If Faron didn’t take it down quickly, painlessly, a drake would mobilize to kill it—if Aveline didn’t kill it first. Either way, it seemed that Elara would die, too.
Her heart pounded against her rib cage as she strained for some idea, some strategy, that could save her sister. Her thoughts turned to dust no matter how hard she tried to grab one. Tears stung her eyes.
Summon the dragon.
That voice, that voice from inside the banquet hall, had returned.
Faron wiped her damp eyes and looked around, but there was no one close enough to have said the words. Her fear for her sister’s safety had pushed the voice to the back of her mind, but she knew now that it wasn’t Obie nor anyone she had heard before. When a god spoke to her while she was channeling their power, it was not a whisper, sly and subtle, but a cutting command that overwhelmed all else. This voice didn’t order; it beckoned.Who are you?Faron wondered.
Your salvation. Now summon the dragon.
Warmth suffused Faron’s body, almost as if she’d stepped into a dream. Night had fallen, and she should have felt a chill wind made chillier by the nearby ocean. But this voice felt like stepping into an alluring darkness, a controlled danger, a level of comfortable thrill that she would have found strange in any other circumstances. It dulled all her other senses until there was nothing left but her sense of responsibility.
Her sister’s life was on the line, so she listened to the voice.
Faron pushed Obie out of her body and, with the last dregs of her strength, flung her soul toward the dragon. Her knees buckled as her soul soared across the sky in search of a connection. This was idiotic. This was desperate. This wasimpossible. No one could summon a living soul, not even her. It went against everything she’d ever learned about summoning.
Still, she skimmed the contours of the dragon’s soul, and it felt as if she’d leashed herself to a comet.
A rage like nothing she’d ever felt before pulled at her, nearly dragging her off her feet. It was like the first time she’d felt Irie’s fire, but different because this wrathful power didn’t burn. It consumed. It swallowed. But it didn’t burn. She was like a pebble colliding with a mountain, a twig hitting a mighty oak. This was a soul as cosmic as the stars with a well of magic as deep as the oceans, and it didn’t even laugh at her attempt to control it. She was too insignificant for it to acknowledge.
Take control, the voice said.
Control, control, control.The word echoed through her mind, strengthening her spine and forcing her forward.
Faron was tired; she was so very tired, but at the edges of her consciousness, she could hear shouts. Somewhere was Elara, poorElara, who only wanted to help people, Elara who could die—woulddie—if Faron let this creature overwhelm her.
No, she screamed, pushing more of herself into this connection with the dragon.Listen to me.Obeyme. Stand down.
She felt the soul howl back, defiant but listening.
Stand down. I said, STAND. DOWN.
Against all odds, the dragon listened.
Nowshewas the comet, consuming the rage and the power and the will of a monster.
Faron forced it out of the air, forced it to land in a gentle arc upon the white sand beach. She forced its emotions to calm, its eyes to close. The Rider clinging to its back slid into unconsciousness with it, and Faron didn’t need to open her eyes to guess that Elara had passed out, as well.
And then Faron couldn’t open her eyes at all.
CHAPTER TEN
ELARA
CROCODILES WERE STOMPING AROUNDELARA’S SKULL.
She groaned back into awareness, every inch of her body alight with pain. Even hereyelidswere hurting. For the love of Irie, what had happened to her? She poked at the gaping chasm where her memories should be, slowly piecing together a picture from what little she remembered. The call. The dragon. Signey Soto. The rush of power and the memories and the screaming, so much screaming. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember what had happened after that.
Her cheek was pressed to something soft, perhaps a pillow. From the gentle feel of the cotton fabric covering her, she was in a bed. She could smell herbs and antiseptic, which meant she was probably in a bed in the infirmary—assuming she was even still at Pearl Bay Palace. The ache that throbbed throughout her body with every heartbeat was distracting, but none of the pain seemed to come from an actual wound. At worst, she was just bruised.
Carefully, she opened her eyes.
Elara had spent a week in the palace infirmary after the final battle of the war, released after the first day but staying for theremaining six to stand guard over Faron’s unconscious body. She recognized the mural on the ivory ceiling, which depicted the three gods—Irie, Mala, and Obie—surrounded by Aveline’s ancestors going back generations. Closest to the gods were Aveline’s mothers, the late queens Nerissa Renard and Kimona Castell, with scalestone swords in hand to protect their deities. This mural was just an approximation of what the gods looked like, based on Faron’s childhood interviews with the santi, who had used her to fill in the gaps in their own spiritual knowledge, but Elara found it comforting all the same.
No matter how weak and confused she felt right now, gods and queens were watching over her. Irie was watching over her.
Elara tried to reach out toward them, but her hand was trapped. For the first time, she noticed that Faron was asleep in a chair by her bed, her head tipped back and her mouth wide open. She clutched Elara’s hand as if someone might snatch her sister away in the night. Faron was still wearing the same dress from the Summit banquet, her braids loose and her baby hairs frizzing. Either no more than a day had passed, or Faron hadn’t left this room since Elara had been brought to it. Or both.
