And he’d seen the moment she pulled back from her rage and decided to let him live long enough to explain.
The furious man with the sword who watched Kol every bit as closely as the bird did was right. Lorelai was a threat who held her power in restraint because she was just. She was kind. She was committed to doing the right thing, even when it cost her.
He had to make her believe that helping Eldr was the right thing.
“How do you plan to trick Irina?” the man with the sword asked without lowering his weapon.
“And what will it cost Kol if you fail?” Jyn snapped.
The princess lifted her chin. “If the trick fails, he’ll pay with his life. It’s the same price he was willing to take from me.”
“He doesn’t deserve to die,” Trugg said.
“Neither do I. Neither did my brother.” Lorelai’s tone dared anyone to argue with her. “But Irina doesn’t care about any of that. She only cares about power. And because of the blood oath, she owns Kol.”
Lorelai looked at the man with the sword. “I have to test a theory before I know if this plan will work. Gabril, I’ll need your help.”
The man nodded and limped carefully across the wreckage of the trees Kol had destroyed as he’d chased the princess through the forest. As he walked past Kol, Gabril said quietly, “Don’t let the bad leg fool you, son. If you hurt my princess, I will be the nightmare you never see coming.”
“I understand the lengths we’ll go to protect those we love,” Kol said. He didn’t add that those lengths were what had put them all in this situation to begin with. Or that he wasn’t through fighting for Eldr.
The older man studied him for a moment, his expression unreadable, and then the princess said, “Gabril, let’s get started.”
Gabril turned from Kol and approached the princess as her bird lifted from her shoulder and flew into the sky.
“Where’s Sasha going?” Gabril asked.
“Hunting.” The princess turned to face Kol as Jyn and Trugg flanked him, their arms crossed over their chests and their expressions grim. “A mardushka uses her magic by calling to the heart of the thing she touches. Every heart feels a little different—the best way I can describe it is that it feels like the characteristics of the person, animal, or thing I’m touching. I’m going to see if I can trick my magic into believing the heart I hold is Gabril’s.”
“Whose heart do you plan on holding?” Kol asked, half afraid the answer would be his, though he thought he was far enough away from her to have a chance at shifting before she could hit him with her magic.
“An animal’s,” the princess said. Sasha returned, carrying the limp carcass of a rabbit in her beak. She swooped past the Eldrians and smacked Trugg in the head with the rabbit’s body as she passed.
“Stupid bird,” he muttered as he scrubbed a hand over his hair.
“My bird can drive her beak straight through your neck and into your artery in less time that it takes for you to draw a weapon, and she already dislikes you intensely. If I were you, I’d do my best not to antagonize her any further,” Lorelai said.
“I thought the bird obeyed you,” Trugg said.
“Better not antagonize me either.” Lorelai knelt as Sasha laid the rabbit at her feet.
“I’ll have you know that I am a Draconi warrior who graduated from the academy with honors befitting a warrior who— Oh skies, that’s disturbing.”
Trugg fell silent as Sasha tore the rabbit’s chest wide open with one strike. Her second strike ripped the heart free, and then the bird cocked her head and glared at the Eldrians, blood dripping from her beak.
“I see your point,” Trugg said.
The princess held out her hand, and Sasha deposited the rabbit heart on her palm.
“Can you tell it was a rabbit’s heart?” Kol asked, stepping forward despite the forbidding look the princess aimed at him.
It was his fate on the line. His life, his kingdom. He had to see the magic at work for himself.
Brilliant white light shot from her palms and surrounded the heart. “It feels like a rabbit.”
“I should think so,” Jyn said.
The princess stared at the heart. “No, I mean the essence of the heart is very . . . rabbitlike. Arrow-quick thoughts, wariness, and speed. It would never pass for human, even if the size and shape were right.” She looked at Gabril. “Would you be willing to cut your hand and put your blood on the heart so I can see how that changes the essence?”
Kol took another step forward. “Let me. This is my problem to fix. There’s no need for him to have an injury, no matter how small.”
The princess locked eyes with him, and the disdain in her expression was worse than the disappointment he’d become used to seeing in his father’s face. At least with his father, he could tell himself he’d been misunderstood, or that something his father had done justified Kol’s behavior.
There was no misunderstanding here, and the justification that he was desperate to save Eldr didn’t change what he’d nearly done to the girl who’d saved his life.
“My magic has already touched Gabril’s heart. I know what his feels like.” She cut each word into sharp little pieces. “I’m not interested in having anything to do with yours, even if it could pass for human and not Draconi, which it can’t.”
He absorbed her words and held her gaze. She didn’t have to have anything to do with his heart, but he wanted her to see it in his eyes anyway. Regret for what his choices had nearly cost her. Regret for being at Irina’s side when her brother was killed. And desperation to change the fate of his people without making the princess pay the price for their salvation.
Something soft flickered through the princess’s gaze, but then she turned away as Gabril said, “Ready when you are, Lorelai.”
Swiftly, Gabril nicked the fleshy side of his palm against his sword. Lorelai placed the heart on a nearby rock and watched as Gabril allowed his blood to drip over it. When his cut began to clot, he reached down with his other hand and smeared the heart on all sides, covering it completely with his blood.
