Dark Lord's Wedding (71 page)

They called him a god. Ants might think the same of a monkey, and Hiresha considered the average person hardly more intelligent. The Winged Flame likely wasn’t anything more than a two-headed savage, a dragon parasitizing humanity. This false god could die. He should die. He must.

Hiresha would execute him, for Fos, for her broken construct, and for the interruption of the perfect wedding.

The dragon spiraled around the tower in a whirlpool of green iridescence. The past aligned with the present. Time ebbed and flowed through Hiresha in bursts of scintillation. She had been in a situation like this before in the Dream Storm Sea. There had been dragons, yes, and a kraken mastermind.

Now a kraken adorned her in jewel piercings under her armor. Her blood would have to run as cold and as blue as the cephalopod’s to exterminate this dragon. Even if the vortex of his flight titillated the senses with its mathematical perfection and potential engineering applications, Hiresha would have to destroy him.

Her red paragon reeled her over the dragon to align her for a perfect shot. The blue paragon remained waiting and spinning on the tower. Beside it, Ix spat venom on the assassins’ amethyst blades.

“Jump,” Hiresha said to Sagai and Naroh.

When they did, she Lightened them. They sailed twenty-three feet toward the dragon. The jaguar knight leapt further from a tower window. His gold tooth glinted as he bit and broke a wing at the joint. The assassins’ gem shards pierced through feathers into the dragon’s flank. The blue paragon whirred into his head.

Hiresha Attracted the diamond with the force of infinite dream reflections. It drilled through a frill of feathers and into the dragon’s eye. She slid around the gnashing jaws for the best angle to pull the jewel deeper to pulverize his brain, as small as it might be.

The blue paragon stuck. She couldn’t rip it through bone. Worse, the diamond had been disenchanted. Whether by contact with the dragon’s skelature or through force of his will, the blue paragon was no longer hers to move. She would have to touch it and rip it out of his larcenous skull herself.

“Tethiel.” Hiresha flung her red paragon in front of the dragon’s path of flight. “Hide me.”

“My heart, I can do so much more.”

The Lord of the Feast flickered into being. He overshadowed the tower as a three-headed titan. In a night overbright with clashing colors, he stood in stark shades of obsidian and moonstone. The jaws of his right hand clamped onto the dragon’s neck, smashing the head down to impact into the street.

Hiresha whisked in, sealed her hand against her blue paragon, and tore it free. His vaporous blood she Attracted away from her face to her red diamond. She leapt back to the tower crest.

The second head descended in a burning blueness.

She backflipped away. The dragon’s jaws split the air where she would’ve been. He snaked onward, toward the guests on the roof. His brightness shadowed two pairs of guests, the kings and the Green Bloods. Hiresha couldn’t save them all.

The potato king dropped his axe. He stumbled backward and fell down the stairs. The choice became even easier.

Ix and Saul lifted toward her, and she whisked them both away from the crush of black teeth. The dragon snapped up the Mimic, yet not fast enough to stop the Feaster from shouting one last line, “Die for beauty and live forever.”

The Winged Flame slammed through part of the tower, collapsing the stair and probably killing the potato king. Hiresha couldn’t make a habit of this. Only so many wedding guests could die before one would have to question the quality of the host.

Half the tower top fell away. Alyla’s limp arm dangled off the brink. Thankfully, Elbe was there to drag her to relative safety. A familiar scream discharged from lower in the tower. Miss Barrows must’ve hidden herself inside, and given the duration and volume her cry, she had taken a healthy breath first. She hadn’t yet been crushed. Cracks ran down the tower, and a few more stones fell away.

The dragon looped up into a sky turned grey from nearing morning. Only seven minutes remained until Tethiel’s Feasting magic weakened. Hiresha needed to do more than prod at another eye.

The jaguar knight ravaged across the Winged Flame. The dragon couldn’t seem to shake him, yet it wasn’t enough. Even the blackened wounds left by the assassins’ gem shards hadn’t slowed him appreciably.

