Shadow of Flame Read online

  Rhys looked down. He’d started leaking a little of his own magic instead of taking in hers. Flames danced around their clasped hands. He inhaled, reaching for calm. Kai was fine.

  Of course, that meant they had another problem. The only magic that could keep Azhdahā from reading peoples’ minds was absolutely classified. He’d known there was a spy since Kavar had attacked them in the Rockies. He’d begun a search, but Ashem was the security specialist. Without him, they’d made no headway.

  Rhys took another breath, pulled again on the magic and the flames around their hands went out. His voice still held an edge, but he’d leashed the anger. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

  “I’m not all right,” she snapped, taking her hands out of his grip. “I freaking killed a girl.”

  “You did what you had to.” Rhys remembered his first kill. The night Owain had come for his father, he’d sent soldiers after Rhys. No weapons in the room but a dull eating knife. It had punched through the man’s skin with a small pop.

  Kai’s brows furrowed. “How...how many people have you killed?”

  “More than enough.”

  She shook her head. “You are terrifying.”

  The door upstairs opened, cutting off Rhys’s thoughts, and Ashem and Juli descended the stairs.

  “Why didn’t you tell me he was coming?” Kai demanded. “Why didn’t you tell me about the freaking vision in which I was kidnapped by Owain?”

  Ashem shrugged. “Visions are often misinterpreted.”

  “But not this time,” Rhys said.

  Ashem turned on him. “You. I would have brought her to you, you sundering scalebrain. You panicked, and now I have to clean it up. I can hide myself and two Wingless far easier than I can hide two Wingless and three dragons.”

  “Three dragons?” Kai asked, looking from Rhys to Ashem.

  Rhys licked his lips. “Evan came with me. He’s waiting outside of town.”

  “And you...panicked?” Kai’s voice had gone quiet.

  Rhys’s jaw tightened. Reliving his idiocy in front of her wasn’t something he wanted to do.

  Juli made a frustrated sound. “You two! Just talk.” She turned to Kai. “After Seren told him what she’d seen, he was so beside himself that he took off without his communicator. Evan didn’t realize he hadn’t called Ashem to warn him what kind of danger you might be in until they stopped on the first night. So yes. I would say he panicked.”

  Chagrined, Rhys risked a glance at Kai. She studied the floor, but her face wasn’t as hard as it had been.

  “So,” Juli said into the silence. “What are we going to tell Kai’s parents?”

  Chapter Eight

  Bound in Pain

  The warm air of the thermal rolled beneath Cadoc’s wings, lifting him higher into the empty sky. He’d seen Seren safely to Eryri. He hadn’t touched her again. Now he could focus on breaking the curse, and he meant to do it. Anything to keep him from lingering too long on how days spent in Seren’s company had awakened feelings better left to their restless slumber.

  When he’d left her with the outermost ring of sentries—he couldn’t risk flying any closer to the island—she’d asked him to wait. An hour later, Citlali, the only Quetzal in Eryri, and therefore the only one who would know how to counter Quetzal curses, had flown out to see him. She’d cut his palm with an obsidian knife and rubbed his blood across her fingertips.

  “The curse is a strong one. Old, forbidden, dark magic. But it can be broken.”

  Cadoc leaned toward her, eager. Ready. “How?”

  “A curse like this requires a charm made from your blood to bind you to the magic. You must find the charm and dissolve it in blood, and the curse will break. But it’s not so easy. It can’t be anyone’s blood. It can’t even be your blood.”

  The victorious tune that had begun playing through Cadoc’s head turned sour. Of course it wasn’t going to be easy. “Whose blood do I need?”

  Citlali’s eyes took on an eerie, reddish glow. “The curse is bound in pain, in coming apart and destruction. To untether a binding that dark, you need light. Creation and love. You need the blood of your parents, your children, or the blood of your heartsworn.”

  Cadoc scanned the featureless sea as he flew east. Ancients, he was going to be cursed forever. He’d been an orphan with no blood relatives since before he could walk. Not only did he need to steal the charm back, which would be hard enough—for all he knew, Owain wore the thing as a necklace—he had to find his heartsworn.

