Core (33 page)

So she kept moving until she was close enough to stretch her hand out to him
. She touched his ear and it ticked in response. His eyes were still light brown. 
Cale’s eyes.
 Ava laughed again. Even after all she’d seen, all she’d fought for, part of her never really thought it could happen. A person one second, and a dragon the next.

He flicked his forked tongue out and it licked her nose playfully.
 
It’s Cale alright.

Ava put her hand on his forehead, on his neck.
He’s so big.
On all fours, he was some inches taller than she was. His breath came through strong and steady, almost like it did when he was asleep. She circled him, examining his long tail, admiring how it spiked at the end. She touched the sharp edges of it in amazement. Then he growled at her, stomping his paws.

“Can you wait a minute? Let me get a good look at you.” She came back around to the front of him. “Let me see your teeth,” she said.

He snorted out smoke and nipped at her shirt sleeve. She laughed again, almost dizzy. 
A dragon. My dragon.
 She had forgotten the sirens, forgotten the Anders family and the grey court. Even the pearl was gone from her mind. 
Nothing matters but this.

“What now?” she asked Emaline.

Emaline’s eyes were as wide as everyone else’s. It almost looked like the woman was about to cry. She swallowed and pointed to the tallest of the surrounding hills. “Now, you fly.”

Cale stomped again. He tossed his head, puffing smoke out of his mouth. Ava didn’t have to sense his anticipation. She could see it.

“How do I get on?” she asked Emaline.

“I don’t know,” the woman answered, breathless. “I’ve never seen anything like him.”

Ava ran her hand over Cale’s back. His skin wasn’t hard or scaly. It was soft, smooth. Like a fine leather, but still warm. She had seen Rane strapped with a saddle and reins, Shiloh directing him through subtle tugs and pulls.

“Maybe he needs reins.”

Harlon handed her a rope made of dragonthread and Cale snarled at it, shaking his head, backing away. Instead, he lay down on the ground, his chin resting on his paws.

Ava chewed her nails a
s she thought. “Do you want me…to sit on you?”

He snorted.

She plopped down on his back and looked around, her legs still on the ground in front of her. 
It feels kind of awkward.
 “I don’t think this is right, Cale.”

But Cale stood up abruptly. To keep from falling off, Ava leaned forward and clutched him with her legs and arms. Her fingers fell right into the grooves behind his ears, her feet into the notches in his skin, right above his hind legs. She giggled at his trickery.
 
Oh my god, 
she thought, shaking her head.
 I’m actually giggling.

Cale walked forward, and Ava held on tighter. She’d never ridden an animal before, but Cale felt stronger than
she imagined a horse would be. She felt weightless as he strutted.

She wiggled her fingers in the grooves.
 
This does 
not
 seem very secure.
 “What if I fall off, Cale?”

She had a f
eeling he was laughing at her as he faced the hill and stood still. The sun was rising, nearly above the peak. 
What is he waiting for?
 She could feel his muscles tense beneath her. He strained forward, like a runner ready for the countdown. His ears flicked, his breath coming out like white clouds. Ava felt her own heart pick up its pace. His excitement was contagious. 
He’s waiting for 
me.

“Umm…g
o?”

He shot forward, his movement propelled by solid muscle, his talons digging into the soft dirt and pushing him faster, faster
, faster.

Cale could see nothing but the sky ahead of them as he ran. The wind rushed past his ears, and he felt the flame in his core burn even brighter.

Ava held on with everything she had.
 How on earth am I going to keep from falling off? 
But she couldn’t stop him. And she didn’t want to. 
Cale won’t let me fall.

She leaned forward even further, laying completely flat, her chest parallel with his back. They reached the top of the hill, and Cale leapt, leaving the earth behind. And just when Ava thought they’d begin to fall, she felt the gush of wind as his wings spread. It was almost as if they’d expanded out of nothing. Ava wanted to see them, but she couldn’t turn her head. Not with the rising sun coming to life before her eyes.

Cale caught the air currents under his wings and pushed. The wind obeyed, thrusting him upward, higher and higher with each push. Ava had seen the sky from an airplane, from the no-ir dungeon’s peak. She’d seen the clouds against the blue. 
But not this.
 The pink and purple of the sun rising filled her eyes.

