Tharaiyelagh reflected that he had begun to feel a little too comfortable in the darkness of these buried corridors. Like home. Like the caverns where his brother had guided his first halting steps. It all felt a little claustrophobic, a little clammy and a little dusty. This time, though, he had enough to eat. For now. Until he needed blood.
He stole a sidelong glance at Tempest, who walked in silence at his side. Tempest seemed fairly unbothered by their current subterranean state. Then again, from what Tharaiyelagh had seen of him, very little ever did bother Tempest. Akieryon, on the other hand, quietly hyperventilated every hour or so.
It seemed to be growing more frequent.
Tentatively, Tharaiyelagh gave him a soft nudge with his elbow. “What are you thinking about?”
Akieryon’s shallow breaths faltered, and for a moment Tharaiyelagh thought he would not answer. Then he gulped air, and he blurted, “Ten strides by seven.” After a tiny, tremulous pause, he added, “That was the size of my cell.”
“Oh.” Tharaiyelagh scuffed the toe of his boot in the ash and dust that covered the floors, now more thickly than before. “Mine was six by eight.”
“You were… You said you were a thief?”
Tharaiyelagh nodded, which probably only just showed in the dim glow of the illumination spell. “I was a child alone with no skills. My options were not great.” The corridor ended at a junction. After a glance down at his softly glowing pendant, he directed them down the path to the left. “But I was not a very good thief. The first time I got caught, they branded my right wing and then let me go. The second time, I got to stew in a cell for a little while before they took my wings. The last time, I was bound for the gallows.”
“I’m glad that didn’t go as planned,” Akieryon said, and his flat tone dragged a laugh from Tharaiyelagh.
“Me, too. Lord Baleirithys had heard of me somehow. He came to take me home.”
“Home,” Akieryon repeated in a whisper of pure longing. “Yeah. That’s…” He cleared his throat. “A merciful stranger freed me. The next person I met was Tempest. He recognized that I had nowhere to go. He took me home.”
In the dark, the two of them shared a smile of understanding.
“Tharaiyelagh.” Tempest’s voice cut through their conversation. “I think your bauble is broken.”
Tharaiyelagh looked around, and he saw that the corridor had ended in an oval chamber. Sheets of basalt hung like sagging curtains at odd intervals, and a sort of mural might have decorated the far wall.
“It’s not broken,” Akieryon said. “I think we just need a thief to open the way.” He nudged Tharaiyelagh forward.
A thief. Right.
Concentrating on the task before him, Tharaiyelagh shuffled toward the far wall. Paint had faded and flaked away, he realized, leaving only scratches on plaster. A fresco, once. Leaning closer, Tharaiyelagh could just make out some of the same ancient Dragonish writing that had adorned the archway a lifetime or so ago. Holding the light high, Akieryon stepped up behind him and gave his shoulder a brief squeeze.
“You can do this,” he said softly. “I know you can.”
Tempest paced the perimeter of the chamber, but after a few minutes Tharaiyelagh stopped noticing. He concentrated on the characters scratched into the plaster. They swirled into the decayed design, making them all the more difficult to read. Taking his notebook from his pocket, Tharaiyelagh copied the topmost words first, as the inscription almost certainly began there.
“Fire,” he muttered, “but an archaic form. A venerative. And… and glass? That doesn’t make any sense at all.” His fingertips brushed against the wall, and a rumble shuddered through the floor, unsettling dust as it went.
“Don’t touch it!” Akieryon gasped, a little too late.
“Tharaiyelagh…”
At the note of warning in Tempest’s voice, he turned. Something thundered down the corridor toward them. Something immense. Tempest lifted one hand, and a barrier shimmered, barely visible, at the mouth of the corridor.
“Right.” Tharaiyelagh returned to the inscription.
Their survival depended on it.
Ragheiyont lay on his back, his head pointed toward the enormous tree, his feet downhill. His wings stretched to either side, warming in the sunlight that filtered through the branches overhead. He felt almost at peace here, and he supposed it would not be a bad place to die.
Maybe that last thought was just the headache.
It had started as a dull ache, crawling up his spine and taking root in the back of his skull. By now it had fully established itself, blooming into a pinching behind his eyes and a throbbing where his head rested on the ground. He knew what it meant, the gradual intensifying of his pain, but still he hesitated to mention it. Even the mighty Sword of Heaven could not feed him forever.
A faint smile twisted at his lips. Sword of Heaven. What a silly, pretentious, ominous thing to call someone so kind. Someone so gentle. Someone whose rare smiles felt like a down blanket.
Ugh. What fanciful nonsense.
