Fireborne (THE AURELIAN CYCLE Book 1)
Fireborne: Chapter 18

“My son,” said Leon Stormscourge, in Dragontongue. “Please, Atreus.”

“Leo will be looked after,” Atreus said.

Then he turned to the soldier beside him and gave him an order.

The soldier, who’d been watching the boy, didn’t hear it at first. The boy couldn’t have been older than eight—though what little of his expression the soldier could make out beneath a mask of blood was not the kind of expression that belonged to an eight-year-old.

The soldier, who had grown up thinking of dragonlords and their sons as another race, another species, was surprised to replace himself thinking that no child, not even a dragonlord’s, should ever wear a look like this.

Then he heard Atreus’s command. It had been said so quietly, the soldier thought at first he had misheard it.

“Take the boy into the hallway,” Atreus murmured, “and slit his throat.”

ANNIE

“He won’t do it,” Cor says.

“Yes, he will,” I answer.

We’re standing in the fleet commander’s office, a desk between me and them, and the door is shut. My palms are planted, flat, on the desk’s surface. Since becoming acting commander, I’ve organized and stacked all of Lee’s papers.

“People don’t kill their relatives,” Rock says, like I need this explained to me.

“Lee isn’t people,” I tell them. “He’ll do it. They’re both Firstriders; he’s always known what that would mean.”

Cor makes a ticking noise of skepticism. His arms are folded.

“Annie,” Rock says, his voice rising, “you understand what happens if he doesn’t do it, right? You understand who will have to deal with him if he changes sides? You.”

I answer with rising anger.

“Yeah, that’s occurred to me, Rock.”

“And you’ll be able to do that?” Rock demands.

It is like a confession, to say it aloud after hours of pondering in silence. “Yes.”

***

By evening, word has spread throughout the corps about what’s supposed to happen the following morning. Dinner is quieter than usual, and when we turn off the lights in the girls’ dorm, it’s silent the way it can only be when people aren’t sleeping. In the end I throw the bedcovers off myself.

“Crissa?” I murmur. Her bed is next to mine.

I have no idea what I’m about to ask her, but she doesn’t make me replace out.

“I’ve said my goodbyes,” she says. “You should say yours.”

It’s all I need to hear.

Goran’s office is unlocked. I let myself in and get his keys. At the stockade, the guards let me by without question. When I say his name outside the cell, I hear him stirring.

“Annie?”

He says it like he thinks he must be dreaming.

It’s dark inside, well past two in the morning already, and I can only see his outline as he gets to his feet. I unlock the door, let myself in, and before I can even go to him, I feel his arms around me, pulling me to him.
“You’re cold,” he says, “you’re shivering . . .”

I hadn’t noticed. He sits me on the edge of his cot and wraps the blanket I gave him around me, and then he holds me close again.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” I say.

Lee lets out a quiet laugh in the darkness.

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

No. I suppose he wouldn’t have been. I put the blanket around him, too, so that we’re sitting side by side, the blanket wrapped around us, and we’re as close as we used to sit in Albans, when he’d put his arms around me in that closet on the third floor.

“Let me keep this vigil with you,” I whisper.

In answer, he only presses me tighter. And then he winds his hand in my hair and lowers his face into my neck. It feels so right that a lump rises in my throat, and I lift my hand to cup his head to my shoulder, holding him there. I think of the glittering night from a world ago, where we held hands after a dance and it felt right, like this, but I pulled away. I can’t remember anymore why I did.

He inhales slowly. “Well, here we are,” he says.

Like here is the utter end, and he’s seen it coming all along.

“Do you . . . do you know what you’ll do?” I ask.

He lets out a laugh again, and it sounds a little like a cry.

“I know what I should do,” he says.

Whether he can do it, is another question.

“I keep thinking,” he says, his face still buried in my neck, “I keep thinking I should just take Pallor and run away.”

So, that’s how close he is to despair right now. To entertain the idea of turning his back on all of it.

But I know Lee better than that. And the one thing that I know, that has held true from the beginning, is that Lee doesn’t run. Lee stays. Even when it hurts him most.

“No, Lee,” I say.

He doesn’t respond, just clenches and unclenches his hands in my hair.

“You know you can’t do that.”

“Why not?” he asks dully. Like he knows, but wants to hear me say it.

And so, even though the only thing I want is for this feeling of his face buried against my neck to go on forever, I pull back. He’s forced to lift his head and look at me.

“Because you’ve been given this power, and you have a responsibility to use it. Giving it up—that’s as bad as giving the other side a dragon. You pick a side no matter what you do.”

