Page 83 of House of Ashes
I tried to give him my hope, my strength, anything he needed.
But it wasn’t until I raised my hand to pat him that he actually moved. He climbed carefully through the dragon door, leaping gracefully into the sky and spreading his wings to catch a warm breeze.
A screech echoed off the mountain walls, and Garnet ascended from the crevasse of the wyvern roost, flapping her rusty wings at twice the speed of Rhylan’s. She soared around him, sending Kirana’s ponytail of thick hair flying.
He grumbled low in his throat, pulling ahead of the wyvern, and that was how we descended south: Garnet fluttering wildly to race against him, and Rhylan catching up with a few long, steady wingbeats.
“She’s young,” Kirana shouted as the sun began to rise in the distance. “We’re working on the part where she actually listens to me.”
I grinned despite myself, amused by Garnet’s panting breaths as she strove to beat Rhylan again.
The hours passed quickly, driven just as much by Garnet’s race as it was by the nerves taking up residence in my stomach; as much as I wanted to reveal myself, to stake my side of the board against Yura, I was afraid of facing the Great Houses again.
You have the right, I told myself. The Drakkon’s Judgments are null. Your House is yours again.
Would they care? Or would they see my mother in my place, a draga who had left almost no good will behind her in Akalla?
But with Rhylan’s apprehension, I had no choice but to hide those fears.
And all too soon, the golden spires of Koressis Eyrie’s dragon terrace, the crowning peak of Akalla, were visible against the late morning sun. Koressis Lake shone like blue glass, and as Rhylan stooped, circling over a roofless pavilion on the shore, I caught glimpses of brilliant colors scattered along the shore: other Houses, preparing themselves for noon.
But I couldn’t focus on them now. Rhylan dipped below the scattered tree canopies and landed easily in the open roof of the pavilion, with Garnet dropping to earth like a shooting star behind him. Kirana let out a groan as she nudged the wyvern towards the pavilion.
I dismounted, unbuckling him with caution spared for the silver leaf on my claws. Rhylan stretched as Kirana dragged Garnet to a wyvern water-trough, fastening the wyvern’s reins to one of the pavilion columns.
“Here.” I unbuckled the pack containing Rhylan’s clothes, averting my eyes with a blush as I handed it to him.
Rhylan paused, touching my cheek. “You should take a moment for yourself,” he said, his voice utterly serious. “It’s been a long time since you’ve seen this place.”
“I’m not going to fall apart.”
Rhylan simply stared into my eyes, and I sighed. “I’ll take a moment while you two dress. But I promise, Rhylan, I can handle this. I’m fine.”
“I know you will be. You always are.” And with those strange words, he ducked away to dress. Kirana had done the same, using Garnet as a living wall while she shed her leathers.
I had seen the golden spires, and the lake; I remembered my father taking me on walks around these very shores when I was a child.
We had probably played in this pavilion once, if not all of them; they were dotted all around Koressis Lake, serving as resting points for dragons traveling to meet with him. All of them were built of white marble shot through with greenish streaks. I remembered tracing those jade lines as a child, my other hand tucked in the Drakkon’s.
They were all happy memories, now overlaid with thick, suffocating hatred. Hatred that I couldn’t allow to blindside me.
So I stepped to the edge of the pavilion and forced myself to look over the place I had once loved.
The place where my father had loved me.
Chapter
Eighteen
Koressis Eyrie, my father’s seat, the throne of Akalla, seemed to rise from the lake like a finger pointing to the heavens.
It was singular among eyries; it was a tower, built from the ground up by dragon claws and dragonblood hands, unlike the natural mountains and caverns chosen by Ascendants.
The eyrie was a gift from Larivor and Naimah, a symbol of their Law across the land, and the home of their son Isandoral—the sole true dragon in Akalla who was not an Ascendant, and had never created a House from his own blood.
Whoever won by right of might would need to ask his blessing. It was said that those whom Isandoral refused to bless led cursed reigns…but that was a worry for another day.
Because the eyrie itself was not where the First Claim would be made. None of us would step foot into Koressis itself until the right of might had been settled, whether by war or not.