way through it before the archers posted around the top of the stadium shot her down?

  She was strung tight, but not afraid. She was too focused.

  The scab over her memory prickled and crackled with the dravym swirling around her above and below. She felt threaded with a strange power that licked across her bones and whispered in her blood. She could feel the memories at the edges of her mind like shadows of monsters just below the surface of dark water. Something sharp and strong sparked inside her as the trumpets called, declaring the game’s beginning.

  The other riders fanned across the arena, casting swooping shadows over the sand. Bri’s dravym made to follow, but she held it back, studying the others, remembering the broken and bleeding riders she’d seen carried back from games and Jadi’s words to keep flying a circuit in the air.

  Her only goal was to survive.

  Alarr was playing aggressively, forcing dravym and riders to swerve and dive to avoid the claws of his mount. When he was distracted with the turquoise team, Jadi and her dravym shot toward the gold nest in a desperate bid for the team’s ball.

  Alarr saw her and wheeled. Jadi appeared too focused to notice him cutting up toward her from underneath.

  He was going to knock her straight off her dravym.

  “Jadi!” Bri screamed, but the red team leader didn’t hear her above the roar of the crowd and the playing of those damned trumpets.

  Bri hissed a curse under her breath and abandoned her path around the arena as Jadi had ordered.

  She intercepted Alarr’s descent, her dravym snapping at his. Alarr wheeled on her and drew a knife from his belt. It flashed in the sunlight, an illegal piece in the game, and Bri’s eyes focused on it as a stab of strange longing went through her.

  Alarr lunged to cut the bridle from her dravym, and instead of shying away, she grabbed his arms, grappling with him in the middle of the sky for the knife. He grunted in shock and tried to incapacitate her with an elbow to the face as she’d done when they’d met. She dodged, every movement instinctive and fluid as if she’d practiced this. As if she had fought hand to hand with men in the sky before.

  The knife slipped from Alarr’s fingers and fell between them. Bri reached to grab it, and Alarr used the moment to slam his fist into her stomach. She reeled back, and he drove his dravym into hers, knocking the beast back. The dravym wheeled around each other, and Alarr drew another blade from his boot and swung at Bri’s neck.

  She yanked her dravym back, and they went tumbling back, but not before she grabbed Alarr’s reins, bringing him down with her.

  The hit a balcony halfway up from the arena floor, the dravym smashing benches as they rolled across the stone. She flew from her saddle and hit the ground hard, pain shooting through her neck and shoulder, but she barely felt it. The crowd screamed with excitement, leaping out of the way as the dravym lunged for each other. Bri’s helmet had broken; she wrenched it off and tossed it aside as she rose. The wind caught her hair and streamed it behind her. Her ears were ringing from the impact.

  Where was Alarr?

  Then, his hands closed around her throat, and he threw her to the ground and slammed a boot against her chest.

  ~

  Auberon jumped to his feet as the riders crashed into the seats two tiers below them. Beside him, Kael had also risen. They moved in unison to the rail, and Auberon’s heart was in his throat, for there was something familiar about the smaller rider, the color of the dark curly hair that flowed from beneath her helmet as it came off, the way she struggled as the bigger rider grabbed her in a stranglehold.

  Could it be—?

  Kael grasped the rail with both hands and leaned over. “Can you see?” he demanded with a note of desperation his voice.

  Auberon was trying. The brawnier rider kept blocking his view, and people were crowding at the balcony below, but—

  “Kael,” Auberon shouted as the smaller rider wriggled out from beneath the boot of her attacker, and he caught a glance of her face. Joy burst in his chest. He almost laughed aloud, but it came out as a sound halfway between a strangled cry and a sob.

  It was their girl. Their dragon girl. It was her! Alive, and here right beneath their noses.

  For a moment, he didn’t know what to do.

  “Quickly, Ari,” Kael cried, and then the Monarchist leaped over the rail in a swirl of cloak and dropped to the balcony below, landing in a crouch. Roused from his stupor by Kael’s use of his nickname, Auberon followed, hitting the ground with slightly less grace. Kael strode to the second rail and pushed aside the patrons leaning over to gawk at the fight below. He leaped, and Auberon followed.

  “Out of the way,” the Seeker growled when one man tried to block his path.

  The man tried to mount a protest, but Auberon pressed a hand to his forehead and knocked him out cold with a burst of Seeker magic.

  Sighters indeed. He’d show them what a Seeker could do when properly angry.

  Auberon threw himself over the second rail and landed next to a shattered bench. The crowd here had cleared away and watched nervously from beneath the awnings. Shadows swooshed overhead from the circling winged beasts and their riders. The crowd across the arena roared. But all Auberon could see or hear was Briand.

