The whimper came again from the massivethingin the middle of the chamber. Adragon, so large it looked like it could engulf the entire grotto, dark scales gobbling up the light from the torches. Its wings were tucked close to its sides, and around its neck and feet were thick metal chains. It moaned in pain as one of the knights jabbed its flank with a wicked metal poker. A faint trickle of bright, golden flames shot from the dragon’s mouth, and the aging man caught the flame in the jar, which he hurried to stopper.
“Keep it close,” a woman Emory hadn’t noticed said to him. “We’ll have new youths to use it on soon.”
The Knight Commander.
She turned to the corridor and froze when she saw Emory looking into the chamber. Her jaw tightened, her hand immediately going to the sword at her hip. “You were not meant to see that.”
Before Emory could pull up her magic, the hilt of a blade hit her on the head.
She fell into darkness, past the stars of the sleepscape, and found herself again before the demon.
His eyes were ablaze with fury as he grabbed her by the throat. “I smell them on you,” he said, seething. “You’re with them, aren’t you? The blood, the bones, the heart—”
“Let go of me!” Emory yelled, clawing at his wrist to try to loosen his grip.
His fingers only tightened around her neck. There was a cruel tilt to his mouth. “We’ll see each other soon, Tideca—”
Emory gasped as she found herself back in her body, herrealone. The impression of Keiran’s fingers around her neck lingered, and for a moment she thought he had reappeared with her into consciousness as rough hands shoved her unceremoniously to the ground. She grunted in pain as her palms split open on the rock beneath her.
Far gentler hands were on her then, forcing her to look into someone’s eyes. Romie’s eyes.
“You okay?” Romie asked.
“What—ow.” Emory touched the wound on her head, wincing in pain. Her fingers came away bloody. “Where are we?”
“They threw us in the Tides-damned cells,” Romie said, slumping to the ground at Emory’s side. Aspen stood over them with an air of total abandon.
Through the fog of pain, Emory tried to make sense of their surroundings. They were indeed in a large, dark, damp cell with five other people. Prisoners, she realized, bare-headed, hard-eyed, sallow-faced men clothed in ill-fitting breeches and threadbare shirts.
Without thinking, Emory healed both the wound on her head and the gashes on her palms. The darkness that had been lingeringat the edges of her consciousness pressed in fully then, her ears assaulted by slithering whispers and her vision swarming with bloodied lunar flowers looking to choke her—
“It’s you.”
The utter awe in Aspen’s voice, the bright note of hope that rang through it, pierced through Emory’s darkness, enough for her to realize who the witch had spoken to.
At the other end of the cell, sitting straight-backed and confident despite the death that awaited him, was a young man with molten eyes, his naked torso corded with muscles. There was a band of dark metal around his neck, like a fetter, which none of the other prisoners had. His draconic wings were nowhere in sight, but Emory knew who he was nonetheless, because the spiral symbol on his chest atop where his heart was could mean only one thing.
Tol.
Aspen’s face was full of wonder as she took him in, this person she had come to know through his own eyes and had probably never trulyseenunless through a reflection.
“Who are you?” Tol didn’t seem to recognize Aspen at all—and why would he, when she’d only ever been this presence in his head that he couldn’t even feel?
Aspen’s shoulders sagged, her expression dimming as she must have come to the same realization. When she spoke again, she became the High Matriarch’s daughter once more, cold and aloof. “Apologies. My name is Aspen, and this is Romie and Emory. We came to free you.”
One of the older prisoners snickered at her. “What a piss-poor job of that you did.”
The rest of the prisoners laughed darkly. But there was a spark of understanding in Tol’s eyes as they landed on Romie. “You were in my dreams.”
“Told you we were coming.” Romie gave an apologetic shrug.“Unfortunately, we ran into some unexpected trouble. Did you know they have adragonchained up out there?”
A muscle feathered in Tol’s jaw. “That dragon is the reason I’m in here.”
“Because you broke your oath to it?”
“That oath is a farce,” Tol spat. “Did you see what they were doing to it? The draconics who have the dragon chained?”
“They were taking its flame.”
