He stopped abruptly and faced her. “It’s just a name. I look a little different, but that doesn’t mean anything. That doesn’t mean I’m one of them.”
Piper watched him, aching inside. He was trying to convince her, and himself, that he wasn’t a Taroth. He didn’t want to be different, to carry the burden of a royal bloodline. It was more than Netia’s comment about babies, more than the dragon king story. This was something that had been eating at him for a long time—his entire life, maybe.
And she would have to crush his fragile hope for a final time.
“I told you about the visions I had of Natania’s memories,” she said, her voice cracking a little. “You know that I saw Nyrtaroth through her eyes.”
He went completely still, tension radiating off him.
She took a deep breath. “The resemblance between the two of you is unmistakable. He could have been your older brother. You look as much like Nyrtaroth as Miysis looks like Maahes.”
His shoulders slumped in defeat.
“I’m sorry, Ash.”
He shook his head, turning away and leaning one shoulder against a tree trunk. She twisted her hands together, wanting to reach out to him but knowing she should give him time to compose his thoughts. As he stared at nothing, all she wanted to do was hold him, to tell him it didn’t change anything.
“I guess I always knew,” he murmured. “I never wanted to believe it. It was easier to convince myself it was just a name meant to intimidate Samael.”
She moved to his side, sliding her hand into his. His fingers curled around hers. He stared out at the forest, his face in profile to her. The dark markings that swirled in the hollows of his cheeks spoke clearly of his regal ancestry. She’d never considered that Ash himself might not believe—or want to believe—the truth of his name.
“Is it that bad, being a Taroth?” she asked.
He sighed. “You heard the story. Taroth means ‘shield,’ and they are destined to protect the draconians—whether they want to or not.”
“You’ve always had a protective nature,” she pointed out gently.
“I’m not obligated to protect the people I love; I do it because I want to, because I care about you. But to be required to sacrifice my life for—for some inherited duty?” He let out another long breath. “Nyrtaroth is hated by pretty much all Underworld daemons. He sullied the Taroth name beyond salvation. Other castes hate him because now Hades is even more powerful, with no one left to challenge them. Because of Nyrtaroth, the draconians fell from being one of the most powerful castes to being slaves and outcasts.”
He turned toward her, putting his back against the tree. His eyes were dark and sadness lurked in the back of his gaze.
“If we found draconians here, what do you imagine they’d think of me? Would they hate me for being a Taroth? I bet they’ll hate me for having served Samael.”
She squeezed his hand. “Or maybe they’ll welcome a powerful, honorable draconian warrior who can help protect them from Samael. Maybe they’ll want the help of the last Taroth in rebuilding your caste’s strength.”
He rubbed his free hand over his hair. “I don’t want to be a leader. It’s hard enough just keeping the two of us alive.”
The ache in her chest grew, sympathy for his turmoil. Born a leader of a people who might hate him for the bloodline he carried. Born a leader but unwilling to lead—unwilling to take responsibility for more lives than he already had, not when keeping his small group of loved ones safe was almost more than he could handle.
“Then maybe,” she said teasingly, tapping him lightly on the chest, “they’ll just want you to make some Taroth babies for them, just in case the dragon king comes looking for his heart flame.”
He snorted. “I think I’ll pass.”
She planted her hands on her hips and gave him a stern stare, half serious. “Now that’s a terrible attitude to have. If you don’t have any children, the Taroth bloodline will die with you.”
“Maybe that would be for the best.” He reached out and slid his hands around her waist, drawing her closer. “Even if we found some draconians who wanted me to be their leader, I don’t give a damn. My life doesn’t belong to them any more than it belonged to Samael.”
She leaned against him, sliding her arms around his neck. His warmth suffused her body. He rubbed his cheek against her hair, then put his lips to her ear.
“The only one,” he murmured, his deep voice sliding down to her bones, “I want to belong to is you.”