  Sundering curse.

  At least Citlali had been able to give him an idea of where to start.

  Izel.

  If the woman who had cursed and tortured him was with Owain, she’d be as hard to get to as the charm. But if she wasn’t—if she was out destroying innocents or whatever it was she did when not bleeding her victims dry—he might be able to get to her. According to Citlali, as the curse caster, Izel would be able to sense the charm’s location.

  He wished Izel was on the list of those with curse-breaking blood. He’d like to see her bleed.

  He pictured Izel, trussed and helpless like he’d been. Visceral pleasure stirred in his chest. To cut and slice her until she writhed with agony. Until she begged for death. Until her mind was so broken she let slip information that could be the death of the people she loved most—

  Revulsion shattered the image in Cadoc’s head. He’d fallen, and now he was barely a hundred feet above glittering blue waves. Panting, he thrust his wings down, up, down again, flapping until he’d climbed a little of the way back to the sky.

  I am not like her. He was a soldier, not a torturer. Not someone who took pleasure in maiming and mutilation. When he had to kill, he made it clean.

  He was not the broken thing Izel had abandoned in the pit.

  Ancients, he hoped he wasn’t.

  It was hard to tell when he had no one to talk to but himself.

  Long after sundown, Cadoc landed on a small island halfway between Eryri and Central America. He was exhausted, but he needed to make a call, and the communicator would only fit over his ear if he were human.

  He paced the cool, sandy beach beneath the moonlight, the magic saturating the quartz of the communicator. It buzzed against the skin of his ear, the silent seconds stretching. “Sunder it, Ashem, answer.”

  In the darkness, with no company but the sound of the waves and the rustle of the trees behind him, he might have been the only person in the world.

  “Do you know what time it is?” Ashem’s voice barked into his head, channeled by the magic-imbued stones.

  Cadoc was near giddy not to be alone. Seren’s company had spoiled him. He kicked off his boots and paced, feet bare in the sand. “Sorry, chief. I spent the day in the sky. I thought you’d want to know that I’ve delivered the Seeress to Eryri.”

  He didn’t have to speak out loud, but he hated the silence.

  “Ffion told me that hours ago, you scalebrain.” A pause, then, “What are you going to do now?”

  Cadoc watched a crab scuttle across the beach. “I thought I’d go back home and throw myself a party.”

  Ashem was not amused. “Cadoc.”

  Cadoc sighed. “Someday, chief, I’ll avenge your sense of humor. I don’t know who murdered it, but it died before its time.”

  Ashem swore, and Cadoc grinned. “Listen, I need information. I assume Owain has the charm, but I don’t know for sure. I want to find Izel.”

  If anyone who fought for Rhys could tell him where Izel was, it would be Ashem and his network of spies.

  “Why Izel?” The question was sharp.

  “Vengeance.” He’d meant it as a joke, but once the word was out, he’d meant it. It set a fire burning in his belly, warming him like he hadn’t been warm in weeks. Frig
htening him.

  The curse wasn’t the only way he might lose himself.

  “Don’t be a scalebrain.”

  From the commander’s tone, he meant both: “you aren’t funny, moron,” and “things are bad, but don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

  And people thought he was a man of few words.

  Cadoc’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. “According to Citlali, the Quetzal who created the charm will know exactly where it is. I want to be sure Owain has it before I go flying in. I’m being cautious. You should be proud.”

  Ashem snorted.

  Cadoc knew desperation had crept into his voice, but he didn’t care. “Please.”

  The sense of a disapproving grumble came through. “Fine. Hold on.”

  Cadoc sat on the damp ground near the surf and piled the sand into a castle with one hand, but without a second working hand to stabilize it, everything fell apart. When his tower crumbled a fifth time, he knocked the whole thing over, scattering the sand.

  “According to the sundering useless reports Harrow sends me, Izel hasn’t gone back to Owain since she escaped Mair. She was last spotted near the old Quetzal compound in southern Mexico. You know it?”

