Evanescent (17 page)

Chapter Eighteen

I saw Winston round the opposite corner onto the street, and I raced toward him, not caring whether or not people stared. He was alive, he was human-shaped, and considering he’d gone to war and battled a demon raven earlier today, he looked really,
really
good.

I slammed into him, and he wrapped his arms around me, lifting me off my feet as he buried his face in the side of my neck and let out a shaky breath. “Allie.”

Before I could say anything he crushed his mouth against mine and squeezed me tight, knocking the air from my lungs and making my skin spark everywhere he touched.

“Thank God you’re safe,” he said and pressed our lips together again.

“Me? I was more worried about what was going to happen to you. You were the one fighting for your life up there against that overgrown canary.”

“Hardly.” He dropped his head so that our foreheads were touching. My stomach fluttered. I was holding him, we were both safe, and right now that was all that mattered. “All I was doing was distracting the bird so that it couldn’t help that wizard. I was trying to keep him busy until you could find somewhere safe to hide.”

“We went to the red dragon clan’s lodge house.” I snuggled against his shoulder, trying not to let him see how freaked out I was by everything that had happened today. “I wanted to help you but with the wizard on the ground we had to run. What if you would have—”

“I’m fine.” Winston kissed the top of my head as he cradled me against his chest, unconcerned that we were hugging in the middle of the street where anyone could see us. “Nothing but a few scratches. Little girls in tiaras playing dress-up are tougher than that bag of feathers. But what happened to you? You’ve been gone for hours.”

“Forget about me,” I said. “What happened to it? The bird?”

“Don’t.” Winston grimaced, and I felt my stomach clench because I knew. I knew that if he was safe then the bird was dead and Winston had been the one to kill it. He turned his head and refused to meet my eyes. “The raven has been handled.”

“The wizard? The one that Kitsuna fought?”

“He was seriously wounded, but somehow he managed to escape. Disappeared. One minute he was there and Kitsuna had her sword at his neck and the next second he was gone and Kitsuna was stabbing at air.” Winston turned to lead me down the street in the same direction he’d come from.

“Great, so we have a wounded wizard who knows we’re at Dramera.”

“It’s where the Fate Maker and your aunt would expect us to go anyway,” Winston said. “They’ll already have plans to attack us here, which is good for us, because Dramera is a strategic place for us to take a stand.”

I looked around us at the high cliffs that enclosed the area on two sides, surrounding the broad lake, and then over at the thick forests on the other two sides. “You want us to fight a war here? We’re boxed in.”

“Yes. Because unless your aunt and the Fate Maker decide to transport an entire army,” he said, “or fly, their only way in is right there.”

I stared pointedly at the narrow gap between the two cliffs at the far side of the lake. It looked like a shadow, a thin line down the middle of the cliff face. “There?”

“The woods are impassable. They’re surrounded by swampland to the north. Behind us are the Cliffs of Lament, and they’re a straight drop into the Sea of Sorrows. So no way in there. If the Fate Maker uses his magic to teleport their army, it will have to be in small groups and that will be too risky.”

“They could fly, though, you said?”

“Against dragons?” Winston glared at the bustling village around us. “It wouldn’t be the smartest plan.”

“So it’s the cliffs, then.”

“They’ll follow the stragglers from our army through the cliffs, and the passage is so narrow they’ll have to travel single file. It will funnel them right into our army.”

“And if they don’t do that?” I asked.

“That’s where we are going, what the Dragos Council needs to meet with you about. They have some ideas on how to fight back.”

“What kinds of ideas?” I asked as we crossed the square toward a group of large, still partially thatch-roofed buildings on the other side.

“Good ideas,” Winston said. “Ideas that we need to listen to if we’re going to keep the dragon warriors supporting us against the Fate Maker. We brought our war to their home and half of Dramera was burned to the ground today because of this. We have to let the Dragos Council have their say now or we will lose them.”

“They aren’t going to punish you and Kitsuna, are they? For the raven, and well, the wizard, too? It’s not your fault the wizard and his monster set the village on fire.”

