The blackened, pointed rooftops of Dortam reminded Leona of a porcupine’s spears. It was a sad, stinted world beneath the clouds. The people were smaller, the plants brittle and hard compared to the lush greenery of Nova. Fen were made of the rocks they cherished so much. Whereas Dragons… they were made of life itself.
“There!” Camile called over the wind.
Leona followed her finger to a broken rooftop. The second they got close, Leona could smell it. She could practically see gold on the ground.
“Xin are built like porcelain dolls. Little Cvareh bleeds from falling off his glider,” Camile jabbed.
Leona let her subordinates put down the annoying Dragon House. She even partook from on occasion, delighting in the verbal jabs. But this time, she stayed silent. The smell of blood was faint. It had long since disappeared on the wind. The trace that was left was little more than enough to make a mark.
She hated Cvareh. She hated House Xin. And she still fantasized about all the ways she could pull out Petra’s lying teeth one by one. But Leona wasn’t going to let it blind her. Sybil had underestimated her foe. Petra was nothing less than a monster, and if Cvareh was cut from the same cloth, he shouldn’t be written off lightly. All his appearances at the Crimson Court could be just that—appearances. Who knew what truly lay beneath.
“The trail goes cold,” Leona noted. Tracking Cvareh wasn’t going to be that easy, or even someone as incompetent as Sybil wouldn’t have failed. “We head for Mercury Town.”
“Oh, gross,” Andre balked. “It smells rancid there.”
“And where else do you think we’ll find talk of Cvareh?” Leona grinned. It was intended to be playful, but her smile was wide enough to show her teeth. She was the leader and it never hurt to reinforce that fact.
“Lead on. If we are to dredge up the worst, we must go to the worst.” Andre motioned a cherry colored hand for her to continue and Leona spurred forward.
If there was a Dragon in Dortam, talk of it would get to Mercury Town. Leona didn’t think for a second that Cvareh would get very far before a harvester set eyes on him. It seemed her sister had the same idea.
“I think it’s an improvement.” Andre tilted his head to the side, assessing the rubble and carnage that was left to rot.
Leona sighed, lowering her glider to the ground, crushing dead Fen underneath. Sybil had no tact, no reason. She reaped chaos, but it was too easy for things to be lost in chaos.
“Anything would be an improvement.” Camile toed one of the fallen Fen’s heads, rolling it from side to side. “They’re at least quieter when they’re dead.”
“That’s part of the problem. Dead Fen don’t talk.” Leona looked through the silent streets. The usually busy Mercury Town had been reduced to death and stillness. She tried to think like her sister, wild. If she landed in Mercury Town with Sybil’s disposition… She’d reap destruction wantonly. “Camile, with me. Andre, that way.”
“Follow the trails of destruction?” The man preempted her expectations.
“See what you find,” Leona affirmed. “Whisper to Camile if there’s anything.”
Andre and Camile faced each other, cheek to cheek. They each spoke a series of sounds, nonsense with no meaning, into the other’s ear. Leona felt the whisper link establish between them. Now, the moment one of them said their activation word, they could speak with the other across any distance—as though one was whispering in the other’s ear.
“So I set the whisper link,hmm?” Camile hummed as they began to follow the trail of destruction that wound in the direction opposite Andre.
“I have a whisper link back to Lysip to report.” Leona barely contained a smirk. Yveun Dono’s activation word had been a flesh chilling, guttural growl that she would gladly scream to have echo through her again.
“I wonder with who? You’re quite cheerful for someone who just killed her sister.”
“Don’t play me for a soft fool. I am not Tam.” She brushed off Camile’s not-so-subtle inquiry. Whoever the woman suspected, she was wrong.
“That you are not.” Camile grinned gleefully. “Tell me, how did her heart taste?”
“Like a cherry, and it exploded much the same in my mouth.” Her triumphs were never something she would hide.
“Sybil would—”
Leona held up a hand and Camile was instantly silenced and on alert. The wind had picked up for just a moment. On it she had caught the hint of a familiar scent.
“This way.”
Camile kept up easily with her bounding strides. The further they got from the epicenter of Sybil and the prior Riders’ destruction, the more Fen were about. They scattered like rats, not one putting up a fight before the Dragons once more in their midst.
The smell nearly overwhelmed her as Leona rounded an alleyway. To the eye, there was no sign of the fight that had taken place, but it had surely been bloody. Camile’s talons unsheathed slowly.
A Rider had died here. They both recognized the scent. Layered atop it, almost triumphantly, was the brisk smell of wood smoke, a distinctly Xin smell.Cvareh.
