Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1) (25 page)

"They're my
people," she whispered to her mother. "The slaves. The slaves in
chains. The slaves whipped. The slaves burned in the bronze bull. My people. My
blood. My father."

Kalafi stepped toward
her, wincing, still reaching out to her. "My daughter—"

"Don't touch
me!" Meliora shoved the queen's hands away. "Don't call me that."

Pain twisted Kalafi's
face. "Meliora, all that I did, I did to protect you. To shelter you from
the cruelty of the world, from—"

"From the
truth!" Meliora shouted, and now she could not curb her tears. "You
lied to me!"

"To protect
you!" Kalafi swept her hand across the chamber. "To raise you like
this—in comfort, in wealth. Not . . . not out there!" The queen barked a
bitter laugh. "Would you have preferred to grow up in chains, collared,
whipped, suffering in the dust like a slave?"

"I
am
a
slave!" Meliora shouted, tears flowing. "All my life I've been a
slave, kept in a gilded cage, collared with necklaces of gold, hobbled by
ignorance. All while my family suffered. While my sister carried a yoke until
her shoulders twisted. While my father—my true father—screamed under the
lash. While hundreds of thousands of my people cried out in anguish, begging
for mercy that would never come. While your son—your own son!—slew them for
his sport. Would I have chosen chains? I would have abolished the chains! I
would have smashed the cruel god Malok, and I would have sent the Vir Requis to
their homeland, far from this accursed city, this accursed empire, this
accursed family—"

Her voice died with a
strangled cough as Kalafi gripped her throat. The queen sneered, tightening the
grip, crushing Meliora's windpipe.

"You will not
speak disparagingly of this family—this family that raised you." Kalafi's
eyes burned. "I've given you everything, Meliora. The life of a
princess."

"I would rather
have the life of a slave." Meliora wrenched off Kalafi's hands and lifted
a jug off a table, its porcelain painted with hunters and pheasants. "I
would choose chains over wealth." She slammed the jug down; it shattered.
She lifted an ostrich egg inlaid with jewels and golden wires. "I would
choose the whip over jewels." She shattered the artifact and grabbed a
jewelry box. "I would choose the collar over necklaces of gems." She
tossed the jewelry box to the balcony; it shattered against the floor, its
jewels spilling toward the city below. She fell to her knees, and she howled
with her pain. "You lied to me!"

Kalafi stared down at
her, calm now.

"Are you done
having a tantrum?" the queen said. "Do you see why I withheld the
truth from you, Meliora? Because you're still a child. Still only a pampered
child."

"Yes."
Meliora nodded and rose to her feet. She stared into her mother's eyes—a
mother taller, fairer, endlessly older, a pure seraph, a pure being like
Meliora would never be. "I'm a child. Nothing but a child. You made me
this way. Ishtafel was my age when he conquered Requiem. Yet you kept me in a
state of infancy, Mother. Deceived. Pampered. Crippled by fineries. But it ends
now; that life is over. Elory came into my life—my sister!—and she started
something, Mother. Something you cannot stop." She took a deep, shuddering
breath and raised her chin. "The slaves will be freed. You will give me
the key to their collars. My brother stole them from Requiem, but I will lead
them home."

Her mother stared at
her silently for long moments, face blank.

Finally the queen spoke
in a whisper, "I should have killed you." She gave her head the
slightest of shakes. "So many times I wanted to, was going to. When you
were in my belly, a mixed child, I was going to see the women in the temples,
to drink their poison and flush you from my body. When you were a little girl,
when I could see your weakness, your short stature, your eyes that gazed upon
your slaves as pets rather than livestock, I wanted to drown you in my pool, to
hold your little body—so small, so weak!—under the water until you stopped flailing.
When you stepped into the bronze bull, I wanted to let you burn, to hear you
scream; if not for the embarrassment it would have caused me, perhaps I would
have. Just last night, I stood above your bed as you slept, a dagger in my hand
. . . and oh, sweetest daughter." She reached out to caress Meliora's
cheek. "I wanted it so badly. More than I wanted anything, I wanted you
dead."

Meliora stared at her
mother in horror, seeing a different person, not the queen she had known, not
the mother she had loved . . . but the bane of Requiem. A tyrant. A monster.

