Page 81 of House of Ashes

I touched the word, thinking of the enormous cauldron in Kirana’s still-room, and how each batch only contained three drops of Erebos’s blood…and even that tiny quantity made her nervous.

The unnamed author had drawn a depiction of a female Naga in the book. I studied the ink sketch, picking out the obvious features: the scales from head to toe. Eyes with fine, slit pupils. Fangs and short, sharp horns swept back from the forehead.

It looked almost like Rhylan caught mid-shift, a draga on the verge of exploding into a beast.

The Naga were intermediaries between true dragons and the dragonblooded, a thing that was never meant to be.

The author also noted that they were blood-drinkers. Like the true dragons, they had no need for food nor water—but, as they were originally dragonbloods, they still required sustenance: the substance that had transformed them to begin with.

I glanced at the sketch one more time, then slammed the book shut.

So Kirana was feeding me a tonic that could, with enough time and excess, make me entirely reliant on Erebos’s blood for the rest of my life. A monstrous creature, neither one thing nor the other.

I stared at the far wall, not really seeing it, and put the book aside.

It was a necessary risk. She was an ordained healer, and she’d earned every last malachite in her bracelet; she knew what she was doing.

I would just have to trust in her judgment, and in my own. Dragon’s blood aside, whatever else was in the tonic was so disgusting I couldn’t fathom actually developing a craving for it.

But the knowledge had also ruined the peace of the library. With a small groan of annoyance, I shoved On Naga onto the pile of research and padded out of the room.

With Rhylan out flying, no sign of Kirana, and absolutely no desire to go lay under my bed in the dark and let my anxiety eat me alive, I ended up wandering the eyrie, drifting from the library to the western side of the mountain’s interior.

There were rooms I hadn’t seen before, shut behind closed doors: a room that was completely empty. One hung with weapons from floor to ceiling. Another was stuffed with crates. When I pried the lid of one open, I found Horde-work vases and linens, imports from the Wildlands.

The next room was a once-cozy sitting room, with soft couches arrayed around an unlit mantel. A board game, with pieces carved from carnelian and white jade, had been left unfinished on a table between them. Carnelian had been winning; now a layer of dust lay over it all.

A shiver crept down my spine, and I left the room quickly.

There was something about that unfinished game, languishing in the dark, that made me think of Varyamar and the teacups in the parlor, left to sit in the wake of tragedy.

At the far end of the hall was a set of elaborately carved doors; Larivor on the left, with his thousand horns, and Naimah on the right, a creature of flame.

I had found the Jhazra Eyrie shrine. Pushing both doors open, I stepped into the small, circular room, gazing about the alcoves carved into the walls.

The shrine was untended as well. A statue of the Dyad was set in the alcove directly in front of me, Larivor and Naimah intertwined. A box of incense had been forgotten at their feet.

I touched Larivor’s snout, silently begging forgiveness for our deception, our flagrant breaking of his Laws.

The Daughters were arrayed in alcoves to the right: Aurae, the guide. Nakasha, the guardian. And finally, the Daughter who had received most of my prayers in recent times: Sunya, the judge.

Flowers had been left in their alcoves at their feet, now dry and crumbling to dust.

To the left of the Dyad was an empty alcove. Nobody would ever create a physical likeness of Ustrael—the Outsider, the Unspeakable—but it was considered ill form not to leave her an empty space.

An empty space that served to remind us of what could fill it, were we to ignore Larivor’s precepts.

Staring at that empty, black hole, I thought of Kalros, and my taunts to him—that his House were cowards for refusing to engage in the war against Vhaiothez, the last Primoris to hatch.

The Primoris were ancient beings, as old as the dragons, born of a union between Larivor and Ustrael, the dark twin of Naimah. When Father Wind saw what his first children were—endlessly hungry monstrosities—he had fought a great battle against Ustrael, scarring the world itself to lock her away with their terrible spawn.

But not all of them languished in the World Scar. Ustrael had laid her deadly eggs far and wide, buried deep in the earth.

My elderly history tutor had once told me it was impossible to truly understand the Primoris through tales. They could only be experienced, in fear and agony and madness.

I’d asked him if he had ever seen one, and the ancient dragon had stared off into the distance for a long while without speaking. Then he’d gotten up and left, and my lessons had been over for the day even though we’d barely begun.

We never spoke of the Primoris again after that. He had seen things I could not fathom in that war.

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