Dragon Fire (32 page)

Rakan felt sick. Was she becoming a void-trail by opening these gates? “Maybe that’s not a good idea,” he said slowly. “Your rök is a part of you.”

“No. Not the real me.”

“You’d die without your rök.” Was that what Erling wanted? To kill her?

June looked at Rakan as if he was a puppy who didn’t understand. “No. I won’t. Or I couldn’t do this.” Two enormous green wings spread behind her as her clothes transformed into a draped white dress that crossed over her breasts. And then she disappeared in a flash of green and purple light. Rakan lunged at the air that shimmered momentarily where she had been. She was gone. He wanted to howl but knew he couldn’t. The sound shield had gone with her. His heart pounded violently in his chest. His rök whirled even faster. The world was falling apart. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t even sense where she had gone. She hadn’t shifted through the matter that surrounded them. She had simply disappeared, leaving no trace. No scent. Nothing. And for the split second before she had gone, her rök had disappeared as if it had never existed.

Rakan stood staring at the spot where she had been standing, even when the students flowed into the hallway for lunch. He no longer wondered who she was. But what she was. Dragons moved through matter. Or not at all.

* * *

Anna had finally settled in a corner of the lunchroom. She picked at the sandwich that she’d throw out later anyway. For the first time in a week, she had felt Pemba at school. But he hadn’t come down yet, even though she had already seen June head over to the music student lounge with Erling. It was where they went when they wanted to be alone. Not that she would’ve sat with them, even had they asked.

Pemba’s slow throbbing energy resonated like a smooth deep bass. He was coming. Anna ripped her sandwich in half. He was no different than Ulf. And she hated herself for having thought otherwise. She turned away from the door, but her attention wouldn’t leave Pemba alone. She tried to remember what he had looked like as a dragon, but it was blurry. She felt him come in. He was so close, so near. She ached to turn around, to see him morph… why was she being such a fool? He didn’t care about her. He was looking for June. She glanced at him just to make sure. And their eyes met. His touch hovered over her like a tentative caress. She started to lean into it before she jerked back around and blocked herself from him. Her mind tingled and blurred with the effort. But he pulled his mind-touch back. Anna sat still, her forgotten sandwich trembling in her hands. He hesitated, almost coming to join her before sitting with some guys from his class.

Anna dropped the sandwich, bitter tears welling in her eyes. An acid wave of hatred rolled up from deep within. She wanted to lash into him and hurt him as much as he had hurt her. Whatever Pemba was, and whatever mess Dawa had gotten herself into, she needed to protect her mom. She stood and cleared off her table, pointedly ignoring Pemba’s furtive glances. She needed to learn to fight.

* * *

T’eng Sten appeared in their rooms without warning, as always. Dvara jumped off the couch and pummeled his chest with her fists. “I hate you,” she yelled.

“Greetings, Kairök,” Rakan said, pausing briefly in his effort to pulverize their punching bag. Dvara had been getting steadily more withdrawn since the incident at the shield. Her rök was close to cracking and Rakan hardly dared to leave her at home alone.

“I see all is well,” T’eng Sten said, holding Dvara by the wrists. He nodded to Rakan.

“Take my rök,” Dvara said. She arched herself into T’eng Sten. He hissed and crushed her against his chest. “You want it as much as I do,” she said, her voice was choked with desire.

“I do.” His voice echoed hers. “But you know why I can’t.”

“Yarlung doesn’t care what happens to us.” Dvara pushed T’eng Sten away. “You know that.”

“I think she does,” T’eng Sten said. His emotions were back under control.

“Only because she wants to use us,” Dvara said.

Rakan doubled his attack on the bag, fighting back a wave of nausea. Sweat streamed down his neck and over his abdomen.

“Whether she cares or not, I can’t take your rök without starting an inter-Cairn conflict. She has publicly accepted Yttresken’s claim. Not mine.”

“And you’re going to let her give me to him like a spineless snake?”