Lee’s still for a moment. Like the words have stricken him. Then he looks away.

“Let’s talk about something else,” he says, “okay?”

“Okay,” I whisper.

We have about three hours before I have to leave.

For those three hours, we lie side by side, wrapped in the blanket, almost like lovers except it’s something more intimate than that. We talk about anything we can think of to push away thoughts of tomorrow, and for moments on end, we succeed.

But the distractions work too well, and time passes quickly, and in the end three hours feels cruelly short.

“Annie,” he says, when it’s time for me to leave. “If I don’t . . . if I can’t . . .”

It’s a question, even though it doesn’t sound like one. I make the promise that he wants to hear even as it breaks my heart to say it.

“Yes,” I tell him. “I’ll do it.”

He lowers his head into my hair, breathes in like he’s taking a final breath, and says, “Good.”

When I rise to leave, he seizes me, pulls me close, and hesitates. For a moment, as he stares at me with lips parted, I see the longing in his face.

Longing for me. So much longing that it looks like despair.

He lets out a groan so quiet it is barely audible, and with a tenderness that makes my eyes burn, he leans forward, tips my head down, and kisses me on the forehead. He quotes the Aurelian Cycle in Dragontongue.

You have given life to me.

As the touch of his lips on my forehead burns like a brand, understanding floods through me. I look up at him, taking in his face in the lantern light: the high cheekbones; the dark hair; the eyes that look older than ever tonight, set against a pale and careworn face.

I realize he’s never looked more like his father, and I don’t care.

I lift my fingers to his hair, bring his face to mine, and close the distance. For a moment the cool shock of his lips’ touch goes through me. Lee’s whole body has stilled. For a fleeting instant, as he freezes, I wonder if I shouldn’t have.

And then he inhales a shaking breath that I can feel, and his lips part on mine, and his hands go down from my hair to my waist. Still light, as if they dare not tighten on me—but then, as he begins to kiss me back, they do tighten. For a moment the kiss, too, is gentle, careful—I’m so conscious of my not knowing, of his knowing—and then he utters a sound so low in his throat that it may be a cry of need or perhaps sorrow muffled against my mouth. Then we’re no longer gentle, and I no longer care that I don’t know what I’m doing, because I know. My lips taste the first warmth of his tongue, my hands take in his chest and shoulders and neck as if they must make up time for all the years we haven’t touched, and I marvel at the feel of his hands, Lee’s hands, holding me so tight to him it’s like he wills our bodies to crush together as one. The strength that I have seen in wire-toned muscles now folded around me, their power on my body heady as wine.

I step forward, pushing him back, so that when he backs into the cot, he sinks down onto it. For a moment we continue to kiss as I stand between his knees and gather courage. But it’s too late to hesitate, too late now for shame, and so I do the one thing left I want to do. I climb onto his lap, fold my knees around him, and wind my arms around his neck to kiss him between drawn breaths. An echo of how we sat in Albans, when he used to hold me.

But this time, it’s I who am holding him.

And all the while his shuddering breaths, and the taste of his saliva mingled, finally, with salt, and someone is saying, I am saying, Come back to us, over and over again.

Until it becomes, at last, Come back to me.

LEE

Annie leaves me wondering whether I’ve dreamed it.

All the same, for the immeasurable space of what must be a half hour between her departure and Atreus’s arrival, the storms of my mind are stilled and all I can think, all I can remember, all that matters, is her lingering warmth.

Come back to me.

In the final hour, Atreus comes down the stairs flanked by two of his guard. He hands me my uniform himself. The armor glints a little in the growing light of dawn, the wingspread dragon with its four circlets of fire bold against the repurposed scales of the breastplate. Though the guards are bearing lanterns, their light is already weakening with the dawn.

When I’m armed, I ask him:

“Did you kill my father?”

Atreus is not expecting this, and for a moment we stare at each other. He is silhouetted in the lantern light.

“It won’t change anything,” I add. “But I need to know.”

One more thing that, for years, I haven’t let myself wonder. But it seems time to lay everything in the open.

Atreus answers curtly, though he meets my eye as he says it. “I did. Though I considered it more an act of mercy than anything else.”

“Yes,” I acknowledge. “It would have been.”

Faint surprise shows on his face, and he makes the smallest gratified nod. Like it’s I who have just offered him mercy.

“You’re ready?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“I’ll be waiting for you on Pytho’s Keep,” Atreus says.

ANNIE

When I return to the Cloister, I replace Power sitting alone, awake, in the solarium. The room is in shadow, the sky through the glass ceiling still dark. My hair is undone, my face damp, the taste of Lee’s lips still on mine.

