“Samara’s father has some. Let me have that.”
“I can’t bend the rules …”
“OH, YOU CAN!” Valenna shouted. “Do you know how Vander got like this? It wasn’t because he fell from a dragon; it was because I struck him with my magic. It is evil, it is vile magic, and if I strike you with it, you’ll be begging for the powder your son destroyed.”
A shadow fell over Ariadne’s face. She was frightened; Valenna relished it.
“I will not change the rules for you,” Ariadne said, her voice tremulous.
Valenna’s anger flared, and her reservations dissipated like smoke in a windstorm.
“Alright then,” she said. “But you will answer for what comes next.”
She shoved Samara aside and climbed onto the little red dragon.
“What are you doing?” Samara cried, trying to pull Valenna down. “You can’t go up in this weather! There’s lightning!”
“I have faced worse things than lightning on a dragon,” Valenna said acidly.She kicked the dragon, and the creature unfurled its wings and leaped into the air.
“Stop!” Samara screamed. “You can’t take her! Thief!”
Her voice faded as Valenna mounted into the rain-lashed clouds. When she looked down, she saw Ariadne gazing after her, stunned.
The dragon knew its way through the mountains, and Valenna gave it its head, letting it lead them past stone spires and towers barely visible in the downpour. Twice, her mount tried to turn and fly home, but Valenna kept its head forward—flying into the wind, toward Sennalaith.
This was not the return she’d imagined; desperate and shivering, crawling back begging for favors. She was supposed to face her father at her full strength, with Olivette at her side. Yet here she was, breaking every promise she’d ever made to herself.
If she asked Cadmus for this favor, she would never be able to turn against him. She would never find her sister.
But she couldn’t stop thinking of Evander, and how hollow her world would be without him.
He deserved to live. After what she’d done to him, she did not.
She understood why he’d left her in Largotia. She’d been so angry at him, but it made sense to her now. He knew her better than anyone, and he knew that she would turn reckless when pushed to desperation. He knew her love for him was all-encompassing, and she would risk it all to save him. Yes, he had been wise to try to spare her from this, but she was gladthat she was not so wise as he.
She kicked the dragon harder. If Evander died before she reached her father, then it would all be for nothing.
Wings thundered overhead, and Valenna drew up her dragon, hovering, waiting. A shadow darted behind her, then in the darkness ahead. It circled and then grew out of the clouds.
A dragon twice the size of her mount loomed over her, ridden by a man in a Sennalaithic uniform.
“You have entered the borderlands of Sennalaith,” he called over the wind. “What is your business here?”
Valenna lifted her chin. “I am Valeria, the dark witch, daughter of Cadmus. Tell my father that I have come to barter.”
Chapter thirty-seven
Evander
Evander’s brain was on fire. The world spun until he thought it might fling him into the ether. A great, glittering bird, its wings such a dark shade of purple as to be practically black, gazed at him.
Raska at last.
Evander wanted to scream, but he swallowed his terror. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of watching him squirm.
“Come for me already?” Evander whispered.
Raska tilted her head, unblinking, unfathomable. She glanced around the room, then back at him.
