“Do not lump me with my brother’s sins because it is easer for you to remain angry!”
She started down the hall once more, ignoring the comment. Cvareh watched as the first and only woman he had ever loved marched willingly into the hornet’s nest of enemies that was House Rok. He wished desperately to know what she was thinking, just once.
Arianna paused and spoke without turning, “Don’t whisper me first, Cvareh. Or I will know that everything was merely for your House, and Loom will never side with you.”
Cvareh stared long after she was gone, the image of her back imprinted on his eyes. To most, the statement would seem like the definitive end of all possibilities. But not to Cvareh. He’d come to know something of the White Wraith’s logic. And in the smallest corner of his heart, it gave him hope.
For if she cautioned him against an action that would make her not work with him, it meant that despite everything, the woman still considered him her ally. She still regardedthemas a possibility, perhaps even an inevitability if nothing further was damaged between them. Repeating this fact to himself, Cvareh started back through the estate, making haste through every hallway, killing the two servants who saw him.
Petra was doing an exceptional job of keeping the place busy, for he hardly ran into anyone on his way out.
49.Arianna
There was a swirling tempest in her chest. Its winds caught pains old and new, blending them with loves familiar and yet to be fully realized. The longer she spent in his presence, the greater the likelihood it would tear her apart.
She didn’t want to love someone at the cost of her ideals. She didn’t want to need someone attached to the murderer of the last person she needed. She didn’t want to set her heart free in a world that was slowly shifting closer and closer to the end of days.
She had spent too long on Nova. She had let her mind be swept away by music and paintings. She had let her body grow fat with magic, let her mind languish. She needed to return to Loom. There, everything would make sense again. She would remember who she was and what she needed to do.
Arianna gouged out a Dragon’s throat with a grunt of frustration. Her claws severed the spine and she cast the body aside, continuing onward.
The truth continued to stare her in the face every time she caught a glimpse of the blue of the nighttime heavens. The hue reminded her of the curtains in her room at the Xin Manor, reminiscent of the color of the sky when she and Cvareh set out for the temple.
Shedidlove him. Despite everything, it was true. Of course, if she was going to fall in love again, it’d be a Dragon. And would she pick just any Dragon? No, she had to pick the brother of Rafansi. The traitor.Finnyr.
Arianna slammed a Dragon against the wall. It was a tiny thing, and had been trying to avoid being seen at all. The boy let out an almost-squeak at the feeling of her claws pressing into his chest.
“Gliders, where are they?” she snarled.
The child nearly wet himself.
“Gliders.” Her claws bit through his flimsy Dragon clothes and into his skin. “Maybe I’ll let you live if you tell me where they are.”
“Up those stairs.” He pointed. “Down the hall, second corridor, and out.”
She dropped him and continued upward. There was one thing that seemed to be similar across all races of life: the need for self-preservation.
The gliders were exactly where he told her they would be. Some Dragons attempted to block her passage, but they didn’t put up much of a struggle. Arianna saw Chimera looking on from the edges of the platform, golden chains looped around their necks. The gold reeked of the same scent as her chains had, tempered to the King’s magic alone. Arianna couldn’t break them if she tried. Chimera slaves bound to do the Dragons’ bidding.
Yet they moved as one to the sides of a glider, doing nothing to bar her access.
Arianna sprinted over and mounted the vessel. She rested her hands on the handles, feeling magic surge from her fingertips through the interior channeling of the glider and into the wings.
“You won’t be able to fly it.”
“Yes, I can.” Arianna shifted her weight.
“Only Dragons can.” The man seemed tired, like he’d had this debate countless times. “Chimera don’t have enough magic.”
Arianna held up her palm and drew a claw across it, showing them her gold blood. It mattered little now, keeping her secret up on Nova. Let them talk. Let the Dragons know she was real and she would come to kill them with an army of Perfect Chimera just like her.
The Chimera looked on, stunned, like she was one of the Dragons’ gods come to life. She wished she could tell them that she was, and that she had the power to save them, but they were lost causes. She couldn’t bring them back to Loom with her and she had no doubt that when the Dragon King fell, he would take everything he could with him—assuming they weren’t killed for not barring her access now.
“I can’t save you.” She felt compelled to apologize.
“We know,” a woman replied. There was some comfort in hearing the tones of Fennish spoken again. “But we can save you.”
“What?” Arianna asked in confusion.