Ragheiyont heaved a sigh, and realized that he had not drawn a decent breath in a bit too long. Closing his eyes, he tried to count the pace of his breathing, but the throbbing of his arm distracted him. His body felt heavy, and his fingers and toes seemed far away. Perhaps he could simply sink into the earth and rest tangled in the roots of the very tree that imprisoned Bel…
The quillworts beside him stirred, and he slit one eye open to find Seikhiel sitting at his side. Of course it was Seikhiel. Van-Dal was decent enough, in his own way, but he would certainly prefer to spend his time with Tharaiyelagh.
“You need to eat.” With gentle hands, Seikhiel eased Ragheiyont upright. Eat, not feed. Ragheiyont wondered if Seikhiel had finally given up on keeping him alive.
“Where’s our prince friend?” Craning his neck, Ragheiyont peered around.
“He’s down at the pond again.” Seikhiel rummaged around in one of their battered packs. “He’ll join us when he’s finished.”
“Finished with what?” Ragheiyont looked, and he saw Van-Dal at the edge of the water, moving his body slowly through a series of exercises, a warrior’s art designed to keep him limber, strong, and agile. Ragheiyont forced a grin. “Ah. Sexy, eh?” He tried to nudge Seikhiel, but he missed.
“I really wouldn’t know.” Seikhiel handed Ragheiyont a lump of bread as Ragheiyont’s spirits, such as they were, fell.
“Not attracted to men? Or dragons? Or… or…?” Or demons. Swallowing his disappointment, Ragheiyont picked at the bread crust. He had no reason to feel so crestfallen, he told himself. After all, he only wanted Seikhiel’s attention at all because of the blood shared between them.
“Or anyone, really.” The softness of Seikhiel’s voice startled Ragheiyont, and he turned to see the most feared Demonslayer in Heaven sitting with both knees drawn up to his chest, his face tilted to the sky. He looked too vulnerable.
“No one, huh?” He had no reason to care, no reason to want to be the exception. “Is that an angel thing?”
Seikhiel snorted in that way that suggested he was thinking of someone specific. “Distinctly not.”
“Oh. Well, do you—”
“Are you going to eat that or destroy it?” Seikhiel interrupted, and Ragheiyont looked down to see shredded bread in his lap. “It’s the last we’ve got. We’re on to hardtack later, I’m afraid.”
Frowning, Ragheiyont pushed the undisturbed bit of bread back into Seikhiel’s hand, then started picking up the pieces he had torn apart. “If it’s the last,” he said, “then we should share it, right?”
Seikhiel gave him a soft smile, and for a moment Ragheiyont felt stupidly giddy. It must be the anemia, he told himself. There was no other reason for the hollow hammering of his heart and the unsteady spinning of his head. None at all.
The chamber shuddered and jolted, throwing blocks of stone from the ceiling. Tempest stood with one hand raised toward the doorway, holding his barrier there, and the other extended into the room, using another spell to keep the ash and dust settled. Wave after wave of something dark and hot and at least somewhat liquid dashed against the barrier spell, choking the corridor. Tharaiyelagh struggled to focus on the inscription. Tempest would need blood, and soon. No, focus!
As Akieryon moved away from him, toward Tempest, he held the light higher and made it shine brighter. The stale air in the chamber had already heated past unbearable, and Tharaiyelagh dragged his sleeve across his brow. “City,” he said, “I think. It’s got a formal modifier, so maybe some sort of capitol. Then a possessive, and heart with a venerative. Burn and be made glass?” If he had more time, he could make sense of the phrasing, ornate and archaic as it was. But time was the commodity he lacked.
Something solid and heavy struck the barrier, and Tempest groaned with the strain of holding it. Tharaiyelagh spared him a glance, and he saw Akieryon at his side, one arm around his waist, supporting him. Another wave of solid matter battered the barrier, and Tempest’s wings shimmered into view. Tharaiyelagh gulped a breath of the scalding air. He had to decipher this inscription.
“Seek you true north.” Huh. Though the grammar was archaic, that phrase parsed easily enough. Beneath it lay an indentation, about the size of a thumbprint.
“We’ve been going west!” Akieryon yelped. Tempest staggered a little, and the corridor had taken on an ominous orange glow.
“North,” Tharaiyelagh repeated, his brain turning over and over. “North!” Snatching the pendant from his neck, he pressed it into the indentation.
The wall peeled open like the curling of old parchment.
Seikhiel and Ragheiyont sat together, nibbling at their last bites of bread. Twice Ragheiyont had tried to give Seikhiel extra, though they had just enough to share. Seikhiel decided against chiding him for the attempts. When no bread remained, he pushed his wings from invisible energy to solid matter, and he lifted them to shield Ragheiyont from view, which was unnecessary but still felt right. He drew a blade and pressed it against his arm, in the same place he had already cut many times before. Ragheiyont’s hand over his own stopped him.
“Don’t waste your strength.” Ragheiyont met and held his gaze, giving him a heartbreaking little smile. “I know you can’t feed me much longer. If no one else shows up, I’m done.” His stare hardened. “I won’t take you with me.”
