The Gate – Part Two

Death was easy.

A last stuttering breath.

Heat leaving the body.

Pupils relaxing, eyes losing focus.

The business of death was something that all had to conduct eventually. Grand dreams of living forever held no interest for me. There were avenues a person could walk down should eternity be their desire. I’d had plenty of opportunities to defect and join the ranks of the undead, and all it would have cost would have been two pin pricks at the neck. A slow, languorous swimming of the mind, and a gradual descent into the dark.

Like floating, they said.

Like dreaming.

I’d never countenanced such a thing.

The price was too high. Life was too beautiful to exchange for some facsimile of life. No, I was ready and willing to accept death when it sought me out in person. It was today I wouldn’t accept. I would not take Death’s hand here, in this frozen hell. I was not destined to die in fucking Ajun, with the sulfurous burn of dragon’s breath blinding me, and the panicked sounds of my friends fighting for their lives ringing in my ears.

I’d made other plans for my death.

A soft bed.

A good book (just finished) at my bedside.

The beginnings of dawn spilling through an open window.

Birdsong.

Something…sweet…on the air.

Not the smell of charred flesh.

Not this.

“Fall back! They’re coming in! Regroup!”

Ren’s cry traveled up my spine like a knife-edge juddering along bone. Others fell apart under pressure. They looked up into the face of a creature like this drake and their courage failed them. When my best friend faced a foe this terrible, his back straightened and his grip tightened around his sword. He didn’t back down. Ajun boasted warriors just as fierce and as brave as my best friend. There were fifteen of them within the city walls—the most ferocious, battle-hardened Orrithian knights Yvelia had ever seen. They were sworn to a higher purpose, though, and would never abandon their posts. Not even for this.

 So Ren did what he had to and cried for retreat, because the Ajun Fae who had ventured out of the gate before it had closed were no warriors. They were braver than they had any reason to be, but they had no training. They had makeshift weapons, they were afraid, and Malcolm’s feeders were picking them off at an alarming rate. There was no sense to the carnage.

I watched as a feeder dressed in a torn blue ballgown leaped, cat-like, and landed upon a tall male carrying nothing but a broom handle. The wood had been roughly whittled into an ugly point, but he didn’t even have time to raise it before she was upon him. She dug her clawed fingers into his head, wrenching it to the side, fangs bared—

A thread of black smoke lashed around her neck like a whip. I imagined the strand of power cinching tight in my mind, and the smoke obeyed, cutting through rotten flesh. I felt that, too—a feedback of sensation that I would never get used to. The moment the putrid skin gave way. The surrender of the muscle below. The strain of brittle bone. The snap that followed after.

Of course, a broken neck was nothing to one of these devils. Even if every bone in their bodies was broken, they would keep on coming, desperate to feed. It took more to put them down for good. As I sprinted past the Ajun Fae, I closed my mind around the power I had lashed the feeder with and I pulled. Her head tore clean off her shoulders, spraying black ichor and spinal fluid into the air, and the male cried out in horror.

He was a historian, maybe. Some sort of clerk. He didn’t know violence. It didn’t live in his heart the way it had set up camp and lived in mine. If he made it through tonight, the sight of that once-beautiful feeder’s head exploding in the air above him would haunt his dreams until the day he died, and if that was the worst thing that troubled his sleep, I still considered him lucky.

On I went, streaming through the living and the dead, scything away as many heads as I could manage with my shadows. The god sword in my hands buzzed frantically, as if it had been waiting for this moment for an eternity. It wanted me to lay its edge against something foul—it wanted to enact justice—but the inaugural blood I spilled across this blade would not be a feeder’s blood. I was going to baptize it with something far more legendary.

Ajun’s makeshift army retreated, falling back toward the gate. Around me, I saved as many as I could, but still they fell. Male and female alike, my brethren were taken too quickly to count. Their screams shook the heavens, but I ran forward regardless, slipping between their number, charging head-on toward my goal.

The dragon.

