The wailing lessened, then grew quiet, then turned to a whimper, a whisper, and finally vanished. I fell on the ground, landing badly on my side, and blinked. My hands weren’t charred. Not even my left, which I’d stuck into the fire.
I sat up. A perfect circle spread around the pillar, green with fresh grass. A familiar aroma filled the area. It smelled like spice and honey. Delicate flowers had sprouted all around me, small white stars with black centers. I had made them once before, when I’d cried during a flare, because a man who served Morrighan had died. I cared for him, and I had tried to keep him alive, but in the end, I’d had to let him go.
Rowena lay on the ground next to me, naked but unburned.
She opened her eyes, raised her hand, and struggled to say something.
Alive. She’d survived. We’d done it.
I felt oddly numb.
My father sat on the ground next to me and gently touched one of the flowers. Ghastek knelt by Rowena, took her into his arms with infinite care, and carried her away.
The boar’s corpse sprawled on the ash, all of its flesh stripped, the great bones rolling gently, as the lion dug into its stomach. The awful chewing sounds of a huge predator eating echoed through Kings Row. A part of me knew this was Curran and he was eating a god, and I should be freaked out by it, but most of me refused to deal with it. I was spent.
“Has the creature spoken to you?” my father asked.
“Yes. He wants to conquer.”
“So did his brother. What else did he say?”
“He offered for me to be his queen. He wants me to betray you. He hasn’t gotten around to saying it, but he will.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I reminded him that my father and my aunt killed his brother and destroyed his army, so he was a losing bet. He told me he wasn’t his brother and promised to prove it. This is his proof.” I turned to him. “He has the yeddimur.”
A muscle jerked in my father’s face. “They are an abomination.”
So the great and powerful Nimrod had a weakness after all.
“Is he really a dragon? Was his brother a dragon?”
“Yes.”
Great. Freaking fantastic.
“He said his brother proposed marriage to Erra.”
My father sneered, and I saw his older sister in his face. “We don’t marry serpents. We erase them from the flow of history.”
“Oh good.”
We sat quietly for a long moment.
“Tell me of the dragon,” Roland asked.
“His name is Neimheadh. He ruled Ireland and Scotland with his army of human soldiers and corrupted creatures. When the magic weakened, he retreated into the mists with his army. Now he’s back. He took people from towns on the edge of Atlanta and boiled them for their bones.”
“The tie that binds.”
I looked at him.
“His kind make their lairs in pockets of reality, a small fold in the fabric of time and space,” Roland said. “They are creatures of immense magic, and they warp the natural order of things to make their homes. This Neig has taken his troops with him into his lair. They existed within it for so long, they themselves became bound to it. The warped magic permeated them and changed them. The magic here isn’t ample enough to sustain him or his army, not unless the wave is quite potent. He and his forces must absorb the magic of our reality to reattune themselves. Humans are magic and numerous.”
“They eat the human bones, so they can manifest here when the magic is weaker?”
“Drink them, most likely. Grind them into dust with magic and mix them with milk. A barbaric practice.”
I rubbed my face. Simple explanations were usually correct ones. Consuming people would be logistically difficult. Too much mass. Bone powder made more sense. Here is your bone smoothie, great way to start the day. I wanted to vomit.
Roland reached out and stroked my shoulder. “Most of them never deal with us, but those who choose to mix with humans are a plague on this world. A plague I will one day cure.”
“Father . . .”
“Yes, Blossom?”
“If he has to drink this bone powder to manifest during magic, how many people will he have to kill to survive through tech?”
“Hundreds of thousands,” my father said.
“Can I enter this pocket realm and kill him?”
“You can’t enter without permission.”
“What if he gave me permission?”
“You would be very foolish to enter.”
“But if I did . . .”
“I forbid it.”
Aha, that and a dollar would get him a cup of bad coffee. He wasn’t exactly in a position to forbid me anything.
Roland softened his voice. “If somehow you end up within his domain, do not eat or drink. If you consume something, it will anchor you to his realm and you will be subject to his power for a short while. It would wear off unless he continued to feed you. As long as you don’t eat anything he presents to you, you can leave at will and nothing within his lair can hurt you. Simply wish to be back here, and the mists will tear, and you will be back in our world. In his realm, you are a ghost. You can’t be hurt, but you cannot hurt him in return. But it’s not a place you should ever visit, Blossom. Dragons are unpredictable, and their command of magic surpasses ours. They’re good at manipulation.”
Curran raised his huge head. His mouth was bloody. He staggered from the corpse, a huge nightmarish beast, too big to be real.
“He sent his champion to fight me,” I told him.
“Where is the champion now?”
“Dead.”
My father smiled.
“You sent assassins to murder your grandson. Your only grandson. They wanted to kill him and eat him. You are despicable, Father. How do you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning?”
“What happened to the assassins?”
“I killed them.”
“I know,” he said. “I felt them die.”
“Your own grandson.”
He smiled at me again. “The sahanu were growing troublesome.”
I stared at him, speechless. “Wow. Just wow. You used me to clean up your cult.”
He shrugged. “You used me to rescue a woman who betrayed me. I’d say we’re even. Besides, my grandson was never in danger. You are my daughter, Blossom. One of a kind.”
“We are not even. Not even close. Do not come after Conlan again. I swear I will kill you.”
A strange contortion gripped the lion’s body. He arched his back, then jerked his head to the sky. His great maw gaped open. The sun reflected on his fangs, which were longer than my legs. He roared, his eyes blazing with gold. A nimbus of pale silver twisted around him, crackling with violent energy. Two protrusions burst from his back. He snarled, and the protrusions unfolded into black wings.
That’s it. I’m done.
The mercs screamed and howled. The look on Barabas’s face could’ve launched a fleet of spaceships.
“Some are born to godhood,” Roland said. “Others attain it. I cautioned you against marrying him.”
The lion walked to us.
Wind whispered. My father was gone. The grass where he’d sat was slowly springing back.
The lion stopped in front of me. He folded his wings, lowered his colossal head, and slowly, carefully lay down on the grass, his face to me. He could’ve taken me whole into his mouth, and there would still be room for ten more people.
“Is he silver?” I asked.
Nobody said anything.
“Is he silver?” I repeated, raising my voice.
“Yes,” Julie whispered.
I got up, turned my back, and walked away from him.
* * *
? ? ?
“DO YOU WANT to talk about it?”
I lay on the edge of the woods, the grass soft under me. The scar of Kings Row lay a few yards away. The sky above me was a beautiful blue, and cute little clouds floated here and there, like fluffy little sheep chasing each other in a vast pasture.
“Baby?”