Above the ruckus and pandemonium, the air shudders with a bone-deep blast that shakes the black castle. A clap of thunder follows. The panic in the passage freezes for a split second as everyone stares up, and then, with renewed horror, people start screaming and trampling each other.
Reyler is leading us in the same direction the masses are heading: out. I dig my feet against the stone floor, hold myself solid against the current of people fighting past me, and turn in the opposite direction.
“What are you doing?” Golmarr yells, his voice barely rising above the din of terror.
“I am going to the top of the bell tower!” I yell. “The dragon has come to kill me, since I have Zhun’s knowledge. If I go outside with these people, the dragon is going to kill them to get to me! I’m going up there to fight it!”
Golmarr studies me for a moment and then smiles. “I’m coming with you.”
“And so am I,” Enzio says, though his face is pale, his mouth a hard line.
A hand grips my arm and pulls me to a stop. I meet Reyler’s concerned eyes. “I have been ordered to get you out of the castle, my lady. I am to protect you with my life,” he says.
“No. I am going to the bell tower.” I twist my arm out of his grip.
“Then I will not be able to protect you, for I was told to bring you to Treyose and then help him lead the soldiers.”
“Go, Reyler. Tell Treyose we are going to fight the dragon.”
He nods and lets the pull of people sweep him away. I struggle against the crowd, forcing a narrow gap between the press of sweaty bodies, and pause at the base of a staircase so packed with people I cannot see the stone stairs beneath their feet. The castle’s blueprints and secret passages instantly unravel in my head, and among them all, one clear pathway seems to light up—a narrow passage hidden behind a giant Trevonan crest, which leads to the bottom floor of the bell tower. With certainty making my steps firm, I shoulder my way through the people blocking the stairway and come out on the other side of the maelstrom of bodies.
A hand grips my elbow. “I thought we were going up,” Golmarr says, mouth against my ear. Even in the midst of chaos, his mouth and breath on my skin make my heart leap.
“We are,” I say. “I know a better way. Stay with me.”
“I will,” Golmarr says. His hand slides from my elbow, and I instantly miss his touch.
Now that we are farther from the castle’s exit, the people in the passages are few and far between. We quicken our pace, pass the open door to the empty throne room, and two steps later, come to the crest on the wall. It is made of wood and has been replaced with a more modern crest than I remember. I lift the reforged sword and hack at the top of the crest. The silver blade shatters the wood, and I leap away as it clatters to the floor and splits in two. Where the crest had been is a cobweb-filled passage barely wider than the width of my shoulders.
“Make way for the king!” someone bellows. I turn away from the hidden passage and find myself staring at a wall of six steel-clad soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder. Behind them is a litter being carried by two more soldiers, with an ancient man covered in purple blankets sitting atop it.
“Make way for King Vaunn,” the soldier before me commands. He looks at my sword and his eyes narrow and move to Golmarr, taking in his darker skin and long black hair. The soldier gasps and takes a step back. “Antharian brutes are infiltrating our castle!” he says. In one chilling, unison hiss, the six guards unsheathe their swords.
“Antharian brutes?” The old man on the litter leans forward, his beady eyes focusing on Golmarr. “The Antharians have woken the dragon! I should have known!” he cries, flinging aside the purple coverlet. It is then I see the jeweled gold crown sitting atop the man’s brittle hair. “They are trying to take my kingdom!” King Vaunn climbs from the litter onto spindly legs, wearing nothing but a thin nightshirt hanging down to his knees. His hair is gray and stringy, his skin thin and wrinkled, but his eyes are sharp with a cruel hatred that makes me recoil.
I open my mouth to defend Golmarr, but then remember what Treyose said about me speaking. My Faodarian accent will give me away, and his grandfather will try to kill me. I close my mouth and grit my teeth.