"Who are
you?" Meliora whispered.

Kalafi smiled thinly.
"Something you will never be. Pure."

Lies. All my
life—lies.

Meliora closed her
eyes, and she thought of the years idled away, twenty-seven years blind. Almost
three decades wrapped in silk and gold, a princess in a tower. And she thought
of her dreams. Of wings in the night, of marble columns rising from a birch
forest, of the stars—a million stars in a different sky, brilliant in the
night, and among them a great celestial dragon. She flew with her kind. With
Elory. And Kira and Talana. With millions of other dragons. Free in Requiem.

"Requiem,"
Meliora whispered, tears on her lips. "May our wings forever find your
sky." She opened her eyes and stared at her mother through the veil of her
grief and her joy. "Yours is the purity of poison, the purity of the
finest steel blade thrust into an enemy's back. But I am a child of starlight.
I am a child of Requiem. I am a dragon."

And in this chamber of
wealth, this heart of an empire, Meliora summoned her ancient magic.

Starlight spun around
her, glowing, spreading out, finally gathering into scales as small and bright
as pearls, in claws like alabaster, in great wings of white feathers, larger
than her seraph wings. She stood before her mother, a dragon—not a dragon like
the others, a creature of spikes and wide scales, but a dragon nonetheless. A
dragon of Requiem.

"This is not
purity," Meliora said to the queen, her voice flowing through her long
neck and jaws. "But this is truth. This is righteousness. You will open
the slaves' collars, Mother . . . or all the empire will see that your daughter
stands among them."

Kalafi screamed—a
wordless, beastly cry of pain. She drew a secret dagger from her dress and thrust
the blade.

Meliora beat her wings
and rose in the chamber. The dagger scraped across her scales, chipping them.
With a thrust of her claws, Meliora knocked her mother down.

The queen fell with a
scream, her dress tearing to reveal the ugly, never-healing wound beneath.

Meliora stared down at
the fallen seraph. Smoke blasted from her nostrils. Kalafi stared up, fear in
her eyes, blood on her dress.

"Where is the Keeper's
Key?" Meliora growled, white fire crackling in her maw. "Give me the
key, Mother. The key to the slaves' collars. Where is the key?"

Kalafi began to laugh.
Lying on the floor, pinned down beneath Meliora's claws, her wound exposed and
dripping, the queen laughed as if watching jesters fight for sport. "You
will have to kill me, daughter. So long as I breathe, the key will never be
yours. Do what I did! I slew a husband. Slay a mother. Show me that you're a
killer too."

Meliora's claws rested on
her mother. How easy it would be, she thought, to simply lean forward, apply
just the slightest more pressure, to pierce Kalafi's flesh. To make the queen
suffer. To pay for all she had done.

With a deep breath,
Meliora removed her claws off her mother.

"I stand above you
now," Meliora whispered. "And I could kill you as easily as a child
crushes a bug. But I grant you life, Mother. I grant you shame. A shame all the
empire will know. Next time you see me, I will wear rags, my head shaved, my
back whipped, for I am a child of Saraph no more. I am a child of Requiem, and
we are a nation in chains . . . but we will be free."

As Kalafi lay on the
mosaic floor, staring up in silent fear, Meliora beat her wings. She knocked over
vases and statues, her claws clattered across the floor, and she burst out onto
the balcony. She leaped into the air, and Meliora soared, flying high above the
city, high toward the sun and across the wind . . . flying to the land of
Tofet. Flying home.

 
 
ISHTAFEL

My sister.
My sweet Meliora. The future mother of my children.
Ishtafel
trembled with rage.
A weredragon.

He marched through the
palace, fingernails digging into his palms. A crack split his breastplate, and
his chest dripped ichor. The golden blood, the pure blood of the gods, sizzled
as it dripped, forming a trail. In one fist, he clutched a feather, long as a
sword, white as leprosy—Meliora's feather, the feather from her dragon form.

A creature half
seraph, half dragon.
Ishtafel sneered, bile rising in his throat.
A
disgusting freak. A monster I almost impregnated.

He stormed down a
portico. To his right rose a wall, its murals depicting his ancient victories.
To his left rose columns, and between them sprawled a view of the city. The
crowds were dispersing, and an eerie calmness fell across Shayeen, but inside
of Ishtafel the battle still raged—the battle against his sister, his battle
against Requiem five hundred years ago . . . a battle he still fought today.

