Page 224 of Of Empires and Dust

“That does not mean you can claim it as your own.”

“I wasn’t asking, Draleid.”

Calen took a step closer to Kallinvar, fighting his natural instinct to open himself to the Spark. “Neither was I.”

“We made a deal, Calen Bryer. We came here for the Heart of Blood, on your word. I will not leave empty handed.”

“And I left an army of souls to march in defence of my home while I honoured my promise and stood by you here.”

Kallinvar’s stare broke. He turned his head inwards towards his shoulder, eyes watching the floor. Quick as a snake, his head snapped back up. But he no longer looked at Calen. Instead, his gaze was fixed on the eggs. There was a hardness in the man’s eyes. He didn’t look himself. “What of the eggs?”

Kallinvar’s voice was barely a whisper.

“What of them?” Calen glanced at Haem. His brother stood with his back straight, body tense.

“What if they are the Heart of Blood? What if it is with those eggs that Fane brings Efialtír into the world?”

“No egg has hatched in four hundred years.”

“And yet everything has brought us here.” Kallinvar kept his gaze on the eggs as he moved closer, the light of the baldír gleaming in his eyes. “These runes are not marked for no reason. Perhaps they are a shield, but from what?”

Calen opened himself to the Spark, the purple glow of his eyes shimmering off the egg scales and the green plate of Kallinvar’s armour. “There is a line, Grandmaster. And you are close to crossing it.”

Calen stopped himself from unsheathing his sword. Even if he did believe he could best the man blade to blade – which he didn’t – the rest of the knights would see to it that he never left that chamber alive. He glanced at Haem again, seeing the hesitation in his brother’s eyes. What would Haem do, Calen wondered, if forced to make that choice?

“Is there truly a line, Draleid, when it comes to stopping Efialtír crossing into this world? Stopping the Shadow from consuming everything? From devouring? From obliterating?” Kallinvar looked to Calen. “Where is the line you draw to protect this world?”

Calen could hear Tarmon in the back of his mind, urging him to stay patient, to think with his head and not his heart. But so too could he feel Valerys’s fire raging. They could not allow any harm to come to the eggs. Theywouldnot. Whether the eggs would hatch or not.

“Thousands of broken eggs fill this city.” Calen didn’t raise his voice, didn’t shout or take a step closer to the Grandmaster, but he fed on the cold fire in Valerys’s veins. “I will not allow you to add any more. There is always a line. Always. The Fall itself was a line crossed with the best of intentions. Understand this – if you want these eggs, you will have to take them over my cold, dead body. But it will be one of your knights doing the taking, because you will be lying right next to me. I swear this by the bond.”

A brief silence passed in which Kallinvar stared back at Calen, none of the other knights speaking a word. Sister-Captain Arlena and the others had reached the chamber now, and Calen stood fourteen to one. It mattered little. He would do all he could to protect these eggs, and he would take as many with him as the gods allowed.

The light from his eyes and the runes of his armour burned bright, Valerys rumbling in the back of his mind. The dragon hadalighted on what remained of the roof of a ruined building by the tower, his rage an unrelenting blaze. If Valerys were in Calen’s place, every knight would burn, their ashes would burn, their souls would burn.

Calen looked at Haem. His brother had come a step closer, positioning himself only a few feet away.

“Take everything else,” Calen said, his hands trembling as he tried to still the fury that raged within Valerys. “The notes, the chests, the journals, the armour. Everything. Take them. Have your Watchers go through everything piece by piece. Just return them when you’re done. Do that, Grandmaster Kallinvar, and we will all walk out of here with our heads. But the eggs go with me. That is the hill I will die on, and so will you.”

In the ruined city above, Valerys unleashed a defiant roar. Kallinvar had threatened the eggs, and he had meant it. Those were not words that would be easily struck from the dragon’s mind.

Kallinvar sucked in his cheeks and stared directly into Calen’s eyes for what felt like minutes. The other knights didn’t move an inch. Haem’s stare never left the Grandmaster.

“Very well.” Kallinvar held his gaze on Calen long after the words had left his lips.

The tension held as the man opened the Rift right there in the chamber and the knights carried through everything that wasn’t bolted down. Everything except for the eggs.

Haem just stood there in silence, watching. Every time his gaze met Calen’s, he looked away. But Calen didn’t.

When Calen began to place the eggs in the satchels he’d found beside Kollna’s body, Haem joined him, silently.

A sharp warning flared in the back of Calen’s mind from Valerys, and every hair on his body stood like needles.

“What?” Haem paused, a dust-covered egg in his hand, his eyes narrowing.

Calen stuffed the remaining eggs into the last satchel, caring little for delicacy. “Uraks,” he said, slinging the satchel over his shoulder. “They’re here.”

“In the city?” Kallinvar strode from across the room, urgency in his voice.

---