Standing shoulder to shoulder with Darian, surrounded by Liliana’s brood, I had the unpleasant realization that the bastards were clever.
Not brave. Not noble. Not even especially disciplined.
Clever.
Orothyn and Nyssara barked orders from opposite sides of the ruined square, stacking their family’s strengths against our weaknesses with the ruthless efficiency of predators who had survived too long by never fighting fair.
Nyssara slid into place with Veyrkos, both of them circling low and fast. Rhoskaryn moved to Darian’s flank, trying to keep him turning, trying to make the gold dragon divide his attention. Above us, Orothyn beat his wings and hovered over the broken manor, already gathering power into the crystal floating before his chest.
He was planning something.
Of course he was.
“Orothyn’s stalling,” Darian growled beside me, smoke curling between his teeth.
“I noticed.”
“Good. I was worried all that divine brooding had finally blinded you.”
“Keep talking and I’ll let Mira know you got sentimental in battle.”
He gave a low, vicious laugh. “Survive long enough to tattle, then.”
Before I could answer, Orrythis and Caelythe lunged for me.
They fought like desperate children trying not to disappoint the adults watching them. That made them dangerous in the ugliest way. Their attacks had no elegance, no rhythm I could settle into. Claws came for my wings, my legs, my throat—anything that might pin me to the ground long enough for Orothyn to finish whatever prayer he was building in the air.
Orrythis struck high. Caelythe came low.
I twisted out of the first swipe, caught Caelythe’s horn with one claw, and drove her face-first into the street. Stone cracked beneath her skull. Orrythis slammed into my side before I could finish her, teeth finding the edge of my shoulder. I snarled and shoved Judgment’s light through my claws, burning a line across his ribs.
He screamed.
Good.
Pain made him sloppy.
Across the square, Darian was doing better than I was, but not by much. Gold scales gleamed through the smoke as he met Rhoskaryn head-on, their bodies colliding with enough force to shake rubble from the surrounding buildings. Veyrkos darted in whenever Darian committed to a strike, slicing at his wings, his haunches, the vulnerable spaces between scale plates.
Nyssara waited.
That was her danger.
She did not waste herself. She watched for the half-second where Darian’s weight shifted wrong, then struck like a knife through silk.
Darian roared as she opened a long wound across his side.
“Need help?” I shouted.
He snapped his jaws around Rhoskaryn’s forearm and crushed down until bone split. “I’m touched by your concern.”
“That means no?”
“That means handle your own shit.”
Fair.
Caelythe rose again, blood pouring down one side of her face. She and Orrythis pressed me harder, driving me step by step away from Darian. I realized too late that was the point.
Separate us.
Make us answer different threats.
Leave Orothyn untouched.
Above us, the crystal brightened.
Orothyn lifted his head to the sky.
“Liliana, Mother, I beseech you!” he roared, voice ripping through the smoke and festival ruin. “Grant your children strength. Come before us and kill this false god and his golden mongrel!”
Darian’s head snapped up. “Golden mongrel?”
I barked a laugh despite myself. “That’s what offended you?”
“I have standards.”
The air stirred.
The crystal’s purple glow curdled into sickly green.
Then Liliana laughed.
Not present. Not physically.
But her voice rolled out of the gem, soft and delighted and intimate as breath against the ear.
That laugh struck deeper than any claw.
The crystal pulsed.
Dark green beams erupted from it in every direction.
No aim. No mercy. No loyalty.
Just power.
One clipped my right wing and tore across my side, burning through scale and flesh in a clean, screaming line. I nearly dropped out of the air. Another beam speared downward toward Darian, and he threw himself sideways, taking a glancing hit across one horn instead of through the skull.
Caelythe was not as lucky.
Orrythis saw it coming before she did.
“Duck!” he screamed.
Too late.
The beam took her head clean off.
Her body staggered three steps, then collapsed beneath Orothyn’s hovering shadow.
For one stunned second, even the brood faltered.
Nyssara rounded on Orothyn. “Shut that thing down before it kills us all!”
Orothyn did not even look at her.
He pushed more power into the crystal.
More beams lashed outward.
Madness.
Beautiful, stupid madness.
I seized Caelythe’s corpse and hurled it upward at him, hoping to break either his concentration or the gem itself. Orothyn noticed fast, too fast, and focused the beams into the body. Caelythe disintegrated midair in a burst of ash and emerald light.
But for that split second, his attention left me.
That was enough.
I launched upward.
The air tore around my wings as I climbed. Judgment’s light gathered along my claws, sharp and white-gold. I swiped for the crystal.
Missed.
But my strike caught Orothyn across the chest, carving through scales and drawing blood bright enough to glow in the night.
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He roared and slammed into me.
We fought above the city, wing to wing, claw to claw, each impact driving shockwaves through smoke and shattered fireworks. He was heavier than I expected, older in the muscle than his courtly mask had implied. Orothyn fought like a dragon who had survived ambushes, storms, betrayals, and business deals with people worse than bandits. Every bite was placed. Every tail strike tried to force my wings out of alignment. Every feint protected the crystal.
Below us, Darian was being slowly cornered.
Rhoskaryn attacked from the front, all brutal strength and reckless hate. Veyrkos kept to Darian’s blind side, darting in with smaller, precise strikes meant to bleed him. Orrythis had recovered enough to join them, fury making him louder than smarter.
Darian took one hit.
Then another.
Then he did something vicious.
He let Rhoskaryn think he had driven him back.
“Darian!” I shouted.
“I see it!”
“No, you don’t!”
“I said I see it!”
Veyrkos lunged for the wound Nyssara had opened earlier.