The weredragons
rebel.
He squeezed the feather in his hand, his blood staining it
. I
will crush them. I will crush every one. I will grind them into the dust. Their
sickening blood stains my family. That blood will spill across the empire.

A slave appeared in the
corridor before him, rushing forth with a jug of water. The man froze and
knelt. Ishtafel stomped toward him.

Their blood will
spill.

Ishtafel grabbed the
man's skull. He shoved his thumbs forward, gouging out the creature's eyes,
squeezing, crushing the skull, sneering as the man's screams died, as the
brains dripped. He lifted the body and slammed it against a column, shattering
its bones, then lifted it again and threw it again, tossing the dripping
remains to the city beyond.

They will pay.

He left the columns,
and he roamed the corridors of his palace, and he was roaming the tunnels
again, the labyrinth beneath Requiem, the hives of the creatures, the greatest
battle of his life, the war that still raged within him, that he would never
stop fighting. He grinned and licked his lips.

My war will never
die.

He found another slave
sweeping a corridor, and Ishtafel laughed as he tore out the woman's organs,
held them overhead, bit into the sweet meat. He roamed onward, a hunter, a
conqueror. A weredragon lurked in the shadows ahead, a vile creature with
shining eyes, and Ishtafel shattered its spine, tossed it down, crushed its
skull under his heel. He roamed onward, covered in blood, finding the
weredragons in their burrows, slaying them one by one, a god of light, a god of
vengeance.

You dirtied my
sister. Your poison infected my legacy. Your blood will forever spill.

He roamed the halls of
the ziggurat, roamed the tunnels of Requiem, covered in the blood of
weredragons. He lifted a heart in each hand, still beating, crushing them, his
trophies of flesh and victory.

 
 
MELIORA

She walked into the land of
Tofet, her dress tattered and burnt, her wings bleeding and missing half their
feathers, her eyes dry, her shoulders squared, an emptiness in her heart. She
walked into ruin, into a land of agony, into her home, into the place that had
always been her home.

For twenty-seven years,
this land hid just beyond the horizon, Meliora thought. For twenty-seven years,
she had gazed upon the edge of Tofet from her balcony, seeing nothing but a
haze. She had imagined a land of happy miners, whistling as they shoved
trolleys on tracks. A land where slaves sang in lush fields and vineyards,
laughed as they danced upon grapes, picked fruits from rustling trees, retired
in lazy afternoons to fish in streams and lounge in meadows. Often Meliora had
wanted to flee her palace, to come to this wondrous land she had envisioned.

Now she walked into
Tofet, into the shame of Saraph, the agony of Requiem.

She walked through a
rocky field where slaves, chained and beaten, labored under the cruel sunlight.
They mixed clay with straw and bitumen, forming bricks in molds, crying out as
their masters whipped them with lashes of fire. She walked along a quarry
where, deep in the earth, slaves labored with pickaxes, chipping stones for the
columns of temples and palaces, coughing in the dust, falling in exhaustion
only to suffer the kicking boots of their masters. She walked along a pit of
tar where slaves shuffled, heavy yokes chained to their shoulders, bearing
baskets of bitumen. The fumes spun Meliora's head, and every moment, another
slave fell, burning his or her knees in the bubbling tar, crying out as the
whips tore into their flesh.

I lived in wealth, a
palace grown from the toil of these people, a throne upon their broken
shoulders.

All around her, for
miles, they cried out in pain, in memory, begging for mercy, praying for a lost
home. As Meliora walked between them, charred and bruised, her tears fell onto
the dry earth.

"I'm sorry,
children of Requiem," she whispered. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for my
brother. For my mother. Forever, I'm sorry."

Finally, past the miles
of pain, Meliora reached a city of clay huts. A great limestone wall surrounded
the place, topped with seraphim guards. There were as many Vir Requis in the
empire as seraphim, and yet their city was so much smaller, over half a million
souls condensed into an area barely larger than the palace grounds south of the
river. Each hut was small, smaller than the carriages Meliora used to ride in
with her mother, molded of crude, flaking mud. Gutters ran between them,
overflowing with filth.