Instinctively, my eyes went to the horizon. Though night had not yet fallen, the full moon had begun its slow ascent—a phantom in a gauzy dress, a cold white eye that watched everything but never intervened. Nesper was the god of the moon on Glasnith, but here, it was the goddess Manott shining down upon us.
“I know your secrets, Draki. You torment Reyker because he’s all that’s left of your humanity. You hate that you care for him, so you punish him out of shame for your own weakness.”
“I punish him to make him strong, to keep him fighting when he wants to give up and die. Just as I’ve done for you.” He gathered my hair in his hand, draping it over my shoulder. “I made Reyker what he is. If you love him, as you claim, you should thank me.”
I slapped his hand away. “You tried to poison the goodness inside him, but I brought it back to life.”
“Then you will be responsible for his death.” It was the smallest of gestures, just a brief furrow between his brows, but I saw it. Some part of Draki hated the thought of Reyker dying. That piece of Draki’s missing soul that he was using me to fill—that he yearned for, though he’d never admit it—was because of Reyker. I wasn’t the cure he wanted, I was a temporary fix.
Draki leaned in close, taking hold of my hair once more, twirling it around his fist. He brushed the strands beneath his nose, inhaling my scent. “I can take away your memories of him, if that makes it easier for you.”
“Let go of me.” He did as I asked, smiling like this was all some sort of harmless courtship ritual. “I could never forget Reyker. Never.”
“There you go again, making bets you cannot pay. Your time is almost up, little warrior. Tomorrow you will give me your answer.” He went to the door, beckoning me to follow.
As I stepped through the garden, I imagined Reyker’s mother kneeling here, mourning her dead husband, her razed village, her lost freedom, watering the blooms with her tears just as Aillira had done with her thorntree.
In a far corner of the garden, I spied a patch of color. A single tiny flower with plum-colored petals, nearly hidden among the vines, had punched up through the weed-choked soil. It was a sign that the Dragon could not conquer everything.
I lay awake in bed, counting down the minutes.
Draki had brought me to Dragon’s Lair just before the last turn of the moon. One of those first nights, I’d watched from the small window in my room as he mounted his stallion and rode off, an elderly male servant tied up and slung over the horse’s haunches. When I’d asked Hilde about it, she told me Draki rode to the Mountain of Fire and made a sacrifice to his mother at midnight on the first night of every full moon.
Tonight, he tossed a trussed-up goat on the back of his horse—perhaps Ildja preferred variety, or perhaps Draki was short on disposable servants. The stallion broke into a gallop, and the warlord vanished into the winding aisles of the lava field. He would be gone for hours.
I would not be here when he returned.
Would I be leaving alone, or would Reyker be out there, waiting for me?
I hadn’t dared let myself dream of Reyker—the Dragon had haunted Reyker’s dreams since he was a boy, and haunted mine since he’d marked me. The risk that he might find us there in the ruins and unearth our intentions was too great.
Once enough time had passed for Draki to be well away, I shoved aside the tub in the corner of the room and pried up the floorboard beneath it, where I’d hidden a spoon brought by a servant with one of my meals. I wrapped my fingers around it, pressing it to the lock in my bedroom door, pouring every ounce of focus into reshaping it. And I prayed to Sjaf—the god of metal—as I had on the boat I’d stolen to reach the island-serpent.
Before leaving the temple and running to the tunnels, Hilde had given me the axe that had belonged to her ancestors, the earliest settlers of Iseneld. The first children of Sjaf. I’d used the axe to kill the shark I’d called, sliced the symbol of sacrifice into my palm with its blade, dripped my blood and the creature’s into the sea and tossed the treasured weapon in, offering them all to the god.
Draki thought Eyvor’s was the only gift I’d sought that day. He was wrong.
The spoon softened in my hand, its form shifting. It had taken a great deal of practice over the last week, trying and failing over and over, before I could finally bend the metal to my will. Reshaping it to fit the lock like a key, as I did now.
I turned the key slowly, cringing at the click that seemed as loud as a scream, as loud as the pound of my heart, certain to alert the guards, but when I eased open the door, the two men at the end of the hall still had their backs to me, chatting and laughing quietly. On silent feet, I inched toward them.
The key squeezed in my fist became a long, slender blade.
I pushed the knife through the back of one Dragonman’s neck. He gurgled, blood dripping down his chest, and the second Dragonman’s arm whipped out, striking the side of my face. He drew his sword as I hit the ground and looked up at him. I could already feel bruises budding along my jaw.
The Dragonman had acted on instinct, but now his eyes widened, realizing what he had done. My guards had permission to restrain me, nothing more. No one touched a woman Draki had put his mark on, not in anger or affection or lust. Anyone who did paid a painful price. And I wasn’t just another one of Draki’s toys, I was his chosen consort.
The Dragonman lowered his sword, backing away. I gathered a thread of the breeze whistling through a half-open window and flicked it in the man’s direction, knocking him down.
For this last ritual to work, I couldn’t use my gifts. Sjaf demanded the blood be shed by my own hands.
Tearing a femur from the wall of bones, I swung it into the Dragonman’s temple and he slumped to the floor. I swung again, and this time there was a crack that turned my stomach.
I took a breath, staring at the bodies. Hesitating. Hilde, and even Draki, had warned me against this. Was I ready?
No. But Draki would come after me. I had to be stronger. I needed it.
On my knees, I mixed the blood trickling from my swollen lip with the blood from the two Dragonmen, drawing overlapping triangles on both men’s chests. Pausing long enough to pray to Sjaf for one final gift.
I was halfway to freedom. Moving swiftly along the balcony, I made it to the next hallway and from there I crept through the shadows to a narrow stairwell. Then I was through the kitchens, to another set of stairs, these leading to the cellar. I hit the bottom stair, running into the cellar with the small knife I’d pulled from the dead Dragonman’s neck, to surprise the guard at the tunnel entrance and disable him quickly.
Standing in front of the tunnel’s barred door were four Dragonmen, none of them shocked to see me. “Put the knife down and surrender,” one of the men said, stepping forward.