Riding a Dragon
The wind lashes at us as we soar, icy and sharp against my skin, but I
barely feel it. I’ve led us straight through the mystical veil toward
Avalon.
The shadowed castle rises through the fog ahead, looming like a halfremembered dream.
Talan slumps in front of me. I cling to him tightly, trying to keep him
upright. He’s slipping in and out of consciousness. His head rests back
against my shoulder.
“Can I help you find a book?” he mumbles in English, his voice soft.
He’s echoing phrases from my old life, which makes my heart splinter. I
am in his head, always.
His blood has soaked through his clothes. It’s warm against my hands,
and the fear inside me is sharp and wild, thorns that scrape inside my skull.
Up ahead, Avalon takes shape in the mist, and my heart races.
Last time I flew Tarasque, she knew exactly where to go. She carried
me right back to her home in the Lost Palace, where she belonged. But now,
we’re heading for Avalon, and I have no idea how to tell her that. The truth
is, I don’t know what I’m doing at all.
“Talan,” I say, my voice cracking, “can you guide her down to Avalon?”
Nothing.
His body is slack, the tension fading from his muscles, and I know with
sickening certainty that if I don’t get him help soon, he’ll die.
Tarasque veers suddenly, arcing away from the city, and I grit my teeth
in frustration, my hands shaking.
“Talan!” I’m screaming his name into the wind, my throat raw. “Please
wake up, for me. I love you.”
Still nothing.
I don’t even realize I’m crying until the world blurs. Talan’s body
trembles against mine, and my mind is chaos—wild, brambly, panicstricken.
The roaring wind fades to a hush, as if the sky is waiting for Talan to
speak again.
Reklam
Her game plan
“Why isn’t anyone watching us?”
He only blinks at me. “So there is a difference,” he mutters. What that means I don’t know, and it infuriates me.
“Why?”
“Mare, I’m here to teach you your histories, to teach you how to be Silver and how to be, ah, useful,” he says, his expression souring.
I stare at him, confused. Cold fear bleeds through me. “My name is Mareena.”
But he only waves a hand, brushing aside my feeble declaration. “I’m also going to try to understand exactly how you came to be and how your abilities work.”
“My abilities came to be because—because I’m a Silver. My parents’ abilities mixed—my father was an oblivion and my mother a storm.” I stutter through the explanation Elara fed me, trying to make him understand. “I’m a Silver, sir.”
To my horror, he shakes his head. “No you are not, Mare Barrow, and you must never forget it.”
He knows. I’m finished. It’s all over. I should beg, plead for him to keep my secret, but the words stick in my throat. The end is coming, and I can’t even open my mouth to stop it.
“There’s no need for that,” he continues, noting my fear. “I have no plans of alerting anyone to your heritage.”
The relief I feel is short-lived, shifting into another kind of fear. “Why? What do you want from me?”
“I am, above all things, a curious man. And when you entered Queenstrial a Red servant and ran out some long-lost Silver lady, I have to say I was quite curious.”
“Is that why there aren’t any cameras in here?” I bristle, backing away from him. My fists clench, and I wish the lightning would come to protect me from this man. “So there’s no record of you examining me?”
“There are no cameras in here because I have the power to turn them off.”
Hope sparks in me, like light in absolute darkness. “What is your power?” I ask shakily. Maybe he’s like
Sayfa 128
A Magnetron
The smallest girl I’ve ever seen rises out of darkness.
Cheers rise as a house in brown silk and red gemstones applauds their daughter.
“Rohr, of House Rhambos,” the family shouts, announcing her to the world.
The girl, no more than fourteen, smiles up at her family. She’s tiny in comparison to the statues, but her hands are strangely large. The rest of her looks liable to blow away in a strong breeze. She takes a turn about the ring of statues, always smiling upward. Her gaze lands on Cal—I mean the prince—trying to entice him with her doe eyes or the occasional flip of honey-blond hair. In short, she looks foolish. Until she approaches a solid stone statue and sloughs its head off with a single, simple slap.
House Rhambos speaks again. “Strongarm.”
Below us, little Rohr destroys the floor in a whirlwind, turning statues into pulverized piles of dust while she cracks the ground beneath her feet. She’s like an earthquake in tiny human form, breaking apart anything and everything in her way.
So this is a pageant.
A violent one, meant to showcase a girl’s beauty, splendor—and strength. The most talented daughter. This is a display of power, to pair the prince with the most powerful girl, so that their children might be the strongest of all. And this has been going on for hundreds of years.
I shudder to think of the strength in Cal’s pinkie finger.
He claps politely as the Rhambos girl finishes her display of organized destruction and steps back onto the descending platform. House Rhambos cheers for her as she disappears.
Next comes Heron of House Welle, the daughter of my own governor. She’s tall, with a face like her bird namesake. The destroyed earth shifts around her as she puts the floor back together. “Greenwarden,” her family chants. A greeny. At her command, trees
Sayfa 70
Reklam
Reklam