Another dose of Dractylpromazine. Fear and despair rose up, threatening to crush me. I forced them down. How were we going to get out of this? I’d been racking my brain to come up with an escape plan that didn’t leave one or more of us dead, but it seemed that Talon had countered our every move. I thought about attacking and fighting my way out. But I couldn’t Shift yet, and I had no doubt that Talon would happily kill Riley and Garret if they felt they no longer needed them. And Talon was counting on that. They knew I wouldn’t risk the lives of the rogue and the soldier. My attachments, as Lilith would say, were my greatest weakness.
Garret, I thought, swallowing the tightness in my throat. Riley. I hope you’re all right. Where were they now? What was happening to them? Imagining the awful things Talon might do to the infamous rogue and the soldier of St. George made my stomach hurt. Hang in there, both of you; we’ll find a way out of here, somehow.
The needle slid into my skin, a brief stab of pain followed by a feeling of drowsiness. Briefly, I wondered where Dante was, and the Elder Wyrm. And which of them was responsible for what was happening now.
“Take her to lab station two,” I heard the human say as the world started to go dark. “And for God’s sake, be careful. We don’t want her damaged before she reaches the Elder Wyrm.”
That was the last thing I heard.
*
I flinched and opened my eyes.
I was lying on my back, gazing up at a sterile white ceiling. My head spun. There was a weird, bitter chemical taste in my mouth, and the light overhead was hazy. I blinked several times, clearing my vision, and my blood turned to ice.
The Elder Wyrm loomed above me, regarding me impassively, though her massive presence filled the entire chamber. I jerked and realized I couldn’t move; my wrists and ankles had been tied down with leather cuffs, and there were straps across my waist and chest, holding me immobile. Instinctively, I tried to Shift, to break free of the restraints, but my dragon wouldn’t respond at all. Panicked, I thrashed against the bindings, feeling the enormous power of the Elder Wyrm pressing down on me from all sides.
“It’s easier if you don’t resist,” the Elder Wyrm said. Panting, I glared up at her, and she gazed back. “Stop fighting. It is useless. You cannot Shift. There are a half-dozen vessels guarding this room, and only a select few know where you are. I would rather not have to sedate you, but I will not risk you injuring yourself. Calm down, before I have someone do it for you.”
“What do you want with me?” I growled.
The Elder Wyrm regarded me another moment. A chilling smile crossed her face, making me shrink down in terror.
“Everything.”
“I...won’t talk,” I said, though my heart was pounding and my breath was coming in short gasps. Riley had said Talon had no problem torturing people for information. If you had something they wanted, they wouldn’t stop until they acquired it, by whatever means necessary. Apparently, not even the daughter of the Elder Wyrm was exempt.
“Talk?” the Elder Wyrm repeated, and raised a brow. “You think you are here to be interrogated,” she mused, and gave a soft chuckle. “No, Ember Hill. You have no information that I want. I don’t care about Cobalt’s network of traitors and runaways. The secrets of St. George mean nothing to me. I am not even concerned about the Eastern dragon that followed you over from China. Soon, none of that will matter.”
“Why am I here, then?”
“You have no idea what you really are,” the Elder Wyrm went on. “Or why you are special. To the dragons of Talon, you are my daughter, the heir to the empire along with Dante. They don’t know your true purpose—none of them have figured it out, not even your very clever brother. You see, Ember...” She smiled again, no less frightening than before. “Dante is the backup plan. You were always the chosen one.”
“I don’t understand,” I whispered, heart pounding as she drew closer, looming over me. “Dante and I were raised together, and he’s always been loyal to Talon.” A thought came to me then, making my breath catch. “So, that story you told us in your office...was any of it true? Is Dante related to me at all? Are we even siblings?” The sudden realization that Dante might not be my brother, after all, hit me like a punch in the stomach. Even with all our differences, the times he’d betrayed me, stabbed me in the back and sided with Talon, he was still my twin. To think that he might be just some stranger, some random dragon that had been raised alongside me...it seemed wrong. Like my brother had died, after all.
“You don’t understand.” The Elder Wyrm shook her head. “Dante is of my blood,” she continued, making me slump in relief. “As are you. Though not in the way you would expect. As far as Talon is concerned, you and Dante are my offspring. The blood of the Elder Wyrm—that is all that matters. How you were created is something only a few know.”
I stared at her, the world spinning around me as I finally got it. “We...we’re clones,” I whispered. “Dante and I...we’re like the vessels, or whatever you call them.”
“No,” said the Elder Wyrm firmly. “You are not like the vessels. The vessels were created to be mindless, programmed to obey commands and little else. They are a perfect army, but they exist to serve a single purpose. They have no individuality, no thoughts of their own. You, however...” Her gaze roamed my body, as if seeing what lay beneath the sheets, scrutinizing it. It made my skin crawl. “You and your brother were engineered for perfection. You might have begun life in a vat, but I wanted you and Dante to develop normally. To reach your full potential. You were genetically constructed to be superior, but I needed your growth to be natural, untampered with. That was essential.”
“Why?”
For a moment, in that tiny room, the Elder Wyrm just stared at me, her eyes distant and dark. In that gaze, I felt the weight of a thousand years, someone who had watched worlds rise and fall, who had seen so much death, atrocity, chaos and evil that nothing affected her anymore.
“I am old,” the Elder Wyrm said, and her voice seemed to echo all around me. “Older than you know. Older than any living creature on this planet. I have spent the past few centuries building this empire from nothing, and it has become exactly what I envisioned. But there is still so much to do, and I haven’t much time left. Even dragons cannot live forever.”
“So, that’s why you need us,” I guessed. “You wanted an heir to take over Talon. Someone who would share your ideals and do exactly what you wanted.”