“Did you enjoy your tearful goodbyes?” Power asks.

It’s the first time we’ve been alone in a room together since the day he confronted Lee in the caves. The bruises on my arms have begun to fade to yellow where he and Darius held them. When I start to turn away, he speaks again.

“Letter from the ministry. Just arrived. Addressed to the fleet commander.”

He holds it out. The seal is unbroken. I open it and read the message within while Power watches me from his armchair.

PLEASE AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CORPS IN THE CLOISTER. YOUR PRESENCE IS NOT NEEDED ON THE KEEP.

“Which does it say?”

I look up at him. Which?

“Do they want us there or not? When he gets back.”

“Does it matter?”

Power smiles and leans forward. “Antigone, I’ll admit it. I admire you. I admire how much shit you’re willing to take face-first to get what you want. But it pisses me off when you’re an idiot.”

I fold the letter and return it to its envelope.

“What,” I ask, “exactly, do you think I am being an idiot about right now?”

LEE

Pallor and I arrive first. The Riversource is in the heart of the highlands, a rocky clearing around a small, deep pool forming the hot springs of the River Fer. In Stormscourge lore, the gorge is said to be the place where the first stormscourge nests were found, where the first eggs were stolen, their hatchlings tamed by my ancestors. I’ve never seen the place before, but I’ve read of it. Looking around at the steep walls, the gorge famously impassable except by dragon, the intention behind Julia’s choice of location becomes as apparent as if she has said it aloud.

This place is perfectly designed for a private duel.

The realization fills me with sudden relief—and then, as I mark the emotion, sorrow.

Julia sur Erinys appears alone above the northern ridge and descends. As they alight, Julia removes her helmet. Today, unlike our two previous encounters, she is wearing battle armor. Emblazoned on the breast with Stormscourge heather, encircled by the three dragons of the triarchy.

The last time I saw such armor, I saw it on my father.

“Hello, Leo.”

“Hello, Julia.”

I take her in: the Stormscourge hair, the eyes, the face that in so many small ways is the closest thing to home I’ve seen since Palace Day. The armor that makes me miss my father like I’ve lost him all over again. I remember the feeling of her hands in mine on Midsummer as we grieved to have survived the same horrors and felt the same pain. I remember a childhood spent in laughter-filled play at her side, before we’d learned the taste of loss.

I see her and remember and it’s not enough.

Because Annie’s right.

There’s a war, and I have to take a side. Palace Day and the ties of blood aren’t enough to make me choose the wrong one. Whatever their claim on me, it’s a fact that the dragonlords reigned brutally and killed indiscriminately. They’re responsible for the deaths of thousands. They cannot be allowed to come back.

The prickles to my conscience, looking at Julia, only put me on guard. She is my kin; she was a girl I played with as a child; she has been, in these last months, the only tie I have left to the world I lost. But at this point, obeying instincts of tribalism or chivalry would be nothing but selfish. The reality is that she and I are both dragonriders. We’re both weapons. And she must be destroyed.

Before this moment, I doubted I could do it. But now that I’m here, looking at her, there’s no question. I’m going to do it. It’s not that it will be easy: It will be horrible.

But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

The only thing left to be determined is how long it will take.

“Julia,” I say, “I’m not sure how to say this, but—”

“You’re not coming back with me, are you?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think you would,” she says. “But I wanted to give you one last chance, in case.”

“I appreciate that.”

Though I’m suppressing the instincts, they nevertheless compel me to ask, awkwardly:

“Do you have others coming—?”

“No. I didn’t tell anyone. I wanted to have the opportunity to settle it like this.”

Privately. Without an audience. With dignity.

Because Julia, like me, learned the hard way to value a dignified death.

I tell her: “I came alone, too.”

“Well then,” she says, her tone mild again. It is clear that she understood the portent of my wording as well as I did, and that she knows what comes next.

For a moment, she fingers her helmet, though we continue to stare at each other. And then she lifts her fingers from it.

“You know,” she says, “we needn’t rush. Would you like to take a final walk together, before we do it?”

With anyone else, I would think this was cowardice or reluctance disguised as cordiality. With Julia, I know better. And even though it occurs to me that every minute longer I spend speaking with her will make this harder, I replace myself desiring, against all reason, to have a final conversation.

“I’d like that,” I say.

We dismount. Pallor makes a huff of consternation behind me; Erinys flexes and rears in impatience. They’re sensing the upcoming fight, are eager for it. We ignore them, approaching each other slowly in the barren space between. We meet at the water’s edge.

