Core (25 page)

“I’m not a liar,” Ava said, hardly defensive. “I said you’re pretty cool because I meant it.”

Juliette stopped. The fence was in the distance, a rickety cohesion of rotting wood against green grass, the forest a few feet behind it.

“There is a reason the sirens call you the Deceiver,” she said. “You are very good at hiding lies amid stalks of truth. You bend your words to match what people would like to hear when doing so is advantageous to you. When it is not, you use honesty like a weapon. It hurts people.”

What am I supposed to say to that?
 Ava couldn’t argue with the girl. She was right in many ways. Ava rubbed her arms with her palms. It was colder the further from the village they went, as if the collective heat of the reds in Great Nest was out of reach.

“Have we met in another life or something? How do you know all that about me?”

“I observed it.”

“Oh.” Ava didn’t want to offend the girl by prying, but Juliette’s explanation meant nothing. “I don’t mean to lie to you, Juliette. I mean, we may never be best friends or anything, but I don’t dislike you.”

“Where your dragon speaks only truth, I see only truth. It is a gift I have. And I am not offended, Ava.” Juliette sighed. “I’m only sorry.”

The girls reached the fence. “Well, don’t be. I’m not mad or anything.” Ava paused. “Are you?”

Juliette’s green eyes shimmered as she lowered her lashes. “I miss my father very much,” she confessed.

As oddly placed as her words were, Juliette looked so sad that it made Ava want to reach out to her.
 
What would I even say?
 She wasn’t very practiced at consoling others. Even with Miriam, she’d always been at a loss. Any attempts at trying to fix things resulted in more tears.

“Do
you want to…talk about it…or something?” she offered.

Juliette looked up at her from beneath those dark lashes, tears spilling onto her cheeks. “I would have g
rown to like you, I think. But…I am so, so sorry.” Then she took a step back.

Just behind the howl of the wind, Ava thought she could hear Cale’s voice calling her name. And just as she turned to look for him, something cold slid around her neck. She tried to scream, tried to pry the thing off of her, but the more she struggled, the tighter the rope pulled around her throat. A dozen hands grabbed her limbs and held
them in place as she was lifted over the fence. Creatures she could not see carried her toward the darkness of the forest.

The last thing Ava saw before she disappeared into the trees was Juliette standing motionless behind the fence, her shawl wrapped tight around her
, her sad, green eyes watching.

Fifteen

Metaphor

The creatures carried Ava through the trees for miles
until, at last, she was dropped to the ground. She fought to free herself, but the cord around her neck was too tight. Black spots danced before her eyes as she lost oxygen. The creatures dragged her across the forest floor like a dog, pulling her along until she was sure they meant to kill her. She clawed at the strange rope, gasping for air.

“Bind her wrists and ankles.”

The voice was demure, slow and smooth. It reminded Ava of the day she spilled a bottle of honey at breakfast, how it spread itself across the surface of the table and oozed onto the ground.

“But be humane about it,” he added. “We’re not barbarians, after all.”

The sirens sat Ava up among the decaying leaves and wrapped the rope around her wrists and ankles. Their hands felt like too much at once. Both cold and hot, both soft and calloused. The werefolk backed away, watching as they swayed.

“What do you want from me?” Ava spat out. “I won’t speak to shadows. Show yourself.”

The man couldn’t have been too much older than Ava, perhaps in his early-twenties. He might have been handsome at some point in his life, with narrow features and dark hair. But black scars crisscrossed over his pale skin, creating roadways from his forehead to his eyes, his eyes to his lips, his lips to his chest. Even his wrists and fingers bore the marks. They were neat, as though remnants of methodical incisions. 
As though he’s survived a hundred surgeries.

He watched Ava watch him, following every twitch of her muscles,
every dilation of her pupils. Ava knew that look. She recognized the overwhelming intelligence in the pools of his eyes. A blue dragon.

“My appearance does not alarm you. In all my years, you are only the second person who has not cowered or wrinkled their nose in disgust at first sight of me.” He tilted his head as he spoke.
Too smart. His accent was identical to Karma’s, a tint of English and something else. “No,” he continued, “you feel sorry for me.”

“What did you do to Juliette?”

“Who?”

“I’m not stupid. I know you that you know who I’m talking about. What did you do to her? She didn’t turn me in
to you willingly. I know that much.”

The blue dragon stood so still that he looke
d out of place in the forest, the leaves of trees dancing behind him in the breeze. Even the nightfolk rocked themselves in the shadows, and the werefolk shuffled their feet in anticipation. But he was carved of stone.