Hiresha needed to pierce the dragon’s heart. She levitated her blue paragon in front of Ix. “Make it lethal.”

“Then you chose the right Green Blood.” Ix sniffed at Saul.

“I choose you both.” Hiresha hoisted Saul closer. “Craft complementary venoms.”

Ix harrumphed. Saul puckered his green lips in thought. They both started tracing sticky fingers over the pyramidal jewel. “Make anything but a bleeder,” Saul said.

“I’m no dabbler,” Ix said. “Keep to your half.”

Both Green Bloods had only coated a fraction of the facets before the dragon whorled toward the tower. The jaguar knight clung to his side by tooth and claw. Hiresha knew she must delay the dragon.

The Lord of the Feast anticipated her need. His arms stretched and opened into sets of fangs, one serrated, one needling. They would clamp on either side of the Winged Flame to fetter him.

Or they should have. The dragon dove around and knocked out the base of the tower. He brushed through the foundations. Powdered, pulverized, the bottom half was swept away.

Hiresha slapped a hand against the tower. She could only Lighten the remaining rooftop. The mortar between the blocks attenuated her magic. The Empire never would’ve countenanced such shoddy masonry. These builders hadn’t even considered dragon attack.

The tower leaned in its collapse. Stones popped out, and Elbe was flung among them trailing songbird feathers. She lifted a hand toward Hiresha but did not scream.

Miss Barrows did, and this time she sounded less operatic and more distressed. The peel died out and returned with even more scraping urgency.

Hiresha either had to fly out to save Elbe or rescue Miss Barrows. The choice was impossible, between a necessary ally and a lifetime friend. Hiresha could only hope the Green Blood venoms lavished on her diamond would inflict as much pain on the dragon.

Hiresha could impress more allies. She careened into the side of the tower for her friend. Kicking through warping passageways, Hiresha collided with Miss Barrows with an embrace. Stones fell. They thudded off Hiresha’s armor.

“My daughter.” Miss Barrows tried to break free. “My Minnow.”

Her daughter had jumped out of a window, not unreasonable given the scenario, except that she had chosen the wrong direction for her exit. Even if she survived the landing, Hiresha expected the tower would fall on top of her.

There was only so little Hiresha could do. She Attracted the daughter by her necklace. Crumbling masonry pushed her the other way. The gold chain sliced through her throat, and stones buried her.

Hiresha called it unfortunate. She couldn’t feel any deeper remorse, not yet. First she had to fight for the chance to grieve.

Miss Barrows wailed, as was natural, even if her daughter hadn’t been half as exceptional as Fos. Hiresha set down the weeping woman in time to see the fate of Elbe. Grisly as it might be, Hiresha believed she owed it to the Purest to bear witness.

Elbe fell. She landed on the dragon’s back and bounced. She slid across a prismatic wash of feathers. He pitched his flight to keep her from falling off. Whatever he was doing with her, it was deliberate.

He rolled above a palace dome. Elbe dropped five feet onto the curved roof then began tumbling down. The Winged Flame whipped around, and the air current pushed her back to the pinnacle. She stood on wobbly legs, and the dragon left her there.

The action had been disturbingly whimsical. Even as relief gushed through Hiresha, her tongue retracted into her souring mouth. She could better predict the Winged Flame if he was one thing and of singular temperament.

“He is many,” Tethiel said from the shadows.

“It might do to rethink my plan,” she said. “Oh, fennec!”

The warbling cry of the fennec called out from the tower wreckage.

Hiresha clapped her gauntlet over her heart, and it clanked against her breastplate. The fox’s collar should’ve kept him from falling far, but a stone could’ve hurt him. It wouldn’t have taken much more than a pebble to break his petite bones.

She waved away the dust cloud. Her fox, her god of golden fortune, lay snuffling beside a spotted orange tail. The fennec hadn’t suffered anything worse than dust. The jaguar knight had been smashed against the tower.

The dragon rescued and killed whomever he wished.

