Lightfall, p.30
Lightfall, page 30
“I would gladly eat him on your behalf.”
“No. This is my kill. We’ll go when I’m ready.” She trudged up the shore and sank down at Bresnyar’s side, the heat of his scales quickly drying her armor. “Then I’ll decide about the spy.”
“And after that?”
She dug her elbow into his hide. “Don’t press your luck, Scales. Let’s head back to the cliff.”
Bresnyar stretched and yawned, settling his chin on the ground and shutting his eyes. “It’s pleasant here. I think I’d like to stay.”
“Oh, now you don’t want to move around? How convenient, you overgrown lizard.”
One fiery eye flicked open, revolving to stare at her. Then the wind plunged out of her as she went soaring through the air toward the water. By the time she realized Bresnyar had flicked her off the shore with the tip of his tail, the water crashed over her, the cold stealing whatever was left of the air in her lungs.
She surged wildly up, breaking the surface with a gasp and plowing toward the shore. “Bresnyar! You can’t just toss people because you don’t want to move! What’s the matter with you?”
“Ah, but I just did.” She picked up a handful of mud and flung it at his muzzle, and he twisted lazily away, chortling. “You’re quite immature when you’re angry.” He heaved himself to his feet and stretched. “Fortunately for you, I am quite hungry, so I suppose we’ll go back up.”
Ashe raised a brow. “No.”
Bresnyar stretched his long neck and shook out his wings. “I beg your pardon?”
She perched her hands on her hips and flashed him the savage grin that sent the deadliest Blood Hive fighters cringing. “No, I just decided I like it here! Let’s stay for a few more hours. Your stomach can wait.”
Bresnyar narrowed his eyes. “I wouldn’t suggest that if I were you.”
“What are you going to do…finally eat me?”
With a tree-quaking roar, he sprang forward and grabbed her in the cage of his fist, lifting her from the shore. With a surge of his wings, they flew.
The nearest sensation was a journey by augwain—but even that couldn’t compare to this, nothing in her whole life did: the exhilaration of the treetops spiraling away below, the wind tearing her hair, her stomach plunging away and her heart surging into her throat. She nearly wept at the terrifying ecstasy, Bresnyar’s claws bearing her up above the Calaluns themselves; then they shot back down onto their ledge, landing softy and safely on the stone. The dragon opened his fist and Ashe rolled from it, coming up to her feet panting, staring at him. “That was…” she broke off with wild laughter. “Holy gods.”
Bresnyar blinked, brows tweaking. “That didn’t frighten you?”
“Was it meant to?” She tore her hands back through her hair, hunger and exhaustion forgotten. “Again.”
He flashed a draconian grin. “If you wish.”
“Oh, I wish. What’s the best way? In your hand again?”
“Wingmaidens tend to ride our backs, but they have saddles.”
“I’ve always preferred bareback myself.” She grabbed his wing joint and swung onto his spine, pressing her knees into the hinge where his long neck began. “Like this?”
“Yes. I’ll go slowly for you…a lovely airborne trot.”
“No.” Recklessness spiked through Ashe, bending her low on the dragon’s neck. “Show me how fast you are.”
His ribs rumbled against the insides of her thighs—a chuckle at the challenge. “As you wish, Ilyanak.”
Golden wings spread out, pushed down, and caught the frigid air; then they shot upward into the sky.
The wind screamed by, raking Ashe’s ears and thudding down every inch of her armor. Her stomach vacated her body to wait for her return on the ledge, and she choked back an exhilarated scream as Bresnyar rose above the low cloudbank wrapping the Calaluns, the frozen droplets clinging to Ashe’s skin. With one powerful thrust, he launched forward, and this time she did shout in disbelief that she was riding the wind astride a dragon.
The clouds whipped into a gale as Bresnyar tore like a specter across their faces, every stroke of his wings sending him forward swifter than an arrow’s flight. Ashe could do nothing but cling to him and toss up wild prayers that she wouldn’t slip off as they hurtled deeper into the Calaluns, the clouds peeling back to reveal taller peaks straight in the dragon’s path.