He loomed over the fray, the sheen of his black scales reflecting the firelight from the flaming arrows that arced overhead in waves. He didn’t move. His terrible jaws remained clamped shut as he observed the battle with hungry, cold eyes.

“Why…doesn’t it…attack?” a panting voice asked. Lorreth. He fell in beside me, matching my speed, his war braids streaming out behind him as he ran.

“He’s…waiting,” I gasped back. “Searching.”

“What…for?”

I leaped over a pile of bodies, flying forward. “For…us.”

Dragons were cold and they were cruel. They also held grudges. The Lupo Proelia had downed a dragon before, and this one knew it. He wanted revenge.

Even as the thought formed within my mind, I saw the lithe figure racing up the slope. She had a child in her arms. Mirelle had always been the fastest of us; the wind seemed to carry her whenever she ran, and tonight was no different. She formed a blur of white and black, streaking up the blood-stained slope—

—and Omnamshacry moved at last.

“Fuck!” Lorreth changed course without having to be told. I swung left with him, on a course to intercept Renfis’s sister.

The horns sounded out again in a desperate plea for help, but help wasn’t coming. Ajun was on its own. The drake stretched its wings, and a wave of air blasted the mountainside as he beat them once…twice. He wasn’t trying to take off. He only needed to buoy himself over the army of feeders, so that he could land on the other side of the slope.

“MIRELLE!” The cry tore out of my throat. A hundred feet stretched out between Mirelle and her brother. She was running toward him, of course. I saw Ren, gathering the few Fae who remained in front of the closed gate. Mirelle stumbled when the drake landed behind her, rocked by the concussive impact of his landing. She didn’t stop to look back, though. She clutched the child tighter to her chest, ducked her head, and ran faster.

Ren noticed his sister, then.

He saw her running, and time slowed.

Unshakeable Renfis, with sudden terror in his eyes. His mouth fell open in a silent cry. In one swift movement, he was drawing energy into his hands, amassing it. The blue-white orb lanced through the night just as I raised my hands and threw out power of my own, and both shadow and light struck the beast in unison. Energy crackled over Old L’Shacry’s scales, shadows forming chains, lashing around his giant form…but too late. The drake was already upon her. Mirelle was already done.

Brimstone and fire rained down the slope, and for a moment the world ground to a halt. The air solidified in my lungs. All sound fell quiet.

One moment, Mirelle was running up the slope, still carrying the child. The next, she was not.

“No! Nooooo!” Lorreth screamed.

We’d stopped running.

What was there to run to now?

When the mighty drake had emptied his throat and his giant plume of fire died, he snaked his head from side to side, brimstone dripping from his scorched teeth, and bit the charred remnants of our friend in two.

Lorreth fell to his knees. Up the slope, by the gate, my best friend’s world had just ended. I knew it had, but I couldn’t see him beyond the brilliant pale wash of the energy he was pulling to him again—more energy than I’d ever witnessed him draw. Like a small, burning blue-white sun, the power mounted and mounted…

“He’s going to kill himself.” The words were flat. Dead. Nothing more than an observation. If he kept drawing power, he was going to burn himself out, and then both of my friends would be gone. Rather than redoubling my efforts and hurling more power at the dragon, I turned my attention to Renfis. I didn’t have time to run to him. I needed to be there beside him now. I needed to take a step forward and be with him.

Now…

Now…

Now…

The need beat in my veins like a prayer. I felt it everywhere. And when I lifted my foot and leaned forward, I knew that I would make it happen. As if manifested from nothing, a wall of rippling smoke and shadow erupted in the air, forming a swirling vortex the likes of which I had only ever produced once before, the night we had found Lorreth on the brink of death. I had conjured a shadow gate then to transport him back to Cahlish, and it had saved his life. Now, I did it to save Ren.

Lorreth stepped through the shadow gate after me without a word. When the two of us emerged on the other side, light was spilling from Renfis’s eyes and pouring out of his mouth. His fingers were splayed wide, bent to crooked angles as if locked around something so tightly that he couldn’t let go. His body trembled, wracked by the power that he was calling in.  

