That had been three days ago. Soon, she and Lyre would set out for the ley line along the cliff. They would return to the Underworld and meet with Seiya—a conversation Piper wasn’t looking forward to. After that, she didn’t know what she would do. She didn’t feel any need to stay in the Underworld without Ash. She didn’t want anything to do with Eliada and the other draconians, whether they welcomed her or not. Raum didn’t need her help protecting his family. No one needed her. Without the Sahar, she was useless.
“Piper?” The soft voice came from outside the curtain to her room.
She reluctantly sat up. “Come in.”
Hinote pushed the curtain aside and walked in, his long tail swishing behind him, fins folded neatly like closed fans.
“Lyre has gathered most of the gear for your journey.” He crouched beside her. “Are you ready?”
She nodded but didn’t move, the blankets still tangled over her legs. It was time to leave, but the bitterness of losing Ash all over again was like a massive weight holding her in place. She dropped her eyes to her lap, despair squeezing her chest.
“What did Shinryu mean when she said Tenryu had forgotten?” she asked brokenly. “Why did she think him remembering could save Ash?”
“I cannot say,” he murmured. “The great dragons are ancient beings with a deep history. Who knows what she might have referred to?” He rose to his full height. “Freshen up, child, and join us by the river. Many are gathering to bid you farewell.”
After he left, she sat on the bed, fighting the urge to lie down and sleep again. Sleep was the only real escape from the guilt of her failure and the agony of her loss. It was worse than if she’d lost a limb; it felt as if she’d lost her soul, that it had burned away in the heat of Tenryu’s blue fire.
Dragging herself to her feet, she stumbled out of her room and down the corridor toward the baths room. It played again in her head, the black dragon grabbing Ash in his jaws and jumping toward the ley line. Was there anything she could have done to stop Tenryu? Or had it been hopeless from the start?
Putting it out of her mind as best she could, she focused on making herself presentable. Even though she’d failed to save Ash, the ryujin were in awe that the great Shinryu had risen from the sea to aid her; the three youths who’d brought her back had already spread the story to every ryujin in the city and beyond. Piper didn’t want them to see her wallowing in depression after receiving such an honor from their revered deity.
She would put on a brave face until she was gone from the Overworld. Then she would decide how much fight she actually had left in her broken heart and burnt soul.
Chapter Eighteen
The air in the Underworld had never tasted so bitter. Piper kicked dejectedly at the charred ground of their former camp, wrinkling her nose at the stink of wet charcoal that tainted the air. The recent rain had left everything damp and fresh, with the exception of the burnt swath of forest. It was late in the long night, with the full face of Periskios waning toward half. In another few hours, the sky would gradually begin to lighten with the extended twilight that preceded the suns’ return.
Lyre leaned against a tree near the edge of the camp, twisting his chain of spelled gems in his hands. He’d been quiet since she’d returned from the island in the sea—mourning the loss of his best friend, dealing with the weight of his guilt for failing to fulfill his promise. Perhaps even trying to hide his resentment toward her. He’d used his signal spell to summon Seiya as soon as they’d arrived, but they still had to wait while she flew from the draconian outpost … wherever that was. Piper was dreading her arrival. How would Seiya react to the news that her brother had been within her grasp only for her to lose him again? She would be furious and devastated.
What would come after that? Maybe it was time to go home. It felt like half a lifetime since she’d been on Earth. What was happening there? Over seven weeks had passed, by her best estimate, since she and her mother had faced Maasehet and Samael in the Gaian command center. Had war broken out between the Ra and Hades families on Earth? How had the Gaians reacted to losing their leaders? Had they disbanded or retaliated?
And what of her family? Had Quinn and Calder made any progress on alerting other Consuls to the Ras’ control of the Consulates?
So many questions without answers. She stared at the ground, knowing she could only find the answers on Earth. She had to go back. But a question hung over her, dragging at her limbs like dead weight:
Did she care enough to go back and get those answers?
