Page 159 of House of Ashes

“Will he blame you for stealing one of his kin?” I fiddled with one of Myst’s rings as I spoke, rotating a band set with amethysts around her claw. “Considering your larcenous tendencies…”

She was silent for a long moment, and I thought I might have offended her. But she was thinking, her eyes half-lidded, tail twitching lazily.

“No,” she finally said. “No, he has always been rather attached to his descendants, far more so than is healthy for a dragon. He would rather she belong to me and live, than die in his House.”

“At least when she wakes, she’ll have choices.” I spun the ring until the amethyst faced upwards, catching the light. “Varyamar is as much hers as it is mine, now.”

But it would be a shallow consolation. Jhazra was her home; she would never feel the same bone-deep ache for the lakes, the jasmine and the wide open forests that I would feel.

If she were even able to care about those things…if the blood-craving didn’t consume her whole, body and mind.

“Yes. You are now sisters, I suppose, in a convoluted, roundabout sort of way.” Myst waggled her claws. “But it all comes down to the same thing. We need dragonbloods, and we need them awake and aware. Watching the winds for something that isn’t quite right. Whatever I smell is worse than war, Serafina—it is the smell of death.”

“War is death.” I thought of poor Garnet…and remembered that I had left her head on the shore of the tarn. I must retrieve it for her pyre.

A good, loyal wyvern deserved to be sent whole into the embers.

“No. This is worse than the death that comes on the battlefield. It is the death that eats one alive, and never ends.” My Ascendant’s claws tightened on my shoulder. “I hope I am wrong about it.”

We fell into silence. I watched the flames still crackling in the hearth across the room, the pop and crackle of the wood sending up sparks.

Myst could hope all she wanted, but I would pray. Tomorrow, I would get on my knees before the Dyad and beg them not to allow this.

War that we could handle. We were already committed to our course.

Yura, I had personally vowed to destroy with my own hands, and I would hold to that vow with my life.

But dire omens and warnings…a whisper of a scent in an Ascendant’s nose…that made me want to run screaming.

To curl into a ball under my bed and close my eyes tight and hold back sobs.

Because bravery, like survival, came with a heavy price. Anyone could sit in comfort and claim that they were brave. That they alone would stand eye to eye with the darkness, and refuse to blink.

But when the darkness came calling, that bravery was not free. It took everything in them…sometimes everything they had.

And when that cost mounted too high, they blinked. If only for a second, but they would blink, thinking that they could not bear the burden of loss…and then the darkness would win.

When I had called Kalros a coward, I’d had nothing but my own miserable life to my name. Nothing left to lose.

I had too many things now that I couldn’t stand to lose. The cost would be more than I could live with.

Myst ran her claws through my hair. “I smell your fear, Serafina. Let it go. They are not here now.” She nuzzled my cheek. “I could always be wrong, and then all this woe would be for nothing, now wouldn’t it?”

“But you’re afraid, too.” I put my hand over the claws on my shoulder, but nothing would stop the racing of my heart. The bands of iron had tightened around my chest, each breath hard-won.

“Only of things that may not come to pass. Do as I say.” Myst exhaled an iridescent flame, which danced before me like a marsh-spirit. “Breathe this in. Sleep and dream sweet dreams. Tomorrow is another day, and you cannot afford to let fear break you now.”

She was right. I was weary in body and spirit, my mind having seen and absorbed too many horrors for one night. It was too much.

If I closed my eyes now, I would only dream of Yura. Of hungry things slithering from the shadows.

So I obeyed Myst, inhaling the flicker of flame. It didn’t burn me; it was warm, swirling like smoke into my mouth and nose, tickling my throat.

The dragonfire wrapped me in a warm, soft cocoon of white mist, of absolute nothingness.

And I slipped into the peace of the Dreamlands.

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