Lorreth reached out to place a hand on his shoulder, but I grabbed his wrist, shaking my head. “You’ll die if you do that,” I said softly. “It wants somewhere to go. A way to ground. If you touch him, every scrap of magic will channel through you. You’ll be cooked from the inside out.”

“We can’t just let him burn himself out!”

That was true. Burn out once and your power might never return. And even if it did, it would never be the same again.  “Renfis,” I said. “Ren. You’ve got to let it go.”

“It…killed her,” he sobbed. “She’s gone. She’s gone! I—” Shaking his head, he ground his teeth together, glowering at the dragon. Further down the slope, amidst the frenzied fighting, the dragon laughed, delighted by the unfolding scene. “I’m going to fucking kill it,” Ren snarled.

“And you will. We’ll help you, I promise. But you’ve got to stop this. You’re hurting yourself.” The sheer volume of magic he was drawing could not be contained within one vessel. It was supposed to be the worst kind of pain—a burning agony within every cell of the body. It was said that siphoning too much magic would undo the user piece by piece, until their organs failed and their souls were shredded to nothing. The body was left behind. It would heal eventually. But all that made a person themselves was destroyed.

“What will you accomplish here if you die?” Lorreth urged.

“I don’t care if I die. Mirelle’s gone. Without her—”

“You’ll see her again one day, you fool,” I told him. “When the Fates deem it time and not before. But you’ll never see her again if you burn away your fucking soul.” It was harsh to speak so unkindly to him in this moment, when the wound was raw and hadn’t even begun to hurt as much as it inevitably would. But I wasn’t going to lose another of my friends. “Let it go, Ren,” I ground out. “I’m ordering you to unleash it.”

He had needed me to command him. To take the decision from him and force him to stop. Immediately, he did as I had bid him, relinquishing his fragile hold on the ocean of power he’d drawn to himself. A blinding flare of light lit up the darkness. For a moment, I thought I’d gone deaf. Everything was silent: the wind, and the cries of the Ajun below, and the snarls of the feeders. And then a roaring BOOM! rocked the mountain, and a sonic shockwave exploded from Renfis, hurling Lorreth and me back, slamming us against the city’s wall.

The wave ripped down the slope, flinging feeders and Fae alike, sending them hurtling off into the darkness. The energy forked, spinning around itself, twining itself into a rope, and it cracked forward, striking at the dragon. The energy found its mark. The blow it dealt was more fearsome than a lightning strike. It hit Omnamshacry in the side, piercing thick scales and spearing the beast between his ribs.

Nothing had ever pierced dragon scale before. Nothing.

Pure rage rebounded around the mountain range as Omnamshacry roared. As soon as the burst of power left Ren’s body, his eyes rolled back into his head, and he was down. The ground rose up to meet him, and he passed out.

Lorreth reached him first. “He let go too late.”

“No.” I shook my head. “He’s unconscious, not dead. He’ll be okay.” But even as I said it, I knew the chances of Renfis ever being okay again were slim. He’d just lost his sister. His twin. And to lose a twin…to lose the bond they had shared? Ren would never feel whole again. “Find somewhere to take him. Somewhere out of harm’s way. When you’re done come find me,” I said grimly. “There’s killing to be done.”

  I didn’t see where he took Ren. I had already moved away, and now a hole was forming in my chest, a mile wide and a mile deep. It was true. Real. Unbearable. Mirelle was gone. That knowledge was penetrating the haze of my mind, sinking deeper like a knife into my belly, and instead of filling me with sadness, I was slowly being consumed by an ice-cold rage.

Mirelle had never asked anything of me. She was as solid as her brother. Unshakeable. I always knew, no matter what, that if I needed her, she would be there for me, and in turn I would be there for her. Now, it felt as though one of the cornerstones of my very foundation had been kicked away and the ground beneath my feet could no longer be trusted to support me.

