“A Dragon earning my trust?” she scoffed, back to the Ari he knew. “That could take years.”
“Good thing I’m a Dragon. Years are something I have.” Cvareh chuckled and grinned. “If I have to, I’ll stop time.”
That almost earned him a smile, and he’d take almost. Cvareh was nearly out of the room, his mission accomplished for now, when something else struck him. He stopped and turned to find Arianna looking up at him in confusion. He would capitalize on whatever good mood he’d earned.
“One more thing. Whatever you think about me… don’t believe me, think I’m a total liar, take no heed of my truth.” The thought stung him a bit—the idea that after all they’d been through she could still not trust him. “But if you listen, not just hear, but listen to one thing I say, let it be this: patch things up with Florence. You will regret it, Ari, if you let her vanish because of your own stubbornness.”
41. Arianna
The bed was cold and the room, though nicely sized, felt a million veca wide. There was no rumbling of Cvareh’s deep breaths while he slept. Florence’s heat wasn’t warming her sheets. Arianna was left alone—as she had been for a week now—with her thoughts.
She had almost worked up the resolve to leave the Alchemists’ Guild without Florence, when Cvareh had visited her that afternoon. He’d come bearing himself to her in ways she hadn’t expected, and didn’t want to believe were true.
Because believing would mean trusting a Dragon again.
And then there were all the claims Florence had made against her. Arianna stared listlessly at the ceiling. The girl had seen vision in her, when there had only ever been vengeance. Both drove, both were pursued with all the passion of the soul.
But a soul driven by vengeance was a selfish soul. A soul driven by vision was a generous one—one that bore itself before others and put the needs of the many before the needs of the few.
There was a time that she had actually possessed those traits. A time when they weren’t just vacant, labeled pegs on the walls of her personality. She had written them off when the rebellion died. Eva, Master Oliver, and the Arianna they had known died alongside them.
She was nothing now, and that had enabled her to be an extension of her benefactors’ will as the White Wraith. What Florence had seen in her was nothing more than a mirror of the potential that lived in the girl herself. Potential Ari eagerly reflected and wanted to grow—as if its vines and roots could curl around the fragments of her heart and pull them back together.
Arianna sat up, rubbing her eyes tiredly. Even Sophie’s words about Eva had stuck with her. What would Eva think if they met now? Was Arianna still someone she’d want to love?
Chasing ghosts down empty halls, she stood, padding on silent feet through the Master’s passages of the Alchemists’ Guild. Eva was dead. Whatever she would or wouldn’t love no longer mattered. Now, Arianna had to live for the living—for herself.
Arianna turned the knob of Cvareh’s door, letting herself quietly into his room.
Even amid her virtual silence, the Dragon woke. Talons jutted from his hands, ready to ward off a shadowed attacker. She leaned against the door, waiting for him to calm himself, to realize who was there. It only took a moment.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered.
She could hear his quickening heartbeat, feel his magic responding to hers. Arianna crossed over to his bed with purpose. He sat straighter as she made herself at home without his permission, drawing up her legs to sit atop his sheets.
His words about her played relentlessly in harmony with everything else she’d been coming to terms with. Arianna had heard them clearly, but they were so difficult for her to process. This Dragon and she had embarked on an odd journey with each other. It was a winding path that had taken them across Loom, and what she thought was to be their final destination had turned out to be a resting point before the next, greater trek.
“I want proof,” she announced.
“Proof of what?” Cvareh asked skeptically.
“Proof that your sister is who she says she is. That if I help this resistance—and her—get their footing, I will not just be replacing one tyrant with another.”
The fact was that Loom was headed toward another war no matter what she did. If it was in one year, or twenty, eventually the rebels here would grow enough, become reckless enough, that they would attack. Loom wasn’t meant to sustain itself as it was. That Ari believed above all else. Tensions would be omnipresent until things with the Dragons were settled in a far better manner than their current arrangement.
“Whatever proof you want, I’ll get,” Cvareh said hastily.
“I don’t want it from you.”
“What then?”
“I want it from her.”
“Her?” It took him a second to put it together. “Petra? My sister will never come to Loom. She can’t. There are too many eyes on her.”