“Go safe.”
He wanted to say so much more. But the woman was strong. Cain was strong. There would be many more opportunities, he assured himself, to say all that needed to be said.
Arianna
Wind whipped her hair into the face of the man riding the glider behind her.
“It’s there, ahead.” Cain pointed over her shoulder and Arianna thought, not for the first time, of dislodging him from his spot with a particularly sudden roll.
“Yes, I can see that. Just focus on staying on.” Did he think that she honestly couldn’t tell where the isle of Lysip was? There were only three main islands in Nova and, given that they floated nowhere remotely close to each other, she could only assume that they had successfully made it to Lysip when another gigantic land mass came into view.
“I am on.” He said it as though the fact should be obvious.
“Stay that way.” Arianna ground the words between her teeth. He was very good at acting like he hadn’t nearly fallen off twice already. Though Arianna was equally skilled at acting like one of those hadn’t been her own attempt to shake him.
“The estate is there.” Cain pointed at a massive complex that was unmistakable even to someone who’d never seen it before.
“My eyes still work fine under my goggles.” She sighed loudly, wanting to make sure he heard it over the wind. Arianna pulled on the handles and pitched the glider toward the estate.
As they approached, a sharp tang hit her nose and went straight to her head. Her lungs burned, her magic fighting whatever the wind carried. Arianna slowed, making a wide arc and banking away.
“Why aren’t you—”
“Can’t you smell it?” She pulled on the levers, bringing the glider into a hover.
Cain seemed as though he was going to protest, on principle more than anything else, but when he stopped and took a proper breath his expression changed.
“Coletta.” She said the name they were both thinking.
Arianna lowered the glider, moving slowly over the estate. A glimpse of one of the outdoor arcades, corpses lying prone, confirmed her suspicion.
“Twenty above… what did she do?” Cain whispered in horror.
“She refused to let us win.” Arianna scowled and tried not to be angry or frustrated at the fact that she would not be the one to kill Yveun’s mate. Was one kill really so much to ask for? Her neck ached, reminding her of Coletta’s handiwork all too well.
“She killed her own? No that’s impossible, even for her . . .”
Arianna finally brought the glider down, bringing a hand over her nose to combat the smell of death, blood, and poison. No one rushed to meet them, no one swarmed in greeting or combat. Their only company was wind. The whole manor was unnervingly still.
“I think you need to come to terms with the impossible,” Arianna suggested as she rolled over a corpse with her foot. In the center of the dead woman’s chest was a slit, right between her breasts, that had gone a dark gold from the festering poison that oozed from it.
“Why?” Cain muttered, looking at a loss. “Why would she kill her own?”
“She’d lost.” Arianna looked in the room attached to the landing area they’d chosen at random. Sure enough, no signs of life. “And she couldn’t handle the idea of us besting her house.”
“But—”
“It’s not a Dragon-like thought, I know. But take it from me, this woman knows no limits.”
Cain was silent, respecting the darkness that hovered over her words at the mere mention of Coletta. Arianna knew well enough how low the woman would stoop.
They wandered the estate, looking for signs of life, for any signs of the woman who had reaped such destruction. But none were to be found.
“It’s as if she’s disappeared into thin air.” Cain slammed his fist against a doorframe, splintering the wood and bloodying his hand in anger. “How many bodies have we looked through?”
“Not enough.” Arianna crossed her arms over her chest and thought. If she had been in Coletta’s position, what would she do?
The realization dawned on her as a Rok man stepped through the doorway.
“I found them!” he shouted, presumably to others. “I found the Xin murderers! They have a Fen!”
“Wait, what?” Cain stalled in his hesitation.
Arianna sprang into motion. She lunged for the man, claws drawn and honed on his chest. Before he even had a chance to react, he was dead.
“We have to get back to Ruana.”
“What?” Cain stared at the Dragon she’d just killed, as if debating if he should feel remorse over the death of a Rok.
“We need to go.” Arianna grabbed his forearm and tugged him forward. He began running on his own as they sprinted through the manor, toward the glider, and away from the sound of rising voices.
“I don’t understand.” He skidded to a stop as she jumped on the glider, grabbing both handles firmly.
“Coletta means to pin these murders on Xin. The longer we stay, the more we play into her plans.”
“But she—”
“She’s not here!” Why couldn’t he see that? It had become so painfully obvious to Arianna. It was so objectively clear how stupid they had been.
“Where is she?” The horror in Cain’s voice betrayed the fact that he had finally been brought to understanding.
“Get on,” Arianna demanded, disturbingly calm. She was going to take off with or without him.
Cain made the smart choice and quickly jumped on behind her.
She yanked the handles and her magic shot into the wings, pulling them upward. Arianna leaned into the movement, as if with force of will alone she could see the glider all but teleport back to Ruana. She ran through everything again in her head, but there was no other option.
“You don’t really think she . . .” Cain trailed off, no doubt running through the same probabilities and series of ideas as Arianna.
Coletta was a woman who’d lost everything to one man, who was now not only the Dragon King, but the head of the House she so despised. If she was willing to kill her own for the sake of vengeance against them, what would she do to him?
Arianna swallowed hard and struggled to keep her grip on the handles as her palms grew abnormally slick.
She had to get to Cvareh.
Cvareh
His bed didn’t feel different.
One would think that, lying beneath the weight of kingship, one would sink further into the mattress. But he didn’t feel any differently. In fact, he felt so very much the same that Cvareh was worried he had somehow missed an important step in becoming the Dono.
It did not feel real yet. He, Cvareh Xin, was the Dono for all of Nova.
Every member of House Xin had begun to fawn over him with renewed intent. Every man and woman seemed to want to get him something. He wished he hadn’t sent Arianna and Cain away. House Rok could wait; he needed his two greatest allies to fend off those who would seek to pour praise on him to the point of nausea.