  Cadoc’s brow furrowed. It was convenient, because the mountains that held the compound were only a day’s flight away. But why would Izel be there instead of with Owain? Had she deserted? Gone rogue? “I know it.”

  “Go to the coast. I’ll have Ffion send some of the Unsworn to meet you.”

  Cadoc shook his head, though Ashem couldn’t see. “I don’t want the Unsworn, chief.” Unlike some, he didn’t think loving someone enough to forgo heartswearing merited being given the missions most likely to kill you. “Izel is too devious. She’ll spot a group coming for her. She might not spot just one.”

  The waves crashed into the quiet as Ashem considered. “All right. You should know I’m headed back to Eryri.”

  Cadoc wasn’t surprised. “Because of Seren’s vision?”

  Ancients, Kai in Eryri. He wished her luck.

  “Yes. Among other things. I’m going back to sleep. Keep me updated.”

  Cadoc tried to think of a way to extend the conversation, but couldn’t. “You know I can’t go without your dulcet tones for long.”

  The buzz of magic died and Cadoc pulled the communicator from his ear. He moved a few yards away from the surf and lay on his back to look at the stars. The lightness of speaking with another person dissipated. The crushing weight of solitude settled onto his chest.

  Alone, thoughts of obsidian knives and blood and splintered bones whirled in his brain until he wasn’t sure which were memory and which fantasy. Nausea pooled in his belly, but he couldn’t escape his thoughts. It hadn’t been this bad when he’d been looking for Seren—he’d had a purpose. He hadn’t had time to think about himself.

  Now his damaged self was all he had.

  Cadoc hummed. Like pinching his own arm while having a wound stitched, one misery distracted him from the other. He was most of the way through the song when he realized it was the one he’d hummed with Seren outside the elevator. The memory of her voice, not the sound of his own, made music the lesser pain.

  For the first time in centuries, he let his thoughts wander where they shouldn’t. Remembering how she looked when she laughed. How her face relaxed in sleep. How light caught in her red-gold hair and turned it into a stream of fire.

  He’d missed seeing her without the veil.

  Four days with her had been bliss and torture. He might have buried his feelings for her beneath hundreds of years and dozens of other lovers, but those feelings hadn’t gone. He’d have to bury them again. Deeper this time. She was the fire-blasted Seeress.

  But Stars, she was also Seren, sweet as honey and bewitching as music. He couldn’t stop thinking of her face. Her skin. Her lips—

  He shot up, sand trickling down the back of his shirt and his nausea returning. A few minutes ago, he’d wanted to flay the skin from Izel’s bones, and now he was thinking of kissing the Seeress.

  “Sunder me. What have I become?”

  The ocean didn’t answer, and Cadoc dropped his face into his good hand. Even Izel had devised no torture so hideous as being alone.

  * * *

  Cadoc arrived in the mountains the next evening, approaching the Quetzal compound beneath the gray-blue shroud of dusk. Hidden in the peaks of the southern Sierra Madre, it was easy enough to land just below a nearby summit and hunker beneath the trees to see what he could see.

  The majority of the compound was housed in a network of caves buried in the side of a cliff, but there was an open, grassy slope at the base where a handful dragons lounged and juveniles and children played.

  Citlali was the sole Quetzal in Eryri because the clan was tight-knit. There were perhaps twenty Quetzals who had decided not to take part in the war, declaring themselves free dragons. Or, as the king-sworn dragons who had chosen sides called them, rogues. This place only housed three or four heartsworn pairs with young children—family was central to Quetzal culture, and Cadoc could understand well enough why these people would want no part in a war.

  He didn’t see Izel, but if Ashem’s report said she was in this place, she was. Cadoc allowed himself to doze until the sun came up, then waited.

  The first time she emerged from a cave mouth halfway up the cliff, a red haze of rage temporarily blinded him. By the time he regained control, he’d half broken cover. He took hold of himself and settled down again, unsure whether he’d been about to attack her or flee. He dug his claws into the stony ground.

