Home.I really am home, much more so than I ever was in Heald.I know that now, feel it as powerfully as the kinspark, and when I set Farah down, I’m already moving, marching up to the towering drakonkin who waits at the far end of the hold, holding back as though expecting me to be the woman I was when I was taken.
I am not.And he must see it, because his grim expression softens for once.
“Father,” I greet Ustervoth.“Miss me?”
It’s the oddest thing to have my father hug me.When I pull away, I turn and gesture.“There’s someone very special you all need to meet.”
“Up,” Isolatta says.“Not here, Remi.”Her nose wrinkles.“I’m not so fond of my own hold that I would linger here any longer.”
We emerge on the deck, theSea Bladealready turned and racing back toward the Landlow Isles, the brisk wind salty and divine despite its chill, the past fading behind me.We gather in Isolatta’s office behind the dark red door, crowded with Sheelan, Hepha, and Aurous joining us, but no one seems to mind.
“Aurous,” I say, “did you want to tell them who you are?”
She’s unfazed by the attention, her faint smile sweet and soft.“Perhaps you,” she says.“Because they want your whole story, and I’m only a small part of it.”
“As if,” I say.Then nod.
It’s going to be a long night.
There are three points in my story when I’m stopped in my tracks, the first by Zenthris, when I tell them about Vivenne and the claim that she’s dead.Atlas gently shushes him, though, and encourages me to go on, so they have information, it seems, that they’ll be sharing as soon as I’m done.
The second is my father, when I explain what the power I took on was really for.
“It was meant for me alone,” I tell him when he groans in understanding.“I started hearing her voice shortly after that night.”In Neem’s city, named for her, Dragonhome, what feels like a century ago.
The third is also my father, who gasps in shock when I tell him who Aurous is.He’s been watching her.I’ve seen his eyes following her every motion, though she barely moves at all.And when I tell them of her egg, of her fate and her birth, Ustervoth falls to his knee in front of her and bows his head.
“Forgive us for failing her,” he says.
She lifts his face, fingers under his chin, and wipes the tears from his cheek with her fingertips.“Neem will be avenged,” she says, “and your part in it is not about forgiveness, Ustervoth.”
The rest I finish in a rush because I’m done with talking, throat dry when I down a cup of wine that Atlas presses into my hand when my voice cracks from overuse.I’ve skipped over some of the details because there are things my father and Isolatta simply don’t need to know.The rest I’ll share with the men I love in the privacy we find together soon enough.
After I eat them alive.
Not yet, though.Ustervoth inhales when I’m done, turning to Aurous.“Tell us what to do to free Neem.”His eagerness is a burning thing that lights the whole room.
“I’m not yet old enough, or strong enough, to do what needs to be done,” she says without apology for it.“We must instead seek the means elsewhere.”She nods to me.“Dorgondon’s shores and my aunties await.They will know I’ve hatched.They will have felt my mother’s passing.If help is to come from them, I will stir it.”
“We can sail for Brittaker at once,” Ustervoth says.
“Speak for yourself,” Isolatta interrupts, tsking softly.“We’re on the edge of winter’s months, and storms abound on the open ocean.What you suggest is dangerous at best.”And our deaths at the worst, is it?
Aurous smiles gently at her.“I can assist with that,” she says.“But I can assure you, my mother’s fears were right.We have no time left to waste.With her death, the southern continent is no longer protected.The last of her wards will fall to the spread of the infection.If we wait for spring, we will have nothing left to defend.The dragons will be dead, our world will be devoured by the power that rewrites the truth, and no one will ever remember anything was different.”
That warning sends a chill through all of us, far more so than the cold that lurks outside.
“If it must be,” Isolatta says, grim again, nodding, her hand on the white and purple hilt of the dagger she wears at her waist.Whatever its significance, I’ve never had time or purpose to ask, but she grips it like a talisman as she straightens her shoulders with a sudden grin.“We’re all mad, aren’t we?”
“We are,” Ustervoth says, taking her other hand in his.“I’m coming, too.”
“But the Isles,” she says.“They need one of us.”
He shakes his head.“If we fail, Iso,” he tells her in a low, quiet voice, “it won’t matter anymore.”
What was once a festive and celebratory reunion has turned dark again.Which prompts me to turn on Zenthris and ask what I’ve been wanting to.
“What word of Vivenne?”He has news, that much is certain.