She turned her head and blindly found his lips with hers, sinking her fingers into his hair. He locked their mouths together. As her blood heated with need, she pressed into him. His hands slid down her back and then lower, and he pulled her hips against him. She gasped and kissed him harder.
Time disappeared, all her senses lost in him, but eventually he leaned back, his arms around her loosening. She leaned her head against his shoulder, catching her breath as the haze of desire faded, her insatiable need for him unsatisfied.
“I think they just put out the campfire,” he said a little huskily.
“I suppose we should go back.” She meant the words but she didn’t actually move. She didn’t want to ever move. Back in the camp with people everywhere, they would once again have no privacy.
“Ash,” she began, leaning back to look up at him. “I was thinking …”
“About what?”
“Well, one of the things I saw from Natania’s memory was a draconian city in the mountains—these mountains, I’m pretty sure—and there was a fairly distinctive statue on the summit of one mountain. When we were at the hot springs, I think I saw the same statue in the distance.”
“Where? I didn’t see anything.”
“At the far end of the valley that the gazebo overlooked. I’m not sure, but what do you think about checking it out? It would give us a little time away from everyone and, if we found it, it would be cool to see a place where draconians used to live, right?”
He considered her suggestion. “Raum and I didn’t scout in that direction, so there could be something there that we missed. If it is a former draconian city, I would like to see that.”
She smiled. “You don’t mind flying all the way back?”
“We can travel much faster with just the two of us.”
A surge of guilt at encouraging him to travel immediately after arriving at the permanent camp made her step back. “Well, you should rest for a day or two, at least. Or maybe a week or—”
“A cycle,” he corrected. “Or two cycles, which is about a week on Earth.”
“Right, yes, two cycles. Or even three. You need to recover your strength and—”
He leaned down and pressed his mouth against hers, silencing her. Her hands jumped to his face, and she couldn’t even be annoyed. She could have happily kissed him until the world ended.
To her disappointment, he soon drew back. “We could both use some rest. We can go exploring once the camp is properly set up and the area is secured.”
“Deal.” She bit her lip. “We’ll need to come up with a reason for Lyre about why we aren’t bringing him with us.”
Ash smirked as he stepped away from the tree. “I don’t think we’ll need to explain anything to Lyre.”
“Oh. I guess not.”
Shaking her head at her foolishness—Lyre would know exactly why they wanted to go off on their own for a few days, no matter how plausible of an excuse they came up with—she slipped her hand into Ash’s as they headed back toward the camp. She hoped they would find the ancient draconian city, but she wouldn’t be too worried if they didn’t. Spending some time alone with Ash was all that really mattered, because she didn’t know how much longer they would have together. One day—one cycle—at a time.
Chapter Seven
Twilight settled over the mountains. She didn’t like the Underworld version. Twilight was supposed to be a short span of deepening darkness, not an event lasting hours. The unsettling limbo
of neither day nor night made her antsy.
She sat astride Zwi’s back, her hands wound through the dragon’s mane, as they soared through the valleys of the mountain range. Steep slopes and sharp peaks surrounded them. The rock was primarily basalt, dark even in the bright sunlight. In the odd, muted twilight, the mountains were solid black, the texture of the rock invisible. In the valleys below, forests of red-leafed trees swayed in the brisk wind, their color slowly seeping away as the sky darkened.
Ash flew above her and Zwi, wings spread wide and locked as he glided effortlessly on the thermals rising from the cooling earth. Piper could feel the warmth carrying them gently upward. It was like floating, impossibly peaceful, and the view was spectacular.
They’d left during the last eclipse and flown throughout the day. With only a light pack and Piper’s weight to burden her, Zwi could fly many hours without a break, and Ash could fly even longer. Their stamina, combined with favorable weather, had helped them cover a great deal of distance. Instead of flying back to the hot springs and following the valley, Ash had cut a straight line in the direction of the dragon statue—or where she thought she’d seen the statue. They’d intersected the valley an hour ago and were following it until they found something. At least, she assumed it was the same valley; Ash said it was, but they all looked the same to her.
