The Lost Lands Page 15

“It requires only a little blood to bond with you,” said Valkea. She opened her jaw, grinning, clearly offering her own fangs for D’Mara’s use.

  Scowling, D’Mara pulled a dagger from her belt and drew its blade over the heel of her hand. Scarlet blood welled and ran down her arm.

  D’Mara ground her teeth together. She’d already made up her mind about this. There would be no second-guessing, no regrets. And in a way, she was glad this was how the sundering was done. If she forgot Krane, she couldn’t miss him. She couldn’t feel guilty for what she was about to do.

  But still, as she reached out to touch the stone, her stomach soured and her heart twisted, as if trying to pull her back. Betrayal tasted like rotten fruit on her tongue.

  D’Mara pushed through it and touched the memory stone. Her hand, slippery with her own blood, gripped the hard facets of the jewel tightly.

  At once, she felt its presence in her mind like a thousand whispers. She couldn’t make out words, only the feeling of hunger. The stone was ravenous, and it wanted her memories.

  So she gave them to it. She thought of Krane the day she’d met him, starving and full of rage and cunning. The stone seized upon the memory and began to pull it, and behind it followed a great string of images, scenes, words. Every moment D’Mara had shared with Krane was sucked from her. She gasped. She wept. She did not remove her hand, even though it felt like the stone was draining her very soul. She remembered the context of the memories—she could recall old battles, but the face and name of the dragon she’d ridden in them blurred into anonymity.

  The very last memory to be stolen from her was of her final parting with Krane, and his last whisper in her mind: Farrelara, me soll.

  Farewell, my soul friend.

  As if he had known.

  When it was done, a shock sparked on D’Mara’s outstretched hand, and she stumbled back. Her head was thick and clouded. She looked around the lava-lit chamber and knew she’d come here for something important, but she couldn’t quite remember what. Valkea, beside her, extended her snout and touched it to the stone. D’Mara watched in confusion.

  They’d come here to … to sunder old Locks … She managed to recall that much, but the rest slipped away. It was as if there were a wall put around D’Mara’s thoughts, one she couldn’t breach no matter how she tried. A pit opened in her stomach and she felt the sense that she’d done something terrible, surrendered something dear … but then the feeling was pushed away by a new voice.

  D’Mara. D’Mara Lennix.

  She looked up, into the eyes of the Red dragon.

  Valkea?

  The dragon’s lips curled into the sort of smile only Raptors could make.

  Hello, D’Mara. Hello, my Lock.

  Sirin stared at the empty sky, her mind struggling to interpret what her eyes had seen.

  Because surely, surely she hadn’t just watched Joss and Lysander return to the Dragonlands without them. She scrubbed at her eyes, but the scene didn’t change: There was no Joss; there was no Lysander. Only the first few twinkling stars of night in the space where they’d been seconds ago.

  Bellacrux landed heavily on the bank, and before Sirin was half aware of Allie running toward her, the girl shoved her hard with both hands. Sirin stumbled back, nearly falling.

  “This is your fault!” yelled Allie. Her face was red and tears poured down her cheeks. She shoved Sirin again, and Sirin let her. “He’s going to get himself killed, because of you!”

  Sirin stared at her, unable to speak.

  “And there is nothing we can do about it!” Allie said. She grabbed Sirin by her shoulders and shook her. “Don’t you see? We’re stranded here without Lysander, Earth girl! We can’t get back! We can’t save him! And it’s your fault! All your talk of acting normal and not drawing attention in this world—but it was you those police were chasing, it was you the dragons had to come rescue while the whole world watched, and it was you who led D’Mara straight to us!”

  Sirin’s teeth rattled from being shaken. Finally she pushed Allie off and stepped back.

  “I—that’s not fair!”

  “Not fair?” Allie’s voice cracked. “You know what’s not fair? Watching my parents get snatched by Raptors was not fair. Working until my hands bled for the Zolls was not fair. Losing my brother because some girl couldn’t stop crying is not fair. You’re too weak and soft for this! I knew it all along!”

