Tressa stormed out of the war room, slamming the door shut behind her. Chest heaving, she forced herself to take deep breaths. She leaned against the wall, frustration coursing through her veins. The door opened again, and someone took hesitant steps toward her. Tressa didn't have to look to know her great-grandmother had followed her out.
The council had argued again and again in the war room. Mestifito's sudden transition from all-powerful dragon to ordinary human had set everyone on edge. He told them everything he knew about his brother, Donovan, including the ghastly way he stole skin from the dead, stitching it together to form a new identity for himself. The council agreed it was best to stay underground until they knew better what was happening in the Dragonlands. Without their leader to guide them, the Black had lost their nerve.
All except for Tressa.
She’d spent the last few months wallowing in her grief. But she felt different now. Perhaps the blood rain had baptized her, reawakening the warrior inside. The last thing she wanted to do was give up. When the others voted to remain underground, she exploded from the room, unable to face the craven people a moment longer.
"Tressa," Granna said hesitantly. "It's for the best. Without Mestifito, we don't know how we can fight this enemy. Donovan has a great deal of power. If he has managed to steal Mestifito's dragon, then what hope do we have of fighting him?"
Tressa fumed. "Yesterday, you believed Donovan to be dead. You even thought he was good, like us. One bad thing happens to Mestifito and suddenly the entire Black army wants to hide? What happened to the brave dragons of the Black? What about the battle against the Red? The Black never shrank back in fear."
Granna sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. "Mestifito is the strength behind the Black. Without him..."
"He's not dead!" Tressa yelled. "Every one of you is acting like he died last night. He lost his dragon. He's like you, now. Like me. Yet there are still plenty of dragons to fight for us."
"They are not willing," Granna said softly. "You heard the captain. They are all fearful of losing their dragons, too. What if they are in midair and their dragon fails? It means certain death. At least we have a chance here. We must be patient."
"And what of Fi?" Tressa asked, her eyes steely. She rested a hand on the cool, stone wall to balance herself. Fueled by anger, her heart beat out of control. "When I left, Fi was with Donovan. She may still be. We need to send out a search party to find her. If he is truly behind the evil, then she's in grave danger."
"Don't you think we know that?" The door had swung open again. Sarah, Fi's wife, stomped into the hallway, her eyes focused on Tressa. "Don't you think I, of all people, know that? Yet, Fi knows, just as well as the rest of us do, that attempting to rescue her would put many others in danger. She is strong. She is resourceful. If she’s alive, she will find a way to escape Donovan. You need to learn to trust in her, Tressa, just as I do."
Tressa glared. Sarah was the love of Fi's life, the woman Fi had talked about constantly. The one she did everything for. She'd fought so hard to protect people like Sarah who didn't have a dragon, dreaming they would be reunited when the world was safe.
Tressa had believed in love like that once. When she was young, she knew without a doubt that she would end up with Bastian. Yet when their chance to marry came, she was unable to conceive and was forced to let him go to another. She lost him. After leaving Hutton's Bridge for the first time, they'd found their way back to one another, only to lose each other again. He’d died protecting her from Jarrett. And now Bastian was alive again, a dragon himself, but beholden to yet another woman.
"No," Tressa said, straightening. "Love is not like that. It does not stand around hoping for a good outcome. It does not wait while the world turns. It must be fought for. If you truly want Fi back, Sarah, you have to fight for her return. If you don't, she may never come back."
Tressa spun on one heel, stalking away from the two women. She couldn't listen to them. Not even for one more second. They were simply wrong.
If the Black army wouldn't leave the Ruins of Ebon to face the evil coming their way, then Tressa would do it on her own. She would ride to Hutton's Bridge and ask the help of her friends.
Tressa threw clothes into a pack, stuffing them in without care. A fingernail caught on a string and tore. Blood welled up. Tressa stuck her finger in her mouth, sucking on the blood momentarily. Tears slipped down her cheeks. The taste of blood reminded her of everything she'd lost, and everything she feared she'd never get back.
Like her dragon. During her initial change, she'd feared what she would become. Then she'd learned not only to accept, but also to control, the beast inside her. She'd willingly given it up to Donovan and his horned leeches with the promise she'd get it back when she drank dragon blood again. But it had come back on its own, tearing through her.
It wasn't until she'd nearly died on the peaks of the Barrier Mountains that she'd regained her humanity. She'd given up on life, closed her eyes, and prepared for death... until Connor found her half-buried in the snow with the help of the invisible dragons. She’d returned, weary and broken, to the Ruins of Ebon. In the process of recovery, she lost her dragon for good.