“Come,” Julia says, and together we begin to walk around the pool.

I know instinctively that we can only walk around it once; that after we have circled it, we will return to our dragons. Her pace is slow, like mine, as if she has the same course in mind.

“Have you found happiness, cousin?” she asks.

It’s strange to hear it put this way. I consider for a moment, if the last few years could be called happy. It’s not a word I’ve often considered in reference to my own life.

Then I think of Cor’s lopsided grin, of Crissa’s rippling laughter, of Annie’s lips on mine as her trembling fingers brought my face to hers.

“I have people I care for, who care for me in return,” I tell her. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

“I suppose, yes,” she says. Then she asks, “They’re the reason you refuse us?”

I sense her doubtfulness at the idea, and I realize that she doesn’t consider personal attachments a good reason to choose sides, any more than I do.

“Julia,” I say. “You know what our fathers did, don’t you?”

We’ve stopped walking. Steam from the Riversource rises; through it, the blurred outlines of our dragons, waiting on the opposite side of the pool, ripple as they move on the water’s still reflection.

“Yes,” she says. “I know.”

The way she says it, I know that I don’t need to tell her that what they did was wrong. Somehow, despite being driven out of her own city, despite living in isolation among the bitter survivors of an old regime, despite never having met or cared for any child orphaned by her father’s dragon, Julia already understands. Her face is pale, set, and sad.

I say, “Then you know why I’ve chosen as I have.”

Julia says, “We don’t have to be like our fathers. Our generation—we can be different. You and I, we already are.”

We’ve both stopped walking.

I think of the civilians burned on Starved Rock, the unarmed ships destroyed on Palace Day. The question comes out raw with feeling. “Are you different, Julia?”

Julia’s eyes flash. Instead of answering, she spits her accusation. “Are you? Your new regime is already failing. Athanatos has done nothing but fill the city with dirty workhouses and destroy our libraries—”

My answer returns cool, because my head, as Julia has grown angry, grows clear.

“He’s trying to start again, and it’s difficult. And what is censorship compared with your crimes? You attacked our fishermen, our traders. Civilians. They were unarmed.”

Julia’s face twists. She says, “We will do what it takes to regain what is ours.”

I inhale the steam-filled air rising from the Fer and shake my head.

“Callipolis isn’t yours anymore. The people have chosen. They don’t want dragonlords.”

A smile glints on Julia’s lips at this, catches in her eyes, as she looks at me. She lifts a hand, gesturing, with an open palm, to me, then to Pallor waiting on the opposite side of the steaming pool, a silver smear against the rising karst.

“Are you sure?” she asks softly. “Look at you, Leo. Look how readily they gave it back to you. The dragon, the power, the respect. Is it true, you are Athanatos’s favored successor?”

Julia’s smile widens at my silence.

“You and I were born to rule.”

There it is. The single belief that ruined all of them. From the dragonlords of the Aurelian Cycle all the way down to my father, and now Julia.

“No,” I answer.

I had meant to add more, to explain myself, but I realize now there’s no need. She does not agree with me; she will not. We’ve reached the bounds of reason and have come to the threshold of belief. I would not do her the dishonor of imagining that her beliefs have been any less hard-won than mine.

She seems to realize the same thing. She doesn’t try to argue, to ask why. We resume walking the edge of the pool, but we’re silent now. I have the sense that I’ve said what I needed to say; that she has, too. I also have the sense that we were both seeking this impasse. Now that we have found it, we’re ready to finish what we came here to do.

There is a sadness shared between us, mingled with resolve.

“It’s been good to talk with you these past months,” she says finally, as we approach the part of the pool where we first started, where Pallor and Erinys wait for us, tensed, wings ready to spread. “Whatever our differences have been. It’s been good to remember with you. I hope that, if ever we meet in any afterlife, we will meet as we were, before.”

As children.

The sadness mounts; it is piercing.

“My hope is the same,” I answer.

We have reached our starting point.

We look at each other, exchange a final nod. Then we turn away. She returns to her stormscourge, and I return to Pallor. We mount again, replace our helmets, and set our visors. Neither of us hesitates before launching into the air.

ANNIE

“You are assuming Atreus is like you,” Power says. “Willing to forgive the facts because of the feelings. But what if he isn’t?”

The chill from the open windows of the solarium, letting in the early autumn breeze in the predawn light, is suddenly enough to make me shiver as I stand, facing Power. He’s no longer lounging: Instead he grips both arms of his chair as he leans forward. As the sky outside lightens, the features of his face come into focus.

