Heir of Pendel (A Pandoran Novel, #4) (51 page)

I grabbed Nightshade and shoved it in my belt, then picked up Flamebearer. Many of the enemy had been killed, thanks to the ravens. They'd preoccupied the gargon and the enemy guards, and now our odds were even. The remaining Nords picked off the rest one by one. The gargon thrashed wildly in the air, trying to rid itself of the crows. I spotted a crossbow on the ground and sprinted over to retrieve it, clicking a bolt into place. I took aim at the sky, straining to see the gargon through all the birds. And then, as if they'd understood my intent, the cloud of ravens parted and I had my opening. I held my breath and pulled the trigger. A click, a whirr, and the bolt shot straight into the sky.

The gargon jerked and screeched in agony. I loaded another bolt and fired. Its wings beat erratically, and the gargon struggled to stay airborne. I shot a third bolt, and this time the gargon stopped fighting and dropped from the sky like a rock.

33

DARIA

I
woke, panicked and sweaty. The fog outside our cave was just beginning to lighten with morning, but I could not clear the vision from my mind.

You are the only one who truly understands the choice before you. You are the only one with the knowledge and the heart to make the right decision, and you must be prepared for it or all you see now will come to pass.

I sat up and rubbed my temples. Choices. I hated that word. I was always choosing between a rock and a hard place, and now I didn't even know what "choice" I was going to have, let alone how I was supposed to be prepare for it. Not that I'd be making any choices any time soon. I was still stuck in this vale with a bad ankle.

"Ah, you're awake," Myez said. He sat beside the small fire he'd built at the entrance of our cave. "Bad dream?"

I pushed myself to a seated position. "Yeah." Though I knew it was more than a dream.

"Want to talk about it?"

It wasn’t that I didn't feel comfortable telling Myez. I did. I'd grown surprisingly used to him over these past couple of weeks. I just didn't want to talk about my vision, because it didn't make any sense and talking about it would just infuriate me more. I shook my head in answer to his question. "But I would like to talk about us getting out of this vale."

I had his full attention now.

"And here I thought you were content to sit here eating berries and rodents the rest of your life, contemplating the universe like a bloody sage." He smiled at me, and I laughed. "You sure you're feeling up to it, though?" he asked, gesturing toward my ankle.

I sighed and leaned forward with my hands on my knees. "No, but…Myez, we've been here almost two weeks. I can't sit here any longer knowing they're out there somewhere." Hopefully still alive. "As long as we can take breaks, I think I can manage it now. How's your shoulder?"

He rolled his shoulder as if to test it out. "I'll be all right. Don't worry about me. I'm in much better condition to travel now than I was when we first arrived." He picked up a stick of cooked meat off the ground and took a bite. "Did you still want to head for Campagna?"

I ran my fingers through my hair and stared out of the cave. No matter what, I had to find Alex. I hadn't asked Alex what his plans had been that night on the veranda, and he hadn't exactly offered them. But Sonya had been in Karth too, and it made sense that she and Alex would cross back over the Black Sea with Sir Torren and his army—which was why I'd headed in that direction in the first place. Now, with all my time spent in this vale, it'd been a total of three weeks since I'd left them in Karth. Plenty of time for them to sail to Campagna's shores. And if they'd already come and gone, well, then, we'd come in behind them.

"Yes…" I said. "That's the only lead I have, and I think it's probably better to go off of what I know rather than speculations, which I don't really have, anyway."

"Agreed," he said, taking another bite. "And hopefully with us sticking together, this cursed vale won't get the best of us."

"I don't think this vale cares if it gets the worst of us, either. So long as it gets
something
," I said.

Myez chuckled, then finished off his meat and wiped his chin. "When did you want to leave?" He tossed his stick into the flames.

"As soon as possible. This afternoon, maybe?"

He mulled this over. "I think it would be in our best interest to wait until morning. That way we can spend today gathering supplies, then have a good meal and a full night's rest before we start."

