Jaqual bows. “A simple smudge will do the trick. And perhaps, if anyone asks you at breakfast, do not mention your time of arrival, Damien.”
In other words, don’t let Elsabar’s parents hear that I besmirched their daughter’s bed and memory. I nod quickly, feeling like a rutting animal, and desperatelychange the subject. “I assume you’ve come this morning with an answer.”
“The answer is yes.” His shoulders sag, at odds with a stubbornly defiant tip of his chin. “You should know that the decision was not unanimous, but the majority ruled in favor of our bargain, and when it comes to Rivertoads and war, we act together or not at all.”
“That’s good,” Eloise says, turning as serious as I’ve ever seen her. “This spell demands compliance, Jaqual, from all three of us. If your people don’t participate, the spell will make them participate or die. Do you understand?”
“And the same goes for both of you?” The eye hanging around his neck winks.
I stare at Eloise. I hadn’t realized the severity of the spell, but as I don’t plan to break this agreement, I’m not concerned when she responds in the affirmative, and I know she’s telling the truth. We will win this war, and Stygarde will have its first election, and if it doesn’t go my way, I will have Eloise. A vision of us living in a tiny cabin we build ourselves fills my mind. That end would be no consolation prize. My mother and Karyl will be disappointed, but this is the only way we stand to win. And we must win. That is paramount.
“The same goes for both of us,” Eloise says.
“Then make it so.”
Eloise nods. “Wait here.” She disappears into the wagon and returns with her satchel, then draws a canteen from its depths. “Follow me.”
The canteen is thrust into my hands. “Drink,” she orders.
I obey, and a hair-raising concoction of slime and firefills my mouth. I cough repeatedly but can’t clear the taste. I thrust the canteen at Jaqual, and he has a similar reaction.
“What the hell is that?” he asks as Eloise drinks without incident.
“You don’t want to know.” She casts the empty canteen aside and leads us to the edge of the woods, where Phantom appears in all their white-scaled glory. I swear to the goddess, I will never get used to the thing’s presence. I can feel the death coming off them, smell the flames brewing in their lungs. Phantom smells like the Darklands, like old souls and the forged metal of the gods. I keep my eyes fixed on Eloise as a deep rumble vibrates in their throat, and they lower their head over hers. The way they hover behind her, it’s easy to see the dragon as an extension of her magic, of herself.
She may be my mate, but she is also the power of generations before her, the vessel of her family’s witchcraft, the magic of ten thousand souls. It was much easier to underestimate her when the embodiment of that magic was a slight fox. Now, it is all I can do to keep my knees from quaking.
“Clasp hands,” Eloise commands.
Jaqual’s eyes swivel to lock on the dragon’s enormous teeth, and I almost laugh at the drain of color from his face and the way his throat bobs with a nervous swallow. Even the eye of his amulet seems to widen. But Jaqual does as Eloise instructs. His hand in mine is cold and clammy. Eloise’s is firm, competent. She slides her grip up both our arms so that we are holding each other’s forearms rather than palm and fingers.
Only now do I feel how intimate this magical triangleis. My mind wanders to Morpheus, to the power triune he used to bolster his power. This is not the same, but maybe not so different either. A tingle travels the length of my spine as purple ribbons of pure power wind around our arms and constrict like hungry snakes.
Eloise is chanting now. Some old Earthly language—Latin or Greek—the words fly too fast for me to register their meaning. Over us, the moonlit sky lightens, but not with a coming dawn. We are glowing. Our connection radiates like a small sun.
“Ah!” My inner forearms burn. Jaqual cries out too. The scent of burning flesh rises between us.
Eloise doesn’t seem to notice. Her eyes have gone entirely white, as white as the scales of the dragon behind her. The purple ribbons constrict until I think the magic might break my bones. The light we’re putting off turns red as blood.
“Elllloooiiiissseee!” I howl.
She can’t hear me. A storm is brewing around her, her hair floating in a sourceless wind, an icy coil of magic that cuts through the pain. She rises off the ground, floating like a mermaid in a sea of dark power. We are the only things tethering her to the earth.
The eye on Jaqual’s necklace is gone, the stone simply white glass now. He’s screaming into the wind, but I can’t hear his voice over the roar.
My bones are breaking. I cannot shift. I cannot escape.
And then the ribbons cut through my skin, sink into my flesh, and disappear. The tightness, the pain, fades. Eloise lowers, feet touching the grass, eyes fluttering as her blank expression becomes hers again, her green irises returning, bright as ever. She releases her grasp on bothof us, and her face eases into a smile. “It’s done,” she says, as if she’s just finished the dishes. She hasn’t even broken a sweat.
I, on the other hand, am trembling, as is Jaqual. I hold out my arms, palms facing upward, opening and closing my hands as the burning abates, and what I see etched into my skin makes my breath catch.
On the arm that clasped Eloise’s, her key sigil, the one from her back that resembles a dragon, is etched into my flesh, the swirls and archaic symbols that make up its form seeming to pulse and spin as I study it. On my other arm, three lines signifying waves lap across my skin. The Rivertoad symbol. His sigil and hers.
Jaqual holds out trembling arms and stares at the dragon sigil on his arm. His other one is bare, likely because he already sports the river sigil somewhere else on his body. Eloise only has the river sigil, confirming my theory.
On his chest, I see the eye return, blinking sleepily.
“The war room is waiting, gentlemen,” Eloise says. “We have a battle to wage.”