“Am I the only one listening in class with him? This is a man who authorized butchering every member of the dragonborn families down to the last man, woman, and child, including those who were his friends. He has rooted through a civilization of literature he loved and is destroying it, rather than let its values erode his city. Atreus doesn’t follow his heart. He works in spite of it.”

The most important protest, the paradox that makes it all work, rises to my lips: “He once saved Lee’s life—”

Power snaps his fingers and leans forward. “According to Lee. Who was what, eight at the time, probably barely spoke Callish, and was senseless with shock?” He shrugs. “Ask yourself this. Is a man who ran a project of total extermination of a people really likely to change his program, just because he discovers a dragonborn rat ten years later who turns out to support his cause? Maybe. Or he’s going to get what use he can out of him and then discard him like the rest. Quietly, with minimal fuss. Out of sight of those whose consciences would twinge.”

I replace my voice, and it’s shaking.

“The whole point of Atreus’s system is that anyone can be worthy.”

Power’s laugh echoes in the empty, glass-walled room.

“Maybe one day,” he says. “But for now, I’m pretty sure the point is that some people aren’t anymore.”

He nods, once more, to the letter contained in my hands.

“Your move, Commander.”

LEE

Julia flies her stormscourge the way I remember them flying in tournaments, when I was a child. The way stormscourges are meant to be flown.

Can I really do this?

Because it’s one thing to resolve to on the ground; it’s another to give your dragon the command to fire. Sparked dragonfire, undoused.

I know what’s needed. I remember what it felt like, a month ago, when I finally won against Annie in our final tournament: that eruption of violence that came with Pallor’s sparking, the feeling of ascendance that left me sick from its darkness. It feels like I’ve spent a lifetime resisting it. But now, when I know that it’s called for, I can’t bring myself to give in to it.

But Julia can, and she is the one who does first.

I feel the blast sear through the left arm of my armor and flamesuit, burning skin, and for a moment—though we are not playing tournament rules, though we are not offering each other time-outs or resets—we both pause midair. I feel the burn, a full searing heat of sparked fire rage down my arm. As the pain makes me light-headed, as I fumble automatically for coolant valves, I lift my head and look at her. Our faces are visored; no expression is discernible on hers any more than mine. But as we look at each other, and the canyon stills and its echoes go quiet, I am certain that we are both making the same resolution.

There is no backing out of this. It will be finished, one way or the other.

I rein Pallor round, and this time, when the ferocity calls me, I don’t hold back.

The world is a blaze of dragonfire and smoke and pain for a time after that. Everything we once imagined that dueling on dragonback would be. Except we didn’t imagine then that it would be accompanied by a feeling, barely distinguishable from the searing burns that have spread across my body, of horror so great it feels like physical pain.

Julia’s guard opens once, twice, three times, but never enough for a kill shot, and because I’m determined to do it with one blow instead of piecemeal, I let the opportunities pass.

I want to be Firstrider, you’re always Firstrider, let me be it for a change—

Though neither of us is speaking, though there is no sound except the wind in the canyon and the hiss of flames, I replace I can hear her, hear us, memories flooding in so long forgotten. From the Palace gardens, when they were ours.

What if I’m King Rada, of the Bassileans? Then we could fight each other, and we’d both be Firstrider.

She’s lost her balance, just enough to expose herself, and through my blurring vision I notice the opening with Pallor at once.

A kill shot.

I feel like my heart is breaking.

Fight each other?

A sound fills the air: my own cry, wild with despair, in time with Pallor’s blast. It feels as though I, like Pallor, am igniting.

He twists down, inhales, and fires.

There’s a moment of perfect stillness, as the fire that filled my vision leaves me blinded, as the gorge becomes, for an instant, perfectly quiet. Then the silence breaks. An inhuman, hair-raising keen goes up, unearthly, alien, full of unbearable sorrow. Though it’s a sound I’ve only ever read about, I know it at once. It is the sound of a dragon who has felt the bond with its rider break in the only way it can be broken.

It takes the breath out of my lungs.

Pallor recovers before I do, driving us forward, firing again to finish what we’ve started. The grieving stormscourge barely resists. It’s as though she no longer has any reason to.

Same time tomorrow?

I’ll try. Wait for me, Leo.

ANNIE

After my conversation with Power, I wake everyone. When they’re dressed, full uniform, we convene in the oration room, where it’s still dark enough outside for the lamps in their sconces to be the chief source of light. But already, birds are calling; dawn approaches.

“Do you agree,” I ask, when all are assembled, “that if Lee completes the task Atreus has set for him, he will have proved himself trustworthy as a Callipolan and your leader?”