“Bresnyar!” Ashe shouted in warning. “Bres—!”
He slammed into the first mountain and pushed off, laughter booming like thunder when he latched onto the next cliff and shoved away to the one past it, then the next. Every lurch sent Ashe’s insides somersaulting, and her shouts dissolved into laughter like his. When they reached the last mountaintop, Bresnyar leaped and spread his wings, catching the wind howling through the crags. It punched them forward again, faster than ever, and Ashe dug her boots into his wing-hinges and whooped with sheer joy. The dragon cut forward like a gleaming golden dagger, the breeze shifting around them while they traveled. Salination impregnated the clouds; the atmosphere thickened.
Bresnyar vaulted upward without warning, sides pumping, neck stretching as he rose up through the clouds, bursting above them into the glorious light of sunset. The thin air pricked Ashe’s lungs and light burned across her face, the same gold as the dragonhide between her knees. Tufts of condensation lay below them, an endless, fleecy mountain range hiding the world. Bresnyar stopped flying, hanging suspended like a dark decoration against the shimmering sun.
Ashe knew what was coming. So when the dragon spread his wings, she spread her arms—let go of everything.
Together, they plunged.
Down through the clouds, the wind erasing Ashe’s tears of joy the moment they left her eyes, she and the dragon fell for endless seconds—then twisted and leveled out, bursting from the cloudbank and shooting over the Agerios Sea. Fathoms of blue water, dappled by the setting sun, spanned out on every side. Bresnyar dipped his talons in the waves, tossing up a whitecap surf and soaking Ashe’s hair. She laughed when he tucked his limbs and spun, letting her do as he did, trailing her fingertips through the water and feeling the world around her as she never had before.
When he righted them both, Ashe opened her arms again, breathing in the world, the sea, and the warmth of the dragon’s body that kept her from freezing to his back. There were no pike walls or prison catacombs here. No Wardens, no royalty, no enemies. Guilt, grief, and worry peeled away, falling into the sea as the wind turned her hair to a storm and the exhilaration of flight reduced her anger, hurt, and shame to cinders.
This was what it was to be truly free.
They flew for nearly half an hour into the ranges of the ocean before Bresnyar slowed and descended toward a dark mound climbing from the equally-dark horizon: a ripple of palm trees, the newly-minted moonlight reflecting on undisturbed sandbanks and finger shoals.
Bresnyar banked and made several small, tight turns to angle his descent, then touched down on the remote island and swiveled his head to peer at Ashe. “Not that you’re tremendously heavy, but I’m tremendously tired, and we never did eat. So if you wouldn’t mind…”
She slid down, peeled off her boots, and picked her way down the shore past washed-up starfish and sand coins and shells sparkling like precious gems. Bresnyar reclined near the trees, resting his wings; when Ashe looked back, she could see their varicose veins pulsing steadily. “How long can you fly before you have to rest?”
“I’ve only ever broken down in flight once, the night Ileria died, when I tried to rush her to our Legion’s healers. It’s less a matter of distance, and more how we pace ourselves. A dragon has two hearts, did you know that? But if he flies too hard, both may stop.”
Ashe reached the very tip of the surfline and wiggled her toes into the wet sand. “You must’ve really loved Ileria, to almost kill yourself trying to save her.”
“The bond between Wingmaiden and dragon is different on the human side of things, or so I’m told. I doubt you could ever feel any equivalent. But imagine if your life and another’s were so tightly woven together that without their breath, your lungs would fail. If their heart no longer beat, neither would yours. If you wondered every moment where they were, and what they were doing…not always consciously, but in the back of your mind—”
“And you couldn’t help hoping even if you did something that put them in danger, they’d somehow be all right. That maybe you could mend things no matter how badly you broke them…no matter how far you pushed them away.”
Bresnyar was quiet for a moment. “So. Perhaps you do know the bond.”
She tried so hard not to think of any bonds lately; not to wonder if Maleck would’ve searched for her had she not used such calculated blows to destroy that unfathomable selvenar bond between.
