Glasnith had erased the names of those defeated gods, and the victors had taken control of their gifts in the mortal realm. I only knew of Veronis through blasphemous stories and scraps from a forbidden book, and I knew nothing of the rest of them. But Draki did, from his serpent-goddess mother who’d helped Gwylor imprison them.
“Why would you help me? What do you want from me?” I wouldn’t pretend to care for Draki, wouldn’t touch him willingly, not even as a ruse to get me out of this place. Maybe not even to save Garreth.
“When you finally give in to me, little warrior, your power will become my power.”
I met the intensity of his gaze and did not flinch. He had his reasons, and I had mine. “Teach me more,” I said.
Reyker was there that night, as soon as I slept and dreamed, awaiting me in the ruins. He opened his arms and I backed away. “How do I know it’s you and not him?”
“Who?”
“How many times have I been fooled, in these dreams and now when I’m awake, into thinking you are alive? I’ve hoped and wanted and let myself believe, only to have you torn away from me. You are dead! And I cannot stand it!”
Reyker shook his head. “I am alive. You are dead, Lira. Aren’t you?”
He sounded too much like he had inside the Mountain of Fire, that false version that Draki had worn to trick me. “Stop! Do not seek me here again. It hurts too much. I cannot trust you, and I cannot trust myself.”
“Where are you?” he asked. “What’s happened to you?”
The answer was too difficult, too absurd. “I am in the Halls of Suffering. I am in the Mist. Or I might as well be.”
He reached for me, and this moment mingled with others—he was Reyker, he was Draki, he was both and neither, a nightmare, a dream. I screamed in frustration, in agony, digging my fingers into my hair.
“Lira?”
“Whatever you are, you only make it worse. Please. Go.”
The despair that twisted his features made me want to take it back. Draki had never made such an expression, had never felt so deeply. “I don’t know what I’ve done to hurt you, but I will stay away, if that is your wish. I’m sorry I couldn’t . . .” He stopped and closed his eyes, pressing his fists against them. “I love you.”
The sunlight dappling the ruins dimmed.
“Reyker?”
Where he’d stood a moment before, there were only crushed clovers, a swirl of moonflower petals trapped by the wind, the hulking shadow of the thorntree.
CHAPTER 30
LIRA
The village of Sjoglen was in the countryside not far past Dragon’s Lair, between the misty foothills of a mountain range, but it felt like a different world from the fortress. There were rows of houses, and villagers wandered between them, chatting with their neighbors as they went about their chores, laughing at the packs of children chasing goats around the valley. The only similarity was the stacks of black stone that cupped the village on three sides. Hardened lava that had spewed from the sun burning inside the island, giving western Iseneld its name—the Lavalands.
All the cottages had sloping walls and roofs of bright green. On closer inspection, I noticed the fuzzy outline of moss and grass. “They build houses out of plants?” I asked.
“There’s wood and stone underneath,” Hilde said beside me, “but the plants keep in the heat. I wish we could do the same in Dragon’s Lair. It gets quite drafty during the Ice Season.”
“You can’t grow a garden out of bones.” I glared at Draki’s back where he walked, a few paces ahead, along the shore of a glassy loch where villagers fished and bathed, rinsed their clothing, and gathered water for cooking. “Were you born in the Lavalands?”
“No, I’m from a small village in the Streamlands, a good ways south of here.”
Vaknavangur was in the Streamlands, just beyond the Lavalands’ border. I wondered how far her home village was from it, but I didn’t dare ask with Draki so close by.
Bending down, I skimmed my fingers through the loch’s cold waters. I called to a school of fish and sent them swimming straight into the fishermen’s nets. The men laughed, struggling beneath the weight, calling for help to drag in their catch.
These people seemed kind enough, but they bowed and waved to the Dragon, stopped to speak with him, offered him fruit and wine, which he accepted with a smile that lacked his usual severity. “I don’t understand,” I whispered to Hilde as we made our way deeper into the valley, following after Draki. “Don’t the villagers know what he is?”
A savage. A villain. Not the hero they greeted him as.
“The last overlord of the Lavalands took more than his fair share of the people’s bounty. He didn’t help Sjoglen or his other settlements when outlaws attacked, when storms caused the lochs to overflow and flood the villages, when plagues broke out. Then Draki rode into Sjoglen, put meat hooks through the jarl’s heels, strung him upside down from this tree”—she gestured to the large birch tree in front of us; children scaled its trunk, swung from its branches—“and invited the villagers to pelt the jarl with stones, offering a reward to whoever struck the killing blow. The people of Sjoglen view Draki as their liberator, as many in Iseneld do. Those who benefit from his wrath rather than being its target.”
A small girl—six years old or so, with blond braids whipping about her head—was perched on the edge of a branch, looking at the warlord. Turned away, he didn’t seem to notice the girl. She flung herself forward, leaping from the tree and landing on Draki’s back.
I took a step forward, ready to intervene on the girl’s behalf.
The Dragon lifted her with one hand and set her on the ground. They eyed each other, and the girl laughed. “I won, Jarl Dragon,” she said, holding out her palm. “I told you I’d catch you off guard one day.”
“So you did, Magda.” He took a knife from his belt and offered it to her. Magda accepted the weapon with wonder, holding it up in the light. “Don’t stab anyone unless they deserve it.”
She nodded at this sage advice and ran off, announcing her prize to everyone within earshot, prompting a trail of children to chase after her, begging to see.
Draki’s gaze slanted toward me. “Commence your studies with the priestess, Lira.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he said, “I let her win.”
I shook myself, not sure what I’d just witnessed. Draki, feigning kindness by giving a blade to a child?
No. Draki, putting on a farce to manipulate me. That was why he’d brought me today—not to show me more of the Lavalands, as he’d claimed, but to display how beloved he was by his people. I wasn’t falling for it.