As I raced toward the dragon, she was everywhere—being dragged to the ground by a feeder, screaming in panic; she was a feeder, leaping through the air and pouncing on a blonde-haired female wearing a night dress. She was the young girl, standing bare foot in the snow, crying out for her mother, and the old woman standing on the small outcrop of rocks ahead, shrieking for her missing mate. Everywhere I looked, Mirelle stopped what she was doing and spoke to me.

The feeder: “You swore you’d keep me safe.”

The old woman: “You brought me here.”

The little girl: “You let me die.”

Another feeder: “My body fused with that little girl’s.”

An archer, drawing back their bow: “It was agony, burning up in those flames.”

A woman, dragging a lifeless bod:. “It’s your fault I’m dead.”

Another feeder: “It’s your fault I’m dead.”

And another: “It’s your fault I’m dead.”

“Shut up!” I hissed. It wasn’t real. The things I saw could never really be trusted. The quicksilver in my head showed me all kinds of hallucinations and none of them were kind, but these visions were particularly cruel. They accusation in every word Mirelle spat at me scored close to the bone. These phantoms were right. I had brought her here. I had promised I’d always keep her safe, a long time ago, when she first joined the Lupo Proelia. I’d thought sending her inside the city would make sure she was safe. Of course she wouldn’t have stayed inside the city boundaries. She must have run back out the moment she’d seen that there were children out there in the cold. I should have known that’s what she had done. That’s who Mirelle was—sweet, and kind, and caring. Always ready and willing to sacrifice herself to protect the weak.

“You let me die.”

“You let me die.”

“You let me die.”

The bodies lying in the snow were all Mirelle. She glared balefully at me from a hundred different vantage points as I ran out to meet the dragon. It was when they started grabbing at my boots with their blood-stained hands that I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Enough! I mean it. Enough!”

The quicksilver knew no mercy, though. It delighted in tormenting me. It was going to drive me mad one of these days.

“Traitor.”

“So arrogant.”

“So cruel.”

“You watched it eat me—”

“ENOUGH!” I hadn’t been able to form another shadow gate after I’d transported Lorreth back to Cahlish six months ago. I’d tried for days, and nothing had happened. I didn’t even think about it now. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be here, navigating a battlefield littered with corpses all wearing my friend’s face. I wanted to be standing toe-to-toe with that fucking dragon.

Time fractured. I was running, and then I was barreling into a wall of smoke…and then I was tipping out of it, and I was right there in front of him.

The drake dwarfed me, blotting out the sky. Black, glossy metallic scales filled my vision. I was close enough to see the steam hissing out from between those scales. Close enough to feel the heat radiating from his hulking body. The smell… Gods alive, the smell burned the back of my nose. I could barely breathe around the sulfurous tang of brimstone.

I acted before he could notice I was there, nothing more than an ant at his feet. All of the fury over what the beast had done to Mirelle, all of the hatred, all of the pain…it welled up and rushed out of me in a tidal wave. The air turned black, choked with shadows. Omnamshacry bellowed when he realized what was happening, and even through the thick blanket of shadow I’d shrouded myself in, I saw the sky light up with a plume of liquid rock and fire.

“Holy fuck!” I tried to trap the curse behind my teeth, but there was no way to stand silent in the face of this kind of nightmare. The beast thrashed, bringing his clawed feet crashing down into the snow. He couldn’t see me amidst the ink—and when he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to, he did the one thing I hadn’t planned for: he tried to take off.

“Martyrs!” A part of me wanted nothing more than to let him fly off into the night. Omnamshacry was the last living dragon in Yvelia—in all of the courts—for a reason. He was ancient, and he was massive, and he was mean. Facing him would probably cost me my life. But if he disappeared, then what? He’d wait for us to leave and then attack the city another night? He had broken his oath to protect Ajun. Now all that remained was for him to destroy it one way or another. He wouldn’t be able to penetrate the gate, but he could torch the city walls until the stone melted and the bedrock beneath them turned to lava. He would devour every last living thing in sight.

