Never had the people of Heartstone seen an oath-breaking draconic, squire or otherwise. In their eyes, this was the NightBringer’s doing. Evil seeping into the ranks of the Fellowship of the Light and corrupting the purest of hearts.
“The oath we take before being remade into draconics is sacred,” Caius had explained to them. “It is a magical vow we make to the dragons whose flame is used to turn our hearts to gold, swearing to uphold the light with this power they lend us. To break this oath is to forsake your life. Tol’s alchemized heart is now tarnished by the dark. Over time, his heart would slowly lose its magic and eventually kill him. This is quicker, at least.”
As Emory glanced around the fighting pit below—noticing an oval patch of dark-stained dirt she realized was old, dried blood—she wasn’t sure which was worse: a slow, agonizing death, or one that was to be made into a bloody spectacle.
The event started off with a ceremonial jousting match between two draconic knights. One was dressed in elaborate golden armor emblazoned with the Fellowship’s crest of the dragon eating its tail. An ouroboros, Caius had called it. The other knight wore what could only be described as a costume: their golden armor was painted with black and blue motifs of moons and stars, and their helmet was made to look like an owl’s head. The silver crest on their chest was of a half-owl, half-cat beast.
The symbol of the Night Bringer.
It seemed silly at first to see the two knights take to the pit in what was clearly meant to be a practiced routine, the crowd booing and jeering at the knight portraying the Night Bringer. The two opponents wielded bejeweled javelins that looked more suited to hanging in a museum than drawing actual blood, and when they bowed at the waist to each other, they were the picture of politeness.
Until they unleashed themselves.
It had been one thing to see the draconics’ wings flicker out like candles after they’d fought thecorvus serpentes; it was something else entirely now to see their wingsappear. One second, the twoknights looked perfectly human, and the next, their bodies were engulfed in ethereal golden flames that started at their heart and coiled around their armored limbs without singeing. Their wings took shape at their backs, as if created from the flames—which sputtered out when the draconics unfurled their wings to their full length, the golden membrane glinting in the light.
They flew off the ground and attacked each other in swoops and swerves, javelins arcing through the sky. This wasn’t a battle to the death, Caius had explained, but a show of skill, an act that would inevitably see the favored golden knight prevail over the Night Bringer’s champion.
But Emory wouldn’t be here to see the outcome.
Taking advantage of the crowd’s focus on the jousting, Emory left the stands with Romie and Aspen, but not before throwing one last look over her shoulder. Virgil gave her a goofy-smiled thumbs-up that made her want to laugh despite the utter seriousness of what they were attempting.
They’d decided it was best that Virgil, Nisha, and Vera stay here while Emory, Romie, and Aspen headed for the cells where Caius had told them the prisoners were held. It was only meant to be Emory and Aspen at first—both their abilities being needed in their plan to break Tol out—but Romie had insisted she join them.
“I’m the only one Tol has actually seen,” she argued, after telling them she’d managed to find Tol in a dream. “Might help convince him he can trust us.”
They descended the hundreds of steps to find the lower levels of the stands occupied by young pages and squires and the draconic masters they trained under. Caius spotted them and stood at once, brandishing his small fist toward the jousting knights, and shouted at the top of his lungs: “Down with the night!”
“Let shine the light!” came the crowd’s eager, earsplitting response.
Again and again the crowd shouted the chant, the distraction allowing Emory, Romie, and Aspen to slip unnoticed through the door that led into the prison.
“Left,” Aspen instructed as they came upon a fork in the corridor. “There will be a guard fifteen feet away.”
The witch had spent the day before scrying into every mind she could find, mapping out the prison through its guards’ eyes. Emory herself had tried to be of some use by prodding into a few minds, but just like the witches’ minds had been closed off to her Memorist magic, so too were the draconics’. The nausea she’d been left with afterward made her want to give up on Memorist magic for good.
Now Emory had a different sort of power at the ready—the blood in her veins singing in elation at being used—so that when the guard saw them, her Glamour worked its magic before he could even look surprised.
“You never saw us.”
They hurried past the guard as his expression became blank, his eyes seeing right through them. Emory’s pulse quickened at the ease of this power. Again and again they used this same trick on the guards they passed as they traveled deeper into the prison built below the Chasm, until the air grew thin and sweltering, and a familiar energy crackled beneath their feet.
Emory paused, the force of the ley line nearly knocking her out.
Its addictive pull beckoned. Her eyes widened in equal parts horror and elation as they found Romie’s, whose brow was knit in confusion. “What is it?”
A low, grumbling noise suddenly filled the corridor. Then a roar.
“I’m assuming they keep the eldritch beasts down here?” Romie asked, face blanching.
“No.” Aspen frowned. “The eldritch are kept on the other side of the prison.”
The sound came again, though it was less of a roar, more of a whimper. The ley line in that direction felt more powerful than it did here. Emory couldn’t help moving toward it, ignoring Romie and Aspen calling after her.
She stopped dead in her tracks when she reached the end of the corridor. Hand braced on the wall, she stared into the chamber before her, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
The chamber was immense, more like a grotto than anything. Torches cast long, dancing shadows on the ground. Odd instruments lined the walls, as well as several doors leading to smaller chambers. One of them was open, revealing what looked like a surgical table. Like some sort of laboratory.
People stood chanting a low, humming tune around the center of the grotto. Red-robed sages, one of whom she recognized as Master Bayns. Knights in golden chain mail. And an aging man in a rich, gold-threaded white doublet who held a peculiar-looking glass jar.
