He suspected as much, but he didn’t know until Petra and he were standing on the platform about to take off. Cain landed to meet them. Angry lines marred the man’s face and Cvareh knew what had been the best day of his life was only going to steadily become worse.
“The Dono has left Ruana,” Cain cursed. “Out of kindness to the mourning of House Xin, and to protect members of House Tam and Rok from the sudden illness, the Court has been ended early.”
Cvareh turned to Petra, only to find his sister staring back at him.
There was only one reason the Dono would cancel the Court: He deemed it no longer worth his time. And why would he? He had already killed most of the Xin fighters. Finnyr was marked for death and would be far less accessible to Petra on Ruana.
And he now had the only Perfect Chimera in Nova or Loom. He had the woman who could make the Philosopher’s Box. He had the key to shifting the tides of fate.
He had Arianna.
44. Arianna
She fought a losing battle with consciousness. On the edges of her awareness were the simplest of sensations: cold, hard, damp. Arianna tried to pull together the scattered shards of her mind. They lingered out of her reach, jagged and crumbling when she tried to put them back in place. The picture would never be what it once was.
Vengeance, in its own way, had been her greatest hope. The belief that there would be some great justice in the world to be dealt by her. Arianna screamed at herself in the recesses of her mind, at the foolish, idealistic girl she’d never stopped being. It escaped as a raspy groan from split lips.
Reality filtered in around her, breaking through the darkness and alighting the edges of her misgivings. She didn’t know what she would live for any longer. She didn’t know if she would live at all after this.
All she knew was that she’d lost.
That was the first true thought that returned to her. She’d been bested by the Dragon King. She had fought and trained her whole life, and when the time came, it hadn’t been enough. Not Arianna, not the White Wraith, not the Perfect Chimera. She hadn’t wanted the mantle, but damn if she hadn’t tried to live into it once it had been thrust upon her. Not for nobility, not for honor, just for Eva.
Eva shone brightly in her memory in all her effervescent beauty. That picture was still perfect. But perfection was fleeting, a sight that wasn’t long for mortal hands or mortal minds. The woman was like one of the falling stars in Nova’s sky.
She faded into darkness.
The darkness was what was real. In that blackness, she fought to find light. She fought for the sake of fighting, for everything left undone. She might be broken, but so long as she drew breath she would pick up the splintered pieces of all she was and use them as shanks between the ribs of those who had crossed her. She’d lived for that one desire before, she would cling to that tether again.
Arianna opened her eyes.
She was face-first on a marble floor. The wide, thin-grouted tiles carried up the walls and onto the ceiling. A room of white illuminated by the light of a single window behind her. It was nearly blinding and Arianna’s vision blurred, her senses returning sluggishly from the prison of her mind.
A man slowly came into focus, seated against the door across from her. His powder skin was nearly gray in her hazy sight. Almost gray enough to be mistaken for a Fenthri, almost the same shade as Cvareh, and the same color as her ears and hands.
“I see you’re finally awake.”
Arianna’s lips curled back into a snarl. She moved to push off the floor, her hands weighted by shackles. The chains snapped taut as she lunged in spite of them. Arms bent backward, chest pushed forward, she stuck out her neck and snapped her jaw like a dog, snarling and growling for one more inch of slack. She would rip him apart with her teeth if she had to.
“You can’t break those chains,” a different voice spoke—familiar, but less so. Arianna turned to find another Dragon leaning against the wall behind her, no doubt just out of reach as well. The Dragon was the color of Fenthri blood, as though the lives of all he’d shattered from Loom below had been poured and hardened into a ruthless mold of irreverent destruction.
She looked down at the shackles around her wrists and ankles. Gold and tempered, she could feel the magic within them object to her attempts to force their locks to disengage. Arianna straightened, swaying slightly with the remnants of the poison that still chilled her veins.
“You have tried to shackle me my whole life. You have yet to succeed,” she addressed the Dragon King with a growl.
He looked mildly amused. “Finnyr told me much about you. It’s a pleasure to see the Rivet genius for myself.”
“Finnyr.” The mention of the man’s name brought Arianna’s attention back to him. The traitor. Underling of the King. “Finnyr Xin.”
“You’ve finally learned my real name. No need for Rafansi any longer then.” His lips moved oddly as he spoke, long scars marring them straight to his cheek. “Stupid little Fen, never probing deeper, taking from my open palm eagerly, never questioning what was in my other hand. Your idiot rebels never saw the dagger coming.”
Arianna merely curled her lips in a snarl. She hated this man with every thread of her being. She loathed him to the point that he didn’t even deserve scalding words. This rage transcended them. “I will kill you,” she swore.
“Go ahead.” He stood.
It was that simple to goad her into lunging forward. Closer, close enough that she could smell him. That his shirt was ruffled by her breath. But he was still too far for her snapping teeth or tethered claws. Arianna let out a scream of agony.
“Did you really think our great King would let me die? That I would lead you to him if I thought your pathetic attempts to kill him would succeed?”
