The queen’s eyes flashed. “Explain.”
Elara told her everything that had happened, from the conversation she’d overheard at Hearthstone to the rising of the Gray Saint, from the imprisonment at Rosetree to the broken dragon bond. The more she spoke, the angrier the queen’s expression got. But the Warwicks made no effort to refute or interrupt her story. They didn’t even look concerned. That worried Elara enough for her voice to drift off.
And then she realized the truth. “You… you never cared if Faron cured the Fury or not. You just wanted her isolated. You wanted herdesperate. You knew she’d turn to him.”
Gavriel Warwick chuckled. “I had no way of knowing what your sister would do, but I suspected that her desire to save you might work in my favor if I kept you here long enough. This situation has been out of my control for some time, but I’ve always been skilled at improvisation.”
“You never planned to let us return to Hearthstone. You were just waiting until the Fury took root,” Elara accused. “You wanted us—me—to be the one to start the war. We did everything you wanted, and I’m your scapegoat.”
“You assign yourself far too much importance, Miss Vincent. A long time ago, we made a bargain with the Gray Saint and failed to uphold our end. He could seep through the cracks of his cage, but his power was minuscule. The Fury, that rage? It’s the First Dragon rattling the cage of the Empty, calling his creatures to him. We cracked the lock, but he wanted it shattered,” he said. “All the dragons needed their Riders in order for the Empty to open, and I hoped that Miss Soto would find hers among the dignitaries. I even hoped, prayed really, that it might be the Empyrean herself. Wouldn’t that have been magnificent? Defeating the Iryans with the very hero of their revolution? But, instead, it was you. The Empyrean’s sister. Useless.”
She didn’t care what a man like Gavriel Warwick thought of her. She didn’t. And yet it stung, anyway, to have him throw her worst fears back at her.
“But in war, one must use all the resources at one’s disposal. I simply had to figure out your use. That’s why I brought you tothe capital, and it was there that I figured it out. You were clearly communicating with the Empyrean. She would do anything to bring you home.Anything.Even open the Empty for us. And so you see”—he tilted his head, unbearably smug—“the Empyrean’s failure to cure the Fury is my scapegoat. The pressure of your own people to return to war after your attack is my scapegoat. You? You were never more than a hostage.”
“Howdareyou?” said Aveline, stepping between the commander and Elara as though she weren’t the queen of a nation in peril. “What about your people? What about your country? How could you condemn them to more endless warfare? How could you risk them based only on the dark promises of an imprisoned god?”
“The Gray Saint is more powerful and dangerous than you can imagine,” said the director, and, instead of smug, she sounded almost sad. “If you fight him, you will lose.”
“I am leaving,” Aveline snapped, “and I am taking Elara with me.”
A ball of flame appeared in the air above Director Warwick’s palm. It cast an infernal light over her sharp features. “We must insist you stay with us for now. At least until our god safely returns to Langley.”
Aveline lifted her hands and the windows behind them shattered. Elara jumped, but the glass just shot into the air like a hundred tiny knives all pointed at the Warwicks. “I am the queen of San Irie, and no power in this world can hold me somewhere I do not want to be.”
The director’s fireball launched, but Elara was quick. Her own hands lifted, a translucent shield appearing that absorbed the blow. She curved the magic into an even larger ball and threw it back, aiming for the commander. He dodged it with ease, but his gaze was severe. Assessing her as a threat.
Good.
Burn it down, niece, Gabourey told her, her bloodlust rising and mingling with Elara’s own desire for justice.Burn them all down.
Gladly, Elara replied. She sent a wave of magic toward the wall and watched it crumble as if she’d flown a drake through it. The stone and wood disintegrated into a misshapen heap, revealing the hall to the open air. Part of her considered collapsing this roof on top of the Warwicks’ heads, but then she remembered there were innocent people in the building. None of them deserved to suffer for what Gavriel and Mireya Warwick had done. Not again.
“We’ll be leaving now,” Aveline said. A line of glass daggers embedded itself in the ground before the Warwicks as an added threat.
Commander Warwick tilted his head. Then he laughed. “You can try, but you won’t get very far.”
No sooner had he finished speaking than the sky beyond them filled with dragons. Elara saw an ocean-blue ultramarine, a bloodred carmine, a golden medallion, and at least three forest-green sages flying toward them, none of which she recognized without her easy access to the wealth of Zephyra’s knowledge. She froze, even as Aunt Gabourey encouraged her to get ready for the fight, promising that even if they couldn’t take all the dragons, then they would certainly go down trying.
The queen held the remaining glass shards suspended over the Warwicks’ heads. “Elara, can you handle that?”
Could she? It seemed like the worst kind of hubris to say yes. She was not her sister, the Childe Empyrean, able to channel the power of the gods to pull whole dragons from the sky. Even if theyweren’t under the commander’s control, the Dragon Legion was still loyal to him.
But Faron wasn’t here, and Elara was. Elarahadto handle this, or San Irie would fall.
And Elara would never let that happen.Never.
Orbs of pure magical energy sizzled into being around her hands. “Yes, Your Majesty. I can handle this.”
Before she could throw one at the nearest dragon, a deep roar split the air. Irontooth, the Warwicks’ carmine dragon, appeared as a long shadow before his crimson body sailed into view. His teeth were bared in a snarl. He would fight the hardest of them all; Elara would have to take him down first before she fought the rest.
Irontooth’s shriek of pain surprised Elara so much that one of her orbs disappeared. He swerved away from a sudden burst of incoming flame, but the ultramarine dragon swung its spiked tail at Irontooth and knocked him off course. Behind him, mouth still smoking, was Azeal, and Elara could make out Jesper and Torrey clinging to their carmine dragon’s back. Combat professor Petra Rowland and her daughter, Hanne Gifford, were on their ultramarine dragon, which must have been Alzina. Together, they dragged Irontooth out of view in a collision of fire and fang.
Signey appeared then, clinging to the top of Zephyra’s head. The sun haloed her dark waves, making her look like a saint. “Sorry, Commander, Director, but these dragons aren’t here for you. We called them here to helpElara.”
“We’ll be escorting Elara and the queen back to San Irie,” said none other than history professor Damon Smithers, sitting side by side with his husband, Rupert Lewis, on the back of their sagedragon, Nizsa. “We’ll submit ourselves for disciplinary action when we return.”
Elara tipped back her head in an effort to keep tears from falling. Signey had already surprised her by showing up for her. So had the den. But the professors whose classes she’d aced, the handful of students who didn’t bully her in the hallways—she would never have expectedanyone’shelp, and yet here they were.