I dreaded the thought of waiting another second, but he was right. We'd need every advantage necessary. "All right," I said. "Tomorrow morning it is."

"Here…" He leaned over, snatched another meat stick off the ground, and tossed it to me. It was charred vulpine—what I liked to call fox. "Eat. Then we'll get to it."

After a breakfast of fox and yesterday's berries, Myez and I set out to gather supplies for our trek. Much of the day was spent with me collecting berries and him hunting. Even though my hunting skills had improved somewhat, Myez seemed to sense I still wasn't comfortable with it, so he offered to do it.

After a few hours of berry collecting, I returned to our cave. Myez wasn't back yet. I paced the empty space for a few minutes. Now that I knew we were leaving, it was even harder for me to keep still. So I decided to take a little walk along the lake.

My boots crunched along the black rock, and a dull ache throbbed in my ankle. I wasn't sure how I'd fare over a mountain pass if an easy two-hour walk through fields was enough to wear me out. But I couldn't stay here. After that vision, I felt more resolved than ever.

The lake looked particularly black this morning. I hadn't heard the voice once since leaving Orindor, and that had been almost two weeks ago. The brooch hadn't shown any signs of activity, either, other than whatever it had done to those shadow demons during my very quick and failed solo expedition. And even though I knew I'd done all I could during these slow and trying past two weeks, I was afraid—afraid that my vision would come to pass and I'd have no idea how to stop it. Afraid that I would never be prepared for something I couldn't know. Afraid that I wouldn't be able to stop my uncle from destroying everyone I loved. Afraid that I would fail.

There shall be much violence in your future
, the voices from the vision echoed in my head. My next step hit the rocks a littler harder than I'd intended, and my ankle throbbed with new pain. I grit my teeth against it. There'd already been too much violence in my future. What more could there be? What more could I endure?

You are the only one who truly understands the choice before you.
What choice? I knew what happened when I decided things. People
died
. My father, my brother, my grandfather. If I'd just done what they'd all asked of me, then…then…

My eyes stung and my ankle throbbed again.

"Argh!" I kicked the rocks and stopped walking. I picked up a rock and threw it as far as I could, right into the water. It landed with a loud
pallunk
, the water rippling outward from the point of contact. Eris had taken over the castle, and meanwhile, Alex and Thad and Vera were somewhere out there doing Gaia knew what. Almost two weeks, I'd been in this fog. Two weeks! And all I had to show for it was a bad ankle and another vague and obscure vision. At least in Orindor, I'd had a way of tapping into current events, even if that way came with blond hair and grabby hands.

"Why not show me what condition the castle is in or what Eris is doing now?" I yelled at the fog. "Or maybe even the best way out of this vale. You know, something at least helpful!"

Suddenly, the brooch flared hot in my pocket.

Startled, I reached in and pulled it out, only to find it'd gone cold again. The engraved dragon stared straight back, unchanged. As if it were mocking me. As if it had been mocking me every day ever since it'd landed at my feet. I growled and was rearing back to toss it in the lake when it burned hot as an ember.

I hissed and let go, and the brooch clattered onto the black rocks. Batting my hand at the air, I hobbled to the water's edge, and plunged my hand into the ice-cold water, waiting for it to quench the fire pulsing in my palm. When I pulled my hand back, my palm was an angry pink, and a blister was starting to form in the shape of a dragon. I glared over my shoulder at the culprit lying on the rocks. It was…glowing. As if there was a light inside of the brooch, pulsing with life.

I crept back to the brooch and, carefully, brushed my fingertips against the surface. It was still hot to the touch, but not searing like before. It suddenly stopped glowing. The air stilled and everything fell quiet.

My heart pounded. Slowly, I scooped up the brooch, stood, and reached for my…dagger that wasn't there. I cursed.

There was a whip of air behind me. I spun around, panting in fright, but all I could see in every direction was fog, and that fog was getting thicker before my eyes. So thick, I couldn't even see the lake anymore. My chest turned to lead. Not again…

"Hello?" I called out, scanning the shadows, looking for signs of those demons from before.