King Vaunn grabs the sword of the man closest to him and runs forward, knocking his guards aside. For an old man, he is deceptively agile. He thrusts his weapon straight at Golmarr’s heart, and the world seems to stand still. I cannot lift my sword in time to block the king. As his sword tip comes even with Golmarr’s chest, metal rings on metal as the king’s blade clangs against the steel tip of Golmarr’s staff. Golmarr slams the king’s blade aside, and the sword ricochets straight at my neck. King Vaunn turns his body with the sword’s momentum, and as his eyes focus on me, he lends his strength to the blade, just as eager to take my life as he was to end Golmarr’s.
Golmarr shouts. Enzio screams. I grunt and thrust the reforged sword between my skin and King Vaunn’s weapon right before it can kill me. Our blades send a mighty crack through the air that seems to rise above every other sound. I twist my sword around his, our blades hissing as they slide against each other, and then the blade falls from his knobby hand, clanging to the floor between us. King Vaunn stumbles back a step and eyes the fallen weapon in shock.
Golmarr’s booted foot covers the Trevonan blade where it lies. “If you lift your weapon against me or either of my companions, I will be forced to kill you, King Vaunn!” Golmarr bellows, holding his staff firmly between them.
The withered king opens his mouth, showing jagged yellow teeth, and screams, “Attack! Kill them!”
Even before the soldiers move to follow their king’s orders, I know what to do. My sword darts low, aiming for the closest man’s ankle. My blade slices through the back of his leather boot and finds its mark, severing flesh and tendon and toppling the big man. He crashes to the granite floor, metal armor clanging, creating a momentary blockade between me and the other soldiers. A heartbeat later, they are upon us, seven against three, with King Vaunn behind them screaming orders so fast they are mere gibberish.
Golmarr is a blur of motion, his long staff spinning and knocking two men unconscious before they are close enough to reach him with their swords. Enzio is like a viper, darting in and out, and attacking fast and hard with his short sword. I back away, loath to kill, horrified at the thought of having another person’s memories and knowledge forced into my brain.
Though only five soldiers remain standing, Golmarr says, “Let it be known King Vaunn started this fight, and I have no intention of taking his land or his life. If he dies, it will not be an act of war by the Antharians. It will be an act of self-defense!” A soldier lunges at Golmarr.
“On your right!” I cry. Golmarr dodges the blow. “You would kill a man for proclaiming his desire not to fight with your king?” I ask, enraged.
King Vaunn’s attention turns to me once again. “Though your dress is Trevonan, your accent is not,” he says. He looks me up and down. “You are from Faodara! Faodara is infiltrating us with the horse clan?” His eyes grow wild. “The Faodarians have declared war on Trevon! Treyose! I need you!” King Vaunn falls to his knees and pries a sword from the hand of one of his fallen men.
Enzio pulls his sword from a soldier’s thigh, and the man falls to the ground. “You stay away from her,” Enzio snarls, but before he can lift his sword to stop Vaunn, another soldier engages Enzio. Golmarr swings his staff into another man’s head with so much force, the man goes limp in the middle of swinging his sword and falls to the ground. “Go to the tower stairs, Sorrowlynn. We will meet you there,” Golmarr says, but before I can take a step, something hits me hard in the shins, and I fall forward, landing on my stomach on something solid and uneven. It is a man. I am chest to chest with the soldier whose Achilles tendon I severed. He slams his fist into my face and then wraps his hands around my throat.
; I am too close to use my sword against him, and his metal armor is a barrier against my fists, elbows, and knees. I jab my finger at his eye, but he whips his head away and I gouge his cheek instead. I look down at the soldier strangling me, and rage fills me with so much heat it seems to boil my blood. Grabbing his short hair in my hands, I lift his head and slam it hard against the granite floor. His grasp on my throat loosens, but doesn’t release. I slam his head into the floor again, and the soldier goes limp, his hands falling to his sides.
In my peripheral vision I see movement, so I turn my head. Golmarr and Enzio are fighting with the last three Trevonan guards, and King Vaunn is standing over me, a sword in his wiry hands, about to run me through the back. Before I have time to react, a short sword clashes against the side of King Vaunn’s head. The old man whirls around and comes face to face with Enzio. Golmarr is one step behind, his teeth bared. King Vaunn thrusts his sword at Enzio, but Enzio leaps to the side. The weapon keeps moving forward and stabs Golmarr in the chest, the tip disappearing beneath his tunic, right above his heart. King Vaunn jerks his sword back out and Golmarr stumbles backward, pressing on his chest. Everyone freezes—the guards, Enzio, King Vaunn—as Golmarr gapes at his torn tunic.
