I had to choose for him.
“They need you, Reyker.” I brushed my lips against his. “Our fates are twined. We will find each other again.”
“Your time is up,” Draki said.
As he released the rock, I leaped off the pier.
The cold was like a punch to the gut. I kicked for the surface and came up sputtering just as the girl went under. I found Reyker staring at me as if he was the one drowning, and I was the stone dragging him down. Then he went after the girl, diving below the waves.
I swam to a spot halfway between the pier and the knarr, treading water. “Let them go first, and I’ll come with you.”
Draki swept his hand toward an empty longship gliding out of the fog, its sail bearing the warlord’s Dragon Star. When it was near enough, the Dragonmen jumped onto it. Draki leaped last, soaring through the air with unnatural grace. As I swam toward the longship, I heard Reyker surface with the girl. She was coughing and crying, but alive.
Once I was close enough, Draki leaned out, extending his hand to me. I wanted to defy the Dragon, to curse and slap him away, but this wasn’t just about me. It was about Reyker’s people too. I wouldn’t let Draki steal anything else from them.
I took the Dragon’s hand.
Draki pulled me from the water and wrapped someone’s cloak around me—not his, since he never wore one. Even now, he was dressed in a fur vest left open in front, like the cold couldn’t touch him. Draki spun me so I faced the other longship. His arms snaked around my waist, pulling me against him. “Now, Lira,” the Dragon purred in my ear, “you are truly mine.”
I didn’t fight. There was no point anymore.
This was my choice.
Reyker had hauled the dead man from the water and was laying him gently on the knarr’s deck. He hurried to cut the others free from the ropes at their wrists and ankles, found a blanket to wrap around the shivering girl. The Wolf Lord, protecting his people, ensuring they were unharmed. The survivors gathered around Hamund’s corpse, weeping, and Reyker let them grieve. He came to the bow, standing there like a figurehead, his body motionless, his expression blank.
I knew I looked the same.
We stared at each other as our ships drifted farther apart, until the fog swallowed the space between us. My hand moved, reaching toward the white veil where Reyker had just been, but he was gone.
PART THREE
ASHES OF DREAMS
CHAPTER 39
REYKER
The invitation arrived by messenger. Draki sent a servant to the mead house, knowing Reyker was likely to kill any Dragonman he came across.
When Reyker entered the mead hall, Brokk at his side, he spotted the servant immediately. She held up the envelope with the Dragon’s seal. Reyker ripped it from her hand, fast enough that she brought her fingers to her lips as if to check that she hadn’t lost any. He tore open the envelope, unfolded the thick parchment, and read the words that were written in the Dragon’s own intricate looping script, caged inside a decorative blue border.
Reyker crumpled the invitation in his fist.
The black river did not ask his permission—as it had done before, it sensed what he needed. It tried to possess him completely. He heard the growl rising in his throat, knew his pupils were widening to swallow the blue of his irises.
No.
His muscles shook from the strain as he fought to keep the darkness inside him leashed, to make it answer to him.
Just as he regained the river’s reins, Brokk’s punch crashed into his jaw. It held the force of a swinging hammer and sent him stumbling into a wall. “Not again, you bastard,” Brokk said.
“I’m all ri—”
A glass bottle shattered over his head.
“Wait, Brokk, I—”
Meaty hands grabbed him by the collar and shoved him out the door, gripping him by the hair and plunging his head into stale, icy water. A trough. Brokk was drowning him in horse spit.
Finally Brokk pulled him out and slung him to the ground. “Gods-damn it!” Reyker sputtered. “I told you, I had it under control.”
Brokk glared down at him. “At the first sign of your madness, you lose the right to be listened to. Besides, I was reading over your shoulder. I saw what it said.”
“Fuck.” Reyker flopped onto his back, staring at the sky, slamming his fists against the dirt. “Fuck! ”
“Behold, the great Reyker Lagorsson, throwing a tantrum like a child. Back when we were boys, you had fits over broken swords and bruised pride. Sometimes a girl. Or your brother. Or your brother and a girl. Gods, he’s been at this a long time, hasn’t he?”
“Do not make light of this.”
“I will make light of this. It’s what I do. It’s what you need to keep you from sinking into a puddle of pity.” Brokk held his hand out. “You’re a lord. Act like it.”
Shame burned through him. What would his parents think, if they could see him now? He shoved wet hair out of his eyes, sat up, and took his friend’s hand.
“It was nice to have an excuse to punch that pretty face of yours,” Brokk said, untying the horses.
“Feels like I got kicked by a skrikflak.” Reyker sniffed at his hair. “What was in that bottle you hit me with?”
“Only some of the finest whiskey on the island. A gods-damned waste. You owe me another bottle, by the way.”
The horses ran for home, or at least the closest thing he had to one. Fjullthorp—another temporary dwelling, while he pined for a place he would never call home again.
After Draki had left with Lira, Reyker and the others took Hamund’s body back to Vaknavangur to set his funeral pyre. Reyker feared they would find the village destroyed, but no, it was still standing. In fact, it was occupied. Dragonmen were finishing the rebuilding work, placing belongings inside the cottages. A flag flew from the roof of his parents’ cottage: the Star of the Dragon. Another thing Reyker loved, laid claim to by Draki.
With nowhere else to go, Reyker had brought the survivors to the Fjordlands, to make a new home. To give them another chance to live, or to fight, if they chose—to join the Renegades’ army, as he had. With his people settled and safe, he was ready to head to Dragon’s Lair. To do . . . something.
He’d not quite thought it through.
“I’m going,” he told Brokk. “I have to get her out of that place.”
“And get yourself killed in the process. You know it’s a trap.”
“Yes.” A trap to draw him out, so Draki could shove his victory in Reyker’s face. So he could reveal whatever sinister plots he had in store that he would force Reyker to be part of, using Lira’s life as collateral. To remind Reyker that nothing in this world was his, that when the Dragon came and took Lira away he had just stood there and let it happen.