With a smile, Sethon lifted the blade and ground his other hand across the raw edges of the jagged, open wound. A different kind of agony. “Heal yourself with your dragon.” He stroked my cheek again, his finger wet, the tang of metal on his skin this time the smell of my own blood.
All of my fury and pain and terror converged into one thought: Kill him.
I drew a deep breath and lunged for the energy world. The room twisted into streaming colors, the energy body of Sethon before me rushing with dark-edged excitement.
The red dragon writhed above me, her golden power locked into the crimson pulse of her huge body. Nearby, the blue beast roared its fury. Could Ido feel what was happening?
“Holy gods,” Sethon whispered. “They are beautiful.”
He could see them through the folio’s power.
Sethon’s energy body leaned down, the heat of his breath against my ear. The words he whispered were bitter and strong—an ancient command that closed around my Hua like a strangling hand. I clawed at it, my desperation useless against the implacable strength.
“Heal your wounds,” Sethon ordered.
It was as if the hand opened for one precious moment, allowing a breath of the red dragon’s golden power and a rush of healing ease. I opened my mouth to call her—Turn the healing on him, take his will, kill him!—but the hand clamped tight again, stifling my voice, blocking me from her glorious power. The energy planes of Sethon’s face solidified into flesh and bone again, the streaming colors around me buckling back into the stillness of the tent.
I gasped, drawing in the sudden absence of pain. The carved mess of my chest was smooth again under the clotting blood, and the swollen ruin of my finger had knitted straight.
Sethon’s head was thrown back as if at the end of an ecstasy. “So that is the energy world,” he whispered. “Such power. No wonder Ido wanted it all.” He broke into a rough laugh. “And when he comes for you, I will have his dragon, too. An army with two Dragoneyes. I will be unconquerable.”
“No!”
He wiped his hand across my chest, smearing the blood. “You have no choice, Lady Eona. Your will is mine.” He raised the knife again. “And, before long, your spirit will be, too.”
Again, he lifted my chin, the shape of him blurred by blood and tears. He was never going to stop. Cutting me over and over again.
Hours must have passed—I could see the brightening of daylight at the base of the tent wall.
At the corner of my eye, I saw him pick up the mallet. He wanted my spirit, and he would have it soon; I could feel the loosening of hope, the ebb of strength and resolve.
I had to find a way beyond his reach. Before it was too late.
Ido had taken refuge in his dragon. But how? With pain, he’d said. Slowly, I found the memory in my clouded mind—we were training, the smell of jasmine, his thumbs pressed into the soft centers of my palms. Our first touch. He had told me that pain was an energy. I could use it to find the dragon. Not a true union. A last resort—and dangerous to the dragon and the Dragoneye.
But Ido had not been held by the bonds of royal blood and the black folio.
Sethon bent down, wrenched off my sandal, and pressed my foot onto the dirt; a solid backing for his mallet. Under my bare sole, I felt rough earth, the wetness of my blood. And something else: a tiny shiver through my foot’s gateway of energy.
I stilled, focusing past the roar of pain in my body. It was earth energy; the oldest power. And my blood—my ancestors’ blood—dripping from me into the dirt of the east, my dragon’s heartland. Her center of power. I drew in a shaking breath to hide my desperate hope, waiting. And dreading.
The smashing blow exploded through me, every part of me gathered in its agony. Screaming, I opened myself to the earth’s energy and the primal power of my blood—an ancient call to an ancient dragon.
Spinning. Weightless. Pain gone. All sensation gone. Only darkness—in my eyes, my nose, my mouth. A cocoon of blessed relief.
Was I dead?
Eona.
A voice. Familiar.
Eona. Come. I have been waiting for so long. We have all been waiting for so long.
Waiting? Who has been waiting?
Come.
The voice drew me out of darkness into the swirling reds and greens and blues of the celestial plane. Below me, my body sagged in the chair, silvery Hua still pumping through it, the pathways threaded with the black of the folio. Not dead, then.
