Page 48 of Under the Iron Sky

Sitting cross-legged on the dungeon floor, Soraya closed her eyes and tried to relax. She’d never been a fan of meditating—her hands got bored if she stayed still for that long—but Raina had loved it.

Soraya grasped onto the techniques Raina used to describe. She let her mind drift, pushed all thoughts of war and fairies and silver-haired monsters out of her mind, and drew a deep breath. She still felt the vapor each time she inhaled, but it was more of a dull tingle in her throat and lungs now rather than an icy burn.

Soraya focused on that feeling now, on the spread of it up her nose as she inhaled, following it down her throat and into her chest, spreading across her lungs. Let it settle her.

She pictured the most damaging memories first. Meetings with her mother, covert missions to set up new bases ready for when the Dar’rak eventually discovered them, where their pieces of the Arch were currently being stored, imagining each one drawn in gold ink on pieces of blue paper just like the blueprints hanging on her workshop wall, and laid them down on the floor around her.

When she was happy she’d gotten everything, she imagined herself in another hallway, saw herself throw each of those memories behind a separate door and lock them up.

She felt like a fool each time she shut a new door. She had no way of knowing if this was working or if she was just wasting her time, but if she’d built this fortress in her mind from nothing, who was to say she couldn’t control what memories went behind what door?

A fool’s hope probably, but she couldn’t sit here and do nothing.

She worked backward after that: the time her father had given her a fake blowtorch and full protective gear so she could join him in his workshop, reading on a park lawn deep within the city proper while Bertok slept beside her, the first time she’d successfully braided her mother’s hair in the small garden outside of their family apartment in the palace surrounded by a sea of deep purple glass flowers, and the time Theron had asked her to dance at the end of a school party when they were eight.

All silly little moments, but together they could act as another line of defense—and in the grand scheme of things, she’d happily sacrifice a few childhood memories if it meant keeping the people back at the bases safe.

Soraya made herself stare at each blueprint before locking it away, committing every face in each to memory, reminding herself of what stood to be lost if she failed here.

She’d just finished locking the final door when a noise pulled her back to the dungeon. Not quite thunder but … wings.

Ikarus and his dragon were back.

Soraya stood with a sigh, muscles aching as she dusted off her knee guards, the rotting metal an even more greenish blue down here if that were possible, and peered out the window. Far in the distance, Ikarus’s dragon was soaring. Well, hurtling really, practically falling toward the castle like a jet that’d been shot right out of the sky and showed no signs of slowing down. Not at three hundred feet. Two hundred. One hundred.

Clinging to the window frame, Soraya held her breath and leaned back, bracing for the earth-shattering impact, but the dragon opened its wings at the last second, beating them powerfully against the air to halt its descent just before it hit the ground. It hovered for a moment, then tucked in its wings and landed with a thud.

A tremor wracked through the castle. Soraya watched the dragon tip back its head and shriek, so loudly she had to clap her hands over her ears to shield herself from it. Even the stalactites above seemed to tremble.

The dragon roared again. No, not a roar, more of a cry. Low and pained like a thousand people screaming all at once.

Something was wrong with it.

Ikarus vanished from between its shoulders, then reappeared on the ground beside the beast a few moments later with a person cloaked in black robes. Their face was completely hidden behind a thick dark veil, and they wore a thin black diadem across their forehead that was set with dozens of small rubies. A Dar’rak healer.

Ikarus removed his helmet and snarled something, his features contorting with rage, and the dragon slowly turned, its head hanging low as it exposed its side and a deep wound Soraya hadn’t been able to see before. Scales were missing from just below its right shoulder joint, replaced by a line of angry red and pink flesh that ran all the way to the base of its tail and top of its thigh. Even all the way over here, the smell of burning flesh made her nose crinkle.

The dragon had been hit with Light. A lot of it, if the steady tendrils of smoke still wafting off the wound were any indication. A cannon, she thought. It’d left a lot of damage. Had Ikarus brought the healer here to euthanize the beast?

The healer examined the dragon from where they stood, then shook their head, apparently refusing—that was until several knives floated from behind Ikarus’s back, hovering over his shoulders like the heads of small beasts all readying to strike.

Slowly stretching out a hand as though expecting the dragon to bite it off if they moved too quickly, the healer stepped forward. A soft gray light glowed around a gloved hand, twin to the one that appeared around the worst part of the dragon’s wound.

The dragon shrieked loudly enough to shake the castle floor. While the healer worked, more cloaked figures began arriving in twos—one healer, and a single Ethereal hidden behind a black hooded robe who kept disappearing then reappearing with another healer a few seconds later, then another, another, until nine of them stood in a circle around the dragon, slowly moving their hands in circular motions while the beast screamed.

Ikarus stood facing the dragon, giving Soraya a clear view of the back of his armor, entirely black, except for the now empty crimson sheaths built into the back plate that flared wide just above his shoulder blades, growing thinner as they trailed down his back in the shape of a pair of folded-down red feathered wings.

Soraya had never seen armor like it.

When the dragon shrieked again, one of the healers stepped forward. Soraya herself had barely registered that he was probably a little too close before the dragon whipped around and slammed its tail into his body. The healer flew through the air and cracked against the side of the castle with a sickening crunch, then hit the stone floor.

He didn’t move again.

When the Ethereal appeared for the final time, he strode to Ikarus’s side, now empty-handed, and pushed his hood back to reveal long black braids that were bound at the base of his neck and disappeared into his robe.

It was the same Ethereal she’d seen with Emelda. He leaned in, moving with the sort of slow grace only a creature as powerful as he could, and said something into Ikarus’s ear.

Ikarus stiffened. Every muscle in his back seemed to go taut all at once before he spun around, and it took every ounce of will in Soraya not to flinch when those gray eyes met hers.