  Sirin sniffled and clenched her fists. She could think of a few things that happened in her own life that weren’t fair either. Her life hadn’t been all charmed and happy like Allie thought.

  Mum, thought Sirin. Oh, Mum!

  The tidal wave of grief that Sirin had been holding back threatened to break loose at last. She swayed on her feet at the sheer force of it. But still she held back. With everything else going on—losing Joss, losing Sammi, Allie’s accusations—Sirin couldn’t afford to break down now.

  Allie interpreted Sirin’s stony expression in an entirely different way. “You’re not even sorry!” she said. “You still see this as some pretend story, don’t you? Some cool adventure you can go tell your real friends about later!”

  “Of course not!” Sirin had no real friends. Not anymore.

  “Was any of this ever real to you?” asked Allie. “Do you even care what happens to Joss?”

  “I do care!” shouted Sirin. “I do, I do, more than anything! You’re right, okay? Everything you said is the truth. When I met you it was like a chance to run away from my problems, from … from what happened to my mum. With you and Joss and Sammi, I didn’t have to think about her. I could … I could pretend everything was okay back home. Or maybe I thought if I just kept running, it would never catch up to me.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “But you’re right. This is my fault. I’m sorry I led D’Mara right to us. I’m sorry I brought my curse on you and Joss.”

  Allie’s chest was heaving from pent-up sobs and anger. She glared at Sirin. “Your curse?”

  “I’m bad luck, that’s what I am. I’m cursed. I should have known this would happen.”

  Because I always end up alone.

  Everyone left. Parents, cats, dragons, friends. Maybe this was just how life was. Maybe she’d been a fool for ever thinking it would be different with Joss and Allie.

  “I have to find the Heart,” said Allie. “It’s Joss’s only hope. Where is it, Sirin?”

  “New York City,” said Sirin quietly. She still had the world atlas she’d bought, and now she pulled it out and opened it. “There.”

  She handed the map to Allie.

  “Go,” Sirin said. “Just go. I won’t slow you down anymore.”

  She was so very tired of trying to fit in where she wasn’t wanted.

  Allie hesitated, then rolled up the map and stuck it in her coat pocket. She turned toward Bellacrux.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe after I find Joss … Good-bye, Sirin.”

  Sirin looked away, at the dark lake below, and rubbed her arm where Allie had shoved her. She said nothing.

  She heard rather than saw Bellacrux take flight. In moments, the whisper of the Green’s wings faded away altogether.

  Then Sirin was alone.

  Perfectly, utterly alone on a ruined bank beside Loch Ness.

  She was hollow inside, like every feeling and thought had been scoured away. She felt like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  But as the night deepened and the waters endlessly lapped at the stones, she did begin to feel. She felt the great wave inside her sloshing and rising, like floodwaters. She knew if she let it loose it would drown her, because now she’d lost so much more than her mum. There was Sammi and Joss too, and even Lysander and Bellacrux and Allie. With them, she’d been able to forget. Constantly running for your life was a surprisingly effective distraction from one’s other problems. But now all of that was over, and Sirin was alone, and there was nowhere left to hide from the past.

  Who had she thought she was, running off on quests,
trying to save the world? As if she could help anyone. As if she didn’t always make everything worse. She’d tried so hard to be useful, a strong member of the team, figuring out clues and plotting how to outsmart the enemy. But it had all fallen apart, and it was her fault. Why would Allie and Joss want her along after this? Who had ever really wanted her, besides her mother? And her mother was gone.

  “Little human,” said a rumbling voice, startling Sirin. She looked up to see a pair of glittering dark eyes watching her.

  Thorval! For it was his deep, ancient voice speaking now, not Nessie’s. His head rose just above the water.

  “You came back,” Sirin whispered.

  “I felt the trembling of the earth from my deep caverns and knew there was a dragon battle above. But it seems I have come too late.”

  “They’re all gone.”

  “Ah,” said Thorval.

  “And it’s my fault,” Sirin added.

  “Is it?”

  Sirin leaned over and buried her head in her arms. She was shaking all over.