Arianna questioned everything, all her decisions, and the hubris that had led her to this. She had thought she could take the Dragon King on her own, when so many others had failed. It was arrogance in perfect form, befitting more of a Dragon than a Fenthri.
“I never expected to find you on Nova, not to mention in my family’s home.” His voice deepened at the mention of the Xin manor. “Did you come with my brother?”
Cvareh. The name ripped from her chest and shot straight to her eyes. Arianna blinked, furious with herself. She had let her mind cloud and her eyes go blind to what was before them. This was the price of love; this was her punishment for dreaming.
“How did you survive the poisoned organs all those years ago, the rot from too much magic exposed to your pathetic Fen frame?” Finnyr asked, oblivious to her plight. He raised a clawed hand and dragged it along her cheek, drawing a line in gold. “Is it because of this, because you actually did complete the box? Is that what made you strong? Tell me, Arianna.”
Magic laced his tongue. He was trying to use power to influence her. That was an easy trick on Fenthri and weak Chimera. But it was nothing more than a sizzle of annoyance in the back of her mind.
“You will not sway me.” She straightened, gathering her height, nearly as tall as he. “My power is far stronger than yours.”
“But still falls shy of mine.” The Dragon King reminded her of his presence and Arianna turned abruptly, readying some whip of a response.
It was never said.
The moment her eyes met his she felt the icy grip of magic smothering her. She wanted to blink, she wanted to look away, but she was frozen in his stare. It started from her fingertips and swirled into her chest. It trickled up her neck, pressed behind her eyes, whispered through her ears, before it sought entry into her mind.
“Tell me of the Philosopher’s Box, Arianna.”
He was trying to penetrate her thoughts, to own the recesses of her brain. He wanted to crack it like an egg, scramble its contents, and pour them out to pick the information he needed from the plasma. Though neither moved, she felt him pressing on every part
of her. He was smothering her, drowning her. It was like his hands were on her throat and his body weighted her down. The only way out would be to give him what he wanted.
Let me in, the magic whispered. Give it to me.
“No.” Her jaw ached from gritting her teeth. Her lips formed a series of unintelligible sounds that followed, but she did not allow words to come. There was nothing she would say other than “No.”
“How many have you made?” He pressed harder, straightening away from the wall.
Arianna wanted to blink. She tried so hard to break that stare, though her body refused all commands. She was trapped and wanted to scream for relief. But she would not give in. She would not stop her struggle. Her magic pushed back harder. She focused on her lips, making them hers. He would violate the rest of her with his presence, but he would not gain her words. “No.”
“What do you need to make it?”
She could no longer speak; she no longer trusted herself to. Every ounce of magic in her screamed at once in her mind to give him anything he asked for. His magic poisoned her more than the other Dragon’s dagger had. Her stomach turned to sickness. Her forehead grew hot with fever. Her body rebelled against the presence of the foreign power and slowly began to turn septic.
But she would not give in. She would not forfeit to this man. She would die before she did. She would spit up blood from her stomach decaying. She would bruise across her skin from her magic depleting. She would go deaf and blind and have all her fingers snap.
Her hatred was more than all the pain combined. And her desire to sow malice across his land was stronger than his magic would ever be. She would fight against the Dragon King until her last breath because she was Arianna, the White Wraith.
“Tell me how you make the Philosopher’s Box!” Golden tears streamed from the man’s eyes.
“No!” she screamed in reply.
Yveun shut his eyes, tearing away his magic. Arianna collapsed to her knees. She inhaled long, gasping breaths, gulping for air, for the taste of freedom. Her body shuddered and felt like a room ransacked. Everything was there, but nothing in its place, and all bearing the mark of a stranger’s touch. It was merely the pain of bruises from her blood exhausting, but they created phantom impressions in her arms and shoulders and back as if she had just been beaten for hours. As if his hands had actually been upon her.
She was the first to look at him, throwing the gauntlet silently. She gave him her eyes again to try if he so dared. She kept her muscles tense, ready to fight, warding off the trembling that rumbled across her with the aftershocks of being so violated.
The King snarled down at her. “I will gain what I seek.”
“You will not.”
“I will return and I will try again.” He stepped forward.
“You are welcome to.” Arianna watched his movements carefully on the edges of her vision.
“You can die peacefully, or screaming like your dear guilds below as they all burned on my command.” He squatted down, his knees bending forward. “But either way—”
Arianna pushed off the ground. Her shoulders popped and every last bit of slack the chains had was consumed. One finger on the hand he’d placed on his knee was in range. Just one.
She bit it off in a single bite, spitting it at his feet.
“You Fen trash!” The Dragon King stood with a snarl. He pounced on her, pushing her off-balance.
Arianna tried to bring up her hands or feet to defend herself. But she couldn’t find enough movement in the chains in the way he had her pinned. He gouged at her throat with his claws.
She felt as tendon and muscle were shredded. The vibration of the skin ripping was sound in her ears. She coughed, sputtered, and choked on her own blood.
