Page 33 of A Matter of Destiny

It’s Rayne. Our eyes meet, and something inside of me feels lighter. I thought I was alone, but here she is. Whatever comes next, whatever waits for me inside these walls, I won’t have to face it by myself. I turn back to the door, take a deep breath, and enter.

Life inside the garden is almost normal. My feet crunch across the gravel path, fountains gurgle in the distance, and all the beautiful little birds are singing the sun back into the sky. But the air itself is filled with smoke and the hungry hiss of fire.

I see the glow of the fire even before I reach the top of the hill, before I turn away from the row of sentinel pines and the view of Cairncliff I’d once used to seduce a beautiful woman, both of us believing the other to be nothing more than human. Red and orange dance along the path, flickers of firelight illuminating the underside of the trees, painting the leaves on the bushes, and competing with the growing light of the sun itself. Noise swells as I walk the path, the hissing crackle of the bonfire, the little bursts and explosions as something inside the flames reaches skyward in a volcano of sparks.

By the time I turn the corner, that’s all that’s left of my home. Flames.

The fire is spectacular, even larger and hotter than the one consuming my shop. I stand, rooted to the stop, as Rayne’s footsteps catch up to me. Her breath is sharp and low, a gasp, and then another.

Sounds rise from the far side of the blaze enveloping my house, some sort of shouting. Human voices, here in this human city. My vision blurs, but only when I raise my hand to my face do I realize it’s tears.

Humans. I pull my gaze off the bonfire and look out over the bluff, to the beautiful little city of Cairncliff. The sun crested the horizon while I was running up the streets, racing against time to reach Noble’s Hill, and now that achingly beautiful light of early dawn paints the city I know better than the twisting tunnels of the Iron Mountains. The streets and shops and alleyways and taverns. The smoke rising from the ruin of Geredan’s Antiquities, and the street that holds Ailen the healer’s shop.

The street where I collapsed as a dragon. The people of Cairncliff knew I was a dragon, of course, but they’d never seen me like that. And now they’ve seen me bleeding in the streets, and they’ve seen Rensivar rising over the ruin of my home.

Now they know what I really am, and they know what dragons can truly do. Now, there’s no way I’ll be able to continue living here. The thought aches, like the dull throb of a bruise pulsing at the edge of my numbed consciousness.

I’ve just lost everything. I turn away from the rising sun and back to the fire, to the figures now pouring through the gates I’d left locked and guarded. It’s the firefighters, weary and soot-streaked, holding buckets. I watch them line up, hand water to each other, throw it on the ground surrounding my house to contain the blaze, and I try to feel something. Rage, perhaps, or sorrow, or horror.

But I feel nothing. Just a strange sort of ringing emptiness, like the wind howling over the barren rocks of the high mountains. This is the end of everything, and I feel… nothing at all.

A hand closes over my arm.

“Come on,” Rayne says. She’s almost shouting, but it sounds like a whisper compared to the roar of the fire. “Maybe we can help.”

She tugs me forward, and I follow, plodding along at her side as my eyes trace the unfolding devastation. There’s what used to be the kitchen, and the stone walls of the entryway. The rafters are glowing almost white, and behind them—

Rayne screams. She stands frozen just ahead of me with one hand clamped over her mouth. I follow her gaze, although I already know what I’m going to see.

There, in the heart of the flames, lies the lifeless body of a black dragon. The hilt of a sword winks in the flames from the dragon’s heart spot.

My mother’s heart spot.

Chapter17

Doshir

“Don’t touch that,” I snap.

Rayne pulls her hand back, then scowls at me through the grime and ash coating her features. She’s barefoot in the still-smoldering ashes of what used to be my house, and the hem of her dress appears to have caught fire. Either that, or the smoke rising to frame her face is just another way she’s expressing her irritation.

“Sorry,” I say, wrestling with a sudden and horribly inappropriate urge to smile. “It’s coated in dragonsbane. You can smell it, right?”

Her nose wrinkles, and she turns back to the sword hilt protruding from my mother’s side. From her heart spot, the sensitive area just under her wing. Grief and guilt twist together in my gut, making me feel like I’ve just taken a punch. A blade coated in dragonsbane probably would have killed her no matter where he’d stuck it, given how weak she was. But Rensivar had to be sure. He must have still feared her, and that thought gives me no comfort at all.

“Mint, right?” Rayne asks.

I nod. My mother’s body slumps over the wreckage, with her winds sprawled out behind her and her lip curled, like she’d died growling. It seems undignified somehow; I wish we had a shroud.

Rayne turns back to me. Her scowl has vanished, and her eyes seem very bright in the morning sunshine.

“Kings, Doshir,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

I shake my head. I’ve had enough of other people’s apologies at the moment. Olin, my old human servant, had almost thrown himself at my feet this morning. I’d been so glad to see him alive that I’d pulled him into my arms before he could finish his first rambling sentence.

“I wanted to save her,” Rayne continues, her voice a thin rasp against the smoke. A tear spills out of her eye and traces a path down the ash and grime on her cheek. “I had no idea he would come this far.”

Guilt sucker-punches me yet again, and the back of my throat turns bitter. My mother knew he would come this far. She’d warned me, hadn’t she? She’d said the only safe place for her was in the Iron Mountains.

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