His lips find my ear, and he murmurs, “Every time we are together, I hope that the gods will bless us. If they do, you will be the most wonderful mother, and I will be the proudest father in all Maledin. I am already the proudest mate in all Maledin.”
Stesha’s sweet words send golden sparks through my body. “With Nilak expecting, you are already the proudest father in all Maledin,” I tease him.
He kisses the top of my head. “I am bursting with pride for both of you. You’re everything I wanted, just as you are.”
It’s sweet hearing him say that, and I remind myself that he means it. I just wish I could believe it.
The attackwe have all feared happens late one afternoon when the queen is absent from the castle. Isavelle and a unit of wingrunners that include Captain Ashton have flown west to her village so that she may visit her family and crone.
Alarm bells ring. The city is under attack. As the sky darkens preternaturally, and guards run for the castle gates to seal them closed, my first thought is that itknows. The lich knows we’re without our queen, our most powerful spellcaster, to protect us. It knows that Kane has followed his mate far into the east, and we can’t depend on any reluctant help that he might have given us against the lich.
My second thought is, dragonless as I am, I’m unable to fight.
I hear pounding footsteps behind me, and I turn just in time to see Stesha thundering toward me, his eyes blazing. He scoops me up against him and carries me atop Nilak, who already has her wings unfurled and her teeth bared, ready for battle.
“We need a better look at what’s happening to the city. You are not to leave my sight,” he orders me.
I am already scouring the ground as Nilak takes to the air.
Both the gates into the castle and into the city are sealed. There is fighting in the streets as City Guard battle undead. Outside the city gates there is a terrible sight. A horde of undead skeletons and other malevolent creatures. Fallen soldiers wearing Brethren and Maledinni armor over their bones. Fallen skeletal wyverns that can’t fly without the fleshy membranes of their wings, but they can climb the castle walls with their sharp talons.
“There are so many,” I moan in horror. Nilak flies in a wide circle around the city. There are hundreds of undead at every outer gate, beating and clawing to get in. They are flinging bones over the walls into the city that form full skeletons from a single bone in just a few moments before they are up and fighting.
While I’m still staring in horror at the ground, I hear Stesha suck in a breath. A shudder passes through both Nilak and her rider. When I turn to see what they are looking at, I cry out, and Stesha’s arm tightens around me.
“Don’t look,” Stesha urges me, but it’s too late.
Flying to attack us is a dragon with rotted flesh hanging off his bones. He’s just managing to stay aloft despite the holes and tears in his once magnificent wings. There are black holes where his beautiful golden eyes once were, but the identity of the dragon is obvious. The lich couldn’t even give Shar any peace in death.
Shar’s jaws are parted to attack Nilak, and she has no choice but to do the same. She opens her mouth and deluges him withdragonfire. His scream of pain is so lifelike that I feel my heart break for him all over again. Fire consumes the undead dragon. He curls into himself like a dead fly, and his charred bones crash to earth.
“I will kill that foul thing,” Stesha snarls. “The soldiers and the wyverns are terrible enough, but to do that to a dragon?”
I bury my face in Stesha’s chest, my shoulders shaking. I can hear him breathing raggedly. Shar’s resurrection has shaken him as much as it has shaken me.
Nilak swoops low and unleashes more fire, and I watch as she incinerates a horde of undead outside one of the city gates. Many of them are still moving as the flames die away.
There’s a flash of greenish light out of the corner of my eye, and a moment later, I gasp in pain. It feels as though someone has stabbed a spear through my skull. My vision goes dark, but I can hear Stesha shout my name in alarm.
Then all falls silent, and there’s only pain so fierce that it feels as though my head may explode.
You will not suffice, hisses a rasping voice.You are weak and talentless, but I have long sought you for other purposes, you green-eyed bitch. Though your eyes are no longer green. A nasty laugh echoes in my mind.You destroyed my body, and so I killed your dragon. But it is not enough. Not ENOUGH.
“What do you want from me?” I whimper, though I don’t know if I’m speaking aloud or if my words are trapped inside my own head. All I know is agony and darkness.
Where is all the hate in your heart for the white-haired prick? I know you have put it somewhere, it says with relish.
I can feel the lich riffling through my memories. Rampaging through them. Hunting for something it can wield like a weapon. I see each of the memories as it examines them. My first sight of the dragons when I arrived in Lenhale at fourteen. Stesha towering over me, proud and beautiful and so different tothe lanky, sullen boy I’d known ten years earlier. My mother trying to force me into that horrible, ruffled dress. My father’s distressed expression as I tell my parents that Emmeric forced a kiss on me.
Then the memories shift in a strange way. I see myself like I’m looking in a mirror. No, clearer than in a mirror. It’s as though I’m standing outside my body and looking at myself through another pair of eyes. I see Stesha as well. The two of us are standing before Nilak on the day of my first riding lesson. Stesha carries me atop his dragon, and suddenly, I’m brimming with jealousy and resentment. But that can’t be right because I felt nothing but joy that day. I’m flooded by dozens of memories. Hundreds of memories. Stesha and I together on the dragongrounds, around the castle, in the streets of Lenhale, in the skies. There’s so much softness in Stesha’s eyes as he looks at me, listens to me, talks with me. He’s happy when he’s with me. He searches for me when he’s lost sight of me. I smile up at him when he touches my hair. I squeeze him hard when he embraces me. His kisses on my brow light up my face.
And all I feel is hate.
I remember these moments, but I don’t understand all this anger. Then I realize why. They’re not my memories.
They’re Emmeric’s.
Through his eyes, I see Stesha and myself standing together as the snow falls around us. Stesha holds my hand on the mountainside because I’ve cut it on Minta’s scale. And we’re smiling at each other. We look so perfect together that it makes my heart ache. We’re clearly meant for each other, but I was too young and grief-stricken, and Stesha was conscious only of his duty and his promise that I would never get hurt.
