He’d made it down the stairs to the arena floor—where his smoking corpse now lay.
The golden crown on his head had melted, running in rivulets over his blackened, open-mouthed skull.
“Oh,” Mareth exclaimed and turned her face away, into my chest.
“Don’t look,” I said and followed my own advice as we descended the steps together.
When we reached the ground and got a safe distance from it, Mareth and I both turned back toward the burning platform. Her hands came up to cover her mouth.
“Pharis,” she said.
“I’ll go back for him.”
I ran toward the platform, but before I could reach it, it collapsed, and the flames exploded into an inferno. Throwing up a hand to shield my face from the heat, I backed away.
No one could go into that kind of fire—and no one could come out of it alive.
Pharis.
A distraught voice called his name as well.
“Pharis,” Mareth cried. “Oh gods, did he get out?”
I turned to see her beside me. She had run to try to save him as well. Now we both stood looking at the burning wreckage.
Tearing my eyes away, I searched for him—and for the dragon.
There it was, high in the sky over the arena, flying north. I stretched my hand up as if I might somehow stop it then let it fall impotent to my side.
My legs buckled, sending me to my knees as the world stopped spinning and slowed to a halt.
She was gone. Raewyn was gone.
Mareth’s gaze followed mine, watching the dragon until it disappeared into the clouds.
She turned back to me, tears streaming from her eyes.
“I think… I think Pharis did that.”
“What? What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Before we came out here this morning, he asked to borrow my glamour,” she said. “He wouldn’t tell me what for but promised it was for a good cause—a matter of life and death, he said. I gave it to him.”
Reeling from shock, I blinked and thought about it.
“I think I gave him mine as well,” I said. “Just before the dragon appeared, I told him he could take everything I have if he’d save Raewyn’s life somehow. I think he might have gleaned Father’s glamour too.”
“You’re right. I felt a change,” she said.
“So he used my Augmenting glamour to amplify Father’s Compelling glamour and your Animal Communication to control the dragon. Did he ever tell you he was capable of holding so many at once?”
Mareth shook her head. “No. I had no idea.”
We both looked around the decimated arena, nearly emptied of people now.
Dark smoke rose from multiple spots. Even the stone walls were damaged, melted from the devastating heat of dragonfire.
Glancing back toward what was once the royal viewing platform, Mareth wiped tears from her sooty face, leaving black streaks on her cheeks.