“I have something she wants.”

“Then give it to her. You have me now.”

The blue dragon stepped up to Ava. He knelt in front of her, and Ava saw pain flash in his dark blue eyes, only for a moment. He reached out his hands, and Ava almost gasped. Up close, they looked like highways. The dark scars were ripped deep, deep into his flesh. She could see where each of the stitches had been.

“What…what happened to you?”

The dragon,
who had been about to touch Ava’s face, stopped. He blinked at her, looking into her eyes. “Again, you are the second person who has ever dared to ask me that question.”

Ava swallowed, her fear quickly replacing her curiosity. She wanted to be far away from the blue, from the sirens
who hovered near him.

“The first was a dragon.” He blinked as though trying to remember accurately.
“A red dragon. I very much wanted to purge him. I had never tasted a red dragon before, you see.” He licked his cracked lips. “Only blue, blue, blue. And their thoughts are all so similar, though some held nuggets of gold buried in their crowded minds.”

He halted suddenly, moving his lips, whispering under his breath in blue tongue.
 
Who is he talking to?
 Ava was afraid of the answer. The dragon shook his head, and continued.

“But I did not take the red dragon’s mind. And I will not take yours.
Yet.” He sniffed the air near Ava, so close to her that she could feel the chill of his skin on hers. “You have an interesting mind. But I must be patient.”

“If I were you, I’d let me go. Or you’ll end up very, very dead.”

The blue dragon put his hand to his chin in thought. It was unnatural. A practiced motion. “Your dragon will come for you,” he said. “I am surprised he is not already here. When I have him, I will have my bartering chip. And then, I will make an alliance with the red court in return for your safety.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. They w
on’t agree to helping you with…whatever it is you’re trying to do. They’re smarter than that.”

The blue dragon clenched his fist. Ava had insulted his intelligence. “I offer people what they want,” he explained. “To blue dragons, I will offer a wealth of information.
To the greens, the greatest treasures. And to the reds, their relations. Their loved ones safely returned.”

“And the sirens?”

He blinked at her. “I will show you, Deceiver.”

He snapped his fingers and a nightfolk approached. It wore the same languid expression beneath the same deathly pale skin.

“Kneel,” the blue dragon told it.

The nightfolk fell to its knees and lifted its hands as though it was receiving a gift. The dragon moved his hands slowly to the creature’s temples. He closed his eyes and whispered something Ava couldn’t understand. Then, without warning, the blue dragon opened his eyes once more. And in them was so much sorrow, so much that it hurt Ava even to watch him.

The siren at his feet sighed and let out a single tear, such a deep purple that it might have been black. Then the creature crumbled into ash and became the earth around it. Nothing but dirt in the wind.

The blue dragon caught the tear in a vial before it fell to the ground. He twisted the cap of the glass container and handed it to a werefolk, who promptly hung it from a low lying branch. Ava hadn’t noticed the tree before, but it was covered with bottles of siren’s tears, like a Christmas tree in mourning.

“You killed it,” Ava whispered. She had never seen a death so graceful.

“I freed it.” The dragon sat down on a log, winded, as if the act had taken a toll. “
The poor beast died long ago. I only purged it of its knowledge, its memories.” He motioned to the dozens and dozens of sirens gathered about him, some hiding behind bushes and trees. “I offer them hope. I give them a way out of their suffering. To die, blissful and ignorant. They come to me, all praying that I grant them this gift.”

“You…
wipe their brains clean.”

“Aren’t I magnificent?” But his tone was dull, almost sarcastic.

He stood up, and Ava could tell he was masking discomfort. The dragon studied his own hands, his network of scars. “It will all be worth it…when we find the pearl.”

“The…
the what?” She was surprised at how breathless she sounded.

She had never seen anything as wicked as what he’d done, but she could almost feel the relief of the siren’s passing. The rest of the sirens watched the blue,
all waiting their turn, all wearing crests that matched his. Ancient blue dragon crests.

“What’s the pearl?” Ava asked again.

The blue dragon turned to Ava, nearly smiling. “The pearl, my dear, is everything.” 

***

The sirens untied Ava and prodded her with their dragonblade weapons until she made it to a looming hole in the ground. It went several feet deep, so far down that it would be impossible to climb out of again. Before she could say a word, the sirens shoved her in.