I set my jaw and reached out with my mind, closing a web around the drake’s wings, and my magic followed suit. A network of shadow ropes formed, lashing over the monstrous creature’s back, and in the space of a few beats he was trapped like a fly within a spider’s web. The dragon screamed out his anger again and again, but try as he might, he couldn’t outstretch his wings. This was harder than throwing up the ward to keep out the feeders. Far harder still than the spear I’d created to pin him to the ground. He was so godsdamned strong. How long was I going to be able to restrain him like this?

It was like trying to cup water in your hands; try as I might, I could still feel my grasp on the magic slipping through my fingers. He would break free. And when he did, we were all screwed.

I drew in more shadows, pulling the darkness to me, through me, out of me. I would never be able to draw enough. Just as Ren had come dangerously close to burning himself out with his energy, I’d wind up doing the same thing to myself if I wasn’t careful. I would become the darkness, fall into it so deep that I’d never be able to rise the surface of my power again. I had to hold back, but…

I was losing—my—

Fuck!

My shadows rebounded, stretched too thin. They rushed back into me all at once, and the pain of so much magic slamming back into me all at once sent me to my knees. So much power. Too much.

I couldn’t…fucking…breathe. My lungs could not expand. It was as though there was a ten-ton weight sitting on top of my chest.

By the time my eyes stopped watering and I’d managed to drag myself to my feet, the dragon was already in the air. An unearthly screech pierced the night. Despite his incredible size, I could barely see the shape of Old ’Shacry as he wheeled and plunged overhead.

I could feel him up there, though; his dark, malevolent presence seemed to charge the air and had every hair on the back of my neck standing to attention. He wasn’t going to flee. He was going to fall upon the remainder of the living still fighting for their lives on the mountainside. Once he was done, he would move on to the city.

‘Run,’ the quicksilver urged.

“Run where?” I hissed.

‘Back to your friends. Find them. Now.’

There was no time to ask why. No time to wonder if this was another self-serving ploy on the quicksilver’s part. I trusted my gut, and my gut told me to obey. I was moving in the next breath, sprinting, back to the spot where I’d left Lorreth—

—and then I was launching myself through another yawning shadow gate, flying and falling all at once. I fell out of the shadow gate, utterly graceless, unable to even get my hands out in front of myself before I landed face-first into the hard-packed snow.

“That looked like it hurt,” Ren whispered.

He was awake. He was okay. He looked a little rough around the edges, but he was standing on his own two feet. Next to him, Lorreth shot me a grim smile. And then there was Danya, her pale hair painted red with blood and black with dirt. They weren’t alone. All of the wolves were there, standing on the wrong side of the gate. Korrix, wielding a double headed ax in their hands. Vash, sporting a long, jagged, deep cut down the side of his face. Foley, too, with a murderous gleam in his eyes. My heart plummeted like a stone in my chest when I saw them, because it could mean only one thing.

“The gate—”

 But Vash shook his head, cutting me off. “Don’t worry. The sprites arrived at last. If you hadn’t closed the gate when you did, it would have stood open this whole time. The entire city would be gone by now. We persuaded them to crack it just enough for us to slip out.”

I thanked the gods for that. At least, I should have thanked them. Without Bal and Mithin’s intervention, I’d surely be dead already, but I just couldn’t find it in my heart to be grateful. They hadn’t saved me out of kindness. They had done it because they didn’t want to be bored. They’d still let Mirelle die. They’d let hundreds of others die along with her, when it was within their power to stop all of this.

And, as if the twins knew precisely what I was thinking, the iron sword in my hand seemed to buzz with energy, growing heavy—a reminder. A gentle nudge. We aren’t in the business of affecting the affairs of lesser creatures, Fierce Heart. We did as much as we could. We armed you with the tool you need to end this. We gave you the sword.