My breath came hard and fast. I squeezed the brooch so hard the edges carved into my palms. I started walking backward, each step shaking, my boots crunching too loudly.

A guttural growl sounded right behind me.

34

DARIA

A
wall of teeth.

That was all I could see. Overlapping spears of bone, each easily the length of my body, equipped with an even more impressive set of canines. And I could distinctly smell rotting flesh. My nose burned with it, and I swallowed, tasting it on my tongue. Trembling, I took a step back, trying to put more distance between my body and the teeth. The guttural grumbling rolled through me with the power and force of a huge diesel, and the teeth moved closer.

My heart hammered against my ribs and adrenaline flooded my body, urging me to run, but I didn't move—I couldn't. I was petrified, and even if I could move, there wasn't a chance I'd ever outrun something this size. The creature snorted a blast of air so hot and so dry, it singed my lashes. And then the fog thinned behind it, unveiling the possessor of those teeth.

It was a dragon from Karth, the one who had rescued me from the flames. It was black and magnificent and terrifying, moving with impossible grace as it snaked its head past me to stare at me with its…eye. It was the largest eye I'd ever seen, like a wall of curved glass, flecked with layers and layers of a thousand different shades of green and red and gold, all gathering in the center along the crimson edge of a vertical black pupil. I could see my reflection in that eye, stretched over the convex lens. I could see how small I was, how terrified I was, by an eye so large it overwhelmed my periphery so that all I could see was this enormous wall of color. The black slit narrowed further as it focused on me, and I was struck by its intelligence. It wasn't cold, as reptilian eyes were, but warm and alive, its pupil a gateway to its soul. A soul older than this world, a soul that had seen generations come and go. A soul subject to no man, and a soul that feared nothing. But I was terrified.

The dragon's growl rolled through my body as it snaked its massive head up and unfurled wings that stretched so far in either direction, I couldn't appreciate their span without physically turning my head. And then I looked down at its talons—the same talons that had held me in their grip and carried me to safety. I'd often wondered how large the dragon's talons had been in order to carry me—if it'd struggled to hold me. Apparently, it hadn't struggled at all. By my estimation, it could probably carry about five people, and its only struggle would have been not skewering them. Just the spur on the back of its heel had to be at least half my height.

The dragon's growl revved, drawing my attention back to its wall of teeth.

And you're Gaia's chosen?

I jumped back, startled. The voice had exploded in my head, hollowing out my skull and filling it with his words. It was the same voice I'd heard in Karth and again in Orindor, the same voice that had asked me to come, though now it was infinitely louder. And was he…insulting me?

He snaked his head back so that my view once again consisted of his enormous eye. His pupil thinned.
Where's the other?

I pressed my hands to my ears, my head aching from the intrusion.

There was a grunt of rumbling in his throat, which I interpreted as impatience.
I can smell another human on you.

He could smell Myez?

A snort of hot, dry air.
I can't believe you're the one Gaia has chosen.

Yes, that was definitely irritation. And my head suddenly felt as though it were being hit by a hammer—a hammer on the inside of my skull, particularly against the spot where the knot was. "Stop talking in my head!" I didn't mean to yell at the dragon, but this headache was so painful I couldn't help it.

The dragon ticked its head to the side, sliding his head around to observe me from my other side with its other massive eye.

Temper. Yes, you inherited that from your Regius side. A Pandor would never be so petulant.

Ugh. I shut my eyes as the pain throbbed. Apparently, none of my thoughts were safe.

Intuitive. Good. That's a start.

I wrenched my eyes open and rubbed my temples, trying to rub the pain away. Cian never hurt like this.

And your
Lux
is strong, which is surprising for someone who hasn't been trained.

"My what?" I all but groaned the question.

Your inner light. All Draconi have it. It is how we share thoughts with one another, but usually it requires years of training for a connection like this. It won't be so painful when you get used to it.

Good, because between Cian and my conscience, I didn't think I could handle any more voices in my head.