“Nobody is going to be punished,” Winston said. “Especially not Kitsuna. After watching her fight I don’t think anyone, including the Dragos Council, is going to look at her cross-eyed while she’s wearing a sword.”

“Good,” I said as he led me up the front stairs of the largest building in the town square and opened the heavy wooden front door. “She was only trying to protect me.”

“A rather remarkable display by a wryen.” The voice belonged to Tevin, a pale blond man who was the head of the dragon clans of Nerissette. He stood just inside the doorway. “I didn’t imagine one of her kind could have such courage.”

“You don’t think much of her kind at all.” I narrowed my eyes, annoyed at how dismissively he talked about the girl who had saved my life today. “She’s just a wryen after all. To you she’s worthless.”

“She’s not worthless to you?”

“She chose to fight a wizard, alone, with nothing but a sword to protect me. Meanwhile, your full-blooded dragons cowered inside like scared little children, waiting for the scary monsters to go away. You want to take a guess on who I value more right now?”

Tevian’s lips tightened, and his jaw clenched. “Perhaps the Dragos Council should consider claiming neutrality in this fight?”

Winston stiffened beside me, and I put a hand on his arm, trying to keep him from rising to the bait.

I smiled at Tevian and tried to look fierce. “Perhaps I should remind you that the prince consort is a dragon. How many of your people would go against you and fight if he asked?”

“And how many would stay put?” Tevian asked. “We’ve fought this wizard twice for you. Why should we do it again?”

“Because once the Fate Maker’s done with me, it’s your lands he’ll come after next. How many people are you willing to let die for your pride?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“I am fighting to
protect
my people,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on his. “And I will not fail them. Now the dragon clans can side with me, or once my armies have finished with the Fate Maker, we can turn our sights on you, our newest enemy who abandoned us in our time of need.”

“So you’re saying that I must decide who conquers my people? Which army it is better for us to kneel to?” Tevian stepped closer so that we were nose to nose, and I had to clamp my hand down on Winston’s arm to keep him from stepping between us. “Yours or the Fate Maker’s?”

“Does it matter?” I arched an eyebrow at him. “Either way, Dramera is no longer yours. If your luck holds out it will be my army that conquers you. If it doesn’t, well, the Fate Maker has threatened to hang me, behead me, and imprison me at various times. What do you think he’ll do to someone like you? To him, you’re worth less than Kitsuna.”

Tevian swallowed and fear flickered in his eyes. He took a step back and turned sharply on his heel. “Come with me.”

He pushed the wide double doors open and we followed as he stormed into a large room. The timbers that held up the wall were painted in the colors of the dragon clans—black, red, blue, silver, and gold—and the plaster between them was a stark white in contrast.

“So much for being friendly so that the dragons fight on our side,” Winston muttered as he followed me inside.

“Golden Rose of Nerissette,” a loud voice boomed from the far end of the room. “Enter and find you here the wisdom of the dragons.”

I straightened my shoulders before I let go of Winston’s arm and walked forward, trying to project nothing but self-confidence. These guys were nothing—just a bunch of dragons—and I was the queen. The queen of an entire world. The queen who had conquered them without a single sword being drawn. A queen that any one of them could eat in a single bite and not have to bother chewing first.

As I made my way up the aisle I saw that I was walking toward a dais like the one in my throne room, but instead of only one throne there were five ornately carved chairs. Two of them were empty. Tevian took the empty seat in the middle of the dais and placed a crown with curling silver horns on his head, the horns protruding from the front of his forehead. The other three men on the platform were wearing similar crowns, each with a different pair of horns.

“Black dragon, join your kin,” the loud voice boomed.

Winston looked from me to them. “I won’t sit in judgment of my own queen. I am her prince consort, and I would give my life for her.”

“You must choose,” said the old man. He was wearing a set of blue robes, and his white hair stood up around his head like a lion’s mane.

“Then I choose her. I’ll always choose her.”

The four men gritted their teeth as Winston straightened his shoulders beside me, every inch of him not just a soldier’s son but a warrior in his own right. His father would be proud of him…if he knew he existed anymore. I hoped again that I’d have the chance to set things right for Winston and his family.