“No!” I scream. I leap to my feet and raise my sword at the same moment King Vaunn turns to me. Without meaning to, without my giving it conscious thought, the point of my sword lowers to his stomach. King Vaunn lunges forward, and his momentum carries him onto my blade, until it is buried deep in his flesh. Even when he is stabbed through, his eyes don’t lose the hatred and anger burning in them. He glances down and sees my sword piercing his stomach, and the anger multiplies.
I pull my sword free and stab again, this time aiming for Vaunn’s heart. In the blink of an eye, all the passion is stripped from his face. Vaunn’s skin goes slack, his eyes lose focus, and he totters backward. He lands on the floor with a loud thud, and that is the moment the worst part of the fire dragon’s inherited treasure takes over—the unstoppable curse of absorbing the knowledge of any living thing I kill. My conscience seems to fill with thick, rotting sludge.
“Your king is down! Do not lift your swords against us again!” Golmarr orders. I fall to my knees and press the heels of my hands against my closed eyes as images fill my brain. I see Treyose screaming, his arm tied to a stone table as a blade slices through his littlest finger. Next, I see King Vaunn plundering city after city, killing men, raping women, forcing allegiances. As the images continue, I do not regret killing him, even if the price of his death is my head being assaulted with his filth.
I shake myself, trying to stop the onslaught of knowledge so I can rush to Golmarr’s aid, but I cannot stop seeing King Vaunn’s memories. Warmth clasps my wrists, pulling my hands from my eyes. When I blink them open, I still see piles of dead men and weeping women, but I also see Golmarr staring into my eyes. His tunic is torn above his heart, and the cream-colored fabric is slowly turning red as his blood soaks it. I reach for it, but Golmarr tightens his grip on my wrist.
“I am fine. You killed King Vaunn,” Golmarr says, his voice soft. I spin away, fall to my knees, and vomit, trying to force the taint of King Vaunn from my body.
The castle rumbles and groans, and the distant screams of people fill the halls.
Golmarr pulls me to my feet, his eyes tight with worry as he examines my body. “Are you hurt?”
I shake my head and spit the acrid tang of bile from my mouth. Three guards are still standing, their backs against the wall and their swords on the ground, while Enzio holds his sword ready. “If any of you so much as sniffs wrong, you will taste Satari steel,” he warns.
“Golmarr, your chest is bleeding. Are you sure you’re not mortally injured?” I reach toward his bleeding wound, but he backs away.
“It is not deep, and we do not have time to spare.”
I nod and take a step forward, but stop again as Treyose and Reyler stride into the passage, surveying the guards at my feet and the three standing against the wall. When Treyose sees his grandfather’s motionless body, I grip my sword tighter, ready to fight the Trevonan prince once he realizes I have killed his king.
Instead, Treyose looks at Golmarr and asks, “You killed him?”
Golmarr shakes his head. “Sorrowlynn did. It was self-defense.”
Treyose exhales a trembling breath and pushes on the bridge of his nose. Golmarr puts his hand on Treyose’s shoulder. “Your troops are assembled and keeping your people safe?”
“The troops are assembled, but the dragon is killing my people one by one,” Treyose says. “How do I defeat it?”
“Come up to the bell tower with us. The beast wants Sorrowlynn. We will draw it up there and you can help us slay it. You will not have to do anything more to get your people to follow you,” Golmarr says quietly. “You will be your people’s hero as well as their rightful king. They will follow you willingly.”
Like a swelling wave, the muted shrieks of people outside the castle grow, reach a climax, and then fade to nothing. Thunder shatters the silence and vibrates the granite beneath my feet.
“Will you fight the dragon with us?” Golmarr asks Treyose again, his voice urgent.
“I will,” Reyler says.