  “I have been remembering,” murmured Thorval. “Your words rattled memories out of me like rocks tumbling down a hill. I remember when I too found myself all alone.”

  Perhaps Sirin would crack like Thorval had and invent another person to help stanch the flow of painful memories.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have made you remember. It’s awful, to remember.”

  “Yes,” agreed Thorval. “But if I had not remembered, then I could not have aided you on your quest. And if I had not remembered, then who would be left to tell you how to use the Skyspinner’s Heart once you found it?”

  “How to use it?” Sirin looked up.

  “But surely you are not interested in that,” said Thorval. “It looks to me as if you have given up. Trust me, I know what that looks like. Over the past two thousand years, I’ve become very good at giving up.”

  “Well,” Sirin admitted. “It’s not as though there’s much else I can do. I am alone, with no way to help anyone. And besides, it’s not as if they want my help. I only make things worse. It’s like I’m cursed, Thorval. Everyone I love …”

  The wave inside her churned, pressing against the unfeeling dam she’d built. She fell silent.

  “Everyone you love what?” asked Thorval.

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Or think about it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because! It—it hurts too much. I’d rather feel nothing at all than remember her.”

  “Her?”

  “My …”

  Thorval tilted his head. “A wise person once told me that remembering is how you keep the lost with you.”

  Sirin squeezed her eyes shut. She sobbed once.

  And that was all it took.

  The dam broke.

  “Mum,” Sirin whispered. “Oh, Mum, I miss you so much.”

  The dragonstone pendant under her shirt seemed to burn into her skin, and finally she drew it out and held it tight in her palm.

  She began to sob, and sobbed harder when she felt Thorval nudge her foot with his nose. She threw her arms around the ancient dragon’s neck and cried into his shimmering blue scales.

  Sirin remembered her mother as she’d been before the sickness, bright and energetic and full of whimsy. She remembered her packing Sirin’s lunches so that when Sirin opened them, the food was arranged in a silly face that always made her laugh. She remembered her mum cooking for three days straight when their neighbor’s kitchen flooded, so that they could take over a dozen casseroles for them. She remembered her mum best of all snuggled in Sirin’s bed, reading to her even though Sirin was almost a teenager and fully capable of reading herself. But she never would have dreamed of telling her mum to leave. She could still feel her mum’s frail, sickening body, but her spirit as large and vibrant as it had ever been.

  She even remembered her in the hospital in the last days, fading before her eyes, but still smiling.

  All the sorrow that had been building up inside Sirin flooded out. She’d never wept so hard in her life or felt so wretched.

  But as she cried, deep, deep down, Sirin began to feel as if a great weight had been lifted from her chest. She felt lighter and lighter with each tear that fell, until she had no more left to give.

  When the blast of the signal horn sounded over Fortress Lennix that night, announcing the return of an important Raptor and rider, Tamra was lying in her room, having just vomited. She’d been ill all morning, and no one could figure out why. It had started with a sudden pain out of nowhere, right in the center of her chest, and Tamra had been aching and dizzy ever since.

  But no illness would stop her from being in the landing yard when her mother returned.

  Valkea? Are you back?

  When her query received no reply, Tamra frowned. Maybe it wasn’t Valkea and D’Mara back from the Lost Lands. But why else would someone be blowing the signal horn? It wasn’t used for ordinary recon and scavenging missions.

  Shoving aside the servant who attempted to help her out of bed, Tamra stumbled through her room and down the stairs to the yard, clutching her chest. Every few steps she had to stop to catch her breath. Honestly, what was wrong with her? The pain was like she’d been impaled with a firestik between her ribs. Blinking away tears, Tamra pushed on, but she was still the last Lennix to reach the landing yard. Edward, Mirra, and Kaan stood at attention with the First Flight, while the other Raptors crowded behind them eagerly.

  There had been much confusion when the First Flight had returned without D’Mara and Valkea. They’d reported that the Lennix leader had vanished along with the Red, through a portal that had closed to the rest of them. It had been Tamra who’d first realized what had happened, and that the Silver scale forged onto Valkea’s brow must have only been powerful enough to let one Raptor through the portal.