“Gods and martyrs. Look,” Danya said breathlessly, pointing overhead. “It’s coming back down. It’s going to torch the whole fucking mountain.”

The burning red glow of the drake’s throat could already be seen, slipping in between the gaps in his scales as, horrifyingly fast, he dropped from the sky like a stone. There was no time to think. “He’s going to dump that brimstone down on the horde as well as our people. That will work in our favor, at least. How many passes do we think he has in him before he has to land?”

Korrix answered first. Amongst the Lupo Proelia, they had the most experience with dragon kind. They had once trained to handle them, back when it was still believed that the beasts could be brought to heal. A lot had changed since then, of course. “Most large drakes would be able to disgorge twice before they needed to refill their fire chambers. But this thing isn’t just large,” they said. “It’s a monster. He’s got three passes in him before he needs to set down. At least,” they added, doubt coloring their tone.

With a bone shattering roar, the dragon descended upon the feeders and the Fae, spraying the mountain in molten lava. The scene before us was already madness…but now it was madness on fire. The brimstone formed tributaries and rivers as it ran down the mountainside, turning snow and ice to steam and incinerating both the living and the dead in its path.

We were beyond the reach of the carnage, but only just. And not for long. A wave of rank heat slapped me in the face as I watched the drake rise up again into the sky, preparing to turn back for a second strike.

“Where will he come down?” I asked the question, already trying to figure out the answer to that myself.

“He needs a clear platform to take off again,” Korrix said.

“He can’t land on the battlements. Not with the gate in place and its magic still warding the city,” Vash added.

Danya was first to point out the jagged outcrop of rocks a hundred feet up the mountainside. “There’s a cliff edge there,” she pointed out. “There are no obstructions. He can drop over the side and catch a current right away. Plus, it’s higher ground. He can search for us better from that vantage point.”

I nodded in agreement. She was right. The beast would think strategically. He would want to find us—me—quickly and end this fast. I turned to my friends, knowing what I was about to ask them was crazy.

“We meet him there. We hide in the shadows, and when he lands, we all attack at once.”

Lorreth’s face was pale as ash, but he gave a single, curt nod. “Yes.”

“I have a god sword,” Danya said. “That new piece of hardware you’re carrying looks like it might be divinely blessed, too. But what about the others?”

The sky lit up for a second time. A fresh wave of brimstone rained down on the mountain, much closer this time. It was headed straight for us. We—shit!—

“MOVE!”

As one we went, dodging burning chunks of brimstone, racing down the melting ice, sliding and slipping as we went—

A cacophony of screaming rang in my ears. “We’ll be okay,” Korrix shouted over the melee. “Do it. We’ll follow!”

“I always wanted to go out in a blaze of glory!” Vash yelled.

Danya skidded in the snow in front of me, barely saving herself from going down. “Now, Fisher! Form a shadow gate!”

“We’re probably about to die,” I called out. “But at least they’ll sing songs about us! That’s one way to live forever!” I formed the gate without looking back. I knew they’d be with me. I didn’t doubt it for one second. We weren’t just warriors. We were family. And if one of us was ready to lay down their lives to protect the Ajun Gate, it went without saying that the others were, too. A black, cold wind cut through my leathers and tugged at my hair. It was a strange feeling, plunging through a shadow portal and being able to feel my brothers and my sister on my heels, following behind me. Their fear was a bright copper burn on the tip of my tongue. But I also felt their courage, and it was enough to bolster my own.

When we stepped out onto the rocky platform, mere feet away from the cliff’s edge Danya had noted, the drake was rising from his third pass over the mountainside, and I already knew there would be no fourth pass. The glow in the dragon’s throat was dim, the reserves in his fire chambers dwindled too low for their light to seep between his layered scales. The prodigious amount of brimstone that was already running down the mountain meant that he couldn’t attack again—at least until he had refilled his reserve.

“Watch him,” Renfis hissed. “He’s wheeling around. Is he…is he heading this way?”

