“Why would it? If anything it displays our physical prowess and discourages duels.”
Arianna opened the door with a disapproving glare in Cvareh’s direction. He looked up at her, barely stopping short a dramatic roll of his eyes. Arianna’s fingers twitched for her daggers but remained at her side.
“You’re corrupting my pupil with your tales of Nova,” she seethed. Florence had a clever mind, too curious for her own good, and she always saw the best in people. Arianna knew that just a taste of Nova was likely to leave the girl wanting more, no matter how many times Arianna told her that Dragons were not to be mingled with.
“I think it’s fascinating.” Flor smiled.
And that was what kept her from sewing Cvareh’s mouth shut. He had begun to endear himself to Florence. No matter how much Arianna hated him, she wanted Florence to smile even more. So she would do as she’d always done with Florence. She’d linger in the shadows, hovering in a place not even the girl could see her. She’d give her pupil the freedom to spread her wings, fly, be curious and inquire, experience the thrill of feeling on her own. Florence would work with the fear of falling because Arianna believed that fear was necessary to grow, but she’d always be hovering nearby, ready to pick up the girl if necessary.
“If architecture and fashion are corruption, perhaps Loom could use a bit more corrupting.” Cvareh’s mouth curled upward and his lips spread.
The expression was strange. He wasn’t baring his teeth at her. Their points remained hidden behind his bottom lip. It was…a smile. ADragonsmile. It unnerved her endlessly.
“We need to move,” Arianna announced. “First, Flor, I need the grease pencil.”
“You’re going to do it?” Florence blinked.
“I’m out of options. Our prior disguises aren’t going to work where we’re going.”
Florence was clearly curious, but she produced the grease pencil kit from her bag. Arianna sat at the stool, passing the tin to Flor to hold like a mirror. Florence stood patiently while her mentor collected herself. The mark would wash off; it was not a tattoo. But every time she put it on her cheek, it felt like forfeit.
Arianna shifted her feet, her coat draping over her thighs. She swallowed the lump in her throat, pulling her cheek taut with her left hand and steadying her right. Her hand was skilled from thousands of hours of schematic creation, and it moved smoothly over her ashen colored skin as she penciled in the symbol of the Rivets.
Coat and harness resumed, she was again the White Wraith: more than Fenthri, more than Chimera, more than Dragon. She cast aside ethical whims and personal grudges. She was the extension of her benefactors’ will, and she would work for them even after they were long dead.
15.LEONA
Leona let out a rallying cry as her magic surged through her palms, into the golden handles of the glider, and across the golden accented wings to propel the contraption upward.
The wind bit her cheeks and whipped her braid behind her. The brisk morning air tasted like freedom, a new dawn heralding a new day—herday. She had no choice but to scream and cry and shout and snarl, because she was the Master Rider. She was a dog let off its chain. She was the untamed storm. And she had been unleashed upon Loom below.
Bending her knees and leaning forward, Leona banked her glider, casting a glittering rainbow across the Rok Estate. She wanted to give Yveun Dono one more taste of her magic. To write it across the sky like a promise that she would not fail him.
Her cries were echoed by the two Riders just behind her on either side. Their screaming vessels tore through the air in formation as they banked heavily down off the side of one of the floating islands of Nova. The Rok Estate dominated the top of Lysip, its main hall and gardens expanding out in all directions as far as the eye could see. At its edge stood smaller buildings of state, chambers provided for Rok’Kin and Rok’Da. Further still were accommodations for To and Veh in society. They all basked together in the sunlight like jeweled turtles on river rocks.
Beneath, the island extended downward. Society’s lower rungs lived in the shade of their uppers. Leona had been born in one of those suspended towers, reaching for the clouds rather than the heavens. She’d played in the honeycombed parks between them and worked her way up to the sunlight above. With Sybil dead, the only time Leona would see this shade now was when she descended to Loom.
Sybil. Her sister’s magic had been strong and Leona could still feel it in her veins, burning through her. It was fading quickly, but she’d relish in the ghostly resentment that tried to turn her stomach sour. But nothing could spoil this day, for it was the first day that dawned after she had known Yveun Dono.
The King had not explained himself—not last night, not with the dawn. She suspected he never would. He didn’t have to. He had made it apparent that he would take what was his. And Leona was nothing if not that.
She adjusted her grip on the handles, the clouds nearing. Throwing a look over her shoulder, she checked that Andre and Camile were still with her. Camile had the face of a cat; her curious amusement at Leona’s mood was apparent. Andre wore a grin that was half snarl. This man and woman were more her blood than Sybil had ever been.
Lysip was shrinking further and further behind them. When she returned victorious, she would seek Yveun Dono’s blessing to duel Coletta’Ryu. The woman was sickly, and would prove an easy kill. But to challenge a Ryu required the Oji’s blessing. After last night, and after she brought home Cvareh’s head, she suspected she may have that unprecedented blessing.
Before the first Fenthri broke through the clouds, the Dragons had called the seemingly impenetrable barrier the Gods’ Line, as it separated their world from the next. Boco, the bird-like creatures they used to fly between the islands of Nova, lost control of their wings as they neared the speeding winds that always wove through the clouds. Every Dragon who tried to descend on the back of a Boco fell violently through the line and was never seen again.
Certain death by falling into the afterlife had made attempts to descend unappealing. And for hundreds of years, no Dragons tried. When the Fenthri barely broke through the clouds, only to be shortly torn asunder by the winds themselves, Nova learned that it was not the afterlife on the other side of the line but another world entirely. Curious Dragons—fools—attempted to cross once more at the site of the first breach, but fell to their deaths. It was their corpses that provided the organs that led to the first Chimera being pieced together by the Alchemists.
Once the Fen had magic, the God’s Line was nearly obsolete. They still struggled, scraping together enough power to cross. But the technology they developed was finally in Nova’s grasp—a technology Dragons had been meant to have in their talons all along.
Leona re-centered herself on her glider, the bottom of her boots connected to the platform with magic and sheer will. She had descended a few times, though it never gave her much cause to be fond of the process. The wind was deafening, the clouds blinding. She pointed her glider nose down and plummeted forward.
Gravity was her friend. It fought vertigo and, in free-fall, she didn’t need to exhaust magic on keeping herself airborne. That magic was better spent holding a thin corona around her and the vessel to protect herself from the winds. Her fingers froze; her braid felt like it would rip from her scalp.
Magic cracked, reaching a crescendo as she pushed through, parting the clouds and opening Loom to her like an abysmal present.
The echoes of two more descents reverberated through the mountaintops that surrounded Dortam. Leona trusted Andre and Camile to be where they were supposed to be. If she couldn’t count on them to make a descent, she had brought the wrong Dragons as her left and right.