“Now try.”
She reached for the heart and cradled it in her palm. The same white light surrounded the heart, and the princess frowned.
“Did it work?” Kol asked.
Lorelai’s frown slowly eased into fierce smile that had Kol’s dragon heart thumping hard in his chest.
“It worked. Now instead of rabbitlike thoughts, wariness, and speed, I feel quick intelligence, speedy reflexes, and a stubborn sense of duty.” She looked at Gabril. “If I hadn’t recently felt your true heart for myself, I’d believe that this was yours.”
“Except for the obvious problem that it doesn’t look anything like a human heart,” Jyn said.
“No, but a deer’s heart would.” Lorelai looked at Trugg. “How fast can you hunt one down and bring it back to me?”
Trugg looked to Kol, and the king nodded.
“Fine. I’ll go find a deer. That’s exactly why I excelled at flying and battle strategy at the academy. So I could hunt down a deer.” Trugg stabbed a finger at Lorelai. “My king had better be in one piece when I get back.”
“I’m not the mardushka he needs to worry about.”
As Trugg shifted and Gabril cleaned his sword on a clump of dying underbrush, Kol took another cautious step toward Lorelai. When she didn’t snap at him to back up, he came close enough to say quietly, “Thank you.”
“I’m not doing this for you.” The wind tossed her curly black hair over her shoulders and the sun painted her pale skin gold as she looked at him. “I’m doing this because if you fail, Irina will just keep trying to find me. And because if Irina uses Ravenspire land to send her magic into Eldr, it might weaken her, and I can use that to my advantage.”
“That’s more than fair, but—”
She laughed sharply, and beneath it he heard the kind of fathomless loss that had opened up within him the day his family died. “None of this is fair. My fa
ther should be ruling the kingdom. Leo shouldn’t be gone . . .” Her voice wavered and broke.
“I’m sorry. I know more than most how useless those words are when you’ve lost so much.”
She closed her eyes as if his words hurt, and when she opened them again, there was a hint of compassion on her face. “It isn’t fair that your people are dying because of choices someone made in another kingdom. And it isn’t fair that you felt you had no option but to tie yourself to Irina because that was better than losing absolutely everything.”
“I have no right to ask this, and I will have no way to repay you the debt I owe, but if this fails, and I die—”
“I’ll send my magic into Eldr and put a barrier between the ogres and your people. Once I’m through fighting Irina, I’ll be able to afford expending the kind of energy it will take to seal them back into Vallé de Lumé.” She said the words simply as if she hadn’t just lifted a weight that was crushing Kol from the inside out. “Now listen, here’s what we’re going to do. Irina will test the heart with her palm. It’s been nine years since she’s laid her hands on me, so my blood on the deer heart should fool her. But she also has a scrying mirror.”
Kol nodded. He’d seen the destruction of his kingdom in that mirror.
“She can’t find me with it unless I’ve recently touched something tainted with her magic with my bare hands. I’ll put my gloves on in a moment and leave this place far behind, and I won’t take them off for five days. That gives you enough time to get to the capital and then meet up with me if you’re still alive.”
He swallowed hard at the matter-of-factness in her voice, and said, “And if I don’t show up?”
“Then I’ll know we failed, and I’ll send my magic into Eldr to form the barrier while I deal with Irina.”
“If that would weaken Irina, won’t it weaken you?” he asked.
“Look around you.” She gestured toward the rotting trees and the dry, crumbling soil. “When a mardushka uses a willing heart to do magic, there’s very little cost to either the heart or the mardushka. But when you have to overpower the heart and force your will, you drain the heart of its strength and vitality, and you drain yourself. Irina’s been forcing Ravenspire’s land to do her will for nine years, and the land is dying because of it. Irina has to be suffering the cost of that. I, on the other hand, am young and strong, and I will use the one thing in Ravenspire that isn’t dying because of the queen—the rivers.”
“Irina will know where to find you once you use your magic, won’t she?” he asked because it was clear that once again, Lorelai was willing to do the right thing even though it was going to cost her.
Her smile reminded him of the way it had felt to watch the ogres while his dragon’s heart thundered for their blood on his talons.
“Irina is going to know where to find me at the end of those five days no matter what happens with you and Eldr.”
“Where should I meet you?” He didn’t add “if I’m not dead” but the words hung in the air between them.
“It’s better if you don’t know where I’m going. I don’t need Irina to get the information out of you before I’m ready to reveal myself. Just come back here and start tracking me. You’re much faster than me in your dragon form. You’ll catch up soon enough.”
Trugg returned with the deer, and soon Kol had the animal’s heart covered in Lorelai’s blood and secured in a pouch. Before he left for the castle again, he met Lorelai’s eyes.
“Thank you.”
“Try not to die,” she said, and then she pulled her gloves on and watched him shift into his dragon and head for the capital.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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NINETEEN
IT TOOK KOL and his friends a little more than a day to fly back to Irina’s castle. They’d pushed themselves, stopping only twice to drink before rising into the sky again.
He had a heart covered in Lorelai’s blood. The princess had her magic-cloaking gloves on.