Sethon’s dark energy body bent over my limp form and hauled my head up by my hair. “She’s in the shadow world.” He slammed the mallet down onto the table.
I was in my dragon. Safe from him. The triumph gathered into cold intent: this was a chance to kill him. Rip his army apart.
Eona. The voice pulled me back from my hate.
You must make it right.
The voice was in me, beside me, above me. I knew its tone, its rage.
Kinra.
In the Mirror dragon, too. Had she been here since the dragon fled?
… waiting for so long. I am nearly gone, Eona. You are the last of my line. You must make it right. See my memories. See the truth.
The energy world suddenly fell away, plunging me into an assault of light and heat, a memory of flesh and bone and skin.
I am standing in hot sunlight in a courtyard, a tart citrus smell rising from the border of kumquat trees around the marble square. It is the courtyard of the Rat Dragon Hall and I am holding a man’s hand. He stands before me, thin body tense. For a moment, I do not know his face, and then his sharp features shift into the face of—
—my beloved Somo.
“Are you sure, Kinra?” he demands. He looks over his shoulder, but we are alone.
I hold up the scroll. “I have found the proof. There is no bargain between us and the dragons. There never was any bargain. The first Dragoneyes stole their egg of renewal—the Imperial Pearl—and we still hold them here with it. A ransom for their power sewn into the throat of our emperors.”
“No!” He shakes his head in disbelief. “If that is so, then why do I feel my dragon’s joy when we unite?”
I touch his cheek. “Somo, I don’t think that joy is for us.” Hot tears sting my eyes. “I think it is because every union holds the hope that one of us will finally understand what we have done to them and make it right.”
The energy world burst back into swirling brightness below me. Although my physical body was slumped in the chair, I felt as though my spirit was rigid with shock. The dragons were enslaved. There was no bargain between man and beast. We had stolen their egg, and Kinra had tried to return it. And like Somo, I had misread my dragon’s joy, blinded by so much power at my command. Now I understood: the ten bereft dragons were not crying for their dead Dragoneyes. They were crying for their lost hope.
Sethon’s energy body squatted down before my inert form, the dark flow of his Hua raging through his pathways. “She is crying,” he said. “That is not possible in the shadow world.” He grabbed my chin, lifting it. “So, where are you, Lady Eona?” For a moment, he watched me, then he closed his hand around the pearl rope binding my wrists. “Return to your body!”
His command opened a crack of searing pain in my safe cocoon.
No! You must see. You must know the truth.
Kinra’s voice snatched me away from the agony, plunging me once more into another place, another time. A large bedchamber, shutters closed, bronze lamps burning oil scented with roses. A small girl kneeling on the floor, playing with a wooden horse—
—my sweet, beautiful Pia. Somo at the door, ordering my maid away. I place the black folio on the table and stifle a shiver. It has taken me so long and all of my resolve to read its dangerous words.
“This book and the Imperial Pearl are the ways we keep the dragons bound to us,” I say as Somo crosses the room to me.
“I can feel the Gan Hua in it.” He rubs the base of his skull. “It makes me feel ill.” He reaches for the folio, and sna
tches his hand back as the white pearls stir. “You say it has been woven with
the Hua of all of the dragons? Like a rope around their spirits?”
“Yes. And if the dragons are to renew, their old Hua must join with the Imperial Pearl, the new Hua. According to the scroll I found, they must be reborn every five hundred years or their power starts to weaken, and with it the balance they bring to the earth. Not so many cycles ago, one dragoneye could take care of his own province, by himself. You know that is not the case anymore. Now every wind and water disaster needs the power of at least two dragoneyes to quell it. Sometimes even three.”
“We only use three in the worst situations,” he protests.
“See, you are downplaying it, too. Just like the rest of the Council.”
For a moment he stares at me. Then, reluctantly, he nods. “How would this renewal be achieved?”
