Dragon Cipher Page 10

  A second later, the sound of massive wings beating the air came to my ears, and Safyr reappeared. His dragon form was stunning. He was the largest dragon I had ever seen.

  His blue scales gleamed in the sunlight and his claw-tipped wings spread so far to either side that they blocked my view of anything else. He was so magnificent that it was hard to even think of anything else. The sight of him filled my consciousness, just as his body had already filled mine.

  With the golden tablet tucked securely under my arm, I climbed over the railing too. I saw his blue eyes wheeling shades of blue at me as he waited. Somehow, the sight of those eyes reassured me. He was still the same person. He had a different form, but I saw him in there.

  I saw him.

  I knew he was the man that I loved, though I did not trust him. The man that I wanted, although I knew I should not.

  He was a contradiction, but he was mine.

  I clambered onto his back and took a seat high up against the spines that would offer me a handhold. With no further communication, he flew, swift and straight. In a moment, we had left the tall building behind, then the island itself. We climbed high in the air, crossing the ocean to the south.

  After a span of time that I could not identify at all, we reached our destination: the portal that would take us to the stronghold of the most vicious dragons on Elter. Safyr swooped lower, toward the blue ocean, until we met the swirling, cycling spot of pure energy.

  I knew little of how the dragons ran their political business, but I was sure he should not be able to operate a portal belonging to a House other than his own. The dragons of House Caeruleus, in whose town I was born, used only their own portal between this world and ours. I was certain of it.

  Yet he opened the red dragons’ portal with ease, even knowing it would take us into the heart of their territory.

  The man did everything with ease, yet he felt none in his heart.

  Or in his tattered soul.

  Our journey lasted only a moment. When we arrived, I blinked at the bright light of the Elterian sun. The wind had whipped all around us, so that we were covered with a layer of fine sand. Elter was a planet of endless desert, from which mountain strongholds rose, each claimed by a dragon House. I could smell the unmistakable scent of reptiles. Sand snakes and dragons were everywhere in this land.

  We flew again, this time against the reddish Elterian sky. My breath caught at the nostalgia panging inside me. I had not been gone long, but I had missed it. It was my home.

  Yet what was there to miss? This place was nothing but doom for humans. Peasants had been the playthings of dragons ever since the Houses had come to power. When the dragon Founders had created the emotional restrictions that bound dragons within each House, they had condemned peasants to death. Only through the murder of my people were dragons able to gather the depth of feeling required to make their magic. I felt no sympathy for their need, only disgust.

  Ahead of us lay the tall, jagged mountain top where House Rubellus made its stronghold. Safyr flew us there, as sure as an arrow. There was no sign of life, either on the landing stones at the top, or in the town below. I knew that the red dragons were poor caretakers of their land and people. They focused all their energies on war, leaving nothing left for proper husbandry of their resources.

  Safyr’s great wings brought us to rest on the landing stones at the top of the mountain. The flat area was intended for many dragons to use daily as they accessed their stronghold, but the place was deserted. No red dragons came out to stop us from trespassing. No angry, crimson-eyed men came running up to the pair of us as we entered a space where we had no right to be.

  Only one man of House Rubellus stood at the doorway to the stronghold. He leaned against the stone wall, watching us with studied indifference. Did it worry him that his House had no other dragons there to back him up?

  Safyr shimmered and blurred with light as he took the form of a man again. He was naked, but he would never don a red cloak. They were there, on hooks, ready for each dragon to take as he went inside. But Safyr would never touch a red one. I knew that much about him.

  Naked and muscled, he strode toward the man who stood waiting for us. The red dragon shifter sneered at him. His face was ugly with disdain, but also verging on the desperate.

  “Safyr, you have come here. You dare? How could you find the audacity to use our portal?” He did not say aloud that such a thing should not have been possible, but I saw that in his face as well.

  I looked closer. It was the same man who had grabbed me last night at the club. Here, on his own world, on his own terms, was the red dragon who had tried to hurt me. He had wanted to punish me in cold blood for the crime of being an Elterian peasant. There was nobody we could have met here who would have alarmed me more.

  My hands grew clammy, despite the heat.

  “I dare much, Brick.” Safyr was impassive. “I have business here. Stand aside.”

  “I will not. I don’t know how you were able to use our House Rubellus portal. It should have been impossible for you to even activate.” Something wavered in Brick’s expression. Was he finally realizing that Safyr was far stronger than he? That the mask of ease that the blue-eyed man habitually wore had nothing at all to do with his true self?

  “There is very little that is impossible for me.” Safyr turned to me, keeping me behind him, safe from Brick. “Laurel, see if you can learn anything more from the tablet, now that we have it on the mountain where it was made.”

  Brick’s eyes followed me as I lifted the golden tablet and ran my fingers lightly along it. He was curious, but he stayed back. His interest in our purpose there temporarily triumphed over his wish to threaten us. The long red cloak that swept from his shoulders to the stone floor seemed to wink danger at me, showing me the color of the blood of all my people on this single dragon shifter’s form.

