“I do not need you to escort me to the dining room this evening, Ulia,” Coletta said as they traversed back through her garden.
“As you wish.” The girl gave a small bow. Coletta appreciated her unquestioning obedience, even when she broke form. Actions like that kept Ulia close. If the girl knew it or not, they kept her alive.
“I would, however, ask you to see that wine is set out.” She felt the corners of her mouth twitch again in a near-smile. But letting the same person see her smile more than once in a single week—in a single day no less—was far too much. “Go to the cellars. There should be a newer vintage from a winery here on Lysip.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Coletta gave the girl a nod of dismissal and started in the opposite direction.
Yveun’s halls were cluttered compared to hers. Ironwork, reminiscent of the fanned wings of a Rider’s glider, arched over her with curling tendrils of metal lacework reaching down in wide, concentric circles. Beyond was what Coletta had termed the sailcloth room, a billowing half-glass roof that looked like the puffed sail of a lake boat. On and on, the walls were adorned and the floor gleamed with a proud, polished finish.
On and on, Coletta ignored it all.
She listened, but there was not another soul to be heard. Even magic hearing would not have revealed a single sound. Yveun had likely sent away every Dragon, high and low.
Nearing his chambers, Coletta pressed on a wall. It looked no different from anything else, the wood paneling near flawless. Near flawless. A small groove betrayed the narrow door that swiveled open at her insistent force.
Clicking the door back into place, Coletta found herself in an unlit, narrow hall that ran parallel to the first. There were many secrets in the manor, and she made it a point to know them all.
Coletta walked without light, running her fingertips along the wall as she proceeded with measured steps. She avoided pushing magic into her eyes, for that could be sensed—or worse, smelled. The darkness slowed her steps, prevented the carelessness of haste that might give her away.
It seemed, however, there were some allowances that could be made for noise.
Yveun, for all his strengths, was still a man and a Dragon. A man with desires, and a Dragon bent on domination. When the two forces combined, the results were hardly silent.
Coletta heard them—heavy breathing, gasping, grunting, growling. Ahead, a few beams of gray light broke through the darkness. Coletta walked toward them like a beacon.
Where the main hall sloped downward, her private corridor remained level. She now found herself peering down at a familiar room—Yveun’s private sleeping chamber.
Blood dripped from his back where long gashes, already healing, had been dragged across his skin. Beneath him, a woman as green as Coletta’s fauna writhed and arched her back as they rutted like dogs and sounded much the same. Yveun’s face twisted, his head thrown back in a snarl of pleasure that was nearly drowned out by the smacking of his hips against the woman’s backside.
It was the first time she’d laid eyes on the creature her little buds had selected for their Dono. Fae, they had said her name was. Little and less was known about her, but Coletta knew the one thing that mattered more than all others: Yveun had taken a liking to her.
Unlike Leona, he had charged forward with this one. He had mounted the creature like an animal, and like an unbroken boco, she was fighting back. The lovers rolled over, and Fae swiped at Yveun’s face, drawing yet more blood. He snarled in kind, digging his own claws down her arm.
Their mouths met before smearing golden blood over each other’s skin.
They were drunk on each other. Coletta watched as her life mate, her king, sexed another woman in a way he had never done to her. His face contorted in bliss; Coletta looked away, having both seen and affirmed enough.
Fae might own the Dono, but Coletta owned Fae. Everything was moving according to plan on Nova. Now, before she’d give in to the demands of her quietly grumbling stomach, she would check in with her odd little Fenthri to see how things were progressing down on Loom.
Arianna
When dusk settled upon the world, Arianna was nothing more than a white smudge against a gray sky.
She peered down at Holx through her modified goggles from the rooftop of one of the airship yards. She’d been scouting since the afternoon, observing people’s comings and goings, studying the flow of machine and man alike.
The home of the Ravens’ Guild was unnaturally quiet. Or perhaps the quiet was too natural. Arianna heard howling winds and cawing birds, benign sounds at odds with the screeching trikes and revving engines Holx was famous for.
The one guild the Dragons supposedly hadn’t touched had, nevertheless, ground to a slow crawl in the wake of the fall of their world. It was unnervingly somber, a quiet testament to the devastation the Dragon King had reaped from his sky city.
Malice sparked within her and was promptly quieted by the thought of Yveun. Looking down on her, his claws on her flesh . . .
Arianna rubbed her neck, urging tension and the memory away.
She had a job to do, and there wasn’t nearly enough time to properly prepare for it. All she had was some basic information from Louie—oddly specific in some areas, completely blank in others—and whatever she could observe before nightfall.
It wasn’t nearly enough time to break into the guild’s hall.
As the sun fell behind the clouds that perpetually blanketed Loom’s sky, Arianna rose. She held out her hand. Magic pulled against her palm, drawing out a line from her winch box like a serpent from its den. The cord was cast in gold and tempered to her magic alone, the closest thing to a loyal friend she had at the moment. It was time to shake off the dust that had settled on her shoulders in Nova.
Arianna looped the cord around a heavy pipe that ran around the rooftop, clipping the line to itself. She walked to the edge of the building and put everything else behind her. Up here, she didn’t need to be Arianna the Master Rivet. She could cast aside the loose ties to Nova as Ari Xin’Anh Bek. She would ignore that her shroud of anonymity as the inventor of the Philosopher’s Box, the Perfect Chimera, had been lifted. She certainly wouldn’t spare a thought for Arianna, the rebel who had twice failed to slay the Dragon King.
She was merely the White Wraith—nothing more, nothing less. She was a vessel for her benefactors. All the rest, she would leave on the rooftop.
With a wide step and a whir of gears, Arianna tipped herself over the edge.