She fell hard enough that a shooting pain made its way up her right side. She spit out the leaves that had flown into her mouth as she landed. The smell was the first thin
g that overcame her. Waste and…something else. Something vile and unearthly. Ava put her hand over her nose, but it did her no good. Tears burned her eyes.

She backed into the wall, trying
to break the laws of physics, trying to disappear. She wasn’t alone. Some of the people in the hole with her were so thin, they couldn’t move. They were no more than skin stretched across angles of bone.

Ava couldn’t help but whimper.
 
They’re starved,
 she thought. 
What is this?

“We won’t hurt you,” someone said.

He was a red dragon for sure. Brown eyes, sandy hair, broad shoulders, surprisingly tall. “Not the most handsome group down here, but if you’ve been tossed in, you’re a friend.”

Ava didn’t move. She was sure she’d vomit. The smell was too strong, her
thoughts too scattered. Her resolve was nowhere to be found. The man kept his distance and Ava looked upward to see if she could climb out. Ten or so werefolk peered back at her, the hair prickling off of their skin.

“If you try to climb out, they beat you and throw you back,” the man said. “But don’t worry. Sometimes he lets people go. Just pulls them out and sends them on their way.” The man licked his lips as though
they were dry. “Philip,” he offered. “Philip of Coston Nest.”

Ava whipped around to face him.
“The Costons of Great Nest?”

He nodded. “You’ve been? Well, I ought to expect that, seeing as we’re only a few miles from there. But most humans have no idea what that even is.”

“My dragon is there right now.”

The man’s straggly eyebrows shot into the air. “You’re a rider?”

“Not yet. We still have to make the pact.”

The man nodded and walked forward, crouching next to Ava. He seemed well enough.
 
Apparently he hasn’t been in the hole of death that long.

“Have you met my family, then? Are they well after the raid last night?”

“We’re staying with them, actually, while we’re in Great Nest. They’re all fine.”

Ava didn’t tell him that
Jemma had been attacked by the siren. And she kept Juliette’s involvement to herself as well. Knowing that his daughter somehow had dealings with the blue dragon and his minions would not help anyone escape.

“How long have you been in here?” Ava asked.

He shook his head as though trying to clear fog from it. “A few weeks maybe. The blue tosses some meat down once in a while.” He looked around at his comrades. “But it’s never enough.”

“Do you know what he was talking about?
About some pearl?”

“That blasted pearl!” he screamed, pulling at his own hair. The occupants of the hole watched with little reaction, but Ava inched away from Phillip. A mind who had been too close to hell for too long.

 
How many people have lost their sanity in here?

Phillip composed himse
lf, rubbing his hand. “Always going on about the pearl, pearl, pearl,” Philip said. “All this for a piece of jewelry.”

Ava sat down on the ground, despite how disgusting she knew it must have been. “I don’t think he’s talking about an actual pearl. It’s a metaphor. He means a treasure. Something he’s trying to find, maybe? Like…maybe something he wants to use
it to take all of our memories for himself. Purge us all at once.”

“The grey court w
ill never let the balance fall away like that.” Phillip said. His voice cracked in desperation. “They will send help. The no-ir will stop him.”

A few others in the hole mumbled when he mentioned the black dragons, fear and hope mingled in their voices.

The black dragons. 
Where are they? Why are they chasing me and Cale instead of finding this maniac?
 She remembered something the blue dragon had said. That if the greys took interest in her and Cale, it would be to his advantage to keep the two of them alive. 
Somehow, we’re involved in this.

“Was the raid terrible?” Phillip asked. “I had to sit here and listen to them plan it all.” He ground his hands into fists, even the broken one. “I could do nothing.”

Suddenly, Ava realized that something in the dragon world was not right. Phillip’s words reverberated in her mind. ‘
I could do nothing’.
 Ava looked around the hole once more. They were all red dragons, all trapped, all helpless. 
He should be able to fly. They all should.

“Philip, can I ask you a personal question?”

“Why not? I’m sure you’ll get to know us all pretty well in this pit. I know everything about Andrew there.” He pointed to a rather dead, rather rotted corpse.

Ava tried not to shiver.
 
Be brave, Ava.
 She had to close her eyes and clear her throat before she continued. “Where’s your rider, Phillip? Why don’t you have one?”

He shrugged,
smacking his dry lips together. “Just never found him. In fact, you’re the first rider I’ve seen in my lifetime.”

“And you don’t think it’s strange that riders are so scarce?”

“I suppose…but times change.”