  I felt the magic of the golden tablet course through my fingers, rising up my arms, swirling in the air around me. I knew that I burned as brightly as magnesium, and I knew that the flare of power could not last. I would come to the end of my strength, and I would die. That would happen soon enough.

  Could I finish the job in time?

  All I needed to do was to pry open the coded magic of the tablet. It held another dimension inside it, imprisoning the part of Safyr’s soul that he had lived without for a million years. I could solve this. I could. I probed at the meaning of the markings on the surface, finding my way into the spell.

  Then, in a rush, I broke through the external barriers that wrapped around the magical prison. I saw into the spell that had held it tightly closed. As I unraveled it, I learned everything there was to know about Safyr’s soul.

  And I dropped the tablet. It made a harsh sound as it hit the stones of the landing platform. It clattered, even bouncing a little. Both men flinched.

  Brick still looked uncertain at what we were doing there.

  Safyr looked as if he was in agony. I’d made it worse, first by deciphering the codes that held the tablet locked, and then by refusing to have any more to do with it.

  But the real despair lay within my own heart. For I now understood who and what my fated mate was.

  I knew he was my eternal mate, yes.

  And I knew we were both damned for it.

  For the magic that had held him back for all those years had also absorbed the story of who he was and how he came to be there. I had seen, as if I were watching it, a spectator in the past, everything he had done. He was ruthless, a killer, a bringer of destruction to humans.

  With a darkness in the pit of my heart that I did not think I could ever overcome, I admitted it to myself.

  Safyr was the dragon responsible for all the evil I knew.

  All the suffering that the peasants of my land had been through was his fault. It was he who had condemned my people to be picked off by dragons. It was he who had set in motion a new world order in which dragons were so stunted that they thought of nothing but
consuming us.

  All that, and more, I now laid at his door. Those were his crimes.

  Chapter 16: Safyr

  Hot regret roiled within me. And guilt, so much guilt. So much sorrow, and yes, irritation at having had to reveal all this to the woman I loved so dearly. Couldn’t I have gone on without her knowing who I was? I wished that were true, but I knew it would never have worked. We had always been on a collision course with the truth.

  I was a mess.

  “You knew that, though? Right, Laurel?” I turned back to her, almost begging. “You knew there was so much here that you wouldn’t want to see. But you came anyway.”

  “I came to help you,” she said hollowly. “Because I love you. But I never, ever wanted to know these things. Do you really think that I would have come if I knew what you’d done?”

  Brick stood where he was, blocking the doorway. “What magic is this?” He bellowed his question at us, but did not wait for an answer. “I know you, peasant witch!” He ran the few steps toward Laurel, grabbing her wrists and holding her. “You are the woman from last night at that pathetic club. But what I remember most is your twisted magic! You are a dirty, conniving peasant. Your plan is to undermine dragons to free your kind? You will never, ever achieve that here at House Rubellus.”

  Laurel stared at him without answering. Finally, she took a tiny step backward. “I will.” Her voice was so low that it was hard to hear, but she was determined to stand up to him. “I will,” she repeated with more strength. “Now take your hands off me, you dragon.”

  Brick made a fatal mistake. He did not unhand my mate.

  Instead of releasing her, he pushed forward, gripping her even more tightly. His expression was insistent and ugly as he used his greater bulk to menace her. She lifted just one finger from where her hands lay trapped in his.

  She was about to strike at him.

  Where her finger crooked, within the only part of her that she could shake free of his twisting hands, she was gathering light. Her magical abilities were stronger than ever, now that she had seen the inner workings of the ancient tablet. She would strike him with more force than she had used at the club. Did she know how much stronger she was now? Was she aware that she would do more damage to him that she intended?

  I could not let her hold the responsibility of this. She could not kill him. She might hurt him or maim him. But it would end badly for her as well. Her magic would forever carry the taint of having been used in an attempt to take life. I would not allow that to happen to her sweet, true spirit.

  But I had no such compunctions about my own actions.

  I had no honor, not one shred of it left.

  I drew my dragon magic from within me, from around me, from the very air itself. The air hummed as I gathered the strength I needed. It took only an instant. The air filled with tension, with the smell of something about to catch fire and burn wildly.

  Dragons these days had no idea what it meant to wield real power. True strength like ours could move entire worlds, tip the celestial bodies from their routes. Long ago, we had been masters of every dimension. We had torn through all the walls, broken down the films between realities. We had been animals, seeking destruction and causing it without a second thought.

  It had been the Age of Chaos.

  I relished the torrent of power that I called into myself. Even as I flexed my muscles with the enjoyment of it, I knew how wrong it was. We had moved beyond that, toward civilization. I was the only one of my kind left, and I was taking steps backward. I was moving into the past where I belonged.

  Then, in a gesture that was as precise as it was deadly. I struck him down.

  Not with a warning, or an advisory cuff for a youthful miscreant. I had finally had enough of this man. This dragon who had threatened my mate not once but twice.

  I killed him.

  I meant to, and I did.

  Laurel shuffled back against the wall, holding her hands to her face. Her own magic dissipated, leaving her without her glow. She was suddenly just a woman again, vulnerable and mortal.

