Page 100 of House of Ashes

“Is it?” She curled her head over her shoulder, preening her flawless scales and gazing at me sidelong. “Or do you waste effort and energy on this nonsense when you could simply…oh, I don’t know…abide by the Law our Great Father laid down? Look at you. How can you rule when you cannot even see?”

I jumped off the bed when Erebos leapt up, curling around my shoulders. “It’s funny how you suddenly decide it’s no longer amusing to break the Law when you think you might get more descendants out of it. I have my reasons for…for all of this.”

I waved a hand wildly, as though ‘this’ was something that could be encompassed with a wave.

“Good reasons? Or do you cling to the comfort of familiar falsehoods?” Erebos asked. He had grown in size while my back was turned, now taking up most of the bed. The dragon cocked his enormous head, sending chimes of golden coins through the room. “You believe my descendant is not worthy of you, when he has proved his worth time and again.”

I sucked in a breath, fury coursing through me. The heat of Rhylan’s touch still hummed under my skin, demanding acknowledgement, demanding commitment.

But the anger…now it burned hotter.

“He sent me to Hell!” I snarled, fists clenched so hard my claws dug into my palms. “He destroyed everything I had, everything I was! I spent years terrified I would die at any moment, starving, offering to sell myself for the sake of safety… and you think I can just get over that? That it’s all forgotten because he was nice to me after he pulled me out of misery of his own making?”

Neither Ascendant responded. They simply gazed at me in an even, uncompromising way that made me feel about three inches tall. The look on Myst’s face mirrored the ones I used to see on my mother when she thought I was being foolish.

I wanted to shrink in on myself, but I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing…what? That I felt tiny under their assessment of my character?

That they were right?

No. They were utterly wrong. Rhylan and I had entered into an agreement knowing we would both walk free from each other in the end—because he had sent me there.

I still felt the icy rocks under my bare feet, cutting up my palms, smelled the thick, deathly stench of the tides, felt the gnawing pain of hunger in my belly. I still woke in the throes of terror, cold sweat coating my skin.

I had promised myself on those nightmare shores that I would not forget. Mistward lived in my bones now, a permanent part of me, just as Rhylan’s role in that was a part of me.

But these Ascendants…all I could do was bare my teeth in a silent snarl of defiance, and whirl into the bathroom, locking the door behind me.

They were wrong.

I slept curled up in the bathtub, knowing that at any second one of the Ascendants could simply choose to appear over me, ready to resume their defense of Rhylan.

But they left me alone. I woke up sore and stiff, and didn’t have to do much but throw my filthy leathers over the side of the bath before filling it.

But I wasn’t the only one in the eyrie who was disturbed. I wandered to the training rooms several hours later, when I could no longer bear to hide in my room, and still couldn’t bring myself to face Rhylan.

Kirana was there, her hair still wet from her own wash, but instead of practicing, she was simply sitting on the polished floor, twisting a dagger back and forth and watching the light play over it.

She was curled up like a child, knees drawn to her chin. “What’s wrong, Sera?” she asked, noting the tension in my shoulders, my clenched fists.

I opened my mouth, wanting to tell her that our Ascendants had finally put aside their enmity for the all-important goal of me producing offspring…but I didn’t want to talk to Kirana about Rhylan, about the tangled snarl of emotions within me that I couldn’t possibly hope to untangle.

“Yesterday,” I lied, forcing my hands to loosen. “I’m fine, really. Why are you here? Is it Coldburn?”

A brief smile crossed her lips. “You would think so, but…no.” She offered nothing else, and I sat next to her, crossing my legs.

Maybe it was because my own feelings were still sore over the Ascendants and their argument, but I gave in to asking the question that had been lurking in the back of my mind. “It’s Cai, isn’t it?”

She flipped the dagger again in silence, and finally let it droop towards the floor. “The First Claim was the first time I’ve laid eyes on him since I left the Training Grounds. I almost didn’t go, because…I knew if I saw him, I would remember everything I could have had, and let go.”

I leaned my head back, watching the opposite wall. Kirana leaned back, her legs unfolding, and dropped the dagger. It hit the floor with a solid clunk.

“When Loralei died, I saw what happened to a mate when a bond was broken. Jaien was…out of his mind. The healers weren’t sure he would ever come back, and honestly, he never really did. Not all the way.” Kirana raised a gnawed claw to her mouth, then lowered it again. All of her cuticles were freshly scabbed around the edges today. “I was a coward when I was younger. I saw what happened, and thought…there was no way I could live if Cai died before me. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t even really say goodbye; I thought if I just left, he’d move on and find someone else. A clean break.”

I sighed. There was no clean break for such a thing.

If there was, I wouldn’t be considering why I still resisted the temptation of the dragon who had sent me to Mistward Isle. I would have held onto that hate with tooth and claw.

“He clearly didn’t. You could still have a bond,” I said quietly.

---