“And my food?”
“Shiori was hungry,” Seryu said crisply. “She’s intolerable when she’s hungry. Besides, you should have offered. You’re looking tired, cousin. I keep forgetting you’ve inherited the inconvenient human need for sleep.”
Elang looked like he wanted to strangle Seryu. But he did straighten, fists uncurling at his side. “The sorcerer is awake.”
I sprang to my feet as Gen shuffled into the room, wearing a lopsided grin. His movements were still stiff and jerky, but his skin had a promising tinge of pink.
“Praise the Sages, I’m alive,” he announced. “The world nearly suffered the loss of its greatest future enchanter.”
“If only your mouth were still stone,” muttered Elang, “the world would have been spared yet another enchanter who talks too much.” A lidded bowl of herbal tea appeared in the half dragon’s hand, and he offered it to Gen. “Drink.”
Gen took the steaming bowl but didn’t drink. His attention was on the wall of books opposite the table, and he brushed his knuckles over their spines. “Can’t I stay, Elang? Your library is most impressive. Some of these volumes I’ve never even seen before. Let me read—”
Elang plucked a book from Gen, obsessively placing it back in its place. “It’s Lord Elang to you, and no. You’re leaving once you finish this tea.”
“Then I’ll drink very slowly.”
“You’ll drink while it’s hot,” Elang said. “It’ll make the sangi last longer. Unless you prefer to drown.”
It was odd, watching the two spar. Elang acted like he was years older than Gen, but they were almost the same age.
“Consider my debt repaid,” Elang informed Seryu. “As soon as the boy finishes drinking, he’s going home. He hasn’t enough sangi to last long in the water, and no number of Nahma’s favors will persuade me to make more.”
“But Grandfather’s storm—”
“My turtles will escort him to the surface,” Elang spoke over Seryu. “It’ll be safe enough. No one’s looking for him.”
Unlike you two, he left unsaid.
I inserted myself between the cousins. “While you both bicker, I’d like to speak to Gen before he goes.”
For privacy, I steered Gen to an antechamber behind the bookshelf, where a blue fire burned between two cushioned chairs.
“I take it Elang is the dragon who lured you to Ai’long.”
“Very perceptive, Shiori,” replied Gen as we sat. He stretched his long legs near the fire, then let his limbs float. “Ironic, isn’t it? Twenty years wasted, only to end right back where I started.”
“Twenty years? I thought you were only here a few weeks.”
“Solzaya put me to sleep for a whole dragon year: punishment for not giving up Elang’s name.” Gen grimaced. “Don’t give me that pitying look.”
I couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Your family, your home…”
“My home ceased to exist long before I came to Ai’long,” Gen replied. “It was destroyed during the war. My father and brothers probably died soon after they sold me off.” He dismissed my concern with a shrug. “It’s fine. I hardly knew them anyway. Stop apologizing like it’s your fault.”
“Where will you go?”
Gen tilted his head to the side. “I take it Kiata doesn’t have any resident sorcerers.”
“If you’re thinking about visiting, don’t. You won’t be welcome.”
Gen sipped his tea. “It’s tragic how much your country despises magic. They ought to revisit that opinion.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You asked how I knew about your magic when we were in Solzaya’s torture chamber.”
“Yes, so I did.”
“One of my teachers used to talk about Kiata,” Gen explained. “He was horrible, ill tempered, possibly mad. When he drank too much, he would ramble on about going to your country and killing the bloodsake to unleash the demons trapped inside the Holy Mountains.” Gen side-eyed me. “Since that was twenty years ago, I’m guessing you weren’t born yet?”
A drink of the now-lukewarm tea in my hands did nothing to repel the shivers crawling up my spine. “Why?” I pressed. “Why did he want to free the demons?”
“He said they’d revere him as their king. And a true king he planned to be—by becoming a demon himself.”
I flinched, a wave of dread rising in my stomach, but Gen didn’t notice. “Demons can live forever, you see,” he went on, “whereas enchanters lose their immortality after a thousand years. The only problem was that he would be bound to an amulet as a demon. The way to free himself, he learned, was to acquire a dragon pearl.”
My chest went hollow. “Seryu told me once that demons and enchanters covet dragon pearls more than anything.”
“Yes, because only a dragon pearl is powerful enough to break our oaths.”
That I hadn’t known. I stared into the blue flames flickering over the watery hearth, thinking of the wolf I’d seen steal out of the Holy Mountains. The King of Demons, he’d called himself. Bandur.
I said, in my lowest voice, “Your teacher was the Wolf, wasn’t he?”
Gen stilled, his cheeks going so taut he almost looked like stone again. “If you know him,” he said slowly, “then he must have made it to Kiata.”
“He was bound to one of my father’s warlords,” I replied, thinking of the former Lord Yuji. “He murdered him…and became a demon. Bandur.”
“By the Sages, he actually broke his oath,” Gen whispered. Disbelief colored his words, and he nearly dropped his tea.
“You can’t let him know of the Wraith’s pearl,” he said, grabbing the arm of my chair. “It is different; it’s corrupted by demon magic. Should Bandur obtain it, he’ll use its power to end his oath. In doing so, he’d break the pearl, and that would—”
“Destroy the pearl,” I said. Suddenly it hurt to breathe. Bandur already knew of the pearl.
“I should travel to Kiata instead of—”
“That’s not necessary,” I interrupted. I needed to snuff out the spark in Gen’s eyes, needed to dissuade him from walking to his doom. “Bandur’s trapped in the mountains. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Gen started to reply, but Elang swept in from behind, cutting me off. “What did I say about finishing the tea? The boy’s prattled enough. It’s time for him to leave.”
Tipping his head back, Gen downed the remainder of his tea and hopped to his feet. “Don’t worry,” he said, donning a carefree smile. “I heard what you said, Princess. If Bandur’s locked up in the mountains, like you say, all the better for everyone. Me especially. I have twenty years of studies to catch up on—and as I’ve said, Kiata’s the last place in Lor’yan I’d want to visit.”