Soul of Smoke (23 page)

It isn’t about me.
It’s about everyone else.

Rhys stopped, his mouth hovering an inch over hers. And then he stepped back, half turning away.

Kai sagged. She felt like a balloon someone had blown up and then let go. Confused, she straightened. “Rhys?”

He wouldn’t meet her gaze. He panted like he’d just run a mile. “Not like this. Not with you frightened half out of your mind. I want. You don’t.”

She pushed away from the wall. “Look, I’m going to be honest with you, I’m pretty sure Ashem doesn’t intend to let me leave here without heartswearing, and nothing is going to change how terrifying this is for me between tonight and tomorrow.”

“He doesn’t.” Rhys moved down the wall, once again studying the weapons. Outwardly he ignored her, but she knew he was aware of her in the way his body remained slightly angled to her, in how his gaze would flick toward her but never actually
to
her
.
Again, she wished he were human. Normal. Anything but the freaking dragon king.

He pulled a long, silver spear off the wall, hefting it. Kai waited.

Rhys tossed her the spear. Without thinking, she reached out and caught it. It was surprisingly light. Kai looked at him questioningly.

He took a staff from the rack of weapons. “I have to keep my mind off Cadoc. And you. I can’t give you a choice, but I can give you a little time.”

Gratitude washed over her. She didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know how to use this.”

“I’ll teach you.”

She wanted to shake him. Her insides were jelly from that almost-kiss and he wanted to teach her how to use a spear. “What about heartswearing?”

Finally, he looked at her. She wasn’t sure what to make of the expression on his face. Sadness, wariness, hope. “Spend time with me tonight. Maybe, when the time comes, we’ll both be less afraid.”

Kai hesitated, then nodded, giving the spear an experimental twirl. A headache had started at her temples, pounding like distant drums. Cadoc was dead or being tortured. Tomorrow she’d kiss Rhys and lose her old life and her independence forever.

“Not thinking for a while sounds good to me.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Family and Blood

Rhys taught Kai the first form of the spear. She memorized the dance-like moves after two demonstrations, but they spent a couple of hours practicing. He tried to keep his eyes on her hands and feet, but, Ancients, it was a pleasure to watch the way she moved, the way her long shirt clung to the curve of waist and hip.

Kai was unafraid to sweat. Graceful and agile, she could be more than a passable fighter; she could be a warrior.

Not that it mattered. Wingless didn’t fight.

She slammed the butt of the spear against the ground in the final stance, breathing hard, and grinned at him. Perspiration plastered inky wisps of hair to her forehead. Her cheeks were rosy with exertion, her eyes bright behind their fringe of black lashes. Rhys couldn’t help grinning back.

Kai relaxed and leaned the spear against the wall. “Can we get some water?”

He nodded, absently tapping fingers against his chest. It didn’t hurt, exactly. Forms required a sort of hands-on teaching; adjusting her arm here, repositioning her foot there. His arms on either side of her, her body cradled against him, dark head level with the top of his chest.

Ancients
. He couldn’t think about it. Couldn’t dwell on the memory of her mouth, barely an inch from his. Or her fear.

He bit back a growl. “Let’s go up.”

They walked to the kitchen. The sky, visible through the cave mouth, was dark and dusted with stars. No one else was around, and Rhys assumed they’d all gone to bed. He got water from the spout and handed the full cup to Kai. Their fingers brushed, and a wave of heat coursed through him.

They took cushions across the table from each other, drinking in silence. After a minute, Kai set her empty cup on the table. A second later, she picked it up and rolled it between her palms. She was never still.

“So...I was thinking, and I really do want to know more.” She studied the squatty brown cup like it was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen.

He examined the bottom of his own empty cup and rolled his shoulder. The scarred skin pulled, but the pain was gone. Aside from the burning in his chest, he was healed. “More?”

She seemed hesitant. “Yeah. You know...more about the war. About Owain. About you. All the things I was too stupid to ask about before.”

Rhys set down his cup, relief clashing with unease. It could only be a good sign that Kai wanted to hear the details, but it wasn’t a story he enjoyed telling.

“Um...” Her cheeks pinked. “Are you...you know? Do you want me to sit next to you?”

Rhys tried not to groan in relief. “Yes.”

She stood and moved around the table, settling close to him. They watched each other awkwardly for a moment. The space between their bodies seemed to shriek and pulse.

Kai gave him an uncertain smile. “So, begin at the beginning, I guess. How did the war start?”

Rhys took a breath, settling back against the stone wall. “The story is a long one.”

“In that case...” Kai took an extra cushion and stuck it behind her back. Then she offered one to Rhys.

He put it behind him. With Kai so near, the pain in his chest had gone to nearly nothing. “More than a thousand years ago, my aunt, Rigani, was queen. She was quite a bit older than my father. I don’t remember very much about her, except that she always used to give me sweets.” He half-smiled.