T’eng Sten growled. “You know it’s not as simple as that. He can’t touch you as long as you stay here. And if I can manipulate the situation correctly, my claim will be authenticated by the Meet, thus annulling hers with no honor lost. To anyone.”

“Who cares about honor?” Dvara flung her hands to the ceiling. “I can’t live like this anymore. It’s like being in a cage. I hate it.”

“You need a little patience.” T’eng Sten reached out to take Dvara in his arms.

“No.” Dvara pushed him away. “If you won’t take my rök, you can’t have me.”

T’eng Sten’s face hardened. “As you wish.”

Dvara spat on the ground and shifted out of the room in a shimmering haze of red.

Rakan stopped pounding the bag. “Where did she go?” Her trail went straight down.

“In.” T’eng Sten tilted his head. “But not too far. Yet.”

Rakan remembered his own desire to tunnel down in despair. “Can she kill herself that way?”

“Yes. The day she stops hating me for refusing her rök is the day I’ll need to take it or watch her die. But we’re not there yet.” His voice was matter-of-fact.

“How can you stand her suffering? I thought you cared.” Rakan trembled with fury.

“I wouldn’t be here risking my neck if I didn’t care,” T’eng Sten said, coming closer.

“You care, but is it about Dvara?” Rakan clenched his fists. It didn’t really matter if he died attacking a Kairök or from the poison that was seeping into his every pore.

T’eng Sten laughed. “If only you knew how little your mother’s idiotic politics mattered to me, you wouldn’t ask that.”

No longer able to control himself, Rakan threw a right hook at T’eng Sten’s temple, concentrating all his pent up anger into that one blow. T’eng Sten blocked it and twisted his body weight into Rakan’s gut with an uppercut. Rakan groaned as T’eng Sten’s fist connected with a pocket of reactivated poison, splintering it into hundreds of flaming shards that pierced his organs.

T’eng Sten caught Rakan as he crumpled on his fist. “Idiot,” the older dragon hissed. “You’re in no shape to fight. Why didn’t you tell me that the poison was transforming?”

Rakan struggled to stand back up, gripping onto T’eng Sten, but got no farther than onto one knee.

“I can help you, Rakan.” T’eng Sten dug his hands into Rakan’s biceps and forced him to look up. “But only if you want me to.”

Rakan nodded, wondering how many dragons actually knew how to neutralize poison but kept it a secret. “Does Yttresken know?”

“What?”

“Can Yttresken neutralize poison?”

“I doubt it, but what difference can it possibly make? You want to ask him?”

“No.” Rakan sank to the floor and hoped Kariaksuq was suffering as much as he was.

T’eng Sten raked through Rakan’s body, dissolving the active poison but leaving the neutralized poison intact. Rakan groaned. T’eng Sten wasn’t as gentle as June. “Can’t you remove it all?” His head cleared as a rush of energy flowed through his veins.

T’eng Sten studied Rakan’s face. “You know I can. I removed Dvara’s. But you’d have to tell Yarlung first.”

Rakan’s anger flared back up and he scrambled to his feet unsteadily. T’eng Sten had the grace not to help. He stumbled to the window on his own. Rakan cursed under his breath. He was in a prison as much as Dvara was. Except that his sentence was death.

T’eng Sten sat on the couch. His long indigo overcoat slipped open, showing his chiseled bulk. A smile played on the corners of his mouth. “If you tell her that I offered to do it, thinking that I could take you away from her, but that you intend to be a counter-spy instead, I think she’d agree.”

Rakan’s attention snapped back to T’eng Sten. “She’d expect information.”

“I’d tell you what to tell her.”

“What if I don’t? What if I turn against you?”

T’eng Sten smiled. “You won’t.”

The Kairök’s confidence unnerved Rakan. “How can you be so sure?”

“I can’t. But you can’t live without taking risks. And this is one I feel I can take.”

Rakan tried to figure out what T’eng Sten hoped to gain from the situation. “Why?”