  Wait, boyo. He couldn’t risk attacking her until she was alone.

  The rogue Quetzals spent most of their time as dragons, their emerald scales and rainbow-feathered wings flashing like jewels in the sun. He caught glimpses of Izel throughout the day, but she never flew farther from the others than the grass at the base of the cliff. Cadoc was beginning to think he’d have to spend a second night hunkered beneath the trees when Izel emerged from her cave again. This time, instead of gliding down into the grass, she launched into the air.

  She flew just south of Cadoc’s hiding place, passing beyond sight of the compound. Lashing his tail, Cadoc leapt after her.

  She wound through valleys instead of skimming over peaks. He’d been keeping his distance, flying far enough back to hide, if necessary. Finally, he decided they were alone enough. He sprang forward, arrowing through the air.

  She never saw him coming. He slammed into her side and sent them both spinning. Cadoc flared his wings, righting himself, but Izel smashed into the stony mountainside and rolled downhill, stunned. He landed on top of her, pinning her feathered wings with his claws. She was so much smaller than him that it was easy. If he’d fought her one on one that night, she never would have taken him.

  She struggled beneath him, then stilled, regarding him with black dead-fish eyes. “You? I thought Owain killed you and threw away your husk.”

  Cadoc bared his teeth, his head reeling with memories. Shoulders burning, skin laid open, throat raw.

  Ancients, those cold, depthless eyes.

  His teeth were on her throat before he knew what he was doing, skin and muscle parting, blood oozing into his mouth. Izel roared, writhing beneath him. He could taste her fear. Her pain.

  It was good.

  Smoke curled from the sides of Cadoc’s mouth. He would end this. Her. Now.

  He tightened his jaw, teeth grinding against bone. Her wheezing breath cut off as his jaws closed her windpipe. Her body convulsed.

  Wait.

  No.

  This wasn’t right. This wasn’t why he’d come.

  With a wrench like ripping out his own soul, Cadoc opened his mouth and let her fall. Izel coughed, a hacking, wet sound. “You are still stupid, Cadoc ap Br
ychan o’r Draig.”

  Cadoc ignored the words, focusing every ounce of control he could muster on not killing her. “I have some questions for you.”

  She hissed and tried to shoot him with one of the poisoned bone spurs. That had worked last time, when she’d captured him and taken him to the pit. This time, however, he dodged. The dart whistled past him, missing him by a scale’s breadth. Cadoc sank his teeth into her shoulder and shook.

  Izel screamed, blood flowing like a red river down her green hide. Cadoc spat a chunk of flesh from his mouth. “You can answer my questions, or I can kill you piece by piece.” He leaned in close, breathed a hint of fire. “I learned from the best.”

  Izel’s dark eyes were narrowed with pain. His bite had snapped the upper bone of her right arm. “You’re here about the curse, yes? The blood charm? Let me live, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  She didn’t deserve to live. She’d been Owain’s torturer for centuries. Hurt so many people. The knife. The blood. She’d worn his father’s face and laughed.

  Now she was helpless, and he was going to kill her. Slowly. Slice by slice.

  Sunder it, no! He was going to get his answers and leave. “Where is the charm that ties me to your curse?”

  She bared her teeth. They were bloody. At the sight of them, Cadoc noticed the pain in his right side. When had that happened? Now that he was aware of it, the wound burned. Cadoc sank his good claws into the flesh beneath the feathers of her wing. “You’ve got to speak when you’re spoken to, Izel. Don’t be rude.”

  She snarled and tilted her head toward the north. “It lies in one of Owain’s caches, where he hides his other useless weapons.”

  Cadoc had heard of Owain’s weapons caches. Filled with artifacts he couldn’t use or magic that caused too few or too many casualties, he kept them along the borders of his territory, little arsenals in case Rhys ever invaded. “How do I get to it?”

  She gave him directions to a place far to the north, in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. A heart-shaped lake, and next to it, a huge standing stone. When he asked how to get into the cache, Izel laughed again. “Fly off and see.”