Darian dropped his shoulder, let the strike glance off scale, and snapped his tail backward. The blow caught Veyrkos across the ribs and launched him directly into the path of one of Orothyn’s uncontrolled beams.
The beam tore through him.
Veyrkos hit the ground in pieces.
Darian looked up at me through blood and smoke. “I saw it.”
“I hate when you’re right.”
“You love it.”
“I tolerate it under duress.”
Orothyn screamed and unleashed another barrage.
This time he did not focus it.
The beams went wild.
Orrythis, blinded by rage, charged Darian at the same moment Rhoskaryn came in low. Darian caught Rhoskaryn by the throat, buried his teeth deep, and bit down until the life went out of him. Orrythis was two strides away when another beam punched through his chest and burned him hollow from the inside.
Nyssara barely avoided the next blast, folding her wings tight and dropping hard enough to smash through a roof below.
The brood was killing itself now.
Liliana laughed again from the crystal.
“Oh, my boy,” she purred. “Are you having trouble against my pet?”
Orothyn’s rage stuttered into panic.
“Yes, Mother,” he snarled, though the words tasted like humiliation. “Give me guidance!”
I saw my opening.
The crystal hovered before him, bright and unstable. I drove forward, claws extended, Judgment’s fragments burning beneath my scales.
Almost there.
Liliana’s voice turned sweet.
“Very well.”
A concussive wave exploded from Orothyn.
It hit me square in the chest and threw me backward through open air. My wings folded wrong for half a heartbeat. The sky flipped. Calimport spun beneath me in fire and ruin.
Then the crystal embedded itself into Orothyn’s chest.
He screamed.
Not in triumph.
In agony.
His body began to grow around it, bone cracking, scale splitting, muscle swelling to contain the power now forcing its way through him. The gem sank deeper and deeper until green light pulsed beneath every plate of his chest. His eyes burned the same color. His wings expanded, tearing ragged at the edges. Horns lengthened. His jaw distorted.
Liliana had not blessed him.
She had used him.
That should have meant something to him.
It did not.
“No more games,” Orothyn roared.
He came at me like a falling tower.
I met him head-on.
The first collision drove the air from my lungs. His new strength was obscene. He slammed me down toward the city, but I twisted midfall and raked both hind claws across his belly. He answered by striking my skull with enough force to blur the world white.
Darian came in from below, gold wings flaring. He hit Orothyn’s side and drove him off me.
“Still alive?” he called.
“Unfortunately.”
“Good. I’d hate to explain to Mira that you died dramatically before I could insult you properly.”
Orothyn caught Darian with a backhanded claw and sent him crashing through a broken tower.
My heart lurched.
Darian rose from the rubble almost immediately, shaking dust and stone from his mane of golden spines.
“I’m fine!” he shouted.
“You look fine!”
“I am very obviously lying!”
I dove beneath Orothyn’s next breath and drove my horns into his chest.
The crystal pulsed against my skull.
For one instant, I felt it.
Liliana’s magic.
Her command.
Her bloodline.
Her trail.
The same connection that had let her empower him could be stolen.
That thought should have frightened me.
Instead, it felt like revelation.
Orothyn seized my neck in both claws, trying to wrench me away. I locked my foreclaws around his chest and dug in, tearing through scale toward the crystal.
He panicked.
Good.
Darian saw it and understood before I had to speak.
“Hold him!” he roared.
“I’m fucking trying!”
Darian launched upward and clamped his jaws around Orothyn’s wing joint. Gold-dragon fire erupted from his mouth, pouring into the joint until scale, tendon, and bone blackened. Orothyn shrieked and tried to twist away.
I used the movement.
My claws closed around the exposed edge of the crystal.
It burned.
Not heat. Worse. Identity. Hunger. Liliana’s will trying to tell my hand it belonged to her.
I smiled through the pain.
“No.”
Then I ripped the crystal free.
Orothyn convulsed.
Power spilled from the wound in green torrents, and I did the stupidest, most necessary thing available.
I absorbed it.
Not all.
Not cleanly.
Enough.
The magic slammed into me like a second heart trying to beat in the wrong chest. My body arched. My wings flared wide. Every old scar lit beneath my scales. For one terrible breath, I felt Liliana’s attention snap fully toward me from wherever she hid.
There you are, I thought.
Orothyn sagged in my grip, suddenly less god-touched and far more mortal beneath his dragon hide.
Darian released the ruined wing and fell back, coughing smoke. “Please tell me that was part of a plan.”
“It is now.”
“That is never reassuring.”
Orothyn lunged one last time, jaws wide, hatred and terror mixed in his eyes.
I let him come close.
Then I drove the stolen power and my own radiant breath into him at once.
The blast tore through his chest from the inside out.
Orothyn’s roar broke apart into light.
He fell, massive and burning, crashing into the fields beyond the worst of the city, far enough from the main roads that his death did not take another hundred innocents with it.
For a second, the night held still.
Then Nyssara rose from the ruins near the sea, wounded and furious.
Darian landed hard beside me, breathing ragged. Blood ran down his side from a deep spear-like wound she had given him earlier in the fight.
He looked at Orothyn’s falling body, then at me.
“Did we win?”
I looked across the ruined city, toward the remaining movement, the fleeing crowds, the smoke, the direction of Mira’s camp beyond the wall.
“Not yet.”
Nyssara screamed and came for us.
Darian sighed, lowering into a fighting stance beside me. “Of course not.”
We met her together.
Gold fire and radiant judgment.
Claw, tooth, wing, and blade.
By the time Nyssara died, the eastern sky had begun to pale.
And when it was finally over, I collapsed beside Darian in the wreckage.