Around the room, Guardians look at one another, startled. Except for Power, who stands in the back, his arms folded, a strange, twisted smirk on his face as he watches me address the corps.

“Annie, it’s more that we don’t think—”

I cut Max off.

“For the sake of argument. If he does it.”

“Of course,” Deirdre says.

Others are nodding.

“Good. Then start suiting up. He’s due back at Pytho’s Keep within the hour. The Inner Palace wants us there as witnesses.”

“Since when?”

“Since now.”

The edge in my tone seems to be enough to prevent them from making further argument. As the rest get to their feet, I pull Crissa, Cor, and Lotus aside.

“I’m going to need your help with something.”

And then I tell them the full stakes. I don’t give them time for horror; instead I give them instructions. Cor to go to General Holmes, Crissa to Miranda Hane.

“Go on dragonback, and tell them that you’re there on the orders of the First Protector. Tell them that he requires their presence.”

When they have departed for the armory, I turn to Lotus.

“How well do you know the houses of the Janiculum?”

Lotus gives me a startled look.

“That depends. For what?”

“Would you be able to identify Dora Mithrides’s home from dragonback?”

Mithrides: honorary alderman on the Janiculum Council and wealthiest of Atreus’s supporters, who was so taken with Lee at the Lycean Ball and so surprised that a boy of such polish could have emerged from the slums.

It seems time to make use of her lingering blood prejudices.

“Yes,” Lotus says, beginning to smile as he understands. “I believe I would.”

Twenty minutes later, he and I are circling above the Janiculum terraces in the half-light of early morning, the shadow of Pytho’s Keep rising steep and black above us. Lotus points down, to a particularly ostentatious estate on one of the highest ledges of the hill.

“That one.”

We descend and land in Dora Mithrides’s front garden, inside her gate and guardhouse. It is, I realize, the first time I’ve ever set foot on the Janiculum. The dragons crunch on the gravel of a turnaround designed for long lines of carriages and horses; the grounds are still, save for a fountain burbling in the center of the turnaround and a mourning dove crying. I leave Lotus with the dragons and make my way up the great stone staircase to Mithrides’s front door, overhung by an ivy-laden arcade. And then I pull the bell.

After a few minutes the valet answers, rubbing sleep from his eyes. I swallow my discomfort and speak as I’ve seen Lee do to servants in the past: without interest.

“Wake your mistress.”

I’m prepared to add an official mandate, but the valet obeys without waiting for it. I don’t know if it’s because of my uniform or my tone.

When Mithrides emerges shortly afterward, she has dressed, though her graying hair is not arranged. Her lined face is alert and intrigued.

“By the dragon, girl,” she says in Dragontongue when she sees me, and her eyes travel past me, to Lotus waiting on the gravel with his skyfish, Iustus, and my Aela.

In Callish, I ask, “Do you remember who I am?”

“Of course I do. You’re the highland rider.”

“And you remember Lee sur Pallor?”

“The Guardian from Cheapside with such an unusual grasp of Dragontongue poetry, and now our Firstrider? Of course. But I fail to understand why such questions merit a call at this hour—”

“Please come with me. There’s something that you should see.”

As Mithrides follows me down the stairs to the dragons, she remarks: “It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a ride on one of these.”

***

In early morning, Pytho’s Keep is the first part of the city to clear the fog and catch the light of the rising sun. As Lotus and I approach, Mithrides clinging to my back with trembling arms, we’re joined by the rest of the fleet, all who were present at my meeting in the oration room. From the air we are able to distinguish figures waiting on the plinth of the ancient Sky Court: Atreus, accompanied by the entirety of the Protector’s Guard, a sea of crimson uniforms, who must have mounted the single winding stair carved into the karst on foot. Standing in the great, flat width of the open court, under the fullness of the dawn sky and lifted to such a height from the ground, Atreus and his guard look like toy figures.

“There’s Lee,” Cor calls to me, raising an arm toward the northwest.

A white aurelian approaches on the western horizon, returning from the highlands.

Relief fills me in equal parts with dread.

He’s done it.

My Lee, what hell have you been through, to make it back to us?

“Let’s descend.”

Mithrides, astride Aela behind me, grips my sides with a sucked-in breath as we dive; all around us, dragons are gathering their wings for descent.

We land on the windswept flagstones before the Protector’s Guard. Crissa lends her arm to Hane, Cor helps down General Holmes, and Lotus and I help Dora. The rest of the fleet have landed in a semicircle around us and the Guard. Today, with clouds hanging low against the karst, the dawn is diffused by pink mist. Old trees, hobbled by years of wind into little more than shrubs, border the ancient court and mark the edge of the karst’s plateau. Three marble arches rise above the plinth on which the triarchs of another age sat, and the stone citadel rises behind them.

