Page 11 of Wings of Frost and Fury
With Vedra put out to pasture, I head back into the cottage to complete the additional layer of spellwork for young Arnett. It’s a good resolution for everyone. Rather clever of me, really.
“Well done, Thelise,” I congratulate myself aloud. “Teaching an asshole a lesson, showing mercy, and securing your place in this town for a while—very well done.”
My words fall flat in the quiet of the house. There’s no one whom I can tell about the incident, no one to share my laughter. No one to rebuke me or to praise me.
Most days, I can handle being alone. I prefer it, except for visits from a few select men whom I invite from time to time.But they’re not the kind of companions with whom I can share any of my inner thoughts or secrets.
Now and then, an ache begins deep in my chest, widening until it’s a vast chasm, in the center of which is a festering injury—the absence of Katlee.
I miss her. I missus,the way we used to perceive each other.
When people looked at her, they only saw her diminutive arms. They viewed her as an oddity to be exclaimed over, avoided, or pitied. They didn’t really seeher. Our situations weren’t the same, nor could I ever truly understand the challenges of her life, but we had one thing in common—that we didn’t see each other the way other people saw us. To me, she was always much more than her physical difference. And to her, I was more than my magic.
UntilI wasn’t.
4
THE BATTLE OF GUILHORN
THE NIGHT BEFORE
THE FALL OF ELEKSTAN
War breaks everything.
There is no right side in any war. All of it is wrong and ruinous.
I hate that my clan is so desperate for food that we have joined the human conflict on the mainland. After a plague wiped out the prey on many of our islands, we had to bargain with the king of Vohrain. He promised that if we helped him conquer Elekstan, he would give us the bountiful Middenwold Isles,where our clan could find food and escape the threat of starvation.
The Bone-King agreed to the deal shortly before he died, and since his demise, Kyreagan has been tasked with upholding the bargain. My clan has been fighting with the Vohrainians against Elekstan for several weeks.
Mordessa has been different ever since we went to war. I’m not sure Kyreagan notices it. As her closest friend, I’m attuned to her moods. I sense her grieved determination, her desperate resolve. Like the rest of us, she knows that this conflict and its rewards could be the last chance for our race.
She’s vicious as she slays the humans with her lightning, unrelenting as she works in tandem with Kyreagan and his brother Varex, malevolent as she glides in company with Grimmaw, the mother of the Bone-King. There is no trace of the kind, golden dragon who kept my secret and stood shoulder to shoulder with me while I battled my corrosive desires. Mordessa has become a violent creature of war, a destroyer of countless lives. I have not heard her laughter since the war began, and I miss the rich sound of it.
But I have hope that she can recover from this and return to her former self. The conflict is nearly over. Tonight we defeated Guilhorn, a powerful stronghold. Its ruin opens the way for the invading forces of Vohrain to access the capital city, where Elekstan’s queen resides.
The Elekstan soldiers have just raised a black flag to the top of Guilhorn’s highest tower, an admission of their defeat.
I’m high above that tower, wheeling through the sky in the company of Saevel, a shining green dragon, and a few others of my section.
“Should we destroy the tower?” asks Therenax, a brown dragon with red eyes. I mated with her twice during the last frenzy, but another dragon impregnated her. Like Mordessa, Therenax has been particularly murderous of late, eager for deathand destruction. I understand her anger, but I am less vindictive toward the armies of Elekstan. After all, they are only defending their homeland. We would do the same if we were in their place.
“Guilhorn has surrendered,” I tell her. “Let the King of Vohrain and his people decide what is to become of the survivors.”
She cuts me a belligerent look and begins to reply—but then the light goes out of her gaze, the way the last gleam of sunset vanishes from the waves of the ocean at nightfall. One moment her eyes are red-hot embers, and the next, they are empty and dark. Her wings flutter like autumn leaves as she falls.
Vylar, the Bone-King’s daughter, sister to Kyreagan and Varex, tumbles from somewhere above me, her wing nearly catching mine. I have to beat my own wings harder to stay in control as the wind of her descent buffets me.
But she doesn’t fall much farther. Her body jerks to a halt, skewered on the metal tip of the tower, on the very flagpole that pronounced Guilhorn’s surrender.
All around us, everywhere, dragons are falling. Struck dead. As if their hearts failed, one and all, in the same moment. The very air shakes with the thunder of their bodies slamming to earth, crashing into the walls and buildings of Guilhorn.
Saevel cries out, all the violence of agony in his roar. I hear the same cries rising around us from the remaining dragons—dragons with the jaw spikes and elbow spurs of males.
Within myself, a sudden void opens, a yawning, dreadful absence. Before, I could sense the females of the clan, both here on the mainland and very distantly on our home isle of Ouroskelle. Now there is nothing. No whisper of their faraway existence, and no surety of their nearby presence. They are simply gone.
Magic, whispers my heart.The darkest and deadliest of magic.
