18. Arianna

“Because time will be on my side.” Ari looked to Cvareh for confirmation that he understood her meaning. A dark shadow passed over the man’s face. Good. He understands perfectly.

“You cannot possibly be serious.” He shifted as he spoke the words and Ari did the same. Barely perceptible movements braced them both for the storm that was on their horizon.

“But I am.” She welcomed the lightning that sparked in his eyes.

He moved on the crack of thunder that heralded the tempest that had been looming between them. His long fingers scooped up the neckline of her coat, tensing. His claws shot out, ripping holes through the otherwise well kept garb of the White Wraith.

“Are you mad?”

“Maybe.” Arianna gave a quick look to Florence for the girl to ease away, she could handle herself. She also didn’t know what Cvareh was about to do. If Flor got wrapped into the scrap, she’d never forgive herself for it.

“You know how well that went last time. It set the Riders right on our tail,” he snarled, his nose nearly touching hers.

“And if I recall correctly, you were fine. We killed one Rider and evaded the others.” Her hands were at her side, ready to grab for her daggers if need be. “And we would’ve lost them entirely if you hadn’t gone rogue at Ter.5.2.”

“Don’t make this out to be that I owe you.” Cvareh’s tongue was heavy with the sudden spike in his magic. “If anything, you owe me for giving you the opportunity of a boon.”

Ari laughed off the influence he was trying to synthetically apply on her. She threw her own magic behind her words, just to make a point that they seemed to be too evenly matched to sway each other falsely. “Hardly. But you must do this for me if you hope to see the outcome of that boon. I cannot get you to the Alchemists’ Guild otherwise.”

The Dragon threw her away. Ari shifted her weight from the balls of her feet to her heels, stabilizing quickly. He looked at her with a fearsome sort of wrath.

Good. She wanted to see his true colors. She wanted him to see hers. She wanted to smash down the foolish walls they’d allowed to go up between them on the ridiculous notion of etiquette.

“If you cannot, then relinquish the boon contract. You’ve met your match. Forfeit gracefully.”

“Forfeit is something I don’t know how to do.” Ari advanced on him this time. “I do not give up. I do not relent. I will have my boon or I will die.”

“Arianna!” Florence’s concerned interjection was lost.

Arianna’s world had been reduced to Cvareh. Their magic pressed against each other. Their muscles rippled with palpable conflict over fight or flight.

“Yield, Dragon, and do this for me,” she whispered, as quiet as a knife through skin.

“You…” His slitted pupils dilated and thinned. “You insult me at every turn. You shame my name knowingly. And then you expect to use my magic as you need without recourse? Like I am some mule at your beck and call?”

He was angry. But he was equally hurt, and that was compelling. “My, you taste your own kind’s medicine and discover it too foul to be palatable? How unbecoming.”

“What?”

“To insult someone at every turn, to demean and degrade them, and then to expect them to give up their knowledge, their skill, without recourse? Does that not sound like what the Dragons have done to Loom since our worlds crossed?”

“Don’t try to make this the same.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

“It’s not and you know it.”

“Do I?” Arianna insisted.

“We are people, not worlds. And you commit the faults you blame me for. You judge me for the actions of my entire race. You see me as a Dragon before you see me as a man. You ignore my good will and attempts at peace, only looking for banners of war between my words. And when you find none, you invent them, so that I better fit your expectations.”

Her hands found no life, and her tongue refused her mental quips.

“Silence? The great and infallible Arianna has finally been silenced? Finally.”

Arianna studied the man. His broad chest rose and fell steadily in time with the deep breaths that were failing to keep his anger at bay. He was genuinely offended. She searched his face and eyes for a trace of deceit.

She found none, though she hadn’t seen any all those years ago, either.

“What do you want at the Alchemists’ Guild?”

He huffed in exasperation at the inquiry—he’d already answered that question and they both knew it. So she braved an honest question: “How do you think the Alchemists will help you overthrow the Dragon King?”

“I stole something from him, something that could give Loom a fighting chance.” His hand moved subconsciously to the folio he never let leave his sight. Arianna had suspected its contents were essential, but now he confirmed it openly.

“And you need an Alchemist to interpret or make that ‘something’?”

He nodded.

Arianna sighed heavily. “If all is as you say, if you are Loom’s ally, then help me do this. Show me that you are not my enemy, that you are the bigger man you claim to be. Prove to me that I can trust you by trusting me first.”

“I have no reason to trust you at all.”

“That’s rather the point.” Arianna eased away from the man, leaning against Eva’s old workbench. The wood was familiar under her fingers, soothing. She knew every burn mark and acid splash across its surface.

“You walk us to certain death.” There was resignation in his tone.

“I do not.”

“Arrogance and confidence are not the same, but both will get you killed.”

The words were louder than the crack of a foreman’s bell, echoing through her ears with the same mind-numbing resonance. Ari looked at the man before her, gripping the table to brace herself against the torrent of emotions that ripped her from toes to ears. His statement had unleashed a ghost within her. Not the Wraith she claimed to be, but a genuine shade from a time long past. Arianna didn’t like believing in things she couldn’t quantify. But she’d always believed in that woman.

“I will put my trust in you, if you put your trust in me.” The mechanisms of her mind were slow and squealing in warning. “And we’ll both make it through this.”

It was quiet for a long moment, neither of them seeing the present. Cvareh sought the future that was just beyond the horizon, as she drowned in the past.

“I don’t have much of a choice, do I? And we’re wasting time arguing about it.”

Arianna nodded and set herself to organizing their supplies across the table. She needed to be as prepared as she could in the short time she had. She needed to be over-prepared, because the last time she had made such a declaration, it had turned out to be a lie.