Even still, she smiled. She smiled at the frightened King. She smiled as he retreated. She smiled at his yet-recovering eyes. She smiled as the door slammed shut and her throat began to heal. She smiled until her jaw popped.
Because smiling held in the screams.
45. Yveun
This was the danger of what the Fenthri sought. This was what he needed to fight against—how their science disrupted the natural order of the worlds the gods themselves designed. The woman was not a Fenthri, not a Chimera, not a Dragon; she was wholly monster and entirely dangerous.
Yveun flexed his still-healing finger, a soft pink from newly mended flesh and still re-growing. The tiniest of claws was begin to form next to the bone, magic strengthening it steadily. He had given the woman half a breath’s distance too close and she had taken it.
He wanted to admire her for it, but this was even too much for Yveun. Even he—obsessed with power as he was, and struck by the lack of half measures a Perfect Chimera represented—could not stand for this. If she became even the slightest bit stronger, if she imbibed, if she gained an organ she didn’t already have...
There was no way even he would be able to stand up against her.
“Dono, I do not think any more of the boxes have been created.” Finnyr scampered along at his side like the worthless rat he was. “She seems to be the only one.”
Yveun gritted his teeth. He needed something that could stand against other creatures like that monster. To assume that no more boxes had been made was to welcome the death of everything he stood for. It would be the end of Nova.
“I think we should merely kill her,” Finnyr suggested. “If she’s only made one box and used it on herself—”
“And who is to say it couldn’t be used on others?” Yveun stopped, rounding on Finnyr. “Who is to say that it isn’t in the hands of those disgusting Fen rebels as we speak, slowly turning them into something that can challenge even me?”
Yveun held up his hand, showing his finger for emphasis.
“Dono, no one can challenge you,” Finnyr sputtered.
The King roared with bitter laughter. Finnyr was still playing a game, a child holding onto an ideal. No matter how many times Yveun drove the point home, it seemed the weak little man never understood. So few could fathom his shame from the mistakes he’d made. He’d only revealed his regrets to Coletta, Leona, and men like Finnyr, who were close enough to his movements that they needed to understand the full gravity of all his risks. For the risks Yveun took rarely ever held consequences only for him.
“Finnyr, I assure you, I am very much a mortal man. While it suits me for the masses both on Loom and Nova to think otherwise, it does not change the fact.” Yveun stepped forward, impressing on Finnyr’s personal space, trying to make him feel as insignificant as he actually was. “And if I die, Finnyr, so do you. You live only by my grace. You exist only because I protect you and permit you to. Do you think Xin will ever show you love again without my support at your back? The only way you will ever leave here is as the Xin’Oji, and that cannot happen if I perish. Your life is mine.”
The man cowered for a satisfying moment. Yveun watched him struggle to steady his voice, but appreciated the struggle all the same. Finnyr would never be a great Dragon, but Yveun needed something from him more important than greatness: obedience.
“Yes, Dono.” The man lowered his eyes. “It is an honor that my life is owned by one such as you.”
“See that you do not forget it.” Yveun straightened away from the smaller Dragon, starting off in the opposite direction. “Now, if I were you, I would find somewhere to hide for the next while until you are needed again. Your use has been exhausted for now, and you will only risk earning my ire if you linger.”
He paused at the end of the hall. “Furthermore, your sister is out for your heart. If you think being on Lysip will keep her from hunting you down, you underestimate her.”
Finnyr glowered at the mention of Petra, but he didn’t object. Yevun continued away, trusting in Finnyr’s cowardice more than anything else about the man. He would continue on for the sake of his self-preservation
above all else. Yveun had more important things to worry about.
Dragons would not be enough to stand against the threat of the Perfect Chimera. To fight a beast, Yveun needed a more fearsome creature of his own. He needed Dragons that would have no shame in stooping to any level for power and strength. Even if that meant imbibing.
But something even further than consuming the flesh of other Dragons was working through the back of his mind. Fenthri could have the flesh of Dragons cut into them. They had no taboos and no fear of exploring such things. If he found Dragons who would cast aside those inhibitions as well, could they receive the organs of other Dragons? Could he sew together his own Dragon warriors from the strongest parts there were to pick from?
Yveun licked his lips with a morbid sort of hunger.
“Coletta.” The heady scents of earth and foliage assaulted his nose the moment he crossed into her domain.
Coletta’s world was enclosed by a tall wall, cleverly designed right into the aesthetic of the estate. Large sun shades allowed in light for her plants, but helped conceal the true nature of her gardens from the casual observer on the back of a boco. For any who looked too close would see the ominous crimson spikes that scaled up some of her flowering plants, or the unsettling aroma that lingered beneath the heavy perfumes of unnatural sweetness.
“Yveun,” she stood from amid the plants down the path from him. The woman wore nothing, allowing the poisons to brush directly against her skin. Yveun had thought her a fool for it in the beginning. She was sick constantly, frail, always afflicted with horrible boils and rashes. But with time, her body had developed immunities. Now, he would dare argue that she had become the strongest of them all, and no one but him ever saw it.
“Leona. You knew of her well before she lived in our halls.”