I lower my voice. “Somo, I think the dragons are reborn through the String of Pearls.”
He steps back. “The weapon?” He gives an uneasy laugh. “Do you intend to kill us all to release all the dragon power?”
“No, it is not meant to be a weapon. It is supposed to be the way for the dragons to renew.” I point to the symbol tooled into the book’s black leather cover. “See, there are twelve interlocking circles. They symbolize the pearl that each dragon carries under its chin. They are not just pearls of wisdom, Somo. They are each dragon’s new self, waiting to be born.” I run my finger around the large circle created by the smaller interlocking circles. “And this, the thirteenth pearl. The Imperial Pearl—the catalyst—that brings their renewal. What we stole from them.”
Somo stares at me. “If they are reborn, what will happen to our union with them?”
I straighten, knowing the pain I am about to cause, because I feel its deep ache myself. “It will go with the old beasts.”
“Go? You mean for good?”
“Yes. We will lose our dragons forever.”
“Kinra, we will lose our power!”
“It is a power built on the enslavement of the dragons, Somo! We are creating a massive imbalance in the land’s Hua by not allowing them to renew.” I point to our daughter, click-clacking her horse across the parquetry. So innocent. “Do you want her children’s children to bear the bad luck that our greed will bring upon them? They will curse our names as the land dies around them! And we will have no rest in the garden of the gods if we do not right this terrible wrong.”
The dim, rose-scented room snapped back into the bright ebb and flow of the celestial plane. Kinra’s memory seared through me. I would lose my dragon. Ido had been right; there was no middle ground. It was all the power or nothing.
Far below me, the energy in the tent broke and swirled as someone burst through the doorway and knelt, every pathway in the newcomer’s body rushing with frantic Hua.
Sethon turned. “What is it?”
“The resistance is massing at the top of the ridge, Your Majesty.”
Sethon’s dark energy surged. “Excellent. Prepare for engagement.”
He circled the chair, pacing, then picked up a knife and sliced into the palm of his hand. Hua gathered at the pulsing leak. He closed his fist around the pearls. “Return to your body, now.”
The blood command reached toward me, calling me back to my flesh.
Not yet!
Kinra’s voice was desperate, dissolving the streaming colors around me into—
—the same bedchamber. Alone. Six months of preparations nearly complete.
Tonight, Emperor Dao will call for my body, and I will steal the pearl. He thinks he has finally seduced the Dragoneye Queen, the only woman in his empire who can reject him with impunity. He thinks he has won me away from Somo. I slot the calligraphy brush into its porcelain rest and press the back of my hand to my wet eyes, stemming the useless tears. Whether I succeed or not, tonight everything changes.
At least Pia is safe—hidden far away with a good family. Leaning down, I blow on the wet ink of the last entry in the red journal. Woman script and code; it should be safe. The journal is my letter to Pia, the only way she will ever know why she lost her mother and father and her Dragoneye heritage. And if we fail, it will show her the way to make it right.
I close the journal and watch the black pearls settle around the smooth red leather; an idea I have borrowed from the first Dragoneyes. They knew how to guard their secrets.
If all goes according to plan, I will take the pearl from Dao on the hour of the Ox and meet Somo outside the palace, where he will be waiting with the black folio. By the time I get to my beloved, the twelve breaths of the Imperial Pearl will be well past and the dragons will be forming the String of Pearls. It will be too late for anyone to stop their release.
The black folio is open on the table, ready for the final task. I touch the hilts of the jade and moonstone swords, feeling my rage woven into their steel. I have not told Somo this part of the plan, and the small deception settles in my heart like stone. But he would not have let me put my spirit at such risk. I pick up one of the swords and draw the tip of the blade across my palm in a hot sting of pain. Bright red wells in its wake. With a deep breath, I press my hand against the open pages and gather my Hua through the flow of my blood. The black folio grabs at me, weaving my energy into the heat of the dark force that already holds the dragons. Bound together now. If I succeed, my Hua will be released with the dragons. If I fail, I will be locked alongside the dragons waiting for another chance. Waiting for Pia or another of my bloodline to make it right—
“Return!”
