I drifted toward slumber, feeling Draki waiting for me on the other side. I sank deeper, and he dug his hooks into my consciousness, picking away at my defenses. There was only one way to make him stop. It would put everyone around me in danger.
I did it anyway.
On the cusp between awareness and sleep, I let him in.
“Little warrior.”
Draki looks just as he did the last time I saw him, on the bluffs—silver hair flowing, eyes glowing golden. The sharp definition of bone and muscle visible across his face, his body, give him the mien of a weapon—elegant, lethal. He stands on an unfamiliar shore, waves lapping at his feet, not the least bit surprised to see me.
I float a few paces in front of him. The landscape around me is as blank as unmarked parchment, as if something—likely the gods in my blood—is concealing every trace of my whereabouts.
“You knew I wasn’t dead, didn’t you?” I say. “You’ve known this whole time.”
He steps closer. “I told you, you are not so easy to kill. Did you truly think I would let you leap off a cliff to your death?”
“You let me jump?”
He flashes his teeth—a beautiful, savage smile. “There were distractions. Interruptions. I want you all to myself, and I will accept nothing less. That is why I have left you alone to wallow in the remains of your namesake’s temple. But I believe we have waited long enough.”
He knows where I am, yet he hasn’t come for me. This is another game, one only he knows the rules to.
“I’m going to kill you for what you did to Aillira’s Temple and Stony Harbor.”
His eyes sparkle with merriment. Serpent eyes, inherited from his mother. “You are going to try, and I shall enjoy every moment.”
“Where are the Daughters of Aillira you took? I want them released.” Though I’ve met few of the other god-gifted women, we are bonded. We are kin. I will fight for them.
I will kill for them.
Draki’s laughter chills me. “The magiskas stay with me. They are mine, as you are. I do have a gift for you, though—someone you thought lost. Someone you might like returned.”
“Who?”
He tilts his head. “If you want him, you must retrieve him.”
“Where are you?”
“Dragon Bay.” He crooks a finger at me. “Come get me, little warrior.”
CHAPTER 10
REYKER
He stared at the fortress, rising like a stone reef out of the wild waves surrounding it. Mere weeks ago, he’d been dragged to the fortress in Selkie’s Quay at the end of a chain, tortured inside its walls. Now it was up to him to breach it.
The villagers had gotten word that the Dragonmen were coming, and had abandoned their cottages, retreating to the fortress. Reyker needed to get the Dragonmen across the mad currents and past the archers waiting on the rooftop turrets. He rubbed a hand over his face, knowing what he had to do.
“I need your help,” he told the two Daughters of Aillira. A tide-teller and a fire-sweeper, the one Draki had forced to believe she was in love with Reyker.
The tide-teller cowered from him. The fire-sweeper spit on his boots.
Just like Lira would have.
Reyker pushed the thought away. He’d pressed Draki into freeing the magiskas’ minds, but Reyker still needed them. Draki wouldn’t free the rest of the captives from Stony Harbor until Reyker succeeded. He’d explained the deal he made to the Daughters of Aillira, but they didn’t believe him. Why should they?
Coaxing wouldn’t work. He’d have to threaten them. He’d have to use the weaker girl against the stronger one, a tactic he’d learned from the warlord.
Reyker pressed a blade to the tide-teller’s throat. “You’ll lead us safely through the current.” He looked at the fire-sweeper. “And you’ll burn up any arrows shot at us before they land, or I’ll kill your friend.”
She spit on his boots again, but her eyes dimmed.
He didn’t have the energy to hate himself.
The Selkies had taken most of the boats to the fortress and burned any left behind. Reyker had sent Dragonmen to find something to ferry them across the water, and they came back with three sad, leaking vessels. Reyker sat in the bow of the first boat, beside the tide-teller, shouting orders to the Dragonmen rowing based on the direction of the girl’s pointing finger.
The boats rocked madly, but the tide-teller’s legs were steady as steel, born for this. When they were in range, the Selkie archers lit their arrows on fire and shot them into the sky. The Dragonmen lifted their shields in precaution, but the fire-sweeper raised her arms, and with a wave of her hand, the fire on the arrows swelled and turned each projectile to ash before fizzling out, nothing but harmless embers raining down.
The archers realized what she was. The next volley of arrows had no flames, but Reyker had brought a torch in anticipation, and the girl took it, moving her hand over it. A mist of fire spread above their heads, burning up most of the arrows. A few slipped past, slamming into the boat, and Reyker pushed the girls behind him, under his shield.
Sudden pain clawed up his side. Flames curled from the fire-sweeper’s fingers where they clasped the hem of his tunic—stupid of him not to expect her to try to kill him the first chance she got. He nearly dropped the shield as more arrows fell. At the next lull, he shoved the girls onto their bellies and set the shield on top of them before draping himself over the side of the boat and smothering the flames in the sea.
The vessel made its way to the foot of the islet. More archers awaited them, but the Dragonmen’s arrows thinned their ranks. Then Reyker and the other Dragonmen were on the stairs, swords and axes out, cutting their way through one Selkie warrior after another, until they were at the doors to the fortress. A small army stood before them.
Reyker closed his eyes. He didn’t want to do this. A Dragonman no more—that’s what he’d promised himself, what he’d promised Lira.
But Lira was dead.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Draki’s face on every warrior.
He lifted his sword. He screamed, pouring out his grief and fury, and the Dragonmen screamed with him. They rushed forward, crashing into the Selkies, and then he heard nothing but the black river’s call: Again. More. All.
Dragonmen tossed the dead over the side of the fortress, until the sea around the islet was red, corpses bumping against the rocks in a macabre dance. They’d surrendered, at the end, but Reyker had been too lost in his battle-madness to stop the Dragonmen from stabbing half the warriors who’d kneeled before them.
As the blood dried on his weapons, he went to the side of the fortress that faced land, the rolled-up flag beneath his arm. He wanted to burn it. Instead, he unfurled it so it fell down the stone wall: the Star of the Dragon.