Irina would be fooled. Eldr would be saved.
He would still be alive.
Skies help him, he wanted to be alive.
When they arrived at the castle, they were quickly ushered into the same room where days ago he’d pledged himself into the queen’s service with an oath that would kill him if this trick didn’t work.
“Come to me, huntsman. Your friends may stay in the hall,” Irina said.
Irina stood at the far end of the table, waiting, her eyes gleaming, her mouth curved into a tiny smile.
He walked in slow, measured steps, bowed with perfect etiquette, and then handed her the pouch. His hands were steady, but the dragon fire in his chest was blazing and the air in the room felt like it was closing in on him as Irina unknotted the rope that held the pouch closed.
She opened it, and the deer’s heart, coated with Lorelai’s blood, fell into her hands. For a moment, she closed her eyes, and white light blazed from her palm and into the heart. A slow smile spread over her face.
Her eyes snapped open. “Well done. It seems our little Lorelai was no match for you, mardushka or not.”
He took a cautious breath, the band of tension around his chest easing. It had worked. He was going to live, Eldr was going to be saved, and he owed the princess of Ravenspire a debt far greater than he would ever be able to repay.
He waited for Irina to lift the collar and send her magic into Eldr. Instead, she placed the heart on the table, wiped her hands clean on the pouch, and picked up her scrying mirror.
“Mirror, mirror, your depths I scry. Show me the princess Lorelai.” The queen stared at the opaque clouds that swirled across the mirror’s surface, her knuckles white as she gripped the mirror.
The hope that had flared within him, waned as Kol’s hearts slammed against his chest. His knees felt incapable of holding up as the mirror’s surface spun faster.
What if Lorelai had taken off her gloves? What if she’d been wrong about how the mirror found her?
What if he was about to die?
His chest burned with dragon’s fire as he fought to keep his expression calm. If he was going to die, he would face his fate with courage befitting a king.
Moments passed, but the surface of the mirror remained unchanged. Irina gently placed the mirror on the table and picked up the heart again. Kol caught himself before he sagged against the table in relief.
The heart had passed its test. The mirror had been fooled. Eldr was about to be saved, and he was going to be alive to rule it.
“One last test.” She met his gaze as she sliced into the muscle with a sharp fingernail and withdrew a single drop of blood.
The relief that had filled him drained away, as she placed the drop of blood on her tongue. Lorelai had said nothing about a mardushka’s ability to read blood with her tongue. Maybe Lorelai didn’t know. Or maybe she’d hoped the queen would take a drop of the blood that covered the outside of the heart.
Irina rolled the blood across her tongue and looked at him, her smile sharp around the edges. “Do you know how I’ve stayed in power all these years in a kingdom full of people who’d love to see me lose my throne?”
He stared at her in silence, his knees shaking while he clenched his jaw and struggled to look composed.
“I’ve stayed in power because I always expect people to betray me.” She moved closer to him. “And because I expect betrayal, I’m always ready.”
Her smile became a shard of ice. “You are going to pay for your betrayal, huntsman.”
She slammed her hand into his chest, and his blood sizzled and churned with white-hot intensity. Before he could pull away, she threw back her head and yelled, “Kaz`ja. Take what is human, and give me control over what remains.”
The magic in his blood rushed for his hearts as Trugg and Jyn leaped into the room and ran toward him.
He tried to wrench away from I
rina, but then the pain hit—an unbearable burning that blistered his chest as if he’d swallowed fire itself. He clutched at his hearts as they beat louder, louder, louder until their frantic rhythm drowned out everything else.
Irina threw out her hand, and the stone floor beneath them shook. Pillars as wide as Trugg’s waist shot out of the floor, blocking Kol’s friends and creating a cage around Irina and Kol.
Pain was a fire-coated blade that kept stabbing Kol with every heartbeat. It stole his breath and turned his knees to water.
He fell to the floor, clawing at his chest, ripping at his shirt and his skin as if he could somehow let the magic out and stop the agony.
Trugg and Jyn threw themselves at the cage, but the pillars didn’t budge.
Irina sank to her knees beside him, one hand on the collar of bone and thistle she’d given him.
Kol doubled over and screamed as the fire inside him coalesced into a single, excruciating bolt of pain that felt like it was ripping him in two.
The queen leaned close to the collar and whispered something to it.
Kol shuddered. His hearts pounded.
And then her hand was against his chest, and her voice was rising above his as she repeated her incantor over and over again.
His friends threw themselves at the stone cage. Kol writhed on the floor as the collar shrank against his skin until it fit him like he’d been born with it. Irina kept chanting, her palm pressed to his chest.
Then his human heart seemed to leap toward her hand, tearing free of its moorings with a sickening lurch that left Kol gasping for air.
Irina smiled, cold and vicious, as Kol’s human heart appeared in her hand, shimmered like a mirage for an instant, and then became solid.
The pain stopped, and in its place was an insatiable need to hurt, punish, hunt, and destroy.
Kol lay on the floor, shaking with the desperate need to shift. His muscles ached to stretch, his bones to re-form, but it was as if his human skin had become an iron cage that refused to allow his dragon out.