Author: Jodi Meadows

The thunder grew louder, more distinct. It didn’t sound like thunder anymore, but growling and whapping of leathery wings.

North, just over the city wall, I saw a deep black shape that separated into three as they drew closer. They had long, serpentine bodies with wings that stretched wide. Sunlight glittered off scales. They were sinuous and elegant, deadlier than sylph. I stared, stupidly enraptured.

People slammed into me—“Move, girl!”—and jolted me back into reality. When I ducked and tried to push against the flow of people heading toward the residential area, my breast pocket chirped. I fumbled for the SED.

“Ana!” I could barely hear Sam over the double cacophony. “Go home.”

“Where are you?” I had to shout, and my throat was already raw with cold. “I can’t find you.”

“Go home.” The connection dropped. Of course he wouldn’t tell me where he was; he knew I’d go after him.

I stuffed the device away and kept going. Surely he realized I wouldn’t leave him in this chaos, no matter his orders.

The market tents were bright bruises against the Councilhouse and temple, cloth mazes that made every turn a wrong one. People scrambled about, some with purpose, most with panic. Still no Sam.

A high-pitched wail rippled through the city, emanating first from the Councilhouse, then shrieking through other buildings before silencing. The alarm was just an attention-getter, as if anyone could be unaware of the attack. Surely even the deaf could hear the dragon thunder.

Three incredible bangs came from the north wall. I strained to see, but the Councilhouse blocked my view. I pressed my palms over my ears, but it didn’t muffle the noise. “Sam!” My voice was lost among everyone’s, and I couldn’t see over hundreds of people taller than me.

I jammed my coat-cushioned elbow against someone—who didn’t seem to notice—and wiggled between two others. There, on the Councilhouse steps. A head of dark hair in need of cutting. Sam? I pushed through and forced my way up the stairs, but he was gone.

The throng finally thinned as everyone either reached safety or—I could halfway see from atop the stairs—reached weapons. At the top of the northern guard station, which was as tall as the city wall itself, a line of cannons had been raised, aimed toward the dragons, now mere yards from Heart.

Another series of thundering bangs, and metal and fire shot from the cannons. One hit the lead dragon, who buckled and tumbled through the air, but the other two flew sideways and dodged easily, in spite of their wingspan.

Cannons swiveled on their mounts as the two dragons flew over the walls, but they didn’t shoot, not toward the city. Blue targeting lights shot up from the ground, followed by invisible laser blasts, but the damage was minimal. The dragons’ hide was stronger than iron.

While one dragon headed straight for the center of Heart, the other spat globs of green something—not mucus, but something that sizzled through the North Avenue cobblestones. Acid. It spread in huge, slimy puddles toward houses and farms.

When a laser finally got more than a glancing hit, it seared through a giant wing. The reek of cooking flesh ripped through the city, and the dragon spiraled toward North Avenue, flinging acid as it went. Hurrah, but by then, the dragon that had been hit by the cannon recovered enough to follow its fellows into the city.

“Ana! For the love of Janan, what are you doing out here?” Stef emerged from the Councilhouse, carrying a laser pistol. “Get inside. Now.” Without checking to make sure I obeyed, she hurtled off the stairs and shot a beam of blue light at the nearest dragon, which had reached the temple.

I couldn’t move. The dragon was right over the Councilhouse, and the other followed close behind, taking laser blasts as though to protect the first. Globs of acid rained on the market field, burning through tents and tables. People converged on the fallen dragon, firing weapons as it thrashed and spit. Humans and dragons all screamed.

The one above began wrapping itself around the temple, shrieking wildly as it bit at the building. Acid drooled downward, but neither it nor the knife-sharp teeth harmed the stone. I covered my ears at the scraping and keening. All these people with weapons, and it went after the temple? Futilely? Its protector wouldn’t last long, even with the rain of acid.

Lights shot upward, fast and blinding. More people, who only minutes before had been selling pastries, surged from inside the Councilhouse with weapons. They bounded down the steps, careful of the seeping puddles of acid that glowed green.

Sam caught my shoulder as he came outside, also armed. “Go inside.” Fear and alarm contorted his face, and there was a darkness in his eyes I’d never seen before. “Please,” he rasped. “Be safe.”

Dumbly, I shook my head and pointed at the dragon guarding the one around the temple. Laser beams finally pierced the wide wings and armored hide, and the beast crashed downward, slinging a globule of acid toward the Councilhouse steps—toward us.

I yanked Sam behind a column just as the acid splashed onto the stone and began eating through. Spatters hissed against the back of my coat.

Shouting for Sam to do the same, I unzipped my coat and slipped my arms free. My bag of clothes and costume supplies dropped to my feet, safe. Dozens of holes appeared on our coats; the acrid stench of burning wool made my nose scrunch.

Holding my breath, I ran my hands along Sam’s back, but he was clean. He did the same for me, then drew me into a tight hug as the third dragon hit the ground and everything shook. I shook, too, with cold and fear of what had almost happened.

The acid ate through the steps quickly and neutralized. Sam stared at it as dumbly as I had at the dragons, that darkness in his eyes. That must have been how I’d looked the night he saved me from drowning, when I’d run from his tent and found myself staring at the lake with nowhere to go.

