The sick feeling turned to anger, making me want to sink my claws into something’s face and char the skin beneath my talons until it melted and fell off. I suddenly wished the clone was alive again, just so I could kill it myself. You wanted to fight, I raged silently. You didn’t want to hide any longer. Was it worth it? Was any of this worth it?
“You couldn’t have protected them, Cobalt.” At my back, Mist’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “Talon would still have come for them in the end. Sooner or later, they were going to have to fight.”
“I know.” Suddenly tired, I sat down, feeling like I was perched on the edge of the abyss, seconds from watching the whole world crumble into darkness. Or maybe explode in an eruption of dragonfire and burn to ash. “And it’s not over yet, is it?”
“No.” Mist came forward and sat beside me, and together, we stared over the battlefield, at the carnage Talon had left behind. The bodies they had wasted, and the dragons they had killed. “I’m afraid this is only the beginning.”
GARRET
The infirmary smelled like blood, disinfectant and smoke.
Fourteen dead. Fourteen soldiers who had been killed in their own chapterhouse. Eleven injured, more than half of them severely, and at least a couple who wouldn’t survive the morning. One stressed-looking medic scurried back and forth between rows, clearly overwhelmed by all the beds that were filled with bandaged, charred, bloody soldiers. I made my way through the room, passing the wounded, the barely conscious and the dying. I’d already been here once; after the collision with the giant Adult clone, my forehead had needed stitches. I had more than a few bruises, but my body armor had absorbed a good deal of the impact. I would ache for the next few days, but I had gotten off easy. I wished I could say the same for everyone else.
“Hey, Sebastian.”
The voice was raspy, weak with pain and drugs. I paused at the bedside of the soldier, gazing down at him. Bandages covered half his face, and one of his arms was wrapped in gauze to the shoulder.
“Your lizards,” he husked out, “did good.”
He might’ve wanted to say more, but it was evident that even that bit of talking was painful. So I simply nodded and moved on, passing other cots with wounded soldiers, until I came to a corner that had been sectioned off with a curtain.
As I pushed it back, my throat tightened. Tristan St. Anthony lay on the sheets, still as death, his chest and head wrapped in bloody gauze. They’d found him buried beneath the rubble of the church tower, barely breathing but miraculously still alive. He remained unresponsive, and the medic didn’t know if he would pull through. But he was still one of the lucky ones.
Pulling up a chair, I sank down beside him.
“Hey,” I greeted him softly. “I just...uh...wanted to let you know how everything went. It worked, by the way. We won. Took some losses, of course, but at least some of us are still standing. Martin sustained a concussion and a broken wrist when part of the roof fell on him, but he’s still up, and he’s still managing the chapterhouse. Though the medic keeps pestering him to lie down. You almost shared a corner with the acting leader of the Western chapterhouse.”
No response from Tristan. The machines around him beeped softly, and his chest rose and fell with each shallow breath. It was strange, seeing him like this. In all our years of fighting together, even when he’d gotten himself sent to the infirmary, Tristan was always awake and alert and rarely stayed down for more than a few hours. I kept expecting him to open his eyes and smirk at me, amused with his own prank.
I sighed. “You’ll probably hear this when you wake up,” I began, refusing to accept that he might not wake up, “and I wish there was another way to say this, but...the Order has been destroyed, Tristan. Martin has been trying to contact anyone from St. George all morning, and no one is answering. The other chapterhouses have gone dark, and the council isn’t responding at all. We might...be the only ones left.”
I paused as the gravity of that statement hit home. I knew it was too soon to really tell. Others might have survived the assault. There might be more of us left than I thought. But with every passing hour and no word from anyone in St. George, it was becoming more and more apparent that the Order had been decimated. That Talon had won this battle, perhaps even the war, and the Night of Fang and Fire had succeeded in striking the final blow against their ancient enemies.
That left us. Myself, a few rogue dragons and a handful of soldiers. The few remaining survivors. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I admitted, mostly to myself. “I don’t know if we’ll ever recover from this, but if we do, the Order has to change. We can’t remain alone and isolated any longer, not with the power Talon now commands. I think Martin is realizing that we need all the allies we can get, if any of us are going to survive whatever is coming.”
“There you are.” There was a hiss of cloth as someone came through the curtains, and a moment later Ember slipped her arms around my neck from behind. I put my hand on her arm as she leaned in, her body warm against my back. “How are you holding up, soldier boy?”
“I’m all right.” I wasn’t. My best friend was at death’s door, the chapterhouse was in shambles and the Order I’d known all my life was gone. I was enough of a soldier to realize that things looked pretty bleak. We had survived the battle, but the war was far from over. And we didn’t stand much of a chance against Talon and their army of dragon clones.
I could feel Ember’s worried gaze on the back of my head and knew she saw right through my lie. “Are the others settling in okay?” I asked to distract her. Martin had given the surviving hatchlings the officers’ housing for temporary quarters. The few families who lived there had already fled, and more important, the building was isolated from the rest of the soldiers. Most of them were here, in the infirmary, but Martin was taking no chances.
“Yeah.” Ember nodded. “Everyone is shaken up, and there are a few who took some nasty injuries, but they’re recovering. Riley has organized things pretty well.”
“And Jade? How is she?”
“Hurt,” Ember replied. “Cranky. She has her own private room where she insisted no hatchlings would come tripping over her, and she keeps admonishing the Order for not having any tea.” Her tone, though solemn, became a little lighter. “I think she’s going to be fine.”
I felt a glow of relief, tiny as it was, that Jade was among the injured and not the dead. The Eastern dragon had suffered several broken ribs and a few deep lacerations where the clone had slammed into her, but it was amazing she had not been wounded more severely. I wondered if she would stick around after she healed; with things the way they were, none of our futures were certain. And Talon was just getting started.
Silence fell again, though it wasn’t awkward. The machines beeped, and the murmur of voices echoed through the curtain behind us. Ember drew back, then pulled up the remaining chair and sat beside me.