Everyone talks about you like you’re a saint… but all I see is a spoiled, selfish child who wastes all her potential, blaming everyone else for her problems.
We’ve seen this level of arrogance only once before. It is tragic, how much you sound like the Gray Saint.
You brought me into this, and now we’re both trapped.
Her lips trembled. “At least I can admit my mistakes. At least I’ve tried to do good.You’veonly done wrong. You’ve become a monster like the one you were sent to stop, Gael, and now you’re the one who needs to be stopped.”
Iya sat back as if she had disappointed him. “Take your pointless moralizing to someone who wants to listen to it.”
“Reeve would listen,” she whispered, ascending the dais on which the throne was kept. “He loved to know things. He—”
“He’sdead. Why do you keep bringing him up?”
“Because he’snotdead. I felt him there, inside you.” Faron reached out, her hand covering his heart. She felt the hard mound of Reeve’s dragon relic hanging there. Even now, after taking his body and changing his clothes, Iya hadn’t gotten rid of it. “I felt his soul, mixed with yours. He’s not dead. He’s just trapped. Lost, like you. You’re both lost, but I can still see you. Stop all this and let me help you.Please.”
Iya reached up, and wrapped his fingers gently around her wrist. Reeve’s eyes gazed up at her, the blue of the water that she loved so much, and she wondered how she hadn’t seen it before. Her fondness for him pressed against her rib cage, as if her heart longed to jump from her chest to his for safekeeping. With her free hand, she traced the curve of his cheek, trying to will him to take control of his body again. “I know you’re in there,” she sent across the bond.“I know you’re fighting. Come back to me. Come back tous.”
He leaned into her touch, and Faron could almost pretend that she had been heard.
Then Iya’s fingers tightened around her wrist hard enough to bruise. “Reeve Warwick is weak. Gael Soto is weaker. Whatever you hope to achieve, you will fail. And this worldwillfall to me.”
He shoved her backward. Faron barely managed to catch herself before she fell down the stairs, her heart racing and breaking all at once. She’d beenso close, but Iya’s face was cold again as he swept down the stairs.
“This ends now,” she heard as his boots thumped across the throne room floor. Even his voice was icy and dismissive, as if hehad reached the limits of his patience with her. “Stay here unless you want to die with them.”
The doors slammed shut behind him with a harsh finality that sounded like another warning. But Faron had never met trouble that she didn’t want to get into. She waited exactly one minute before running after him.
Aveline Renard Castell, the blessed queen of San Irie, was a golden streak across the sky, colliding with Lightbringer again and again.
She had driven the imperial dragon away from Pearl Bay Palace and over the open ocean, and she was doing more to hurt him than the drakes were. Even Signey and Zephyra had joined in, Faron noticed, zipping around Lightbringer’s body in a blur of green, scratching, biting, and blasting flames into his open wounds. Lightbringer was no longer pure white; he was streaked with scorch marks and blood trails.
He was losing.
Iya’s shoulders were a tense line as he strode through the Victory Garden. The dragons had stopped fighting the drakes and were now helping them put out the fires and attack Lightbringer. Port Sol was covered in smoke rather than lit by flames, and Port Sol Temple stood unharmed over it all, glowing with protection magic. Elara had yet to reappear, but the tide of the battle had definitely turned.
Faron threw herself at Iya before he could take another step.
They hit the grass in a tangle of limbs. Iya was a trained soldier, but Faron had caught him by surprise. She also had a lifetime of schoolyard tussles under her belt. She dug her knee into his back,dragging one of his arms around until she heard his shoulder pop. “Do you remember when we met here?” she leaned down to whisper in his ear. “You told me totake control.” Her knee pressed farther into his spine. “You said you were my salvation, but I think the truth is that I’myours.”
“This is your idea of salvation?” Iya grunted, though he made no move to break her hold. She felt the shiver that ran through his body and reveled in it.
“Lightbringer is going to die if this continues. You don’t have to die with him. Let Reeve go, and I’ll help you.”
“We’llbothdie with him.”
“I have a feeling you’ll take that harder than I will. Let. Reeve. Go.”
Iya turned his head just enough to glare at her. “I told you—”
“You’ve told me a lot of things. Not all of them were true.” Faron leaned so close now that her lips brushed his ear with every word. “Listen to what I’m telling you: This world isn’t yours to rule. Do you want to spend the rest of the days of your freedom fighting to retain it, or do you want to taste what freedom really is?”
Faron’s back hit the ground as soon as the last word was out. She hadn’t even seen Iya move, but suddenly he was pinning her down, straddling her legs so she couldn’t kick him off. One hand pinned her arms above her head, tight as shackles. The other gripped her throat but didn’t press. Not yet.“What do you know of freedom? You live under the thumb of your parents, your gods, your queen, your country. You have never been free, Faron. Not until you met me.”
His words whispered through her mind, settling into her blood. His eyes were dark pools as they stared into hers, his face hovering mere inches away.
“You are nothing without me,” he said aloud.
“You’d be nothing withoutme,” Faron snapped back, light sparking at the corner of her eyes. “And you may be stronger than me, but I still have powers you never will.”