Then Cale plummeted, spirali
ng down toward the ocean. His core was too full to contain it any longer. He let lose a pillar of flame and Ava screamed, afraid that the fire would consume her, afraid she would lose her grip as they dived. It only took her a moment to realize that she’d never lose Cale. The cry of a rider left her lips, and she knew she’d been born to be exactly where she was. The wind picked up, rejoicing, urging them on. The sky had not heard that sound in a hundred years.

Finally.
Already. The clouds, the sun, life itself belonged to them.

The phoenix and her dragon.

THE END

Epilogue

Ima pulled the silken sheets around her as she sat on the edge of the bed. There was more than enough room for both of them. In fact, the circular bed could fit most of the dragon world amidst the folds of its blankets. But she knew there was no place for her. Not there. Not with him.

Despite his stillness, Sirce was not sleeping. Never, not in all her years in the court, had she seen her brother close his eyes. They were always roaming, always devouring. And they
sank into her then, just the same. She could feel him watching her, basking in the knowledge that he had tasted her yet again.

Sirce hated her. She knew that well. Her brother had retreated too far into himself to see anything besides what he produced. His gift to the world had overtaken him years ago. He no longer made hatred; he was hatred incarnate. Yet, of all seven greys, it was Sirce she chose to bed.
Again. And still, again.

Ima
placed her feet onto the floor and felt the cold seep into her soles. It was welcomed. The icy pangs shot through her skin. 
Pain.
 She almost smiled at it, for it was she who created it, she who sent it out into the world God had given the seven to rule over.

She stood, keeping the sheets wrapped around her perfect frame, letting her silver hair tumble down her back. She reached for
the dress that had been discarded to the stone floor not an hour earlier.

“Look away,” she said to Sirce.

But he did not. He kept his eyes on her as she dropped her sheet and slipped back into the glimmering dress. Sirce knew that she hated being ignored, being disobeyed, being objectified.

“You look ashamed,” he said from his place in the bed.

She had been keeping her bright eyes to the ground, and her marble skin was paler than when she had entered his room. She was in the form of the Ima he had first met, but with none of her passion, none of her light. And he could not help but be glad that he had played his part in smothering her vibrancy.

Sirce too had changed his appearance. He was younger, his face holding few wrinkles, his gray hair long, as it had been two or three hundred years before.
Ima wanted to laugh at how old he must have actually looked, how old they should all have looked. A thousand years. 
A thousand years must look incredibly painful.

“You should answer my question,” Sirce said, already abandoning amusement for anger.

“You did not ask one,” Ima snapped.

Sirce’s lips curled away from his teeth, his eyes boring into her back. “Have I made you ashamed, dear sister?”

Ima turned to Sirce, her hand on her waist. “I would not have laid with you if I did not want to. You only shame yourself, Sirce. You cannot shame me.”

“Your lies cause me no pain,” he replied.

It was meant to be an insult, but Ima took no offense. If she wanted, she could have Sirce begging for his own death. And how she wanted it. But not yet. Not yet.

“I am not lying,” she answered smoothly. “You embarrassed yourself tonight, at the hearing. Those children brought shame to you, and you swallowed it whole.”

“I would not expect you to understand politics, Ima. You have never been ambitious enough to follow.”

“Ambition, brother, is for fools.
So the Grey Book says. Are you a fool, then?”

Sirce stepped out of bed at that. He crossed the icy room and opened the door to his chambers.
Ima gathered her skirts and slipped through the iron doorway without a word. She made her way to her own chambers and ordered one of her sprites to fill the bath.

She slipped out of her dress once more and into the ice water. It seared her skin and she
basked in the too familiar feeling of unhindered pain. Then she called in her little blue-skinned sprite once more.

“You may add the hot water now,” she said.
The bath settled to a warm, soothing soak, and Ima sighed. Comfort was boring to her after so many years of spewing forth it’s opposite, but she was not as stupid as Sirce. She would not let her gift become her. 
To wield my weapon, I must remain separate from it.

She would play the whore as long as it took. She had planned to endure another hundred years of her torture before she would have all she needed to k
now about the Judge of Hatred. Then she would see at last how far her brother’s core had filled up with its own poison.

But the phoenix…
the phoenix she had not foreseen.