Our plan depended on him landing here. If he chose another place to land, then the element of surprise would be lost. We’d have to portal in right in front of him, and—

“There. Yes! I can see him. He’s coming!” Vash cried. And there he was. The dragon himself couldn’t be seen. The sky surrounding his silhouette seemed brighter, though. It was the disappearance of the stars, blinking out of view and then reappearing, that marked his trajectory across the sky. And then he was right over head, claws outstretched, rapidly descending right on top of us.

My shadows were already cloaking us. As soon as Grandfather Ash set down onto the rocky platform, I loosed a cry and screamed my defiance to the heavens, daring them to take this victory from us. “Ni’ Mirelle!”

“Ni’ Mirelle!”

“Ni’ Mirelle!”

“Ni’ Mirelle!”

The cry echoed around me as I attacked. I charged at the beast, and my wolves came with me.

It was not clean.

I was first to reach the drake. I snared him in shadow, but it was a temporary delay—he was already thrashing and roaring by the time we began to climb. Me first, then Danya, then Renfis, Lorreth, Vash, Korrix and Foley.

“Spear him! God swords first!” I shouted.

‘Stick him deep. Stick him true,’ the quicksilver chanted. “Deep and true would be best for you.’

Danya was already plunging her sword toward the monster’s back, aiming for his notched spine. A crackle of energy burst from the blade’s tip as she raised it and brought it singing down, but the blade glanced off the dragon scale, scraping down the beast’s back. Ren sent a charge of energy down into the dragon, but it did nothing this time. Nothing. Either his magic was depleted from such a massive discharge earlier, or the dragon was somehow blocking him now. That wasn’t possible, though. A dragon had no innate magic.

“Stupid Fae things!” the dragon seethed. “Fools! I am older than the stars in your dimming sky. The points of your swords mean naught. Your flesh will taste sweeter than honey. Sweeter than the one already lies in my belly—”

“Die!” The anguished cry came from behind me, from Mirelle’s brother. Ren screamed as he unleashed another torrent of glowing blue-white energy at the dragon, and this time it did have an effect. A small one, mind you, but it made the dragon flinch. Smoke plumed up from the great beast’s back, and a line of scorched scales remained in the magic’s wake.

Omnamshacry shook his massive body, and it was all I could do to keep my balance, to cling on.

“No! Foley!” Danya grabbed for him, but our brother’s balance was gone. He was flung off into the black. Gone. “Foley!”

‘Do not think of him now. Later. Not now.’

 For once, the quicksilver’s cold assessment was correct. I couldn’t afford to think of Foley right now. There would be time later. And I knew what I had to do.

The dragon had said it himself: the points of our swords meant naught. Not against his scales. But there were softer parts of a dragon. Parts that the point of a sword would sink into…and I knew how to find one.

It was sheer insanity—I would never survive it—but I had to try.

I couldn’t second guess the decision. If I allowed myself even a second’s hesitation, I would lose my nerve. So I ran, up along the drake’s back, fighting for balance with every step as he twisted and thrashed. His horned, ridged head should have been easy to traverse, but the scales were larger here, more bulbous. Slippery. The second I stepped out onto the beast’s brow, I knew it: I was never going to make it to his eye before I fell. With a mighty shake of his head, it was over.

I didn’t just fall. I was hurled away like an annoying insect.

“Fisher!” Lorreth hollered. But the shadow gate was forming in front of me.  I wouldn’t fall over the cliff’s edge. My fingertips kissed shadow—

And a cloud of sulfur engulfed me.

The dragon’s jaws closed around, snatching me out the air.

Heat.

Heat and burning pain.

Panic thundered like a drum in my veins.

I was dead. Fucking dead. In a matter of seconds, I would either be incinerated or swallowed, and both of those eventualities were too…too frightening. Too horrible. Too terrifying—

‘The sword,’ the quicksilver urged. ‘The sword. The sword!’

