She fought a losing battle with consciousness. On the edges of her awareness were the simplest of sensations: cold, hard, damp. Arianna tried to pull together the scattered shards of her mind. They lingered out of her reach, jagged and crumbling when she tried to put them back in place. The picture would never be what it once was.
Vengeance, in its own way, had been her greatest hope. The belief that there would be some great justice in the world to be dealt by her. Arianna screamed at herself in the recesses of her mind, at the foolish, idealistic girl she’d never stopped being. It escaped as a raspy groan from split lips.
Reality filtered in around her, breaking through the darkness and alighting the edges of her misgivings. She didn’t know what she would live for any longer. She didn’t know if she would live at all after this.
All she knew was that she’d lost.
That was the first true thought that returned to her. She’d been bested by the Dragon King. She had fought and trained her whole life, and when the time came, it hadn’t been enough. Not Arianna, not the White Wraith, not the Perfect Chimera. She hadn’t wanted the mantle, but damn if she hadn’t tried to live into it once it had been thrust upon her. Not for nobility, not for honor, just for Eva.
Eva shone brightly in her memory in all her effervescent beauty. That picture was still perfect. But perfection was fleeting, a sight that wasn’t long for mortal hands or mortal minds. The woman was like one of the falling stars in Nova’s sky.
She faded into darkness.
The darkness was what was real. In that blackness, she fought to find light. She fought for the sake of fighting, for everything left undone. She might be broken, but so long as she drew breath she would pick up the splintered pieces of all she was and use them as shanks between the ribs of those who had crossed her. She’d lived for that one desire before, she would cling to that tether again.
Arianna opened her eyes.
She was face-first on a marble floor. The wide, thin-grouted tiles carried up the walls and onto the ceiling. A room of white illuminated by the light of a single window behind her. It was nearly blinding and Arianna’s vision blurred, her senses returning sluggishly from the prison of her mind.
A man slowly came into focus, seated against the door across from her. His powder skin was nearly gray in her hazy sight. Almost gray enough to be mistaken for a Fenthri, almost the same shade as Cvareh, and the same color as her ears and hands.
“I see you’re finally awake.”
Arianna’s lips curled back into a snarl. She moved to push off the floor, her hands weighted by shackles. The chains snapped taut as she lunged in spite of them. Arms bent backward, chest pushed forward, she stuck out her neck and snapped her jaw like a dog, snarling and growling for one more inch of slack. She would rip him apart with her teeth if she had to.
“You can’t break those chains,” a different voice spoke—familiar, but less so. Arianna turned to find another Dragon leaning against the wall behind her, no doubt just out of reach as well. The Dragon was the color of Fenthri blood, as though the lives of all he’d shattered from Loom below had been poured and hardened into a ruthless mold of irreverent destruction.
She looked down at the shackles around her wrists and ankles. Gold and tempered, she could feel the magic within them object to her attempts to force their locks to disengage. Arianna straightened, swaying slightly with the remnants of the poison that still chilled her veins.
“You have tried to shackle me my whole life. You have yet to succeed,” she addressed the Dragon King with a growl.
He looked mildly amused. “Finnyr told me much about you. It’s a pleasure to see the Rivet genius for myself.”
“Finnyr.” The mention of the man’s name brought Arianna’s attention back to him. The traitor. Underling of the King. “Finnyr Xin.”
“You’ve finally learned my real name. No need for Rafansi any longer then.” His lips moved oddly as he spoke, long scars marring them straight to his cheek. “Stupid little Fen, never probing deeper, taking from my open palm eagerly, never questioning what was in my other hand. Your idiot rebels never saw the dagger coming.”
Arianna merely curled her lips in a snarl. She hated this man with every thread of her being. She loathed him to the point that he didn’t even deserve scalding words. This rage transcended them. “I will kill you,” she swore.
“Go ahead.” He stood.
It was that simple to goad her into lunging forward. Closer, close enough that she could smell him. That his shirt was ruffled by her breath. But he was still too far for her snapping teeth or tethered claws. Arianna let out a scream of agony.
“Did you really think our great King would let me die? That I would lead you to him if I thought your pathetic attempts to kill him would succeed?”
Arianna questioned everything, all her decisions, and the hubris that had led her to this. She had thought she could take the Dragon King on her own, when so many others had failed. It was arrogance in perfect form, befitting more of a Dragon than a Fenthri.
“I never expected to find you on Nova, not to mention in my family’s home.” His voice deepened at the mention of the Xin manor. “Did you come with my brother?”
Cvareh. The name ripped from her chest and shot straight to her eyes. Arianna blinked, furious with herself. She had let her mind cloud and her eyes go blind to what was before them. This was the price of love; this was her punishment for dreaming.
“How did you survive the poisoned organs all those years ago, the rot from too much magic exposed to your pathetic Fen frame?” Finnyr asked, oblivious to her plight. He raised a clawed hand and dragged it along her cheek, drawing a line in gold. “Is it because of this, because you actually did complete the box? Is that what made you strong? Tell me, Arianna.”
Magic laced his tongue. He was trying to use power to influence her. That was an easy trick on Fenthri and weak Chimera. But it was nothing more than a sizzle of annoyance in the back of her mind.
“You will not sway me.” She straightened, gathering her height, nearly as tall as he. “My power is far stronger than yours.”
“But still falls shy of mine.” The Dragon King reminded her of his presence and Arianna turned abruptly, readying some whip of a response.
It was never said.
The moment her eyes met his she felt the icy grip of magic smothering her. She wanted to blink, she wanted to look away, but she was frozen in his stare. It started from her fingertips and swirled into her chest. It trickled up her neck, pressed behind her eyes, whispered through her ears, before it sought entry into her mind.
“Tell me of the Philosopher’s Box, Arianna.”
He was trying to penetrate her thoughts, to own the recesses of her brain. He wanted to crack it like an egg, scramble its contents, and pour them out to pick the information he needed from the plasma. Though neither moved, she felt him pressing on every part of her. He was smothering her, drowning her. It was like his hands were on her throat and his body weighted her down. The only way out would be to give him what he wanted.