Dread squeezed Seikhiel around the ribs and turned his stomach. He had hoped to avoid this moment, but here they were. Setting aside his weapon, he knelt closer to Ragheiyont, whose gaze never wavered. “I won’t let you die.”
“That’s not up to you. An’ you’ve done more than enough already t’make up for your guilt or whatever.” For just a moment, Ragheiyont glanced away, glanced at the gold-white feathers of Seikhiel’s wings. “It’s enough, y’know. The way you’ve looked after me. All kind and patient and…” He blinked away a faint sheen of tears. “I guess it’s probably just that I’ve been on my own so much and all but…” He drew a shuddering breath, sagged a little, then concluded in a hoarse whisper, “Woulda stolen ya if I could, jo.”
Stolen? Seikhiel considered how Ragheiyont’s swift smile and dancing blue eyes could bring light into his darkened world. He studied the way Ragheiyont’s current low spirits made him feel, as though an unseen fist slowly crushed the air from his lungs. He swallowed his uncertainty. If Ragheiyont was dying—and he had to acknowledge the possibility—then he needed to hear this. “I’m… not entirely certain you haven’t.”
Ragheiyont’s fingers curled through the baldric where it crossed Seikhiel’s chest. His grip tightened, and he tugged. Seikhiel yielded. Ragheiyont’s face tilted to meet his, and though he knew he should not, Seikhiel allowed it. He allowed their lips to meet.
Rather against his better judgment, Seikhiel had explored kissing in the past, always to the same effect. Warm lips, damp lips. Dull and unnecessary. Today he had no expectations beyond offering Ragheiyont some small comfort. If Ragheiyont decided to survive…
The sting of a sharp fang scratching against his lip startled him. Seikhiel gasped and flinched, but Ragheiyont moved with him, clinging all the more tightly as the taste of blood blossomed between them. His tongue flicked against Seikhiel’s lip, and he made tiny noises in the back of his nose, noises of intense need. His wings angled forward, and the claws on their upper joints gripped Seikhiel’s shoulders with bruising force.
The dragons were right. Sharing blood could be shockingly intimate.
For a dizzying moment, Seikhiel wanted to wrap his arms and wings around Ragheiyont, to hold him tight, to kiss him until neither of them had any strength left. Instead, he broke away. With a strangled little sob, Ragheiyont slumped face-first against Seikhiel’s chest. Waves of regret washed over Seikhiel.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, not trusting his voice just yet. His heart seemed to jolt around inside him, disrupting his lungs and his stomach. “I’m so sorry.” If word got back to Heaven that Seikhiel had kissed a demon, Ragheiyont’s life would be worth less than a sack of soggy turnip greens. Worse still, he had enjoyed the kiss. Why? Because of the blood?
Ridiculous. Absolutely absurd.
“No, no, no,” Ragheiyont was saying, his voice muffled and a little strained. Seikhiel tried to push him back, to look at him and assess the damage done by his lapse in judgment, but Ragheiyont clung like a limpet. “No, y’ain’t sorry, ‘cuz sorry means”—here he gave a wet sniffle—”sorry means y’don’t mean t’do it again.”
Seikhiel gave the matter serious consideration. Would he kiss Ragheiyont again? In a better world, a world without peril to the young dragon, probably. The experience had stirred questions in him. Questions, and assorted biological anomalies. For now, though, he had to make Ragheiyont’s safety his priority.
“Sorry,” he said gently, “means that you’re in greater danger for our having kissed.” He tried to brush Ragheiyont’s plumage back from his face, but Ragheiyont ducked his head away from the touch. “You mustn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t bear it if he—if someone hunted you because of me.”
“C’n take care of myself,” Ragheiyont mumbled sullenly, but he sat back and he scrubbed at his face with his sleeve. “Y’really do care.” He sounded so mystified. Seikhiel wanted nothing so much as to bundle him up and take him home for a soothing cup of tea. Did dragons enjoy tea? It seemed he ought to know the answer to that.
“Of course I care.” Not yet ready to give up on feeding Ragheiyont, Seikhiel settled his wings comfortably against his back.
A little spark of something wicked glinted in Ragheiyont’s eyes. Perhaps a hint of a renewed will to live? Ragheiyont slouched to the side and grinned at Seikhiel. “But I’m not sexy.”
“Not even a little bit.”
Ragheiyont was silent for a while, long enough that Seikhiel worried that he had hurt his feelings. Dragons were known for their vanity, after all. But then Ragheiyont nodded in a slow, thoughtful way. “That’s better, I think,” he said, at least partly to himself. “Caring is better than acknowledging how undeniably gorgeous I am.”
