“There it is—the Wraith’s pearl.” Nazayun’s voice was booming. “Not much to look at in this state, but who can blame it? It is broken and corrupt, belonging to no one. But that shall change.”
My eyes shot up to Nazayun. That shall change? What game was he playing? I thought he meant to keep the pearl for himself.
“Shiori’anma has sworn to return it to its rightful owner,” he continued, “the dragon able to make it whole once more. Let any who wish to claim the Wraith’s pearl make a case for it now and attempt this trial.”
The entire chamber went still. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Solzaya’s claw twitch with temptation. She wasn’t the only one. The lords and ladies of the Four Supreme Seas were all on edge, enraptured by the pearl.
Still, not a dragon dared step forward.
Except one.
“I will try,” said Elang in his gruff, overly graveled tone.
“I thought you would,” Nazayun replied. “Shiori’anma, give him the pearl.”
“It doesn’t belong to him,” I protested. “He isn’t the Wraith.”
I thought my refusal would anger the Dragon King, but it had the opposite effect. “He is not,” conceded Nazayun. “But you see, Shiori’anma, he and the Wraith have something in common no other dragons share. They are missing their pearls. Their hearts. Will you not give my grandson the chance to claim this one as his own?”
I didn’t reply. There was an undercurrent of glee in Nazayun’s words, as if he found pleasure in Elang’s torment.
“A half dragon,” I whispered, finally understanding why everyone spoke of Elang with such repulsion and fascination. Taking in his mismatched eyes, and the striking halves of his face, I realized that the other dragons were mocking him as well as me by donning human forms.
“Yes,” Nazayun went on, relishing my surprise. “Elangui is half mortal, born to a human mother who had not taken the Oath of Ai’long. His pearl left him at birth, and without it, he cannot assume a full dragon form.”
The water around Elang had turned so thick it betrayed every movement he made. I caught the twitch in his brow, and how his breathing had gone shallow. As if all his hopes rested on this very pearl.
“It isn’t yours,” I told him, trying hard to be both kind and firm. “It might hurt you.”
Elang’s expression turned to ice. He sniffed, as though I bore a stench, and cast a glare my way that was easy to read: How dare you pity me.
“I will try,” he repeated.
With a grunt, Elang unhooked his cloak and let it fall. He approached me, reaching for the pearl with a clawed hand.
Even if I hadn’t wanted to give it to him, I had no choice. The pearl spun away from my side and catapulted into his waiting hands. There it sat, light spilling as its halves parted, with the showmanship of a bird’s wings spreading feather by feather.
Elang held the pearl against his chest, his palms curving around the broken halves, trying to force them closed. The pearl writhed in resistance. It began to spin, and light poured out of the crack, overwhelming the half dragon. Blisters bubbled upon his human side, and his silver scales went deathly pale.
I lurched to intervene, but the Dragon King held me back.
“Let him be,” he said as the dais trembled. “He is welding it whole.”
As I watched, I knew that wasn’t so. If anything, the pearl was breaking more. The crack along its dark surface turned molten and bright, its light coalescing into a single beam aimed at Elang. It was going to kill him.
Enough was enough. I yanked on Nazayun’s starstroke net and threw it over his face. It was something no being—mortal or immortal—had dared do to the Dragon King, and every soul in the chamber thought me a fool, but I didn’t care.
I dove for the pearl. “He isn’t the Wraith!” I shouted as I snatched it from Elang. “Return to me!”
The pearl turned to face me fully, its fractures blinking in annoyance. But a moment later it flew back into my hands and went dark.
Nazayun’s reaction was cataclysmic. In one breath, he grew a hundred times in size, swelling from man to dragon. His sapphire robes melded into his flesh, turning into plates of glittering scales. He crumpled the starstroke net in his colossal fist and hurled it across the dome.
Fool that I was, I instantly went after it. Or at least I tried. Nazayun’s claw came slashing down to block my path, and the seas roared.
Everywhere I looked, dragons were bolting out of the broken ceiling. There was no time to search for a whirlpool or use magic. Even Elang was making his escape on the back of a turtle. Entire walls shattered, pillars of marble and crystal showered down like raindrops. While the dome collapsed, I hid behind a coral cloud for safety.
I tried to track the net amid the chaos, but Seryu caught my hand. “You really are the most troublesome girl,” he griped. “Leave the net. We have to go.”
The crystal gate he’d used to send Gen away was still intact. He rushed us toward it, and a whirlpool bubbled under his claw—an oasis of seagrass just visible at the end of the tunnel.
“Wait,” I said, twisting away. “Kiki—”
Seryu held me back. Lightning crackled from the Dragon King’s beard, and with his claw, Nazayun drew the bolts into a cyclonic storm.
“That’s a search storm,” Seryu said. “It’ll be looking for you, and if it finds you, it will kill you. You still want to stay?”
Without waiting for my answer, he pushed me inside the whirlpool—an instant before lightning struck him in the back.
We spiraled down a dizzying chute of water until the whirlpool spat us out, one by one, in a field of seagrass outside the palace. With a thump, I landed on top of Seryu.
I rolled off his back and shook him. “Seryu?”
His whiskers made the slightest lift. He wasn’t dead.
Encouraged, I gave his shoulders a light shove. “Wake up.”
Still unconscious, he sank deeper into the seagrass, his nails curving into claws and his skin turning gradually, unmistakably green.
I backed away.
A dozen times I’d witnessed my brothers transform into cranes. Every dusk and dawn, for the longest, most excruciating minute, Raikama’s curse shattered their bones and ripped apart their muscles, contorting their limbs into wings and stick-thin legs, their noses into long dark bills, and their hair into crimson crowns.
I’d never forgotten the sound of their screams.
Seryu’s transformation was nothing like my brothers’. It was swift and effortless, as if he were slipping into a suit of armor. Scales ridged over what had been smooth human flesh, and his legs, sprawled over the morass of seagrass, stretched into a long and winding tail. Whiskers sprouted from his cheeks, and lastly, his horns appeared, half covered by a mass of dark green hair.