I glanced back at Wayland walking beside Idris in terrible silence and noticed a polished haft protruding from above the collar of his mantle, as if he had a weapon strapped to his back.
I hadn’t noticed before, but it was good he was armed. We were going to need all the fighters—and weapons—we could get.
An hour later, Balor spotted something. His whole demeanor lit up—he pointed with a fist the size of a wine barrel toward the shadows of a distant ridge.
“Fire, lady!” he rumbled, with a large smile for me.
I saw it. A streak of blood-red embossed with gold, arcing across the sky. Distant but unmistakable.
Draig fire.
“Laoise,” Irian said.
Hope and lingering horror burned through me in quick succession. Had Laoise survived the trials of the afternoon intact? Had her draiglings? “It has to be.”
“Dragan Mother is giving us a signal,” Balor agreed, his booming voice chattering the pebbles beneath my feet. “She wishes for us to meet her.”
“Or she has encountered new enemies and is warning us away,” Irian said, encouragingly. “Let me scout.”
His silver eyes flew far. His thumb ghosted over the hilt of the Sky-Sword, belted at his waist. And I knew he had flown away, in mind if not in body. I counted my heartbeats.
Ten. Twenty.
His metal eyes flicked back into focus. He smiled—or perhaps it was a grimace.
“It is indeed Laoise,” he confirmed obliquely.
“The draiglings,” Idris asked. “Are they all well?”
“They are all well.” Irian abruptly sank onto the ground. “We should rest.”
“The flames appear no more than a few leagues away,” Wayland said, after a moment. “If we continue walking, we shall surely reach her by morning.”
Irian settled his spine against a rocky outcropping, rested the sheathed Sky-Sword across his knees, and closed his eyes. “For once, time is not of the essence.”
“She is my sister,” Idris said, a little hotly. “She may need our help—”
“She needs time.” Irian’s expression was strange—neither amusement nor understanding nor even sympathy, but somehow all of them at once. “That flare was meant neither as warning nor beacon. I am not sure we were meant to see it at all.”
“Then what?” Idris demanded.
“Laoise is very, very angry.” Irian cracked one eye open. “In my admittedly limited experience, angry fire-breathing draigs should be left to work out their feelings in peace.”
Irian was, as usual, correct.
We all slept badly, if we slept at all. Balor snacked upon a few quartz outcroppings, then stretched out on his back and snored thunderously at the sky. In perfect counterpoint, Irian kept a still, silent vigil, his eyes closed and his palms resting on his sword, although I knew he did not sleep. Sinéad huddled a few feet away beneath her cloak; Wayland and Idris leaned together, but uneasily, as if their frames did not fit close enough for comfort. I was too restless for sleep.
Dawn came with frigid fog and a palpable wave of hopelessness wafting over the group. Hunger descended on me with swift and unexpected force, hollowing out my stomach and twisting my insides. I glanced with sympathy at Idris, Sinéad.
If I was hungry, they had to be famished.
The sky turned pale and glossy as a pearl as we walked south.Soon, the sun rode higher; mist burned off and warmth blossomed. Sinéad threw off Irian’s extra cloak; Wayland gratefully turned his face—paler now than when I’d first met him—toward the warm blue expanse.
We smelled smoke before we glimpsed the fire. A plume the color of charcoal bloomed from a narrow valley, unfurling like a greedy, glowering rose. It stank of incinerated things—wood and scorched earth and broken rock.
What must have once been paradise had been reduced to fire and ash. Towering skeletons of scorched trees twisted starkly against a smoky sky. A curving river was a blackened scar, choked with charred debris. Wisps of smoke curled from the ground, filtering muted, eerie stripes of sunlight. Against a wall of black rock, Laoise’s anam cló curled amid her brood of draigs, the eight of them looking like the dying embers of an extinguished wildfire.
Hog squealed with glee as we approached, launching herself from the spikes on Laoise’s back. But Laoise shifted back into Gentry form with one smooth, practiced motion and grabbed Hog from midair, unceremoniously plopping her between her siblings before turning on her heel and stalking toward our group. Her hair was a flame; her eyes were bonfires; her expression could have destroyed worlds. I heard Wayland take a sweeping step backward, heard Irian draw the Sky-Sword, heard Sinéad exhale a shaky “Laoise?”