No, Hiresha would nullify his will. The jaguar knight had kept his oath to her by fighting bravely. She flung the stone off him. He whimpered a mew. The great cat’s jaw had withstood a collision that had broken all his fangs. What fortune that she had already made him replacement teeth, though something would have to be done about his splintered ribs and punctured lungs. She couldn’t attend to it all. The Winged Flame was already arching back.

She cradled the cat’s head as she lifted him. Her power held his broken bones still. A leap took her to a teetering disk of stone, the last bit of the tower’s roof. Hiresha lowered the jaguar knight beside Alyla and moved her glowing hand onto his whiskered snout.

“Will you heal him?” Hiresha asked.

Alyla blinked with eyelashes crusted with tears. “I will, if the Lord of the Feast stops.”

“Agreed,” Hiresha said.

“My heart, I must—”

“I said, ‘Agreed.’” Hiresha found Tethiel by his dawnstone. She pulled him from shadow into her arms. Her red paragon circled around them. It brightened, second by second, from the nearing dragon.

Ix stepped away from her blue paragon. A yellowish grease coated its fractal sides. “It’s ready.”

Hiresha.
Tethiel’s words pricked her mind.
Lure the immortal away from the city or more will die.

“He’s not immortal.” Hiresha angled the tower top toward the streets. Her jewels reflected red.

The dragon dove with jaws open, revealing an impressive array of black fangs and white gums. Its violet tongue forked twice, ending in four points. Hiresha had to speculate on what it could taste: feelings, nearby magic, and perhaps even the flow of time.

The Winged Flame crashed his teeth together with the sound of terminality.

She sprang away with Tethiel and her jewels.

Hiresha’s purple cape was sheared off. The dragon didn’t even have the decency to gag on it.

He crisscrossed after Hiresha. She couldn’t outmaneuver him. She couldn’t outpace him. Hiresha only succeeded in drawing him away from the guests.

Tethiel duplicated himself and her every fraction of a second. The false reflections sprang off in other directions. Only their distraction kept the dragon from devouring, though he soon angled back to the true Hiresha and Tethiel.

She could fling her blue paragon back between his snapping fangs. No, that was too risky. His digestive juices might neutralize too much of the venom.

Bees pattered off her armor. She passed through the last of the swarms, over the final garden rooftops, and above the murky flow of the Gargantuan. Her circuitous flight had allowed her to observe the full length of the dragon. The miniscule but repeatable trembles in his body revealed much about internal anatomy, and she faced an undeniable problem.

The Winged Flame had three hearts.

She had but one envenomed diamond and one hope. If she punctured the heart at the center of the long torso then the last erratic beats might spread the destruction throughout the body. It needed to work. The dawn would come in seventeen seconds, and in all probability the balance of power would shift to the Winged Flame.

Hiresha would need the perfect angulation and the perfect timing. She needed to bypass both heads, and she needed to do so now.

Then fly.
Tethiel dissolved from her sight. He was no longer there to hold onto, though his dawnstone necklace was above the water level. He must’ve dropped. Hiresha reassured herself that the enchantment in his armor would keep him floating.
A god may yet learn mortal fear.

The river exploded with teeth. The Lord of the Feast reared up. He breathed green nightmare fire. He gnawed. He swallowed one of the dragon’s heads whole. They grappled, sending waves crashing over the Gargantuan.

And Hiresha faded into transparency. Tethiel had made her invisible, at least until the dawn. She had her opportunity.

She skipped unseen across the whitewater. She leaped over skewing dragon coils. Beneath his center heart she threw her blue paragon. The oil of its venom rippled over facets as it spun. Its point aimed up at the belly of the Winged Flame, following Hiresha’s hand.

Her red paragon positioned her over the dragon’s spine. The heart now thudded between her and the envenomed diamond. This was her moment. She lashed the blue paragon toward her with all the strength of lifelong dreams.

The jewel lanced through feathers, hide, and muscle. It bore into the heart. There Hiresha left it spinning, shredding, and corrupting.

She had done all she could do. It would have to be enough. If this succeeded and eradicated a god, no one would question her again. Her future would gleam.