She hadn’t yet spotted the oddly shaped peak that had reminded her of the dragon statue. It worried her that she couldn’t see any similar summits. Had she been mistaken at the hot springs? What if they’d come all this way for nothing? The valley ahead eventually ended at a sprawling behemoth of a mountain that was definitely lacking a carved peak.
Ash didn’t seem worried about it. He’d said any exploring they did was useful since he and Raum wanted to map as much of the mountains as they could. Raum had said as much when they’d proposed their plan to scout the valley. Lyre and Seiya had been less enthused, not only skeptical about the presence of an abandoned city among the peaks, but also uncomfortable with Piper and Ash travelling so far without backup. Seiya had volunteered to come with them but Raum had shot that down fast; Seiya couldn’t keep up with her weak wing.
Seiya had subsided after that, leaving Ash and Piper to make whatever plans they wanted. Piper had seen what Lyre had meant about Seiya’s spirits being low; she’d given up so easily compared to the fierce protectiveness of her brother she’d displayed in the past. Or maybe she just trusted Piper more now.
The mountains drifted by and Piper relaxed on Zwi’s back. They would land soon and set up a camp to sleep for a few hours. Ash’s head was already turning this way and that as he searched for a good spot. He’d timed their journey in the hopes of finding the dragon statue before the long Underworld night, but it looked like they would be searching in the dark.
Ash’s wings tilted and he began a gradual, curving descent. The valley below was thickly forested—impossible to see if the terrain was suitable to make camp. She didn’t care where they stopped; she was just looking forward to a night alone with him. Memories of the park in Habinal City kept whispering through her head, distracting her from the breathtaking vista of mountains.
She sat up a little straighter, scanning the horizon once more in the final hope that she would spot something. Where was the dragon peak? Maybe she had just imagined it; it had been so far away from the hot springs. She could have been seeing almost anything.
As Zwi banked after Ash, Piper’s view of the oversized mountain that marked the end of the valley shifted. The diminishing light fell across the peak in a strange way, and she realized the single, wide peak wasn’t one mountain—it was two. As they arched through the air toward the east side of the valley, a gap became visible between the two peaks.
And framed clearly between the two summits was a distant, third peak, where a stone dragon perched regally on its rock throne, wings half-spread and neck curved in an elegant S.
“Ash, look!” she yelled. “There it is!”
Ash’s wings snapped down as he pulled a tight one-eighty, squinting in the direction she was pointing. His mouth fell open when he spotted the distant statue.
“Well, shit.” He snapped his wings open to catch another thermal. “Do you want to keep going?”
“Yeah, let’s check it out!” Remembering she wasn’t the one doing all the work of flying, she contained her enthusiasm. “Are you up for it, Zwi?”
Zwi rumbled a positive-sounding note.
“She’s good,” Ash said. “Let’s go.”
He shot forward, wings beating down. Zwi swooped after him. They closed in on the sprawling twin mountains. Ash flew higher, angling over the high pass between them. Piper bent low over Zwi’s neck, taking deep breaths as the air noticeably thinned. The carved summit loomed, beckoning them onward. The towering peaks on either side closed in around them and the wind in the pass intensified, buffeting Zwi from side to side. Both draconian and dragon flew hard, wings pulling up and snapping down with forceful beats as they fought the currents.
The punishing wind abated as they soared out of the pass. Another valley opened in front of them. A glittering lake filled the valley floor, its water tinted a crystalline aquamarine. Grassy—or rather, leafy—hills dotted with bright flowers surrounded the lake on three sides. Ahead of them, at the far south end, the fourth side of the lake was a gravelly shore that stretched flat for a dozen yards before morphing into steep-sided basalt that shot up hundreds of yards to the summit where the dragon perched, standing guard over the valley.