Kai leaned toward him. Not much, just a little. Just enough that the side of her hand nearly touched his where they rested on the table. “I assumed your father was king.”

“He was, later.” Rhys shifted so that their hands touched, the sides barely brushing against each other. The electric energy rolled through him. She had to feel it, too, but she didn’t pull away. “But first, my aunt was queen. She had only one child, my cousin Owain. He’s always been obsessed with magic, especially the artifacts the Ancients left behind.”

“Ancients?” Kai’s brow furrowed.

“Ancient dragons. True dragons, who didn’t have the power to become human. But you wanted to know about the war.”

Kai nodded.

Rhys continued. “Owain used to be a fire Elemental. In his search to rediscover the vastly powerful magic the Ancients used, Owain murdered a handful of dragons for their blood and scales. But the magic backfired. His powers inverted. Instead of creating heat, he could only take it away.”

He looked up. Kai was silent, her eyes fixed on his face.

Rhys focused on his hands and continued, “Rigani was horrified when she heard what Owain had done. There have been so few dragons for so long that murder, especially in pursuit of something selfish, was unforgivable. Without telling Owain, Rigani gathered our greatest magicians and transferred the inheritance of the mantle from Owain to my father, Ayen. In doing so, my father should have received the mantle upon my aunt’s death.

“It didn’t go as planned, though no one knew it until later. Like the artifacts, the mantle is magic of the Ancients. We’re a fading race, and the secrets our people held during our peak are lost to time. According to my father, Aunt Rigani meant to tell Owain that she’d transferred the inheritance of the mantle. But she never had the chance.”

“Why? What happened?” Kai had turned fully toward him, brow furrowed, expression rapt.

“She died.”

Her eyes widened. “How?”

Rhys faltered. “Slaughtered by humans for sport.”

Kai withdrew her hand from his. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged with more nonchalance than he felt. “Dragons have killed greater numbers of humans for less purpose. Dragon-human history isn’t peaceful.”

“Oh.” Kai’s troubled expression deepened. She didn’t withdraw further, but neither did she move closer.

Rhys siphoned off the smallest bit of power inside him, spinning it into a ball of fire no larger than a robin’s egg. He rolled it across his palm and back again. “It’s been better in the past millennium. Since dragons have been warring amongst ourselves, we’ve left humans alone. You’ve left us alone in turn. So much alone, in fact, that your people decided we never existed.”

Kai pressed her lips together at that, but didn’t speak, watching the fire in his hand.

Rhys levitated the fire above his palm and called four more tiny flames into existence, setting them to orbit each other. “Owain accused my father of setting Rigani up—of bespelling her, killing her and framing humans so that my father could take her power. Owain refused to believe that his own mother had disinherited him, no matter what he’d done.

“Owain left Eryri—the original Eryri, in Wales—and many dragons followed. Believing, as Owain did, that my father had stolen Owain’s birthright and then murdered Rigani. Another group broke off, declaring that they would follow neither. Today, they call themselves free dragons. My people—the people of Eryri, call them rogues. They scattered across the globe, some living in groups, most living in isolated families in the wilderness, or hiding among humans.

“And so it was that a third of the dragons stayed with my father, a third went with Owain, and another third swore they would follow no king and take no part in war.

Owain stayed in exile for a few hundred years. We didn’t hear much from him, except that as he grew older, his followers grew in number. Still, Father didn’t worry. Not like he should have.”

Kai was leaning in again, scooting closer. Their hands touched. It felt so natural, so
right
, that Rhys had slipped his hand over hers without even thinking, and Kai intertwined their fingers.

The fires over his other hand zoomed faster and faster, until they seemed to stretch and become lines of light. “Father seemed to forget about Owain. He had his own problems, the foremost of which was my mother. She was unhappy, and he didn’t treat her well. One day, my mother went missing. That night...”

Rhys’s fingers curled into a fist, suffocating the fragile flames. “My father woke up in agony. Pain that makes even this pain look like nothing.” Rhys traced fingers over his heart, lost in the past. “As the story goes, my mother hated my father so much that she went to Owain with a plan to kill him. Owain used his small piece of the mantle—a piece that had torn away, somehow—to sunder my parents.”

“Sunder?”

Rhys blinked. He’d nearly forgotten she was there. “It means he broke their heartswearing.”

Kai frowned. “Ffion said there was technically a way to break it.”

Rhys grimaced. “It can only be done by someone who holds the mantle. I don’t know how, but I think Owain needed something of my mother to do it. A strand of hair, maybe. Or blood. Or tears.”

Kai squeezed their still-intertwined fingers. It was comforting, having her there, a warm presence at his side.

“Before my father could recover fully, Owain attacked. My father was the only one who could fight Owain without being killed outright, because both controlled a part of the mantle. My father, his power being so much greater, should have beaten Owain easily. But he was too weak from the sundering, and Owain slaughtered him.”