“The Fate Maker has returned to these lands,” the old man said. “After you claimed you destroyed him, he returned.”

“I never said that I destroyed him, just that he was gone. He disappeared that day,” I said.

“Yet now he’s back. With an even larger army. An army filled with the troops of your aunt, the empress of Bathune.”

“I know. I was there when they attacked.”

“You chose to flee,” Tevian said.

“My castle was overrun, and we were forced to retreat.”

“A retreat was the best option,” Ardere said quietly from this seat. “It was better to give our troops a chance to regroup and fight another day.”

“You brought a wizard into Dramera,” said another man, this one in a red hat with curly black horns on it.

“My friends and I stopped two more before they could follow.”

“And that makes the one who found his way here acceptable?” he asked.

“The wizards are coming anyway,” I snapped. “One is now wounded. He’ll be an example to the rest of what they can expect when they come.”

“That you will flee and leave others to fight your battles? The wryen Kitsuna of the red dragon clan fought the wizard while you ran into the forest,” Tevian argued.

“She was trying to protect me.”

“One day soon, Golden Rose of Nerissette, it will be time for you to stop running and stand and fight.” The old man in the blue robes sneered down at me from the dais like I was some sort of kid he was punishing in the principal’s office.

“Then that’s what I’ll do,” I said. “Just as I did the first time we faced him. Like I would have done today if our walls would have held.”

“Enough of this!” the man in red robes roared. “The Rose did what any of us would do. She is not to blame here.”

“She told us that he was defeated,” the man in blue said.

“She told us that he
disappeared
,” the dragon in red corrected. “We took that to mean he was defeated and most likely dead. We told her he was gone forever, and as an outsider, she chose to believe us—the elders of this world.”

“That’s—” the man in blue started.

“I told her that he was gone,” Ardere said, his voice even. “I told her that if he had disappeared into the light then he was most likely dead. I was the one who told her and the crown prince that a search for him would be pointless. John of Leavenwald and I convinced her not to send the men.”

“Then you were a fool,” Tevian snarled.

“I was,” Ardere said. “That doesn’t change the fact that the queen acted on my advice and now we are here, at war again—this time against a larger army.”

“The Fate Maker won’t wage war against us if we claim neutrality,” the man in blue said. “Even though the prince consort is one of our own. We can cut him loose, break our alliance with the world of men, and let them fight amongst themselves. When the war is over the Fate Maker will have no quarrel with us. We’ll live in peace as we did before.”

“Your loyalty to your own is touching,” Winston said drily. “But even if you cut me loose and do not fight, he’ll come here next. He’s not going to be happy living in peace now, not now that he knows there’s a chance for the dragons of Dramera to rebel against him. For him it’s all or nothing.”

“He’ll settle for what he can get easily,” Tevian said, his voice filled with razor-sharp anger.

“He wants the tear.” I paused as every single dragon on that dais sucked in a breath, their eyes wide. “He wants a relic that melts the walls between this world and the Bleak itself. Now, does that sound like a man who’s willing to take only what he can easily conquer?”

“No.” The man in blue shook his head. “But the tear doesn’t exist. It’s a legend.”

“Yes, it does exist,” I said loudly. “And I have it.”

All of them went silent. The man in the blue robe’s mouth was gaping open.

“Liar,” Tevian said.

“I have it.” I lifted the chain of the necklace up and let the crystal swing in front of my chin. “I have the Dragon’s Tear.”

“By the light of the Pleiades,” Ardere said, his eyes wide. “Are you sure? Are you sure it’s the tear?”

“Yes.” I nodded. “It’s the tear. Timbago was its guardian.”

“Timbago?” Winston asked.

“He gave it to me. Before he…” I swallowed and didn’t meet his eyes.

“Can you bend the tear to your will?” the man in red asked and I turned to look at him, holding my tears in check.

“I don’t know. I haven’t exactly wanted to mess around with it. Not with the whole ‘melting the walls between us and the Bleak’ thing. It’s not like we can use it anyway. Everything we found says that you have to know where the weak spots are in the other worlds in order to move between them. So it’s not really a very good portal.”