The darkness was memory. He’d probably died in dragon acid before, maybe within the last few lifetimes. I didn’t have to ask to know, so I wouldn’t. Instead, I touched his chin and drew his gaze away from the hole in the stairs. “It’s over.” They hadn’t even had time to launch the air drones, things specially made to defend against dragons.

I had no experience with dragons other than what I’d just witnessed. I’d only read about them: failed attempts to hunt the population into extinction, diseases and poisons introduced into their food supply, and experiments done on captured dragons. But still they attacked, as angry as they’d been five thousand years ago when humans first came to Range.

The people of Heart had endured these attacks for millenia. I couldn’t begin to imagine overcoming that kind of terror every time.

More people swarmed from the Councilhouse, parting around us as they wielded small hoses that sprayed chemical mist on everything the acid had touched. It smelled sweet, like crushed grass. The cleanup had begun and we should help, but I needed Sam to be okay first.

He lowered his eyes and kept his voice soft. “I wanted to be brave.”

I held my hand over his, which still gripped the pistol hilt. His knuckles were pale, and veins showed sharp and blue. “Why didn’t you stay in the Councilhouse?”

“I knew you wouldn’t go home. I had to find you.”

My chest tightened. “You are brave, Sam. You’re the bravest man I know.”

After we helped clean our share, we fetched our belongings and went back to his house. I read to him for an hour before he fell asleep, leaning against my shoulder. I put the book aside and adjusted myself on the sofa.

He shivered closer to me, one hand tight around mine. It was strange, being in this position of having to comfort someone when I’d only recently learned to be comforted. But I remembered how Sam held me in the cabin after the sylph, and that his presence had helped. I could do the same for him.

Breathing in the scent of his hair, I realized I’d needed him my whole life, before we even met. First, his music and the way he taught me through books and recordings. Then, he saved my life and refused to abandon me no matter how much I deserved it.

But as I pulled a blanket over both of us and combed my fingers through his hair, my perspective shifted.

There was no music in this quiet, and none of the tension of two weeks ago in the kitchen. Even with his body against mine, I didn’t have knots or yearning, just desire for him to be himself again, unhaunted by past lives and deaths.

He held on to me like I was a rock, the only thing keeping him from drifting out with the tide of dark memories.

It was the first time I realized he needed me, too.

Chapter 17

Footsteps

“NO SAM TONIGHT?” Sine asked from across the library table. It had only taken her an hour to bring it up. She’d made it sound casual, but I didn’t have to be five thousand years old to know she’d been waiting for an opening. Apparently silence was as good an opening as any.

I gave a one-shouldered shrug and turned the page of my book. Philosophy. Lots of guessing why people were reborn. Why some took a year to return, while others took up to ten. No one agreed on anything, but because these were where my questions began, this was what I had to read. “We don’t do everything together.”

“Don’t you? I don’t think I’ve seen you apart since the market.”

I’d been under the impression people in Heart valued their privacy. My alternate theory—that people already knew everything about one another, so they didn’t bother prying—sounded more likely now. I was the exception, of course. If I was involved even remotely, people asked questions. The afternoon I’d dragged Sam outside the city so he could show me all the nearby geysers and hot springs, gossip had spread like wildfire. I still couldn’t figure out what made fumaroles so scandalous, but maybe people were desperate.

“I’m just surprised he’s not with you, that’s all. You two have been spending as much time here as Whit, always off in your own corners, studying.”

I flashed a smile. “He said he wasn’t sleeping well and wanted to rest this evening. Everything should be back to normal soon.” Maybe. He hadn’t actually said anything. I’d made him stay in.

“Oh, good. I hope he feels more rested soon.” She ducked over her book again, pen scraping against the paper grain.

“I hope so, too.”

We worked in silence for a few minutes more, time dripping by like water from a leaky tap. But I couldn’t focus on the philosophy book in front of me. The author seemed conflicted on his views about Janan, whether he was real and responsible for reincarnation, or whether humans were doing it on their own, by virtue of being human.

“Sine?”

She glanced up, eyebrow raised.

“Do you believe in Janan? Do you think he created everyone and reincarnates them every lifetime?”

She lowered her pen and sat back. “Sometimes I think I don’t, simply because it annoys Meuric and Deborl. But honestly, I want to believe we humans aren’t at this alone, perpetually reincarnated in a world where dragons, centaurs, griffins, and rocs are always trying to kill us.” She shrugged and found my gaze. “Like you, I want to believe there is a beginning to all this. Life.”

My beginning was so much more recent, yet no one could tell me what had happened. People who’d been there.

“What about the walls? Do they feel strange to you?”

“The heartbeat?” She shook her head. “Everyone can feel it, certainly, but it’s comforting, and part of what makes me want to believe in Janan and his promise to return.”

Or maybe he’d never left.

The heartbeat certainly didn’t feel comforting to me. Sam seemed to think it was funny or cute how I tried to avoid touching the white stone, but it gave me the sensation of worms crawling beneath my skin.

“Thanks,” I said, turning back to the book with a sigh. I really wanted to find someone else who didn’t like the walls and see if they had any thoughts on it, but there seemed a definite connection between my newness and the creepy feeling.