But what was done was done. He was home, and now she would do what needed doing with Kashar, decide how to handle the Mahasari spy, then find a home for herself.
Leaving the surf, she went up the shore to Bresnyar and crouched to look into his eyes. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
He studied her in turn. “Your scent has changed. I smell no sorrow in it tonight. No despair.”
She laid her hand on his snout, his breath warming her all the way through. “Tonight, I don’t feel like giving up.”
And in this place, with the world so open around them, promising a new beginning…tonight was enough.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
THE BAD DAYS returned with the onset of another cold snap. Cistine woke most mornings with wrists and knees sore from the cold despite her heap of blankets, stirring up memories of Kalt Hasa. Though these things didn’t make her quite as unsteady as they used to, she retreated to Darlaska in her mind more often and fell asleep slowly, nipped with urgency that time crawled by without the treaty and Salvotor was not yet convicted.
But there was no helping either one. According to Thorne, the Chancellors still deliberated over Talheim’s proposal, but their attention was mostly on reports from Siralek, and now cleaning up the mess of Nygaten; and she couldn’t blame them or rush their work.
Busyness kept her sane despite poor sleep, bad dreams, and the low gnaw of dread in her stomach since the incident with the Atrasat. She spent every spare moment training, cracking the cipher and amassing a list of spies with Thorne, meeting with Mira and Ariadne, and pushing the others to visit Morten for their inkings—or visiting him herself.
“Honestly, I wish we had these years ago.” Quill flexed shamelessly, sitting cross-legged on Cistine’s feet, pinning her boots to the training hall floor while she counted aloud through her core-strengthening exercises. “Think of all the terror I could’ve struck into Vassoran hearts.”
Cistine grinned as she hefted up, wrapped her arms around her bent knees, and studied his fresh inkings: broad raven wings like spirals of shadow spread cross his arms, chest, and torso. “I don’t think it would’ve been worth going into battle shirtless just to show off.”
“You’re painfully underestimating the lengths I’ll go to for a good hair-raising swagger, Stranger.” Quill thrust her back down to the floor, then flashed his palms. “Again.”
Groaning, she swung herself up and landed two punches into Quill’s hands, fell back, sat up, and punched, again and again.
“What’s bothering you?” he asked after several repetitions. “Usually you’re ready to stop after fifty of these.”
“What isn’t?” she panted. “Salvotor, the suspended trial, the treaty, my bad feelings. And now all these attacks, and however they’re connected to the rest of it.”
“Fair.” Quill scratched below the fringe of his hair, then offered his palms again. “I don’t envy you and Thorne, especially about the treaty. I’d take battle over politicking any day. But I can’t think of two people better for negotiating the peace between kingdoms. You’ve already done it between yourselves, so what’s a few more minds to change?”
Cistine smiled, resting a moment against the floor. “I appreciate that.”
“Anytime.” He curled his fingers twice, and she moaned, hauling herself up to land two more cross-hooks.
When she lowered herself back to the floor this time, footsteps scuffed on stone, announcing Ariadne’s arrival.
Cistine sat up slowly this time, arms curled under her knees, a greeting dead on her lips; Ariadne’s hands were wrapped, hair bound sternly at the back of her head, eyes flashing for battle. Mira descended behind her, face impassive but a strange melancholy in her eyes, and followed Ariadne to the side of the room lined with grainsack mannequins for swordplay.
“Ari?” Cistine called after her.
Mira held up her hand. “She needs time right now.”
Ariadne took up a fighting stance halfway down the dim room, saber braced just above shoulder height, elbow cocked and level, gaze fixed straight ahead. Then she lunged with a perfect right-guided swing, ripping into the first grainsack just below its left arm.
“Again.” Mira’s voice belonged to the Vassoran guard she’d once been, rising through the practiced calm of the counselor she’d become. Ariadne danced back and plowed in again, bringing down uppercuts from the right and left, spinning behind the mannequin to deliver a deft slice at kidney-height, then a backhanded stroke plunged straight into the ribs. The frenzy in her movements was not bloodlust; it was the same hectic anger and fear that drove Cistine into augment training with Quill after her worst dreams, into sparring with Thorne when she couldn’t sleep.
