Quietly she says, “You know … I’ve never seen him like this before.”
“Covered in goo? Or pissed at me?” I hold up a large foul piece of black crystal, green toxic sludge dripping off it. I summon the Magician, changing grime into water, and it alters the composition. I stuff the crystal in the bag with the rest.
“The goo I’ve oddly seen.” She giggles at some old memory. Her green eyes catch in the ambient light she creates. “I meant … happy. I’ve never seen him happy, not really.”
“I don’t think I’m to blame for that,” I say, thinking of our argument.
“No … but maybe to thank.” Fable collects the rest of her little pile. She hesitates. “He deserves it. You probably both do.” She nods to me before moving a bit farther, to start on a new pile.
I stand there, guiltily thinking about what that means, what that kind of happiness even looks like if my family isn’t safe and secure.
A shimmer of blue light distracts me, glowing brighter. No one else is nearby, and before I can call anyone’s attention it races away. I follow the strange flame as it hops along, blinking in and out, leading me farther and farther ahead.
The others’ voices grow distant, and my steps slow as I chase what must be a will-o’-the-wisp. My father told me stories about them, some in which they were the spirits of the fallen, luring the ignorant toward what killed them, hoping to be avenged. In other tales, they were sprites leading people toward their fate.
The blue flame appears once more in front of a mossy corner of the cavern.
“Well, nowhere left to go.” I keep my hand over my cards as I approach and stretch my hand out …
But it disappears. Moss rustles in the breeze from where it hangs over a small opening— a hidden passage at the back of the cavern. I pad the moss aside and gasp, everything in me recoiling.
There’s a rotting corpse in elven armor behind it, burnt to charcoaled bone.
Something glimmers in its hand, a shard of black zenith unlike any I’ve seen so far, carved and spindled, wrapped with a sleeve of charred bark. It’s refined, but sparkling in a way I’ve never seen. Pinching the sleeve carefully, I pick it up slowly.
It drags on something within me, a magical charge pulling at my heart. It doesn’t look exactly like the image drawn in Draven’s book, yet undeniably I know what it is. The Darkstone. Worldwielder. One of the four Arcadian Artifacts, strong enough to give Draven, or whoever holds it, unimaginable power.
He was right. They exist.
I didn’t realize a part of me doubted until this moment.
The cards at my hip begin to glow on their own, as if it’s calling to them.
The light illuminates the shifting space ahead. My eyes drag up the scaled wall to the ceiling. It shifts, slithers.
And I meet the burning acidic-green eyes of a drake that’s very much alive.
29Drake
Beware the Tower card and the destruction it brings, heralding sudden change and crisis.
SHIT.
I spin around, racing backward, shoving the mossy curtain aside. The light from the hollow’s opening is blinding compared to that dark sanctum. I sprint, putting as much distance between me and the beast as I can.
When I stagger into the clearing, my eyes meet Draven’s, and his expression cycles from confusion, to desire, to fear.
“DRAKE!” I shout.
As if waiting for an introduction, the beast bursts in, destroying the mossy covering, loping after me, too smooth and fast. I need a weapon, but every time I’ve tried summoning the Star, which would allow me to forge a blade made of light, I’ve failed.
It doesn’t have wings but is far bigger than the wyverns, at least sixty feet tall. It has scales like the bark of a felled oak tree, overrun with moss and ivy. Plates of chitinous armor flank its chest like an insect. A glowing green sack of acid rests just beneath its chin.
The others scream and scatter. I keep running, but another second and I’ll be flattened—the entrance to the cave is too deadly to cross. For those without wings … we’re trapped.
The drake’s browned, sharp teeth open to snap me up. Fable dives into me and we slam to the side, just before I would’ve been devoured. It turns, bearing down on the others instead. Bewilderment turns to terror as the beast flattens one elf to pulp, biting down on one of Soto’s soldiers and snapping him in half, gore spilling at its feet.
Where is Draven?