Rhys swallowed. The memories were still so vivid—the heavy air of the summer night, the roaring, the sounds of dying, and then power unlike anything he’d ever imagined. “The instant my father died, I knew. In killing him, Owain gained a full half of the power of the mantle. I inherited the other half. We’re perfectly matched.”

Kai watched him in stunned silence. He wasn’t sure when she’d leaned into him again, but her closeness abruptly overwhelmed him. If he turned his head...
A
few more hours.
I
can wait a few hours.
He stared hard at the old, gray wood of the table beneath his hands. It was far less tempting than looking at her mouth.

“What happened to your mother? Did she die when your father died? Because she was Wingless?” she asked.

Rhys jerked one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “I don’t know. The Council claims she died, but everything was chaos. I don’t know who killed her or what happened to her body. In all honesty, she was never much of a mother to me. Though I know Deryn misses her. I don’t think Wingless die just because their mates do. As far as I know, even sundered, the Wingless retain their powers.” He paused. “It changes you, Kai. Once you’re Wingless, you’re no longer human. You’re a dragon with no dragon form.”

“But wait,” Kai said, squinting at the table, apparently not hearing his words. “If a little of the mantle made Owain too dangerous for anyone but your father to fight him, and you have the mantle, why did Kavar attack you and the others in the meadow? Why didn’t you just, I don’t know, command them all to stop fighting?”

Rhys frowned at the change of subject. He’d been afraid she’d ask this. The answer made him look like an idiot. There was no use trying to make it sound better than it was. “Demba had attacked Deryn earlier that day. Like a scalebrain, I was too focused on hurting him back to do what I should have.”

“So why not command him to drown himself or fly straight into the ground or something?” Kai asked.

Rhys went rigid. “If you had a gun, would you shoot someone unarmed?”

Kai looked at him as if he were insane. “Um...yeah. If that person was trying to kill me.”

“No.” Rhys spat the word through clenched teeth. “It wouldn’t be right. Ancients, I don’t even want to kill Owain. He’s family. When I was a boy, he was like an older brother to me.”

“Yeah...but, I mean...” Kai’s voice was quiet, as if she feared his reaction. “He sounds sort of gung-ho about killing you.”

Rhys tried to find words. “There are other reasons not to use the mantle. My father used it too freely. Dragons who might have supported him went rogue or followed Owain, who promised them less control.” He took a breath. “That much power is heady. Tempting.” He didn’t tell Kai that he didn’t use the mantle because he was afraid. Afraid of becoming his father, who had been obsessed with power. Or Owain, obsessed with using the mantle for vengeance.

Rhys shook his head to clear his thoughts and went back to the story.

“Ashem got us out: my vee, Deryn and I. Deryn didn’t have a vee yet, she was too young. So she came with us. Ashem, though he wasn’t much older than us, kept us alive and helped me make alliances. The Mo’o of the south Pacific took us in, and we moved Eryri to an archipelago in the middle of the ocean—as far from Owain’s stronghold in the north as we could get.”

Kai’s leg pressed against his, now. It felt good, as if energy and comfort flowed from her skin into his. Rhys rubbed the side of her hand again. It was intoxicating, the combination of the silky, delicate skin on the back of her hand—scars and all—and the rough calluses on her palm, won in battle after battle against gravity and stone.

Silence settled between them, and Rhys broke it before it could become awkward. “So, that’s why we’re at war.”

Kai was frowning, distractedly running her fingers over the old wooden table. “I know I asked, but that’s—I mean, Rhys, it’s a lot. War and death and revenge. It’s for stories. Heroes. It’s not something for people like me. It’s not making me less afraid to heartswear. Kind of the opposite. I’m supposed to make this stuff my life? I’d rather live at home and teach gymnastics forever. I’m just...normal.”

Rhys squeezed her hand. “It’s normal people—people who want nothing but peace, family and happiness—who die because some idiot wanted some grand thing.” Rhys thought of his people, who would pay the price for Owain if Rhys failed.

She drew a troubled breath and let it out slowly. “But you can’t stop, can you? Because Owain...he’s after a grand thing, right? The subjugation of humans. And the only thing stopping him is that you hold half the mantle. And he doesn’t dare start a war with the humans without every single dragon he can get, but they won’t all fight for him unless he can force them to.”

Rhys nodded. “Though if I die, my half of the mantle passes to Deryn. He’d have to kill both of us to get all of it.”

Kai frowned. “What about your other sister? The one who can see the future?”

“No. Being the Seeress prevents Seren from holding the mantle.”

Kai laid her head on his shoulder. “What I said is still true, though. You and Deryn are the only things stopping Owain from killing everyone. What you’re fighting for isn’t a grand thing, it’s just the right to be normal. I think that’s a pretty good cause, if you think about it. Much better than ‘grand things.’”