Liz shakes her head.“No.We talked about this, and I saidno.I told you that your plan’s terrible—it makes no sense.Your death could be the very thing that dooms your people.Listen to me.”She kicks him.Then she hits him.
That doesn’t hurt me any more now than it did before.But Hyperion’s smile is pained.
Liz spins on me, her eyes flashing.“He’s giving up.”She kicks him again.“No, you can’t give up, you stupid brute.I forbid it.”
He’s lived his entire life with the weight of knowing that, if the prophecy is true, he’ll destroy his people.But now, on Earth, he’s done nothing to harm us.He hasn’t betrayed the blessed.He’s been brave, and strong, and good, and true.
Even so, I understand.
He wants to die, because he’ll finally be free of theweightof it all.
Liz.
She ignores me.
She yanks the remaining blade out of the sheath on her back.“I’m cutting my sword out of your belly, you big jerk.Do you hear me?You can’t keep it!”Before I can stop her, she scrambles up toward the top of his belly.
Liz,stop, I say.I understand his desire.He’s not insane.It’s rational.
“Just because you’re stupid too doesn’t mean it’s right.We need him.The blessed need him.Don’t let some idiotic thing—” Liz is crying, rivulets of tears running down her face.“My mom told me I was promised to the crazy people who came to kidnap me.She traded my life to those people who dragged me away from my home and tried to throw me in that volcano.”She tightens both her hands on the hilt of her one remaining sword.“My mom made a deal, after I died in her stomach, that if they brought me back and I got a childhood, they could have me.She traded my life to them.”
That’s...insane.Hyperion coughs.I’ve never seen a dragon cough, unless they had a rock or a small animal caught in their throat.She’s insane.
“You’re just as bad as she is,” Liz says.“Worse!”She looks down at the glowing blue spear inside Hyperion’s belly.“I’m going to perform the first-ever dragon surgery, and I’m going to pull this stupid ice spear out of your dumb belly, and then you’re going to bond a human and recover.Do you hear me?”
Before I can stop her again, Liz slices his belly open.
At least, she tries.Even badly injured, Hyperion’s magic is strong, and his hide is even stronger.She’s barely sliced through the scales when the blue line that’s glowing inside his stomachexplodes,tiny blue and red glowing specks swirling wildly.
What just happened?Liz is blasting her questions far and wide.What was that?Is he—did that?—
Blessed are gathering now, flooding the flat top of the mountain north of Selfoss where we’ve been gathering.Gordon and Rufus.Asteria and a dozen of her strike blessed.They’re coming from all over, and their ensnared have come with them, too.No one can look away from the blue and red lights chasing one another around in Hyperion’s stomach.
I can’t blame them.I’m staring, too.
His head has gone limp.His eyes are flat and dark.
He’s dying.
You have to let him go,I say.It’s what he wants.
“You have got to be kidding me.This issomessed up,” Coral says, hopping off Asteria’s back and jogging to Hyperion’s side.Before any of us can stop her, before we can say a single word, she braces both her arms against the bright red scales of his right flank, and there’s a sucking feeling, and then the room’s flooded with a brilliant golden light.
The word Liz says is one I haven’t heard very often, and she looksverydispleased.
Coral straightens.“He’s not dead yet, and now if he dies, I do too.So, tell me again what he wants, and how we need to let him go?”
Liz’s face blanches.“We have to get him over to that cursed volcano,right now.I think maybe only that heartstone can save him.”
NO.I forbid it.
“It’s Coral,” Liz says.“She’s bonded to him, so spare me the lecture, and fly your stupid brother to Eyjafjallajökull before I stabyou!”
Ah, Coral.What a stupid human baby.
I have no idea what Liz thinks she’s going to do at the volcano.Even if she leaps back inside, there’s no way she’s going to save him in time, but there’s no reasoning with her.If I ignore her, she’ll do something else just as drastic, and with her wings she could fly there herself.
So I open the portal.