Whatever Ariadne and Mira had unburied in their session today, it rocked her foundation.
She landed two more blows against the mannequin, and Mira asked, “Who are you striking?”
“That gods-forsaken kurak,” Ariadne spat.
“What does that mean?” Cistine whispered.
Quill rested his chin on her knee, frowning. “Nothing good. I don’t know how to say it on the common tongue exactly, but Helga would’ve washed our mouths out for it.”
Mira cut a hand toward the mannequin. “Hit it again.”
Ariadne’s sword severed the left arm, then the right.
“Again!”
The next strike walloped the target so hard, it rocked on its fastenings and nearly crashed to the floor.
“Again, Ariadne!”
She bellowed in rage, arms pulling and sailing in a succession of swings too quick to track; then, with one last deft swing, she severed the mannequin’s head.
For a moment, there was no sound but the grain pouring out onto the floor.
“I’m afraid the trial won’t be enough, Mira.” Ariadne gazed at the devastated mannequin, the words a close to whatever conversation brought them here today. “It terrifies me how badly I want to kill him even though it doesn’t bring me a future. I fear his darkness is in me. That I’ll never be rid of it.”
“Don’t mistake feelings for actions,” Mira said swiftly, “and don’t think that wanting to do something is the same cruelty as doing it. Wasn’t it you who told me during our first session that the True God can change our hearts if we ask? But he cannot undo our actions. It’s in the stepping over that we create wounds which never heal.”
Ariadne sucked in a damp breath through her nostrils and slowly nodded.
Mira walked to her, took her shoulders, and turned her in a sharp pivot. “There is a gift in you, Ariadne Lightfall.” At the sound of her Name, all three warriors stiffened. “You understand that, don’t you? You have a gift of love. Your task was not to become a visnpresta or to serve in a temple, it was simply to use your gift. Salvotor has not taken that power from you, you withhold yourself from using it as long as you dance with him in the past, in that apartment.” She released Ariadne, gripped her sword-wielding fist, and pressed it to her heart. “Use your gift, and you can still change the world. But you keep it hidden as long as you keep dancing with him.”
Ariadne stared at the saber’s hilt, then raised her eyes to Mira. “If there is some way to do that, why has the True God not shown me?”
Mira tilted her head. “And what if he already has? Are you listening?”
Cistine tapped Quill, and he let her up. They slipped out in silent accord; Ariadne’s pain was not theirs to witness today.
But it was all Cistine could think about on her way to and from Morten’s house that afternoon, where he worked over her inkings in silence, bereft of his usual jovial smiles. The cold hadn’t changed things just for her; melancholy gripped the courthouse, the whole city, and her friends—a sense like this trial and this strange season might never end. Perhaps there would never be a treaty, or a verdict, a thief caught or justice brought for Detlyse Halet, Siralek, and Nygaten. She didn’t like thinking that way, but today, everything seemed so hopeless.
She had to do something about it.
The idea came when she left Morten’s, passing the solid, frozen fountain in the desolate square outside. She stared at it for several minutes, a hopeful notion forming in melancholy’s cracks; then she took off at a run all the way back to the courthouse.
The cold stung her nose when she hurried into the peristyle at last, mostly deserted at this hour but for a lone figure hurrying away from the main courtyard toward the visitors’ apartments. Excitement pierced Cistine’s wandering thoughts when the wind tugged the woman’s hood back, revealing short-cropped dark hair and russet skin. “Daria?”
She halted, eyes wide. “Princess?”
Cistine jogged to join her. “What are you doing in the courthouse? Were you looking for me?”
“Not tonight, no.” Daria glanced back the way she came, stuffing bloodied knuckles and bruised fingers into her pockets like she’d been hitting walls. “I didn’t say before…it would be poor manners to seem like I’m procuring favors, knowing you were with Chancellor Thorne that night we met, and his affinity for Blaykrone…”
Cistine’s pulse sped at the mention. “What about Blaykrone?”
