The ruins spread around him, broken stone, charred land. He ran through the wreckage, calling Lira’s name, as he had done many times before. He ended at the thorntree. The messages he’d left her—one line for each time he’d searched—were still there, carved into the bark with a sharp stone.
WAIT FOR ME HERE.
I MUST SEE YOU.
WHERE ARE YOU?
WHERE ARE YOU?
WHERE ARE YOU?
He knelt and found the rock at the base of the tree. He carved another message.
I’M COMING FOR YOU.
“She won’t see it,” a voice said.
He whirled, the rock raised in his fist. A gold-eyed woman stood behind him. “Seeress,” he greeted her. “How are you in my head?”
“This is the only escape left to me.” She ran her hand along the messages in the thorntree’s trunk. “Your words are wasted. The Dragon has shielded her dreams against you. She could be here, right now, but the two of you will never find each other, never see the signs of love you leave.”
He’d suspected this, of course, but knowing it, knowing she was in Dragon’s Lair, alone, with no way for Reyker to reach her, to offer the smallest shred of hope . . . He had lived that life himself for many years, with one crucial difference. The torments he’d suffered in the name of Draki’s twisted obsessions were from one brother to another. Reyker had given in and become Draki’s demon, his Sword.
It would be worse for Lira, as Draki’s consort. Far worse.
She lay beneath him willingly.
“Have I lost her already?” he asked.
“Does it matter?” The seeress crouched beside him. “Either way, the Dragon must die. You did not heed me before. You stopped the girl from sacrificing herself and freeing the fallen god who could have weakened Ildja and her spawn. Now you must confront the Dragon at full strength. I cannot tell you the secret. The gods did not show me. I only know it is buried inside you, waiting to be unearthed.”
“How am I supposed to do that? Why would the Ice Gods create me to be a weapon but leave no instructions for how I’m to be used?”
She shoved him and the ground gave way beneath his feet. The ruins were gone. He was floating in a black expanse—the sky-well, where his people once lived as gods before falling through a hole in the sky to live on the earth as mortals. The spiraling arms of galaxies stretched out as far as he could see in ethereal shades of cobalt and violet. He couldn’t see the seeress, but he heard her, her voice echoing between the stars.
“Why do you think I was sent to find you that day in the wilderness? Why do you think I am here now, planting these seeds in your slumbering mind where you are best able to comprehend them? Sleep. Dream. Untangle what I’ve told you. When you wake, you will remember nothing, but you will have a light to guide you through these uncertainties.”
The stars shuddered. The brightest one, right in front of him and yet infinitely far, exploded in a bursting wave of color and dust—rocks the size of countries, crashing down to create new worlds.
This was where he’d come from.
Draki was a god, but long ago, in this realm, Reyker had been a god too. Had they been brothers even then?
Perhaps Lira had been here as well, a goddess drifting beside him through eternity. Had he loved her before this life, sought her across time and space in their mortal bodies to be the light of his earthly soul?
Reyker woke with a jolt in the feasting hall. His head lay on the table, strands of his hair floating in the forgotten bowl of stew. The quill was still in his ink-stained fingers. He looked down at the list and saw another name had been added, though he didn’t remember writing it.
Lira
She was grouped with the other magiskas, her gifts listed alongside her name.
Beasts
Water
Wind
Earth
Healing
Metal
War
SOULS
This last skill, he had written larger than the others, underlined and circled it. For what purpose? He knew what she was, how she could dip into the deepest parts of his being and draw out his very essence. Thoughts. Emotions.
Memories.
Words swirled around his head, as if from a long-forgotten dream. You carry the answer to his death inside you. You’ve already witnessed how it can be done.
A vision. An omen. A thread of something he knew from the past: rose-colored droplets, trickling down skin inked with scales and knots.
Red.
Blood.
Not Aldrik, who’d borne no tattoos, who could be wounded, who’d bled and healed. Draki, who’d returned from the Mountain of Fire as an immortal, rendered invincible by Ildja. Or so it had seemed.
“Gods aflame,” Reyker whispered. Draki had bled.
The Dragon can bleed.
He only had to remember how. There was nothing else to the vision, just that infinitesimal flash. But Reyker had spent more time with Draki, with Aldrik, than anyone, knew both versions of his brother better than anyone. The secret was there, somewhere—the detailed memory, trussed within the chaos of his mind and soul. Lost, but not irretrievable.
Not from the plundering of a powerful magiska.
This was why they’d found each other across oceans, why they’d lived in spite of all the things that had tried to kill them. There was a way to destroy the Dragon. And together they would find it—the Ice Gods’ Sword and the Green Gods’ soul-reader.
CHAPTER 42
LIRA
I stared into the oval mirror. It was taller than me, framed with a trim of silver and gold, etched with knots and dragons—another gift from my soon-to-be consort, this one ensuring I could never look at myself without seeing traces of him surrounding me, confining me to living inside whatever boundaries he chose.
Even so, I couldn’t stop staring. That woman inside the mirror was not me.
First, there was the gown—my final gift—made of a rich blue silk that clung to every curve. The left side was void of decor, but the right side had markings like the mirror. Like the Dragon. The right sleeve, neckline, bodice, and waist, down to the hem of the skirt, bore the same design as Draki’s skin, embroidered black silk instead of ink, but otherwise an exact match of his tattoos. Servants had twisted my hair into tight spirals and pinned them around my head, letting a few ringlets dangle at my neck.
Then there was the warrior-mark. If I was to be Draki’s consort, I had to show the world, to prove my devotion with a tattoo similar to the ones his Dragonmen wore. Draki had tattooed me himself, his face too close to mine, the pain insubstantial in comparison to the meaning that tiny needle branded into the skin above my right eye: the twisting branches of a thorntree.