“Because sometimes taking a chance on someone in need can earn you a lifelong ally.” T’eng Sten stood and faced Rakan. “But more importantly, you aren’t like your mother anymore than Dvara is.” He put a hand on Rakan’s shoulder. “Think about it. But maybe not too long or she’ll suspect something when she realizes that some of the poison has already been removed.” The Kairök nodded with a self-satisfied smile and shifted out of their rooms.

Rakan sat on the low wooden table wondering if he could trust T’eng Sten. Because the idea was tempting. He’d be able to warn June without killing himself in the process. And maybe even protect her. But T’eng Sten probably had his own plans. And Rakan had no idea what they were.

T’eng Sten’s trail shimmered on their couch. Why hadn’t he ever noticed that the thin inner line wasn’t indigo blue? It was brown. Sort of. Rakan zoomed in on the inner strand. It was a mix of all of T’eng Sten’s kais wound together with his indigo, making it look brown. Rakan’s nostrils flared. His mother’s was pale turquoise. She didn’t care about her kais any more than she cared about her offspring.

Rakan felt another wave of anger. And another wave of nausea.

* * *

Lysa leaned against the locker next to Anna’s after lunch on Thursday. “Are you coming to practice tonight?”

Anna jerked back. She hadn’t felt Lysa approach. But then again, she hadn’t been thinking about what was going on around her, either. “Maybe,” she said, eyeing Lysa cautiously. Pemba hadn’t been at school for the past few days and his absence was almost worse than his presence.

“Good. We’ve missed you.”

Anna snorted. She doubted anyone had noticed. Or if they did, they were probably just as glad she wasn’t there.

Lysa smiled, her pale green eyes flecked with gold. “
I
missed you,” she said. “And I know what it feels like to be manipulated… or to think you were.”

Anna shut her locker, hugging the books she’d need for the afternoon. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t think I was being manipulated last year. I was blinded by what I thought I felt for my so-called boyfriend.” Lysa paused, her voice oddly disembodied. “You tried to help me, when no one else did.” Lysa’s eyes were like orbs of light. “And now you think you’ve been manipulated when you haven’t.”

The bell to go back to class rang.

“Do you want to go?” Lysa asked with a nod to the classroom.

“No. Not really.” Not anymore.

“Good.” Lysa shimmered with excitement. “I’ve never skipped before.”

Anna stared at her. “Really?” Everyone skipped sometimes. Or maybe it was only if you had a cousin like Red who couldn’t stand being in school and dragged you out for a wild trip to the mountains. And somehow, Red and Haakon always got out of trouble as easily as they got into it.

Lysa linked her arm through Anna’s, and they walked out through the schoolyard and down the hill. “Where should we go?” she asked.

“Anywhere but Helmersen’s,” said Anna, not wanting to be reminded of Pemba.

“Wherever.” Lysa slowed down. “Erling is furious.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he’s yelling at me. I…” Lysa stopped.

“We can go back,” Anna said, looking at Lysa who stood still, her face blank.

“No. I just shut him out.” Lysa’s face was determined as she started to walk again. “I know it’s the right thing to do even if Erling doesn’t think so.”

“But… I mean, don’t get in trouble for this.” Anna examined Lysa. Had she just been speaking telepathically with her brother?

“It’s okay. I need to tell you what happened last year. So that you’ll understand.”

“Understand what? No, tell me that later. How can you shut Erling out?”

“With a mind shield.”

“But do you actually hear him, or just feel him?”

“Both.”

“But…” Anna said, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. “How?”

“We’re different, Anna. That’s what I want to explain.”

Anna considered her friend for a moment and then nodded. “Okay.”

They walked on in silence. “Here,” said Anna, leading Lysa up a flight of stairs to Hansen’s café. It was the kind of place her mom would come with a friend. They wouldn’t see anyone from school. The place was emptying out after lunch. They got coffee and heart-shaped waffles and sat at a table overlooking Tromso’s main street.

Anna looked around the café, a mix of modern metal tables and dark wood counters, waiting for Lysa to start.

“I like the way they’ve decorated,” said Lysa, nodding at a potted plant and a candle that were attached to the wall on long iron bars. “A perfect balance of light and matter.”