  The larger rider grabbed Briand by the hair and dragged her to the edge of the balcony. He dangled her over the side, and she grabbed the rail with both hands, hanging by her fingertips. Kael reached him first and knocked him back. The rider, not expecting this, fell back without resistance, and Kael dropped to his knees, grabbed the man by the front of the shirt, and pummeled him with his fist repeatedly.

  “Ari!” he shouted, his face laced with the closest thing to panic Auberon had ever heard from the Monarchist.

  Auberon ran to the rail and seized Briand’s outstretched hand the same moment she began to fall. His hand caught hers, and as their fingers touched, a blinding rush of power shot through him like lightning, down his arm, through his palm, and into hers. Auberon screamed at the pain.

  As a scorch of magic passed through him, Briand’s eyes snapped open wide, and she gasped.

  ~

  As soon as the man in the gray cloak’s hand closed over Bri’s, a searing blast of power shot into her fingers, up her wrist, and through the rest of her body like a fire-treated sword plunged beneath her skin. She was like a brand, a match. No, a powder keg.

  And she ignited.

  For a moment, she couldn’t hear or see anything. Her skin was singed. Her thoughts flattened like trees knocked down by a cyclone. Her vision drowned in white light. It was as if she was floating in a salt water pool, surrounded by gray clouds of mist. Bri felt nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing.

  One exhale, one dangling blink of empty white and reeling pain, and then, it all came rushing back with a howl. The clouds were violently scalded away as the sky peeled back, chased by tongues of fire. A million memories converged on her at once, spiraling through her mind. She screamed, but it was a scream of triumph. She locked eyes with the man hanging over the rail above her, the man keeping her from falling to the floor of the arena. Long hair, pale eyes, a cold mouth set with fear.

  A word rose from deep within her.

  Auberon.

  “Pull me up, Ari,” she gasped.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  AUBERON’S FACE BRIGHTENED like the sun after a hurricane. He seized her other arm and pulled her over the rail and into his arms. He pressed his face against her hair and wrapped her in a crushing hug.

  “Dragon girl,” he whispered, and then he pulled back and looked into her face. “You remember? You know who I am? You know who you are?”

  Who she was.

  Briand. Her name wasn’t Bri, it was Briand Varryda.

  She almost sobbed as the knowledge coursed through her mind.

  She remembered.

  It was all crashing through her now, a waterfall turning into a deluge, into a flood, an ocean—a lifetime of memories unleashed all at once in a glorious agony of relief. Climbing the walls of her uncle’s estate. Losing her father. Dubbok games with soldiers, climbing trees in the forest. Drinking the poison to save Bran. Summoning dragons at Barrow Bridge. Gillspin. Thief-queen. Capture. Faster and faster, her memories unspun, flashing before her. Auberon’s interrogation. Stealing away from the castle in the dead of night. Kael—

  Kael.

  She wrenched away with his name on her lips. Auberon let her go.

  “Kael!”

  She screamed it.

  Kael turned from where he was still kneeling over Alarr. Their gazes collided. All the sound sucked from the air, and Briand felt her heart crash against her ribs as she took a step toward him.

  Kael let Alarr drop to the ground as he staggered to his feet as if in a trance. His mouth moved in the shape of her name. His eyes scorched hers. The wind caught his hair and the edge of his cloak, whipping them, and his throat convulsed as he swallowed.

  He took a step, she took a step, and then they were running, and they locked their arms around each other. Briand’s fingers twisted in Kael’s hair, and his hands cradled her face. And they were kissing like starving beggars tasting bread. They were fire touched to a parched forest. He was home at the end of the longest journey in history, and she was the prodigal returned, and he was lost, and she had found him. Briand felt tears on her cheeks, and she didn’t know if they were Kael’s or hers, for they were both weeping. All she could see was his face. The rest of the world fell away. Even the deluge of memories sweeping back over her quieted. She and Kael were alone in a sacred space bound by love.

  “I remembered you,” she gasped against his lips. “Even though I couldn’t remember anything at all about who I was or where I came from, still, I dreamed of you. Somehow, I knew you existed, and the lack of you was the worst grief. Your eyes haunted me, and your voice was in my waking thoughts.” She leaned closer, and their lips brushed as she spoke. “Kael of Estria, you’ve sunk into the very fiber of who I am, and even amnesia cannot take you away.”

  “My darling,” Kael whispered back, his eyes searching hers with every word he spoke. “I’ve died every day that we were apart. When I thought you were gone forever, I was a desperate man. Never die again. I love you. I love you.”

  A laugh wrenched from her throat. “I promise I’ll live forever if you’re with me.”

 

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