If she didn’t care anymore, she shouldn’t go back. She would just get in the way of the people who actually cared about Earth’s fate. Her passion from before, her need to stop the daemon war from claiming her home world, was like a strange, hollow memory that belonged to another person. Had she really cared so much about the fate of strangers?
She lifted her head, her gaze going out of focus. Of course she had. She’d always cared about the fate of strangers. Every daemon who’d come to her Consulate had been a stranger, but she’d still wanted to be a Consul more than anything. She’d always wanted to be a peacekeeper, to keep people safe.
Nothing had changed—nothing except losing Ash. The emptiness from his loss consumed her entirely, devouring any passion she’d felt for anything else. But Ash wasn’t the start and end of her being. He’d changed her so much, helped her grow, and the person she’d become wouldn’t give up because she had to go on alone. Ash wouldn’t have given up. He would have soldiered on the way he always did.
Sighing, she resumed her slow wander of the camp, thoughts spinning. Her fingers fiddled with the top of a small dagger hilt poking out of her armguard. Hinote’s parting gift had been two small daggers made of shimmering, silver-blue dragon scale: harder than steel, magic resistant, and capable of cutting through many spells and weavings. They were probably priceless and she couldn’t stop herself from checking every few minutes that they were still in place, afraid she would somehow lose them.
She meandered in another circle. Even with her eyes on the ground, she didn’t immediately notice the odd patterns disturbing the damp ashes and muddy ground. Her pacing stalled and she crouched, leaning closer. They were tracks—bird tracks. Giant bird tracks with three long toes and deep impressions from curved talons. They had to be roc tracks. The giant raptors must have come down from the sky to check out the damage. She was glad she hadn’t been around for that.
As she rose again, she realized that their pile of burnt gear, abandoned weeks ago, had also been disturbed. Something had rooted through it, scattering half-melted cookware and twisted swords out of the pile. She kicked at a heat-warped dagger, inexplicably annoyed that the rocs had messed with their stuff. Stupid birds. Well, they’d wasted their time. There hadn’t been anything edible left to scavenge.
With nothing else to do, she used the toe of her boot to nudge the dagger back into the pile, then scooted a blackened pot back to where it belonged. She kicked it a little too hard and a mini-avalanche of soot and burnt debris slid down the side of the mound, with a clanking pot lid hitting the ground last. Grumbling, she reached down to toss the pot onto the top of the pile.
A glint of silver caught her eye and she froze halfway down. There shouldn’t be anything shiny in the heap of gear; everything had been burned black by the intense heat of Ash’s attack. Leaning to the side, she saw the glint again—something small in the center of the pile, revealed by the fallen debris.
An uneasy feeling slid through her and she put a foot on the pile, leaning close. A thin steel disc, a little smaller than the palm of her hand, sat inside a pot, untouched by ash or soot. She stared at it, her unease growing. The inside of the pot was scorched black, but the disc was as clean and shiny as though someone had just polished it.
“Lyre …” She trailed off. Why did the disc look familiar? Maybe it was just a piece of their gear. “Lyre, come take a look at this.”
His footsteps crunched over the charred ground as h
e approached.
“Look at this disc,” she said, reaching down to pick it up as he joined her. “Have you seen—”
His hand flashed out, grabbing her wrist and yanking it away from the pot. “Don’t touch it!”
She staggered backward, almost thrown off balance by the force of him grabbing her. She opened her mouth angrily but her complaint died when she noticed how pale he’d gone. He studied the disc, barely breathing.
And she suddenly realized why the disc looked familiar: it had the same basic dimensions as the spelled disc she’d found on the Hades agent among the Fairview Gaians. The spy’s disc had been woven with blood magic to transmit secret messages between Hades reapers, including the agent’s instructions direct from Samael.
Her heart pounded in her throat. “Is it … is it spelled?”
Releasing her wrist, he braced his hands on one knee and leaned in close, his eyes darkening to black.