Deafened by the unrelenting wind, I summon up my courage to look at Atreus. He stands on the plinth, framed by the arches, his short gray hair whipping flat against his forehead. It is light enough, on the Keep, to see his face clearly.

For the moment, his eyes travel from face to face, lingering on Holmes’s and Hane’s and Mithrides’s, and then to the array of riders, on dragonback, behind us. Like he’s searching. But then I force myself to speak, and he looks at me. I have to raise my voice over the wind.

“As requested, Protector. Your witnesses.”

It’s like being drilled through to the center, holding Atreus’s gaze. I think of my uniform, of the dragonrider’s cloak flowing behind me, of the dragon that answers to me alone standing to my right.

“Thank you, Antigone.”

“What is the meaning of this, Atreus?” Dora Mithrides asks.

General Holmes looks around the crumbling Sky Court in bewilderment, and then his eyes replace the Protector’s Guard behind Atreus, and he frowns. As if he’s noted the presence of an armed force and the remoteness of our location, and begins to wonder at the combination. Hane merely looks with long, slow glances from me to the Protector, understanding what hasn’t been said.

Atreus does not have the opportunity to answer Dora’s question. On the edge of the court, silhouetted against the glowing sky, a final dragon has landed. Pallor no longer gleams silver-white; he’s blackened with ash, each breath a hoarse gasp. When Lee slides stiffly to the ground, I realize that much of what darkens his armor is dragonsblood. His back is turned to us, his shoulders hunched, one hand gripping the ridge of Pallor’s back for support.

“What on earth?” Dora breathes from behind me.

“Atreus,” says Holmes, with mounting intensity but through barely moving lips, his words clearly intended for none but Atreus to hear, “why is your Guard waiting on the Keep for our Firstrider?”

I don’t wait for Atreus’s answer. Instead, I turn from them and go to Lee. I can feel the eyes of those watching on my back. I join Lee at the court’s edge. Beyond it, the karst falls away below glowing mist and the Palace, the city, and the river still lie in shadow.

Pallor has begun to let out keening cries as Lee spills over. Lee, his face averted, doesn’t notice my approach until I say his name. I wrap my arms around him, pull him close, breathe in the smell of dragonfire and blood. When he lowers his head onto my shoulder, he is for a moment completely silent—as if his distress, so uncontrollably demonstrated by Pallor, is still something he seeks to contain within himself. Then the moment breaks. A single cry of grief escapes him, muffled and defeated, as if it has been torn from him against his will. I feel answering sorrow surging up within me.

But I force it down. The time for grief must be later. I let him go.

“They’re waiting, Lee.”

He doesn’t ask for what, just nods and straightens. He drags one arm across his eyes, and for the first time looks past me, at our audience. The sight of them seems to clear his head. Beside him, Pallor’s thrashing begins to slow, his cries to lessen. With sudden decisiveness Lee turns from me and yanks open a massive satchel tied to Pallor’s flank, dark with the outline of a human body. He pulls from it a stained, blackened helmet on which the Stormscourge symbol of highland heather is still barely visible.

With a final touch to Pallor’s still-shuddering side and a nod to me, he walks toward the waiting onlookers: Atreus, the Protector’s Guard, Holmes, Hane, and the other Guardians and their dragons. There is a moment of silence in which all we hear is the deafening wind.

Then Lee stops, two yards from Atreus, and flings the helmet to the ground between them. Before Atreus can say anything, Lee begins to speak.

“I was born Leo, son of Leon, of House Stormscourge. I hereby renounce that name.”

Hane draws a sharp breath. Holmes’s eyes widen. Lee’s voice is clear against the wind. He is speaking in Dragontongue, in meter, according to the traditions of high oaths in the old courts.

“In the name of Callipolis, I have forfeited all ties of blood. In the name of Callipolis, I have forsaken both the traditions of my people and the laws of their long-dead gods. In the name of Callipolis”—Lee inhales, his voice breaks—“I have slain my kin.”

He slides to his knees on the flagstone, lowers his head, and extends his hands, palms up.

“Let the blood on my hands be my offering; let the spoils of my battle stand as proof of my loyalty.”

And then he places his palms flat on the ground.

“All that I have, I offer to Callipolis. I am at your mercy, to be kept or cast out, according to your wish.”

