Signey realized that Elara wasn’t behind her and pushed back through the crowd to her side. “Are you all right? I didn’t upend your entire worldview, did I?”
“No. No, I—no.” Elara blinked. Swallowed. “We’ll just have to disagree on this subject. And I don’t believe you can do anything with the Gray Saint that Faron isn’t already trying.”
Signey grabbed a cherry and popped it into her mouth. The pit was spat on the cobblestones. Red cherry juice stained the corner of her lips. Elara swallowed again. “Well, we have to trysomething.” Signey wiped at the juice and missed half of it. “I wish my dad were here. He could help. He loved this kind of thing.”
“Espionage?”
Signey snorted. “No. Family. Growing up, he made sure that Jesper and I could speak Lindan, that we enjoyed Lindan food and music, that we knew Lindan history and culture. Although he was a dracologist, one of his proudest research projects was onlytangentiallyrelated to dragons: the Soto-Zayas family tree.” She made another valiant swipe for the cherry juice, leaving a single smear right at the seam of her mouth. “I wish I’d paid more attention. Gael’s name was probably on it.”
It was a long time before Elara could think of anything else. Since they were treading onto sensitive information, she sent her next statement through the bond.“Well, we still have our own resources here. We go to the National Hall tomorrow, right? Maybe it’s time to try breaking into the commander’s office, see how far along he is in raising the First Dragon.”
“I’ve already been in the commander’s office. He keeps nothing of note there. If he’s hiding anything, let alone a list of next steps, it would be at Rosetree Manor.”
Elara bit into a cherry and followed Signey down the street. Rosetree Manor was the private residence of Gavriel and Mireya Warwick, Reeve’s home before the Warwick family had moved to San Irie to occupy Pearl Bay Palace. She could think of no pretense under which they could infiltrate the commander’s home without being caught, but they had learned as much as they could from the National Hall—which was nothing. She could probably build a dragon from scratch if she had to, bones, muscle, and all, but the connection between their magic and the bond eluded her and the dracologists. Signey could likely name every member of the Conclave and Judiciary, but she’d learned more about the commander’s plans from Elara than from the man himself.
In fact, every time they went to the National Hall, Elara felt as if they were giving more than they were getting. There was a gleam in the commander’s eyes when he greeted them that made her nervous.
He had once come to check on her in the laboratory, where she had been watching a dracologist test how long a dragon had to be dead for the magic in their relic to weaken. The carcass of the dragon in question—Skythrall—had been dead for five years. The other—Raisel—had been dead for fifteen.
Elara had asked if it was necessary to know the dragons’ names when carving up and experimenting on their corpses, and the dracologist had replied, “Dragons are divine creatures, their chosen Riders worshipped as saints. We honor our dragons in war and in peacetime, in life and in death. When a dragon falls, we learn what we can from their bodies and then craft their remains into relics through which their magic can temporarily live on. And when our people create rings from claws, necklaces from scales, bracelets from fangs, it’s to venerate those who have lent us their protection and their power. So, yes, Miss Vincent, it’s necessary to know the names of the creatures we’re honoring.”
Her cheeks had burned in response, and that was when the commander had found her. He’d been dressed in a navy-blue suit, his tie a deep green that almost matched her uniform, and he’d been smiling in that strange way he had, as if she’d given him a gift that he hadn’t been expecting.
“Raisel was ridden by twins Kenya and Sebastian Edwards, who perished helping free San Irie from the clutches of Joya del Mar,” he’d said. “Skythrall, well. Skythrall was the mount of Eugenia and Celyn Soto.” He’d nodded in the face of Elara’s shock. “Signey and Jesper’s mother and sister.”
Immediately, Elara had reinforced the wall between herself and Signey, making sure that her Firstrider wouldn’t pluck the image of her dead family’s dragon cut open on a laboratory table.
“Skythrall was killed during the war by an Iryan drake. Many of the relics that the Soto siblings wear were created from him.” The commander had placed a hand on the table, inches away from a silver tray that contained a pile of Skythrall’s blue scales. “Has your co-Rider told you about the history of her family?”
“I’d rather hear it from her,” Elara had said. “Sir.”
The commander had smiled, and it had been an unfriendly one. “The Hylands, the Sotos, the Warwicks, and the Lynwoods are all dragon-riding dynasties, but the Sotos stand above them all. Imagine what one could do with so much power.”
Before she could think of a response, the commander had drifted toward the door. “It’s been illuminating to have you here, Miss Vincent. You and I have far more in common than I think you know.”
Those words had kept Elara up long after she had finished speaking with Faron and Reeve. They still haunted her now, weeks later, when she knew that he had made contact with Gael Soto at least once before and planned to inflict the First Dragon on the world again. It felt as if she, Signey, Faron, and Reeve were trying to chip away at a mountain with nothing but a toothpick.
“Elara.”
She blinked out of the memory. From the urgency in Signey’s voice, this wasn’t the first time she had called Elara’s name.“What?”
Her Firstrider stood in the middle of the street, an unmoving crowd around her. Everyone was staring upward in various states of horror. Elara turned to see what they were looking at, and her stomach dropped. A dragon tore through the sky flame-first, its wings flapping hard as it shot over Margon Island. Even when the fire faded, it was followed by a roar that made the earth shake beneath her feet, the bellow of a dragon who was absolutely livid.
“That’s Nizsa,” said Signey aloud. “Professor Smithers’s dragon. He and his husband must be up there.”
“The Fury,” Elara continued, following her train of thought. “We have to help.”
She was the one to grab Signey’s arm now, dragging her back toward the bridge to Caledon. Signey not only kept pace with her, elbowing their way past everyone running to safety, but also called Zephyra to fetch her saddle and meet them there. “We finally have the opportunity to do some good,” Signey had said the day they’d called their truce. It wasn’t that Elara hadn’t believed her until now, but it was the first time they’d been united in exactly what that meant.
For the first time, the three of them were going to do some good.
They caught up with Nizsa near the southern tip of Nova, where Langley curled around the Hestan Archipelago and pointed west toward San Irie. Professor Smithers and his husband, Rupert Lewis, sat unmoving in the saddle, ignoring all cries of their names. Elara still had only patchwork memories of her own time gripped by the Fury, but she remembered the desire to hurt, to maim, to kill. There hadn’t been enemies and friends, but targets, and the howling rage coursing through her had made her eager, even desperate, to strike.
But as Zephyra closed the distance between them and Nizsa, Elara realized something about the Fury that should have been obvious to her before now: Everyone wore their anger differently. She, Signey, and Zephyra might have been apoplectic with rage,but Smithers, Lewis, and Nizsa’s fury was seething and methodical. They didn’t simply want to strike anyone or anything. They wanted to raze. To annihilate.
To conquer.
“How do you want to do this?” Signey sent when they were so close that Elara could see the gleaming silver of Professor Smithers’s hair over Signey’s shoulder.