How should he respond to that? He could laugh it off, or he could turn it into another encouragement for Ragheiyont to feed, to take a little blood—a thought which suddenly brought warm feelings in his chest and a swirl of confusion in his head. Seikhiel looked at Ragheiyont, and Ragheiyont gave him a sly little smile.
Seikhiel opened his mouth to reply, but a low rumbling sound stopped his words. He sprang up to a crouch, short sword in hand, ready to protect Ragheiyont. The ground beneath him shuddered, and at the foot of the hill the air seemed to split open. A gate! Someone stumbled through, trying to shield his eyes from the sudden sunlight.
“Tarali!” Ragheiyont started to his feet, no doubt to run to his brother, but he lost his footing and sank back to his knees. Tharaiyelagh’s head snapped around toward the sound of his brother’s voice. Clouds of ash and noxious gas billowed through the gateway after him, and then two figures shot through, one carrying the other, wings straining under the effort. Red hot stones pelted the hillside, sinking into the soil and igniting small patches of quillwort. Magma poured out of the gate just as it slammed closed.
Akieryon and Tempest landed in a tumbled heap, but immediately Tempest struggled to his feet again. He lifted one hand, and water swirled up out of the pond, improbably dousing the magma and all of the small fires. Then he collapsed like a discarded doll.
“Tempest!” Akieryon threw himself across the prone prince. He bared his shoulder and guided Tempest’s fangs to his exposed flesh. Everyone looked away.
Seikhiel started down the hill, and Ragheiyont stumbled along close by his side. When he saw Tharaiyelagh leap joyously into Van-Dal’s arms, Ragheiyont gave a short laugh. “I thought he was in love with the other prince. The one still in Seyzharel.”
“Baleirithys?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
Van-Dal scooped Tharaiyelagh up in his arms and squeezed him tight. “You smell of volcano,” he declared, right before depositing Tharaiyelagh in the pond.
Tharaiyelagh came up sputtering and flinging water everywhere, but he beamed with the same sunny smile as his brother. “But where—” His gaze fell upon Seikhiel and Ragheiyont, taking in their hands that had joined at some point that Seikhiel could not remember, as well as Ragheiyont’s unhealthy pallor and his bandaged arm already starting to bleed through again. It felt like his sharp eyes missed nothing, and in an instant he splashed back out of the pond.
“Rahi!” Tharaiyelagh ran to his brother, shedding droplets as he went. He seized Ragheiyont in a soggy and still sulfurous embrace. “You must tell me everything.”
There was one detail Seikhiel fervently hoped he would omit.
Feriel stood amid the hanging crystals, not really hearing their soft chiming in the evening breeze. His time ran short, his one and only chance to hide the evidence, and yet somehow he had come here. The Memorial Oak stood before him in silent reproach.
He thrust his hand into his pocket, and his fingers closed around the Sigil. Seikhiel’s Sigil. The unyielding metal bit into his skin as his grip tightened. His eyes found the only crystal that mattered.
Go on. Tell me that I’ve done everything wrong and I deserve my fate.
The crystal did no such thing. It merely swung in a small circle, twisting in the breeze. The ornate letter L caught the light from time to time, and Feriel felt worse than ever.
I can’t set anything to rights. I’m too far lost for that. I’ve watched too many good soldiers meet gruesome fates. I’ve failed. In the end, I can accomplish nothing. I belong here with you, my dearest friend.
He could flee, of course, but that would only draw attention. And then what would become of Seikhiel when he did return? Feriel had never doubted that he would return. Men like Seikhiel would never desert. Not while he still felt like he had something to protect.
The breeze shivered through the branches of the Oak, and Feriel’s grip tightened on the Sigil. He still had to get rid of the thing. Standing here feeling sorry for himself would accomplish nothing. He drew a deep breath, and he took a step back.
“Feriel.”
Every muscle in his body tensed. His blood chilled and his breath stilled. This was it. His doom had come. Forcing a mask of calm on his face, Feriel turned and gave his commanding officer a brief salute.
“Curious that I should find you here.” Niseriel wore that serene expression that meant that he was furious. The corners of his icy eyes squeezed as though he might smile. “Contemplating young Keilel’s rash actions?”
Feriel unclenched his fist, but kept his hand in his pocket. “I saw it happen, sir.” Saw every bloody moment of it.
“It’s a tragedy.” Turning away, Niseriel gestured with a small tilt of his head. “Come. We have much to do.”
“But what can we do?” Feriel fell into step beside Niseriel too easily. Shame slithered around inside him and settled at the pit of his stomach. “Lord Michael said—”
“I know what he said,” Niseriel scoffed. “It doesn’t matter. He knows nothing.” He slid an arm around Feriel’s shoulders and tugged him close. “You,” he breathed against Feriel’s ear, “will use your precious magic to bring my Seikhiel back to me.”
Feriel shivered in the fading light of day.