No one could explain it. Not until today. Not until Mestifito suffered the same affliction. Now everyone was scared they were next. As if Donovan could somehow steal the dragon from every person who held one in the Dragonlands.
He'd used the leeches to drain Tressa and Fi of theirs. Mestifito had admitted the brothers had some sort of magical connection, which must have allowed Donovan to steal his. There was no proof Donovan could take the dragon from anyone else. Yet the fabled Black dragons of the south were hiding their heads underground while the world above them faced an ancient enemy.
Well, they wouldn't face it alone. Tressa would answer the call to war with steel. It was all she had left. Despite her anger, she knew the Black had every right to refuse to fight. She would offer the same option to the ghost dragons. If they chose not to fight, she wouldn't like it, but she would accept it.
Tressa shed her dress, leaving it on the floor in a pile, and grabbed her warrior clothes from the wardrobe. She’d lost one outfit in the battle at the Isle of Repose. The others had waited here ever since.
Tressa pulled on her leather pants and tugged the tunic over her head. She belted her waist with a rope she'd woven herself over the last few months while she wallowed pathetically in her helplessness. Tressa glanced at herself in the mirror. Her distorted reflection gazed back at her. She reached toward the table and grabbed a dagger. Pulling her hair in a bunch to the side, Tressa held the dagger up to her long, dark locks.
Once before she'd shorn her hair to appear as a man. Now, however, Tressa slid the dagger into the sheath on her hip. This time she would go into a battle as a woman. Not as a man. Not as a dragon. Just as Tressa.
She reached back, quickly weaving her hair into a braid she'd long ago perfected in Hutton's Bridge. She bound the end with string, tying it off in a knot.
Tressa looked at the mirror again. Yes, the woman standing before her was the one she'd always wanted to become. Strong. Determined.
Ready to fight.
Fi stretched her arms over her head. She'd lost count of the days that she, Donovan, and Jarrett had been trapped under the rubble of the Red castle. At first, she'd tried marking them, but eventually she gave up. Every day the skeletons dug farther underground. Every day they moved through the tunnels. Fi wasn't even sure what direction they were going. The skeletons dug through the places that were easiest, making no allowance for their destination.
If they even had one. Donovan kept saying they'd stop soon. Eventually they'd find a place to emerge. Fi couldn't wait for that day. She'd finally have a chance to escape Donovan's clutches. She wanted nothing more than to be away from that evil man and warn her friends he'd changed.
After he'd sewn up a new skin for himself using the body of a Red mage, Donovan became completely unrecognizable. His once light skin was now olive. He'd often wink at her, chortle, and say he was pleased to use both of his eyes again. One blue eye had been hidden behind a scar on his last skin. Donovan explained to Fi that it was by choice. Just another way to make himself look different from any of his previous incarnations.
Fi wanted to run a sword through his beady eyes. Then his throat. Then his chest. She wanted to hack off his limbs and feed them to Decarian, who remained behind, trapped in his deep hole. The skeletons could only dig a tunnel large enough for the humans to pass through. Donovan had assured Decarian they'd be back for him as soon as they found a way out.
And one night they did. At Donovan's order, the skeletons dug upward. Wood splintered as they cracked open a floor. Within moments, the peasants who lived in the modest cottage in the middle of the forest near the border of the Flaming Hills were dead. The skeletons ran them through with swords before they knew what was happening.
Donovan pulled Fi up through the hole into the cottage, her shirt catching on the ragged splinters. The bodies of the peasants were pushed down the hole, passed backward from one skeleton to another until they could be tossed in Decarian's hungry maw. Fi shuddered when she thought of it.
And yet it was the same way she was fed. One of the skeletons would emerge through a hole in the dark of night and steal meat. Then it would be passed from one bony hand to another until it arrived at the front. Donovan would cook it over a fire and share the meat with her and Jarrett.
He hadn't stopped warning her that when he was through with Jarrett, she would be his next pet. Whatever thrall he held over Jarrett hadn't passed to her yet. She wondered what was taking Donovan so long. In some ways, she wished he'd just get it over with. She wouldn't have to live in fear any longer. She'd be like Jarrett—obedient and passive. He showed no interest in conversation, much less escape. The man she'd known was gone, replaced by a husk that only resembled him. Fi didn't want to end up like him, but at the same time, if there was no hope to be had for her own future, then she wanted Donovan to get it over with. She wanted the emotional suffering to end.
