Ildja removed her hand, and I collapsed in a heap, staring at my wrist. The skin was gone, leaving only charred muscle and bone. Through the fog of pain, I saw Destroyers drifting high above me, faceless phantoms crowding the space, waiting for me to die so they could snatch my soul and deliver it to the darkness. I watched Ildja give the dagger to Draki, and he kneeled next to me, brushing my hair aside. My mouth wouldn’t do more than groan. I couldn’t beg him to stop, though he read the plea in my eyes.
“This will not kill you, little warrior. The Fallen Ones’ blood heals you too quickly. It also weakens my influence over you, so I must carve my mark into you again with Ildja’s key. When it is done, your war gift will be stable. Your guilt and sorrow will be vanquished.” His voice was gentle. He thought he was helping me.
I want them, I tried to cry. My guilt, my sorrow—they make me human.
With a final burst of strength, I snatched the dagger from his hand and stabbed beneath his collarbone. The blade did not shatter, but neither did it break the skin. It hit Draki with a leaden thump and skidded harmlessly down his chest. He shook his head at me. “How like my brother you are,” he said. “We will fix that. I will fix you.”
A gods’ weapon was useless against the Dragon. What hope did Reyker or I have of stopping him?
Defeated, my arm fell limp at my side, and Draki peeled the dagger from my fingers. The blade slid behind my ear.
Reyker will kill you for this, I thought. But no, Reyker no longer remembered me. I was alone. No one was coming to save me.
As the dagger traced the lines of my scar, blood trickling down my neck, another flood of pain swelled within me, not a tearing this time, but a joining, like welding together two antithetical elements. A union of enemies. With this mark, I wasn’t just Draki’s possession, I was his tool. His thrall.
Something was seeping out of me—my will, my emotions? No, something deeper—the spark of life in my soul, the forces that drove me, the fire that made me Lira. It guttered.
Stop, stop, stop, I howled in my mind. Sto—
The fire. It died.
As was death’s wont, there were no blurred lines, no detectable shifts. I was one girl, and then I was another—awakening inside that other girl’s skin, with no care for who she’d been. Where that fire once lived there was only ash. I could think, but what point was there in thinking? I could speak, but had no use for words. My body ached, but that’s what bodies did when things were broken. Pain was a temporary condition that could be ignored.
“Rise, Lira of Drakin.”
Yes. That was my name.
The wound behind my ear tingled. My arms and legs obeyed.
“How do you feel?”
Such an odd question. “Alive,” I answered. “Awake. Cold. In pain. Shall I list more sensations?”
“No. What do you feel for Reyker?”
My lips twitched. Strange. “Reyker Lagorsson of Iseneld. He is a man. Your brother. A warrior. Strong. Healthy. Blond hair, blue eyes. He sides with your enemies, Jarl Solvei Snorrisdottir and the Mountain Renegades. I feel nothing for him.”
“Would you be willing to harm him? To kill him?”
“If you asked it of me, yes. I—” For some reason, I stammered. “I would kill Reyker Lagorsson.”
The citrine-eyed half god glanced at the goddess made of fire. Both seemed pleased, though I wasn’t certain why. “Do you know what it is I want you to do, Lira? What I once showed you would happen, just before you leaped from the cliffs on Glasnith?”
I sorted through memories, located the one he spoke of. “Yes.”
“Do it, little warrior. Show me your devotion.”
Devotion. Was that what drove me to kneel, to bow? He wished for me to worship him, and every shred of my being knew this was what I’d been created for, the only thing that mattered. So I did.
“You are my savior, my master,” I told the Dragon. “You are my god.”