Page 327 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

Without me, you will have nothing to unite you. You will fall to wars of wealth and religion. You will make enemies of each other. As you always have. And you will end yourselves.

Ead swam. The white jewel rang against her skin.

You need not give your life.Her head broke the surface, and she kept swimming.Another fire burns in your heart. Become my handmaiden instead, and I will spare Sabran Berethnet. If you do not do this, the voice said,I will break her.

You will have to break me first. And I have proven difficult to break.

She climbed onto the ship and rose.

So be it.

And so the Nameless One, the blight upon the nations, plunged toward the ship.

Every fire in the Abyss went out. All Ead could hear were cries of fear as death came as a shadow from above. Only starlight pierced the darkness, but in that light, Ascalon shone.

She ran across theDancing Pearl. Her world darkened until there was only the beat of her heart and the blade. She willed the Mother to give her the strength that had filled her on that day in Lasia.

Unearthly metal, alive to her touch. The Nameless One opened his jaws, and a white sun rose inside his mouth. Ead saw the place where his armor had been torn away. She lifted the sword that Kalyba had made, that Cleolind had wielded, that had lived in song for a thousand years.

She buried it to the hilt in flesh.

Ascalon glowed until it blinded her. She had a moment to see the skin of her hands simmering with heat—a moment, an age, something between—before the sword was wrenched from them. She was thrown high across the deck, over the gunwale, into the sea. Scale crashed through theDancing Pearl, carving it fesswise.

The strength left her as quickly as it had come.

She had driven the blade into his heart, as the Mother had not, but it was not enough. He must be chained to the Abyss to die. And she carried a key.

The jewel drifted in front of her. The star inside it lit the dark. How she longed to sleep for eternity.

Another light flickered in the shadows. Lightning, glowing in a vast pair of eyes.

Tané and her dragon. A hand reached through the water and Ead grasped it.

They rose from the ocean, toward the stars. Tané held the blue jewel in one hand. The Nameless One thrashed in the Abyss, head thrown back, fire spraying from his mouth like lava from the mantle of the earth, with Ascalon still buried in his breast.

Tané locked her right hand over Ead’s and pushed her fingers between her knuckles, so they both held the waning jewel. It pressed against the dying beat of her heart.

“Together,” Tané whispered. “For Neporo. For Cleolind.”

Slowly, Ead reached up with her other hand, and their fingers interlocked around the rising jewel.

Her thoughts waxed faint with every breath, but her blood knew what to do. It was instinct, deep-rooted and ancient as the tree.

The ocean rose to their command. They played this final game by turns, never breaking their hold on each other.

They spun him a cocoon, two seamsters weaving with the waves. Steam filled the air as they knitted the Nameless One into the sea, and the darkness quenched the hot coal of his heart.

He looked up at Ead one last time, and she looked into him. A flash of light blinded her where Ascalon had torn him open. The Beast of the Mountain let out a scream before he disappeared.

Ead knew that she would hear that sound for as long as she drew breath. It would echo through her unquiet dreams, like a song across the desert. The dragons of the East dived after him, to see him to his grave. The sea closed over all their heads.

And the Abyss was still.

72

West

In the foothills of the Spindles, the wyrm Valeysa was dead, brought down by a harpoon. All around her, the ground was strewn with the earthly remains of human and wyrm.

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