She dropped him and continued upward. There was one thing that seemed to be similar across all races of life: the need for self-preservation.
The gliders were exactly where he told her they would be. Some Dragons attempted to block her passage, but they didn’t put up much of a struggle. Arianna saw Chimera looking on from the edges of the platform, golden chains looped around their necks. The gold reeked of the same scent as her chains had, tempered to the King’s magic alone. Arianna couldn’t break them if she tried. Chimera slaves bound to do the Dragons’ bidding.
Yet they moved as one to the sides of a glider, doing nothing to bar her access.
Arianna sprinted over and mounted the vessel. She rested her hands on the handles, feeling magic surge from her fingertips through the interior channeling of the glider and into the wings.
“You won’t be able to fly it.”
“Yes, I can.” Arianna shifted her weight.
“Only Dragons can.” The man seemed tired, like he’d had this debate countless times. “Chimera don’t have enough magic.”
Arianna held up her palm and drew a claw across it, showing them her gold blood. It mattered little now, keeping her secret up on Nova. Let them talk. Let the Dragons know she was real and she would come to kill them with an army of Perfect Chimera just like her.
The Chimera looked on, stunned, like she was one of the Dragons’ gods come to life. She wished she could tell them that she was, and that she had the power to save them, but they were lost causes. She couldn’t bring them back to Loom with her and she had no doubt that when the Dragon King fell, he would take everything he could with him—assuming they weren’t killed for not barring her access now.
“I can’t save you.” She felt compelled to apologize.
“We know,” a woman replied. There was some comfort in hearing the tones of Fennish spoken again. “But we can save you.”
“What?” Arianna asked in confusion.
“Go. We’ll see to it that you can’t be followed.” The Chimera closed in on the other gliders with tools in hand.
She pushed her magic into the wings, strong and even. Arianna focused her will and commanded the glider like an extension of herself. Up, she demanded mentally, and the glider took to the sky.
Arianna soared on her own for the first time. There was no illusion of another Dragon, no airship captain, no bird-like beast propelling her upward. Just her and her magic. The sight of the glider caused quite a stir, but by the time she was noticed, she was too far for any of them to reach her.
She leaned forward, shooting across the hills and towns of Lysip to its far edge. The Chimera might be on her side, but she couldn’t have absolute faith that they would dismantle every glider before some Dragon got to them. Arianna pushed hard over the edge, spiraling around the underbelly of Lysip.
Finnyr’s face seemed carved into the shadows of the clouds beneath her. She was deliberately leaving her opportunity to kill the man behind. Arianna swallowed, and let it go. She’d waited years; she could wait longer. Charging in recklessly had failed, so when she returned for his head it would be with an army at her side. It would be with his brother helping deliver him to her justice.
Ari began to gain speed, and braced herself for the winds that rippled the surface of the clouds below attempting to bar her entry home. Arianna pushed more magic, steadying herself, sparking a magical corona to encase her. She was ready. She would—
“Stop.” The shout was laced with magic that sizzled across her mind, penetrating the vulnerability of surprise and fractured focus.
Arianna looked toward the source, following the trail of magic back toward Lysip’s underbelly. Her eyes met a pair of fire-red orbs that seemed to glow with raw power in the distance. Let go, they urged her. She stared, vapidly confounded by the presence of the King of the Dragons in the underside of the island. But there he stood on a ledge, holding her eyes and mind in his sway.
Let go, he mentally urged again. Her hands shook.
Between the shock and magical exertion, Arianna’s fingers uncurled. It was only a second—the feeling of air rushing between her digits and over her palms—but she was jolted back into awareness.
A second was all it took.
The magical trail that had been following her the whole time dimmed as the glider lost its fuel. Arianna found herself spiraling in the air, trying to grasp for something that was never where she expected it to be. Her other hand ripped off the remaining handle with the force of the wind.
The clouds were coming fast and she had only one chance to try to get to the glider and form a corona that might be her only shot at survival. She twisted her body in the air, trying to swim through nothing toward the one life raft that would save her from an ocean of death.
Her fingertips touched gold as the clouds engulfed her with their howling winds.
50. Florence
The forest at night was cool, despite summer encroaching on them. Faint light from the gray sky above was almost completely smothered by the tree canopy. The leaves rustled in a faint wind, echoing the restlessness of the Fenthri below.
Florence had followed Derek and Nora to a group of their friends. She recognized James from earlier, but the rest were vaguely familiar faces, a tight-knit group of Alchemists that had no interest in allowing a wanderer to penetrate their ranks.
Perhaps that was the problem with Loom. They had all been told to stay in their place, to follow their guild marks, to not question when it had been their nature for so many years to question everything. The older generations resisted, but Florence’s age and younger? They knew no better. They had grown up accepting the idea that Loom was as it was for some unknown reason, even if they didn’t fully agree with it—even if history didn’t agree with it.
That was the danger of Sophie’s plan. She spoke of sacrifices, but the sacrifices she was risking encompassed the very future of Loom. The longer they spent accepting the Dragons’ rule, the more they would all forget. It was easy for Sophie to say otherwise from where she sat; she was of the last generation. Her heart had been hammered into shape before the Dragons had ever ruled.
The young ones who sat among them now were still taking form. Florence watched silently from her seat at the far end of the table, closest to the open window, as the younger initiates slowly trickled from the room. When they were older, would they even remember a rebellion? What world would they inherit?
“You’ve been quiet,” Nora noted, tearing some bread off the loaf in the center of the table and shoving it into her mouth.
“Just hungry,” Florence lied. Well, it wasn’t a complete lie. She was hungry. But that had nothing to do with her silence.
Nora hummed, clearly unconvinced. “Does it have to do with what the Vicar said?”
“What else?” Florence mumbled, wishing the conversation would change. She had yet to work through the best response to Sophie’s decision.