It was black as pitch inside the dragon’s maw. I couldn’t fucking breathe. I was drawing down poison every time I gasped, but I couldn’t help it. And I needed one last breath, anyway. One more lungful of air, for one last cry, as I took the sword that I miraculously was still holding and I drove it upward, into the roof of the dragon’s mouth with all my might.

“NI’ MIRELLE!”

The Old Fae came out as both challenge and curse.

For revenge.

For retribution.

For my friend, who the beast had taken, and for those who remained to mourn the loss of her ever afterward.

Ni’ Mirelle.

For Mirelle.

The blade sank home, driving upward, and I felt it cut through flesh. I braced for the fire, but the fire never came. A rush of energy surged upward, through me, through my blood, my bones and tissue, and it was more power than I had ever known. It wasn’t my power. It didn’t belong to the sword, either. Blade and body combined and acted as a conduit to a deeper reservoir, and through us the vengeance of the gods themselves poured forth.

The dragon made no sound. It shuddered, the way a mountain might shudder moments before it collapsed…and then that’s precisely what the dragon did.

It collapsed.

Dead.

With me caged inside its stinking mouth…

I lost count of the hours it took for them to free me. I could call no shadows to me in this kind of darkness. I had no energy left within me to do so besides. No matter what, I knew that I wouldn’t die here, though, and that knowledge allowed a strange calm to claim me. I didn’t sleep. I sank into a different kind of consciousness—a quiet place, between places, where the dead might linger a while before traveling on to what came next.

That’s where I found her waiting for me.

“I knew you were stupid,” she said, “but I didn’t think you were that stupid.” She wore the same lop-sided grin she always wore. There was a book in her hand, and sunlight dappled her face. There was no blood. No pain in her eyes. No suffering.

“You’re wearing a dress,” I observed, allowing a note of teasing into my voice.

Ren’s sister poked out her tongue at me. “You’re supposed to tell me I look beautiful,” she chided.

“You do. You always look beautiful,” I told her.

She rolled her eyes in that playful way she always did when she was frustrated with me. “You were supposed to tell me that before. When it could have meant something…more. When it could have changed things between us.”

I knew what she meant. It had always been there, between us, that tension. That want that I could feel radiating from her even now. A door that only needed a gentle push to open. Sadness washed over me in waves as I considered what could have been…and what I would never have been able to give her. “I’m so—”

“Don’t you dare tell me you’re sorry, Lord Cahlish.” She laughed, and the sound was bright and genuine, if tinged with a little sadness of her own. “I was a sister to you. I know that. I always knew that. And it was enough. I promise…” She nodded, reaching out for my hand. “I promise that it was enough. And this doesn’t change anything. I’ve been your sister my entire life, and I’m not going to let a little thing like death get in the way of that now.”

“Mirelle—”

“Stop talking, Fisher.  There’s nothing more to say about that, and I have other things to tell you. Important things that I need you to hear. Are you listening?”

I took her hand, squeezing it tight. “Always.”

“The first thing you need to know is that the god swords will start failing soon.”

“Failing?”

“Didn’t I just tell you to listen?”

I shut my mouth.

“It’ll happen over time, but it will start soon. Eventually, all of the swords will lie dormant. Apart from yours. I’ve bound a part of myself to it. The small kernel of magic that my soul possessed, whatever it was worth, now belongs to that sword. It will help you when you need it—”

“Mirelle! No! You can’t! Take it back!” I tried to pull my hand free again, but she clasped hold of me tight.

“I will not. It’s already done. And anyway, like this, I am still a part of the Lupo Proelia. I’ll still be with you. And Renfis, too. It’s what I want.”

I couldn’t allow it. I wouldn’t.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she chided. “You’re being terribly dramatic. I’m already dead, so what does it even matter? The second thing I need to tell you is that your mother wants you to know how much she loves you. She’s with you, too. She will always be with you. And lastly…”

Light spilled into the darkness.

“Lastly…”

She was fading.

“Mirelle?”

“She wants me to warn you. She needs you to guard your true name. She says that your life depends on it…”

And then she was gone.