49. Arianna

There was a swirling tempest in her chest. Its winds caught pains old and new, blending them with loves familiar and yet to be fully realized. The longer she spent in his presence, the greater the likelihood it would tear her apart.

She didn’t want to love someone at the cost of her ideals. She didn’t want to need someone attached to the murderer of the last person she needed. She didn’t want to set her heart free in a world that was slowly shifting closer and closer to the end of days.

She had spent too long on Nova. She had let her mind be swept away by music and paintings. She had let her body grow fat with magic, let her mind languish. She needed to return to Loom. There, everything would make sense again. She would remember who she was and what she needed to do.

Arianna gouged out a Dragon’s throat with a grunt of frustration. Her claws severed the spine and she cast the body aside, continuing onward.

The truth continued to stare her in the face every time she caught a glimpse of the blue of the nighttime heavens. The hue reminded her of the curtains in her room at the Xin Manor, reminiscent of the color of the sky when she and Cvareh set out for the temple.

She did love him. Despite everything, it was true. Of course, if she was going to fall in love again, it’d be a Dragon. And would she pick just any Dragon? No, she had to pick the brother of Rafansi. The traitor. Finnyr.

Arianna slammed a Dragon against the wall. It was a tiny thing, and had been trying to avoid being seen at all. The boy let out an almost-squeak at the feeling of her claws pressing into his chest.

“Gliders, where are they?” she snarled.

The child nearly wet himself.

“Gliders.” Her claws bit through his flimsy Dragon clothes and into his skin. “Maybe I’ll let you live if you tell me where they are.”

“Up those stairs.” He pointed. “Down the hall, second corridor, and out.”

She dropped him and continued upward. There was one thing that seemed to be similar across all races of life: the need for self-preservation.

The gliders were exactly where he told her they would be. Some Dragons attempted to block her passage, but they didn’t put up much of a struggle. Arianna saw Chimera looking on from the edges of the platform, golden chains looped around their necks. The gold reeked of the same scent as her chains had, tempered to the King’s magic alone. Arianna couldn’t break them if she tried. Chimera slaves bound to do the Dragons’ bidding.

Yet they moved as one to the sides of a glider, doing nothing to bar her access.

Arianna sprinted over and mounted the vessel. She rested her hands on the handles, feeling magic surge from her fingertips through the interior channeling of the glider and into the wings.

“You won’t be able to fly it.”

“Yes, I can.” Arianna shifted her weight.

“Only Dragons can.” The man seemed tired, like he’d had this debate countless times. “Chimera don’t have enough magic.”

Arianna held up her palm and drew a claw across it, showing them her gold blood. It mattered little now, keeping her secret up on Nova. Let them talk. Let the Dragons know she was real and she would come to kill them with an army of Perfect Chimera just like her.

The Chimera looked on, stunned, like she was one of the Dragons’ gods come to life. She wished she could tell them that she was, and that she had the power to save them, but they were lost causes. She couldn’t bring them back to Loom with her and she had no doubt that when the Dragon King fell, he would take everything he could with him—assuming they weren’t killed for not barring her access now.

“I can’t save you.” She felt compelled to apologize.

“We know,” a woman replied. There was some comfort in hearing the tones of Fennish spoken again. “But we can save you.”

“What?” Arianna asked in confusion.

“Go. We’ll see to it that you can’t be followed.” The Chimera closed in on the other gliders with tools in hand.

She pushed her magic into the wings, strong and even. Arianna focused her will and commanded the glider like an extension of herself. Up, she demanded mentally, and the glider took to the sky.

Arianna soared on her own for the first time. There was no illusion of another Dragon, no airship captain, no bird-like beast propelling her upward. Just her and her magic. The sight of the glider caused quite a stir, but by the time she was noticed, she was too far for any of them to reach her.

She leaned forward, shooting across the hills and towns of Lysip to its far edge. The Chimera might be on her side, but she couldn’t have absolute faith that they would dismantle every glider before some Dragon got to them. Arianna pushed hard over the edge, spiraling around the underbelly of Lysip.

Finnyr’s face seemed carved into the shadows of the clouds beneath her. She was deliberately leaving her opportunity to kill the man behind. Arianna swallowed, and let it go. She’d waited years; she could wait longer. Charging in recklessly had failed, so when she returned for his head it would be with an army at her side. It would be with his brother helping deliver him to her justice.

Ari began to gain speed, and braced herself for the winds that rippled the surface of the clouds below attempting to bar her entry home. Arianna pushed more magic, steadying herself, sparking a magical corona to encase her. She was ready. She would—

“Stop.” The shout was laced with magic that sizzled across her mind, penetrating the vulnerability of surprise and fractured focus.

Arianna looked toward the source, following the trail of magic back toward Lysip’s underbelly. Her eyes met a pair of fire-red orbs that seemed to glow with raw power in the distance. Let go, they urged her. She stared, vapidly confounded by the presence of the King of the Dragons in the underside of the island. But there he stood on a ledge, holding her eyes and mind in his sway.

Let go, he mentally urged again. Her hands shook.

Between the shock and magical exertion, Arianna’s fingers uncurled. It was only a second—the feeling of air rushing between her digits and over her palms—but she was jolted back into awareness.

A second was all it took.

The magical trail that had been following her the whole time dimmed as the glider lost its fuel. Arianna found herself spiraling in the air, trying to grasp for something that was never where she expected it to be. Her other hand ripped off the remaining handle with the force of the wind.

The clouds were coming fast and she had only one chance to try to get to the glider and form a corona that might be her only shot at survival. She twisted her body in the air, trying to swim through nothing toward the one life raft that would save her from an ocean of death.

Her fingertips touched gold as the clouds engulfed her with their howling winds.