  “What have you done?” Her terror came through in her voice.

  “I have destroyed him. It was my right, according to the old ways. He threatened my mate.” To me, it was a simple calculus.

  “I am not your mate! You have not claimed me! And now you never will.” She crouched down to pick up the tablet. When she did so, I felt the grating sensation of its ancient magic being disturbed. It raked again along my entire being.

  Sand gods, this was a long day.

  Laurel had not allowed a single tear to fall. The salty drops that glinted in her eyes stayed there, within her iron control. Her face was as pale as milk, but her gaze was clear and firm.

  “I will have nothing more to do with you,” she said. “I will not free your soul from this tablet.”

  “No?” I didn’t know if I was about to cajole or threaten her. Perhaps both.

  “You were not straightforward with me, Safyr. You did not tell me who you really are. I had to find out the hard way, by getting inside the magic of the tablet. Now that I know what your role has been in what happened to my people, the peasants of Elter, I will go no further with this.” She compressed her lips and watched me intently. “I will not free you,” she repeated.

  “Ah, so you’ve seen all that? You’ve seen how we ended the Age of Chaos?”

  “Of course I have. The tablet’s magic has shown me all that lay within your soul when you were imprisoned in it. You were an evil being, capable of so much destruction. Responsible for so much pain. And I don’t believe you have changed.”

  “Pain, yes.” My eyes grew unfocused at the notion that we could even talk about the agony that I had endured. Or that Elter’s peasants had endured at the hands of dragons.

  I remembered the names she had told me. Rosemary, Loch. Tanner. And so many, many more.

  All the peasants that had lost their lives to the brutal system of dragon magic in our world. All those souls that were gone too early due to my own actions.

  And now Laurel knew.

  She watched me in horror. “You can’t deny it, can you? The peasants who have died since Elterian dragons began to take human lives to create their magic. All of that is because of you.”

  I gave a single jerk of my head downwards.

  “You,” she whispered. “You are that old. You are the single remaining Founder of the Houses.”

  “I am,” I answered dully. “I am so old that I do not belong to any of the Houses. I pretend to be a blue, because that is the color of my scales. But I am not bound by honor, as a blue dragon ought to be. I am not tied by blood to any of the traits of House Caeruleus.”

  “That is how you can lie, even to me. And you can kill another dragon.” She gestured to where Brick lay in a corner, his charred body lifeless on the stones. “You ought not to be able to do that, if you were one of Elter’s modern dragons.”

  “Yes, I have that power. I have always had the power to take another dragon’s life, unfortunately.” I went on, meeting her eyes squarely. “It is never done now, but it was a common thing in the old days. I was an enforcer of order in the Age of Chaos. It meant that I was a brutal killer, but I was sure I did it for the right reasons. My task was to destroy rogue dragons who threatened our way of life. I thought it was for the greater good, but who’s to say? Nobody from that time lives now. So it is only my word on that.”

  “I’m not even…”

  “I know,” I broke in as she slowed. “You’re not even concerned about what I have done to other dragons. Perhaps that is your prerogative. You want to know how it was that I came to extinguish the lives of so many peasants. Perhaps more than there are grains of sand in front of us.” I spread an ironically elegant hand out toward the yellow desert that lay below the mountain.

  She waited.

  “I’ll tell you. I realize that you already know now, but I’ll say it aloud. I am the last living Founder of the Houses of Elter. I a
m the dragon who conceived of the system in which dragons would be bound to only a few emotional traits. It was not part of my plan for dragons to learn to consume peasants. I did not foresee that they would have to fulfill their need for more complex feelings to build their magic. But, yes. I am the one who consigned your people to be destroyed through eternity by dragons hungry for emotions that they could not feel for themselves.”

  “What happened to the other Founders?” she breathed.

  “They gave their lives to make our dream a reality.”

  “Why didn’t you die as well?”

  “I held back. I...thought it was too easy to end my life before I knew our plan would work. So I weathered the storm of magic that we created. You’ve seen the scars on me that cannot heal. They are from that time, that struggle. When I rebuilt our entire world, it took a toll on me. Yet I survived. I alone lived through it.”

  “Lucky you,” she said, with a look of condemnation that pierced me.

  “No. Not that. When I saw the result of our plan, that the peasants would pay the price for our civilization, I set myself a worse punishment than death. I tore my soul in two, and I made myself go on like that. Just as I had torn Elter apart.”

  “You are a monster,” she said to my face.

  “And you are my fated mate,” I said to hers.

  Chapter 17: Laurel

  I could feel my arms wrapping tightly around my body. I felt as if I might be able to hold myself together in the face of everything I had ever known shattering apart.

  “I’m not your mate,” I said once again to Safyr. “You might have thought you could manipulate me that way, but I do not agree to it.”

  “No,” he sighed. “It was never a way to manipulate you.” He raked his hand through his hair. “It is a truth beyond time. You are the one fated mate for me in all the world. I did not make that up as a ruse to gain access to your magical abilities.”