They spent three nights in the cottage. Fi tried looking out the window once, but Donovan caught her and broke her left pinky finger. He promised to do the same to her other fingers if she tried again. Fi tore a strip of fabric from the bottom of her dress and wrapped the broken bone. It would heal... eventually, though she assumed it might always be crooked. A permanent reminder of her captivity.
On the third night, Fi settled down on the floor to sleep—Donovan took the bed for himself—her eyes closed shut as tightly as she could manage. She repeated the same thing in her head every night before going to sleep:
Please let me break free tomorrow.
It was a hope, a prayer… one that had yet to be fulfilled. Before she could repeat it a third time, Donovan sprang from his bed, startling her enough to force her eyes open. He stepped on her ankle as he bolted across the small cottage to the covered window. Donovan flung the curtain to the side, and the cottage was washed in a red glow.
"What is that?" Fi asked, her curiosity momentarily outweighing fear of reprisal.
Donovan chortled, his hands on his stomach. "This is what I have been waiting for. The blood moon. It has arrived just as I predicted!"
"What does it mean?" Fi asked. She sat up, lacing her fingers to stop her hands from shaking. Dread crept through her soul. The moon shouldn’t be red. The strange noise of a heavy liquid dripping on the roof didn't ease her anxiety.
"It means the time has come for me to strike fear into the hearts and souls of all who live in Dragonlands. It is time for me to rule!" He laughed again, then ran out of the cottage, leaving the door hanging on its hinges.
Fi grabbed her cloak and bolted after Donovan. She pulled her hood over her hair just before following him outside. Donovan ran across the grass, wet with whatever was falling from the sky. Fi's heart pounded. This was her chance. The skeletons were still underground—Donovan didn't allow them in the cottage—and he was too preoccupied by the moon.
Fi darted the opposite direction, her feet slipping on the thick, wet grass. She glanced down. Her feet were covered in some kind of slime. She lifted one foot, tracing a line with her fingertip. Bringing it to her nose, she took a deep breath, then recoiled.
This wasn't just some strange form of rain. It was blood. After so many battles and so much death, she knew the scent well. Fi looked up at the moon. Blood dripped over the full moon and fell to the earth.
"What?" she said to herself, knowing she didn't have an answer. Still, even if the sky was dying, dripping blood upon them, it was her only chance to escape. Fi set her eyes ahead, leaving behind the months of terror in Donovan's clutches.
"Don't," someone behind her pleaded.
Jarrett. Fi took a deep breath. It was one of his rare moments of lucidity. Jarrett had them occasionally. Why did he have to have one now? Fi turned around. Jarrett stood in the doorway of the cottage, looking every inch the man he used to be.
"I'm leaving," Fi said. "I swear, if you come after me, I'll kill you."
"We can't escape," Jarrett said. "It's futile. No matter where you go, he will hunt you down."
"If I leave now, he won't catch me." Irritation rose in Fi's chest. Not at Jarrett, but at herself. Why was she talking to him? Why was she wasting precious time?
Tressa. Because she knew she could never look her friend in the eyes again if she left Jarrett behind when there was a chance he could be saved. Tressa was the best friend she'd ever had.
"Come with me." Fi motioned Jarrett to her side. He hesitated only a moment, then ran to her. "I swear, Jarrett, if you betray me, I will slit your throat."
"I believe you." Jarrett rubbed his neck with his hand. The two took off running into the nearby forest.
Fi grabbed Jarrett's hand, clutching it tightly. If they didn't make it into the forest before Donovan came back, they would have no chance of escape. Fi cursed Donovan under her breath. His horned leeches had taken her dragon away from her. Tressa had gotten hers back somehow, but Fi couldn't do anything to make hers appear. She tried, almost every moment of every day, but she knew it was futile. Her dragon was gone. Before, deep inside, she'd always felt it lurking, ready to appear. Now that feeling was gone. Perhaps forever.
Instead she would have to rely on her wits as a human. Frustrated, Fi wished she'd listened more in school as a child. If she had remembered the star charts she'd been taught, then maybe she would have some clue as to where they were in the Dragonlands. She would know how far it was to safety. Instead, she was utterly lost. She had no weapons. No food. Nothing.
"No. No!"
Fi spun around, realizing she was no longer holding Jarrett's hand. He stood on the outskirts of the tree line, his arm raised and his finger pointing to the sky.
"Jarrett," Fi hissed. She was ready to run into the trees without him, leaving the insane man to his master. Then a shadow passed over the moon, momentarily darkening the night to a pitch black.
"It's Donovan," Jarrett yelled. "He's turned into a dragon!"