  Still, her Lock and D’Mara should have been back hours ago. What if the scale had stopped working, and they were trapped in the Lost Lands? What if something terrible had befallen them while they were there? Tamra didn’t know; her connection to Valkea had all but ceased the moment they’d gone through the portal.

  She wished she’d been more assertive that morning and demanded that she be the one to ride Valkea through the portal. But her dragon had insisted it would be fine, and Tamra had believed her.

  “There!” shouted Kaan, pointing to the sky. As usual, he was the first to spot the returning dragon. “It’s Ma!”

  Tamra squinted and saw he was right. Valkea bore down on the fortress with a roar of undeniable triumph.

  What happened? Tamra sent. Did it work? What did you see?

  Still Valkea made no reply, but the pain in Tamra’s chest sharpened. She bent over, gasping. Valkea, something’s wrong with me.

  She’d heard that Locks could feel each other’s pain, but Valkea didn’t even look at her.

  Valkea!

  Why was the Red ignoring her? Tamra started to walk to her, but Valkea swept away, up the loggia and after D’Mara.

  Valkea? What’s going on? Valkea! Can you hear me?

  “Tam?” Mirra glanced at her, frowning. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Tamra rasped. “I’m fine! Mind your own business.”

  Mirra rolled her eyes and turned back to the approaching Raptor. Valkea landed hard, her claws sending out a spray of sparks as they scratched the stone. D’Mara vaulted down, holding a squirming hatchling.

  “Edward!” she shouted. “Hold on to this whelp. And all of you pay attention! I intend to announce the new Lennix Grand.”

  Edward took the little trussed-up Green, then exchanged a smug look with Decimus as more Raptors crept into the landing yard, their interest piqued by D’Mara’s announcement.

  Tamra knew everyone expected the new Grand to be Decimus. Edward looked as pleased as a hatchling that had just caught a rabbit. He stood with his chin high and his shoulders squared. Even if it wasn’t him receiving the title, being
the Lock of the Lennix Grand was an honor in and of itself. He would hold almost as much sway as D’Mara over the Raptors.

  “Raptors of the Roost,” D’Mara said loudly. She spread her hands wide. “I am pleased to report that the mission to the Lost Lands was a success. As you’ve guessed, we will require more Silver scales before a full raid can be launched, but I have already set wheels in motion to ensure we are supplied with as many as we need. Which brings me to our second announcement: We have gone far too long without a Lennix Grand, and it is high time we purged the stench of that traitor Bellacrux from the Roost for good, by honoring our new Grand.”

  Everyone looked at Decimus, who preened.

  “Raptors,” called D’Mara, “I present to you your new Grand—and my new Lock! VALKEA!”

  Tamra’s heart stopped.

  Instead of roars of adulation, the Raptors looked around in confusion. D’Mara’s new Lock? But Krane was still alive! And so was Tamra.

  As Valkea reared onto her hind legs and screeched and spat flame all over the sky, Tamra reeled. She backed away, out of Mirra’s reach, and bumped into a stone column supporting the loggia.

  Valkea? What is going on?

  Valkea didn’t even seem to hear her. For that matter, now that Tamra really reached for her Lock, she found it was like grasping at a shadow.

  In the spot where her Lock had been, now Valkea simply wasn’t there.

  “Grieving sickness,” whispered Mirra, turning to her twin. She stared at Tamra with the one thing Tamra had always despised most: pity. “You’ve got grieving sickness.”

  Tamra had seen it before, the pain that followed the death of a Lock. Dragons and humans alike experienced it, and it lasted for days or even weeks depending on how strong the bond had been.

  But Valkea wasn’t dead.

  Valkea had broken their bond.

  Which was way, way worse.

  And even worse than that, she’d broken their bond in order to Lock with D’Mara. The link between human and dragon was the strongest in nature, a joining of mind, heart, and spirit. It was the ultimate form of trust … and Valkea had betrayed all of that. She might as well have torn out Tamra’s heart and crushed it in her jaws.