Sethon’s voice ripped me from my dragon and slammed me back into my brutalized body. I screamed, every part of me alight with pain. His hand snaked around my throat, fingertips digging into the round of my windpipe.
“If you try that again, I will not be so generous with the healing power,” he said, choking off my sound.
My pulse pounded in my ears, its frantic rhythm holding Kinra’s words.
Make it right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I SQUINTED ACROSS the battlefield, trying to recognize Kygo and Ido among the tiny figures that stood along the edge of the escarpment. Could they see me on this command tower, kneeling at Sethon’s feet? They could hardly miss me: we were in the center of the assembled army, raised twelve tiered steps above it on a wooden platform. To add to that, we sat upon a small throne dais marked out by a tall canopy. The bait in plain sight.
Sethon reached down and stroked my hair, his touch making my skin crawl.
Perhaps Ido was not standing on the ridge at all. He no longer had the threat of my compulsion hanging over him, so why would he stay?
I glanced up at the purple silk canopy that billowed over us, its long fringe of red blessing banners snapping like whips.
There was some strange quality in the hot gusts that swept the flat grassland, and in the bank of silver clouds closing in around us. I wet my cracked lips, tasting the air: it held the harsh edge of dry lightning, the same acrid energy I had smelled and tasted on the beach with Ido. Every Dragoneye sense within me said he was making this searing wind. He had stayed, and he was going to fight alongside Kygo. The certainty straightened my spine.
“You have something else to say?” Sethon asked High Lord Tuy, who was bent on one knee before him at the base of the small dais. He was another of Sethon’s half-brothers, closer in age, with wary, narrow eyes and deep lines cut from nose to mouth; a permanent sneer etched into his face.
“I have a concern, Your Majesty,” he said. “This plan to take the ridge. All conventional wisdom says that attacking uphill is a fool’s strategy.”
Sethon’s hand traced the moonstone and jade circles on the hilt of one of Kinra’s swords, slung in the back sheath over the arm of his chair. “A fool’s strategy?” he echoed softly.
“Xsu-Ree cautions against it specifically, brother,” Tuy said, his fist clenching with the effort to moderate his tone. “Why go against his wisdom? It
has always stood us in good stead.”
My knees ached from kneeling on the hard wood, but I did not dare shift in case the movement brought Sethon’s focus back to me. Except for my hands—still bound by the pearls, and useless—he had released my body from his physical control. I could not bear to lose that freedom again. As it was, I still felt his choking grip on my power like a tight rope around a dog’s neck. Hot shame swept over me; this was what I had done to Ido, and what we were doing to the dragons.
“We should march around the escarpment,” Tuy added. “Attack on equal ground with all our force. It will only take a week or so, and we will slaughter them with minimal loss.”
Sethon’s fingers curled into my hair and yanked my head back. I fixed my eyes on the canopy, trying not to show the pain that clawed across my scalp. “Look at what I have, brother,” he said, shaking my head. “Dragon power. I don’t need to attack on equal ground.”
Tuy’s eyes flitted across my face. “Everyone sees what you have, Your Majesty,” he said tightly. “The Mirror Dragoneye is indeed a prize. But her presence is making the men uneasy. They fear you will bring bad luck upon the campaign by flouting the Covenant.”
Sethon released my hair and gestured to the huge battalions below us, each division in its own painted armor—red, green, purple, yellow, blue—immense ranks of color that seemed to stretch forever toward the escarpment.
“The men will be glad enough of her dragon power when Lord Ido attacks,” he said. “You will take the ridge while I take care of Ido and his dragon. Even if we lose five men to their one, we will soon overrun them.” He crooked his finger at Yuso. “Remind my brother how many men we face.”
Yuso stepped forward. “No more than four and half thousand, High Lord Tuy.”