Page 80 of Hearts Lost

ITHRONEL

I HAD A CHOICE

“Stop screaming,” the dragon growls.

I don’t think I can. Heat sears my skin and prickles my eyes; something horribly smooth and solid closes around my body like bands of polished obsidian. The last thing I see before Rensivar the Wicked pulls me from the Lands Below is Aloserin, his features distorted by panic, his dagger winking in the strange light of that strange room. He’s reaching for me, his whole body is pulling toward the portal, but it’s obvious he isn’t going to make it. The distance between us is already too great.

The portal burns as the dragon pulls me through, ripping breath from my lungs, searing my skin in wave after fiery wave. And then it’s over, and I’m gasping for air, my arms pushing against the rope Aloserin’s mother wrapped around me in another world.

And I’m not screaming.

The sound of my rasping breath seems very loud wherever it is we are now. A cave, I assume, from the stone floor and the general gloominess. But when I lift my head, I see windows ringing the round walls, their impenetrable dark faces reflecting the light of a few sad little lamps attached to the walls.

Nighttime, then. Nighttime, or perhaps I’m in yet another world, something beyond both the Lands Below and the Worlds Above. Some place where there is no light in the sky. I shiver, and the wood of the chair digs into my spine as the dragon drops me like a stone. He snorts as he paces across the floor, smoke rising from his nostrils.

“This’ll be worth nothing, I’m sure,” the dragon mutters, as though he’s speaking to himself.

The dragon Rensivar. Another shiver chases the first, pulling my skin tight. I remember the elegant tapestries hanging in Princess Elanerill’s tower with their lovingly embroidered flames pouring from the black dragon’s maw as the defeated Kingdom of the Fall marched beneath his wings and into the Lands Below.

Rensivar built the barrier, they say. He came to the aid of the Kingdom of the Summer in the hour of our greatest need, after the sinking of the warship Nightingale. But that was hundreds of years ago, in the dusty, half-forgotten past. I’d thought the dragon Rensivar was long dead, if he’d ever existed in the first place. If the terrifying black dragon on the tapestries wasn’t just a story meant to explain away some dark magic worked by King Grathgore.

The dragon stops his pacing, turns to me with his violent red eyes, and lets out a low growl. A wash of cold panic obliterates thought and memory. My heart races inside my frozen body, and for just a moment I think I know what it feels like to be the rabbit beneath the hawk’s shadow. To be the mouse before the cat.

The dragon’s eyes narrow. He tilts his head, then lets out a strange sound that’s something between a snarl and a laugh.

“You’re not even one of theirs,” he snaps.

It’s not a question, but I find I’m nodding my head anyway, agreeing with his assessment. He’s right; whoever they are, the Kingdom of the Fall or Aloserin’s family, I’m not one of theirs.

“What’s your magic, then?” Rensivar asks as he shifts closer to me, moving slowly with his body low to the ground, like a serpent.

“H-Handler,” I stammer.

He snorts, releasing twin plumes of smoke from his nostrils.

“Typical,” he growls. “Worthless. I’ve got less than five weeks before the next new moon’s eve, and I get a handler.”

I try to swallow, but my throat is as dry as a crypt. Is it a good thing to be worthless to Rensivar the Wicked? Somehow I doubt it. My gaze trembles past Rensivar and toward the far wall, where an elegant silver bell hangs on an ebony stand.

“Any changes since you went into the void?” Rensivar snarls.

My eyes snap back to the dragon who’d somehow crossed this room without seeming to move at all. The scent of dragon is thick in the space between us, heavy and oily, and his red eyes look like they’re burning right through me.

Changes? Since I went to the void? My chest is so tight that I struggle to pull in a breath. Aloserin flashes through my memory, that expression he makes when he’s trying not to smile, the way he stared at me through the firelight when he thought I wasn’t looking, like I was something precious he’d discovered by accident.

The way he’d looked at me at the top of the waterfall, surrounded by all the people from his kingdom that I’d tried to kill. Like I was someone he didn’t recognize. Like I was someone who’d hurt him.

It was the same way he’d just looked at his parents, I realize with a sickening lurch in my gut. He’d turned toward his mother and father in the dungeon beneath his house and stared at them in exactly the same way he’d stared at me. Like they’d been keeping something horrible from him. Like they’d betrayed him.

And they had, hadn’t they? I knew it the moment he slammed open the door and stared at me like a man trapped in a nightmare. His family made a deal with Rensivar the Wicked, and he didn’t know. He didn’t know until he found me in his basement.

My breath catches on my lips, and my eyes burn. Changes? By the stars, the void changed everything for me.

“Your magic,” Rensivar hisses through rows of jagged teeth. “Did the void change it?”

The room swims as tears force their way past my defenses and spill down my cheeks, big, ugly, tears. Rensivar makes a disgusted sort of growl deep in his throat and, stars help me, I can’t blame him. I’m disgusted too.

“I don’t have time for this,” the dragon snaps. “Look, I can torture you to see if anything interesting comes out, or you can just tell me if the void changed your magic.”