“I will, too, but wait.” Treyose picks up his grandfather’s body and carries it through the open throne room door, laying it on the hard stone floor. He pulls a torch from a sconce in the throne room and strides out, shutting and locking the door from the outside. To the three remaining guards, he says, “Stand watch and keep his body safe. I have a dragon to battle with.”
The bell tower is the tallest man-made structure in Trevon, standing ten stories high, like a black granite needle thrusting all the way to the clouds. At its highest point sits a huge bell, with four open windows exposing it to the air. There is a balcony around the bell’s windows, built wide enough for a small army to stand atop and fight a dragon.
Today, we have no army, just two Trevonan soldiers, an Antharian warrior, a Satari forest dweller, and me. And even though I am the woman, I am the one wielding the only weapon in the world that can kill a dragon.
A spiral stone staircase with no handrail twists up the interior of the bell tower, lining the sleek black wall, all the way to the top. Up the steps we climb, circling the bell’s thick rope, which dangles down the exact center of the tower. We reach the last step, and I stop at the stone door leading from the bell tower to the balcony. Placing my hand on the rusted steel bar locking it, I try to slide it away. But it doesn’t budge.
Golmarr steps up beside me and lends his strength to mine, but the bar still does not move. Enzio joins us, and the metal groans with our combined effort.
“Stand aside,” Treyose says. He hands me the torch and steps up to the door, placing his big hands on the bar. My focus moves from the metal to his missing finger, and again I see a flash of his arm stretched long across a stone table and tied in place as a sword swings down and severs his pinkie. And then I hear King Vaunn’s voice: That is what you get for refusing to lead my army! Your hand will be next.
Treyose groans with effort, his biceps strain against his sleeves, and the tendons bulge in his neck. With a shriek of metal on metal, the bar slides free and clatters to the ground. It topples over the side of the stairs, and a moment later, far below, we hear a quiet clang as it collides with the ground.
Treyose shoves the door open, and a blast of cold air hits me, accompanied by a cloud of smoke. The balcony is wider than I remember, and its once-glossy granite floor is covered with centuries of dirt, dead birds, and bugs.
I squint against the weak sunlight and step out onto the balcony. The bell tower is whole and untouched. Shading my eyes, I look to the sky, but there is no dragon in the haze. I cross to the edge of the balcony, my feet crunching the littered ground, and look down.
Far below, a dragon flies and people are runni
ng from the beast while Treyose’s men stand in organized columns, ready to fight the creature. The dragon dives down and the soldiers fire arrows, but the beast doesn’t slow. Two voices echo in my thoughts: Let us grab us a handsome soldier. No! That pretty maiden there! I want to eat her. I want to ruin her milky skin! I shudder at the realization that I am hearing the dragons’ conversation. I heard the fire dragon, but only when he intentionally spoke to me.
“I can hear them,” Golmarr says, his eyes wide. “Look!”
Just out of the soldiers’ reach, the beast touches the ground, and then whips its wings against the air as it takes flight. The way it flies is nothing like the way the fire dragon or the glass dragon soared. This creature lurches in clumsy, lopsided jolts. It turns and starts flying toward the bell tower, and I understand why it cannot fly well. One of its wings is the vibrant, shimmering hues of a sunset fading from light to dark to purple; the other wing is the dull, grayish color of putrid mud. The purple wing is wide and delicate, like a falcon’s. The gray wing looks like the stubby wing of a dead and plucked chicken, with skin pulled so taut between bones that light shines through it. Above the wings, the neck divides in two, and on the end of each neck is a single dragon head.
“God save us all,” Reyler mutters as he gapes at the beast.
Beside me, I hear Enzio swallow. “Are you truly going to fight that thing, cousin?” he asks.
I cannot speak around the fear clenching my throat closed, so I nod.
He swallows again, an audible gulp. “Give me the sword. I will do it,” he says, holding out an unsteady hand.
My heart hurts at his offer, at the obvious motivation behind it. Enzio cares for me as deeply as I care for him, which is why I shake my head and tighten my hold on the sword. “I will not let you fight in my place, friend.”