“It’s spelled,” he said tersely. “I can’t tell exactly what spells and I don’t dare touch it, but …” He straightened and turned his black eyes on her. “I think it’s a scouting beacon.”
“A scouting beacon?” she repeated in a near whisper.
“A military spell,” he said, his tone as bleak as his dark eyes. “Placed by Hades scouts to mark a location … for the rest of the troops.”
She shook her head slowly, then faster and faster. “No. No, it can’t be that. You can’t be sure. You didn’t even touch it.”
“It’s definitely giving off some kind of magical signature.” His eyes flicked back to the disc. “It’s a simple spell, a lot like the twin distress signals I made for me and Seiya. With these, a master spell leads its bearer to the various beacons, which are otherwise almost impossible to detect. I’m certain that’s what this is. They all look the same.”
“They all look the same?” she echoed, unable to help the suspicious note in her voice. “How many of these things have you seen?”
He glanced at her and said nothing.
Her hands clenched and she shoved Lyre’s mysteries aside to deal with later. “It can’t be a Hades beacon spell because there’s no way a Hades scout would be out here. You can’t even get here without wings. A reaper could never …”
She trailed off as her eyes turned toward the roc tracks on the ground. As if in a dream, she remembered that nightmarish day when she, Ash, and Seiya had fled through the Hades forests after she’d broken the draconian siblings free from Asphodel. Hades soldiers had attacked them from the sky, riding on the backs of huge saddled birds.
The memories of their escape were a blur of panic and exhaustion that she rarely thought about. Even when that flock of rocs had attacked her at the hot springs, she hadn’t connected the wild predators with the tamed mounts of the Hades soldiers.
She pointed at the disc, her hand shaking. “Someone was here after we left. They placed the beacon. They … somehow they followed us here.” Her horrified eyes lifted to Lyre’s. “Raum said there’s a draconian settlement nearby.”
“If they find it …”
“Hades will wipe them out,” she whispered. She spun in a fast circle. “They left the beacon so they could find this place again, right? So they could come back with soldiers—an army to attack the draconians. But it takes time to move an army … Could they even move an entire army through these mountains? It would take a long time. It took us weeks to fly, so it would take them—”
“But Piper,” Lyre interrupted, his voice flat, almost dead, “they don’t need to bring an army over the mountains. Not anymore.”
She stared at him. Then she turned and gaped, horrified, at the rippling ley line at the far end of the clearing. Tenryu had created a ley line right in the middle of the otherwise inaccessible mountains, eliminating weeks or even months of difficult travel to reach this place.
She broke into a sprint, charging up to the ley line. Casting a light that hovered above her head, she bent at the waist to scour the ground. Lyre ran to the other end of the line, creating his own light to search under. She zigzagged all around the line, but the ground was smooth, untouched by tracks of any kind other than hers and Lyre’s, deeply imprinted in the soot where they’d walked out of the line a couple hours ago. Relief slid through her.
“There are no tracks at all,” she said. “They haven’t come through yet. We have time to warn the draconians.”
Lyre stopped searching but he didn’t look relieved. “There are no tracks at all,” he repeated. “None.”
She blinked at him.
“Where are our tracks from when we went into the line?” He gestured, the movement jerky with anxiety. He strode a few feet away from the line. “Everyone came over to say goodbye. Where are their footprints?”
She looked at the ground. “They—they could have washed away in the rain.”
“But not the roc tracks by the gear?”
A shudder ran through her, panicky fear and desperate denial.
“I think they wiped it clean,” he said, his hands flexing at his sides as though he longed to have his bow in his grip. “Just in case, they erased signs of their passage so no one could guess their numbers.”
“Oh god.” She clamped her arms around herself to stop her shaking. “Seiya is coming, isn’t she? They haven’t—They aren’t—”
“She’s coming. I can sense her getting closer each hour.” He spun on one heel and started to pace. “Armies are slow, and it would take a decent-sized army to attack a large group of draconians. Draconians are more powerful than reapers, but I don’t know how many draconians we’re talking about. Samael will probably overestimate the force he needs, to ensure an easy victory.”