Lee, head bowed as he waits, does not witness the silent interchanges of his audience: how Holmes levels a gaze at Atreus with a long, deliberate exhale, eyebrows raised in a challenge; how Hane has raised her hands to the sides of her face and seeks Atreus’s eyes with her own wide ones, bright and horrified; how Dora Mithrides has folded her arms as she glares at Atreus, her lips pursed. The Protector’s Guard are gripping their spears slackly, uncertainly, looking to Atreus for further instruction. Atreus looks past all of them, at me.

Then, to my utter surprise, he smiles.

It is not a smile with any warmth: It is a lip curled, a lifted brow, as if, instead of feeling thwarted by my maneuvers, he is laughing at them. In that moment, his malice is palpable.

The triumph that has been rising within me falters. A coldness blossoms in my stomach. For one heart-stopped instant, as he steps forward, I think, He’s going to do it anyway.

Then he looks down at Lee and speaks.

“Rise, son of Callipolis.”

Breath returns to me in a slow exhale.

Lee gets slowly to his feet. Atreus steps down from the plinth and places a palm on Lee’s forehead. Lee raises his head fractionally at the touch. He closes streaming eyes. When Atreus continues, his voice is soft, emotionless. Almost lazy.

“Do you swear to honor, serve, and protect the City, as long as you have breath?”

“I swear it.”

“Then be Stormscourge no longer. You are Lee, of no father and no house.”

Atreus’s hand falls. Lee opens his eyes, blinking as if the dawn light blinds him.

Cor steps forward, producing from the pocket of his uniform Lee’s silver-and-gold wristband, retrieved from Goran’s office before our departure. He holds it out to offer to Atreus, but Holmes steps forward and takes it instead.

“Affirm your vows,” Holmes directs Lee gruffly, in Callish.

Lee inhales. Then he recites, without faltering, the words that we first said as children, seven years ago.

“I vow to serve as Guardian, from this day forward, till death release me. I forswear all worldly possessions and riches, that I be not corrupted. I forswear all family and the comforts of hearth and progeny, that I be not torn from my purpose. All that I am belongs to Callipolis. By the wings of my dragon I will keep her. Let my will be her protection. Let my reason guide her to justice.”

Holmes holds out the band to Lee’s extended wrist and snaps the wristband in place. The fingers of Lee’s dominant hand reach for it automatically, confirming its presence.

When the wristband is secured, I unclasp the medal of the Firstrider and fleet commander from my shoulder and hold it out to him.

Lee reaches for it, looks at me, and his eyes focus. Then, instead of taking it, he closes my fingers over it.

“Keep it.”

I stand frozen, my closed fist smeared with the blood and ash of Lee’s hand. For a moment, I don’t understand.

Then Lee turns from me to address those watching, lifting his voice over the wind.

“I have sworn my loyalty to Callipolis. I have shown myself willing to wage war for it. But it is not a war I can or should lead. I recuse myself.”

His voice thick with a different emotion, he unfolds an arm, gesturing to me with the whole of it. “Instead, I will follow the one who should. Antigone sur Aela is next in rank to take my place. She has demonstrated herself more than my equal in the air and on the ground. I will follow her.”

Pressure on the edge of my eyes is growing as Lee’s meaning hits home. For a moment, all I can think is no. No, I don’t want this, I can’t do this—

But then I remember that I did want this. That I can do this. And Lee needs it.

And when I look past him, to those watching, to see if they raise the objections that are half swirling in my head, I replace they are not. Instead, for the first time since Lee arrived on the Keep, Atreus’s face shows surprise. His hand has moved, seemingly unconsciously, to cover his mouth, twisted with whatever realizations he has left to make as he regards Lee’s arm proffered in abdication.

Then Lee turns to me. “Antigone, will you accept the mantle of Firstrider and Fleet Commander?”

The eyes of the corps, of Atreus and Miranda Hane and General Holmes are on me, but now my eyes are only on Lee. Covered in blood and ash, gray eyes blazing as he stands tall, dark hair rippling in the wind of the Sky Court. Every bit a dragonlord’s son.

Waiting on my word, though it costs him all that’s left of his resolve to do so.

My throat tight, I nod. And then I force my answer to be loud, and carry over the wind.

“I will.”

Lee steps closer, takes the medal from me, and affixes it again to my shoulder. I am aware, while his fingers clasp the pin against my uniform, of my own light breathing as I look up at him, as we pass through this moment. A few heartbeats that take us from one order to another.

The medal again on my shoulder, Lee steps back from me and bends before me, full-backed, into a bow. Though his voice is strained, it does not break.

“I salute you as my commander and offer you my dragon’s service as your Alternus.”