They flew over the lake toward the summit. As they drew near, the toll the last five hundred years had taken on the statue grew more obvious. The muzzle, once open in a soundless roar, was missing its lower jaw. One wing was mostly intact, but half of the other wing had broken off. Chips and chunks were missing, and the finer details of horns and scales had weathered away over the years.
It was still magnificent.
Ash soared upward until he reached chest height on the dragon, where he stopped, wings beating in an awkward up-and-down hover. He looked so tiny in front of it, his wingspan a fraction of the dragon’s. Its neck was as thick as his torso.
Zwi swooped past Ash, circling the statue. Ash followed, and they flew several slow circles around it, examining it from every angle. Piper tore her gaze away to look across the valley. It took her a moment, but she eventually spotted a balcony protruding from the sheer slopes of the mountains that formed the east and west walls of the valley. In the dim twilight, the balconies were almost invisible, mere shadows amongst the dips and crevices of the natural rock face.
Once she recognized one, she spotted another—and then another and another. Two dozen jumped out at her all at once on a single mountain face.
“This way, Zwi,” she said, pointing at the nearest balcony. “Ash, come on!”
Zwi glided toward the mountainside, hesitating until she noticed the balcony. She let out a deep-pitched chitter and swooped straight for it. Piper clutched her mane as the dragon landed with a thump in the center of the wide span of stone and held her wings out of the way for Piper to dismount.
Piper jumped down as Ash landed beside Zwi. He turned in a slow circle, eyes growing wider as he too spotted the dozens and dozens of hidden balconies and entrances all over the mountains on either side of the dragon summit. The summit with the statue didn’t have any balconies, instead standing in lone glory at the southernmost tip of the valley.
He brushed one hand across the carved rail, fingers tracing the faded geometric design. Circling around Zwi, Piper joined him at the railing.
“We found it,” she said, beaming. “Isn’t it magnificent?”
He nodded, amazement written across his normally stoic face. “That statue is something to see.”
“I wish you could have seen what it looked like five centuries ago.” She took his hand. “Let’s look inside.”
Together, they walked through the arched, carved entryway into the dwelling. Bits of rock littered the round
, open space and a layer of grit, carried inside by the wind, covered every surface. Off to one side, two low-backed chairs had survived, one lying on its side with a broken leg. Moving away from Ash to the still-standing chair, she brushed the dirt off it, discovering wood that was still solid in places. In others, it was beginning to crumble, but it had held up well over the past five centuries. She wiped away more dirt to uncover a carved design on the back.
Ash picked up a broken board from near the entrance. He held it up, then looked at the wall beside the door.
“Look,” he murmured. “There’s a track there. I think this used to be a sliding door.”
Piper looked from the board in his hand, the bottom edge jagged from a rough break, to the remains of the door scattered across the floor, then to the chair on its side. Her excitement at finding the city faded into stomach-tightening sorrow. In her enthusiasm to see this place in the flesh, she hadn’t really thought about how it had all ended for the people who’d live here: in war. Ash was holding a piece of the front door of a draconian’s home, a door she imagined had been broken down as the Hades soldiers invaded. She could see it in her mind, a mother draconian rushing away from the shattering door with her child, knocking over the chair as she fled the coming reapers.
Ash met her eyes, the same grief reflected in his gaze. He carefully replaced the board on the floor and joined her. Side by side, they entered the next room. A window with a wide stone sill for sitting let light flood across the space. Across from the window, a round stone platform a couple feet high dominated the room, carved from the mountain. Piper walked closer, frowning in confusion, and picked up a shred of dry, rotted fabric.
“A bed,” she said softly. “This was a bedroom.”
Ash moved to the corner by the window and crouched. A small wooden chest sat in the shadows. He carefully wiped the dust off, then opened the lid. Piper knelt beside him. Inside, the chest’s contents—a collection of small stone and wooden toys—had been left untouched by the weather.