He spun and strode in the opposite direction. “We’ve been gone for a little over two weeks—that’s about six cycles here. The scouts had to be at least a few days behind us or Ash and Raum would have noticed them. Eliada was taking Seiya and the others to an outpost first, right? Seiya is still miles away, so the outpost isn’t that close, and we don’t know how far the settlement is from there. The army is travelling by foot through rough terrain with no roads or paths. They’ll be moving slowly.”
He stopped and faced her, raking a hand through his pale hair. “This is all guesswork, but we might still have time to warn the draconians. The army has to be close, but … we might have time.”
Her hands tightened over her upper arms with bruising force as she hugged herself harder. “How did this happen? How did they follow us?”
“One of the draconians must be carrying something that’s spelled with a beacon. There’s no other explanation.” He gestured at the pile of burnt gear. “It’s nothing here, otherwise the trail would have ended at this spot. The scouts would have had no way to follow the others to the outpost. They wouldn’t have brought an army, and all our tracks would still be around the ley line.”
“Do you think one of the draconians is a traitor?” The question hurt to ask.
Lyre stilled. “I don’t think so. I hope not.”
Piper nodded, her thoughts unintentionally turning to Jezel’s angry bitterness and Sivan’s distant coldness. But they were children. Would they betray their kin?
“Someone must have a beacon on them without knowing it,” she said, a little too loud and firm. “None of them would betray their loved ones to Samael.”
He grunted a wordless agreement, though she knew he didn’t entirely believe it either. His eyes lifted to the dark sky. She too looked toward the horizon, wishing with all her might that she would see wings in the sky. But it was too soon; Seiya wouldn’t be arriving for hours yet.
There was nothing she and Lyre could do but wait.
* * *
Piper stood in front of the ley line, hands clenched at her sides as she stared at the dark blue sky. Silhouetted against the twilight horizon, dark figures drew sluggishly closer, wings beating almost in unison. One was most certainly Seiya, but she couldn’t begin to guess as to the five others.
Lyre
stood beside her, equally tense. While they’d been waiting, they’d ranged into the forest and eventually found the tracks of the soldiers, almost a mile out, heading in the general direction of the draconian outpost. They’d travelled in rows of four so there was no way to determine how many had passed through the forest.
Dread simmered in her gut as she willed Seiya and the others to arrive faster. She bounced her weight from foot to foot as the approaching draconians grew near enough to make out. Along with Kiev and Mahala, three familiar draconians had accompanied Seiya: Hedya, Tiran, and Eyal.
Seiya’s wings spread wide and she swept toward them. Dropping to the ground a few feet away, she hurried up to Piper and Lyre, hope written across her face. Piper endured a crippling wave of terror from the combined Nightmare Effect of six draconians and made an effort to keep on her feet as her knees turned to butter. Some of her immunity had worn off over the last two weeks.
“Lyre, Piper,” Seiya gasped, fighting to catch her breath. “I was starting to think you’d never come back.”
“Did you find out anything about the dragon and Ash?” Kiev demanded, landing beside Seiya while Mahala landed on Seiya’s other side.
Piper shook her head, the hope in their eyes like knives in her heart. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I found out more about the great dragon but … there’s nothing we can do for Ash.”
Kiev’s shoulders sagged and Seiya pressed a hand over her face, struggling to keep her composure in place. Piper wanted to comfort them but there were more urgent concerns to address first. She turned to Hedya and the two men, who’d touched down a few yards away.
“Lyre and I found a Hades scouting beacon,” she told them, “and signs of a large force travelling through the forest.”
Hedya went rigid. “Show me.”
“The beacon is over here,” Lyre said, leading the way to the pile of gear where the untouched disc still sat. Hedya, Tiran, and Eyal followed him. Kiev and Mahala went after them and a moment later, Seiya pulled herself together. She and Piper joined the others as Lyre explained the beacon and the tracks they’d found.