Unleash the Inferno (Heart of a Dragon Book 3) Read online

  She does not love Julian, his head said. His heart whispered, But how could she love you? Aye, she'd claimed to, but she was an Andrachen. She would marry a politic match for the good of her people. Bitterness wrenched his breath from him.

  The Seer Fey waved away her own question. “Why did you send a message for me to come to this spot?”

  “Julian wished to meet you.” The color rose high in Sage's cheeks. She shook her head. “But I see now how dangerous it was to have this meeting here and now.”

  “And why did Julian wish to meet me?”

  Silence filtered across the clearing. Ayden crouched low, straining to hear.

  Julian cleared his throat in the awkward silence. “Would it not be natural to wish the meet the mother of my psuche partner?”

  “Aye,” Kayeck's opaque eyes narrowed. “For anyone but you.”

  Julian backstepped at the insult, but Kayeck changed the subject. “Sage, you must do something for me.”

  “What is that?”

  “You are privy to the inner workings of Sebastian's Council—”

  Sage shook her head, interrupting. “Nay, Julian... is out of favor with the King because of his—his disobedience regarding the King's niece—”

  “He will soon be back in the King's good graces; I have seen it.”

  “You have seen Julian's fate?”

  “I see only what the Stars see fit to show me.”

  No one spoke for a moment, and then Kayeck said, “I wish to know the plans Sebastian holds for West Ashwynd.”

  Sage and Julian glanced at one another before Sage spoke slowly. “He—his army officers have been commanded to first restore order to the city of ClarenVale, but then he will be sending troops across the Channel.”

  “As I thought,” Kayeck nodded. Her white eyes swung toward Julian. “And you will be leading some of the attack?” she asked. “Sebastian has ordered large numbers of his Pixies and their Dimn to board his warships and use their Pixie charm to wield the waters of the Channel?”

  Julian took a long moment to answer, but at last, he nodded.

  “Then it is true.” Kayeck's voice was resigned, almost sad. Her slumped shoulders curled even more as she hunched over the rock.

  “What is true, Mother?” Sage asked.

  Kayeck didn't answer for a long, long moment. Ayden reached behind him, stilling Luasa's restless muzzle, waiting.

  Finally, the words came. “Paik, the Grand-Master of the Seer Fey, seeks to aid and abet the Lismarian King to destroy the Andrachen twins in West Ashwynd. He has received instructions to lead the Pixies and others of Sebastian's army against The Rebellion.”

  Ayden didn't move even after Julian and Sage had disappeared from sight down the slopes. Kayeck remained in her alcove, and Ayden's knees cramped as he crouched behind the trees. Luasa grew restless. She kept still beneath his hand, but her thoughts whirled in colorful patterns as they played out in Ayden's head.

  “You can approach me now, lad.”

  Ayden started violently and then peered around the tree at Kayeck.

  “Aye, don't make me climb down there.” Kayeck barked a rusty laugh. “I'm not as young as I used to be.”

  Ayden cleared his throat. “None of us are.” He clambered up the rock toward her. Luasa beat him there, her silvery body stepping neatly in front of him.

  “It's all right, Luasa,” Ayden breathed, resting a hand on her reflective scales. “She is Seer Fey.”

  The she-Dragon snorted derisively. She did not trust the old woman.

  “Aye, that I am,” Kayeck agreed, “but that does not mean what it used to, lad. Your Dragon is right not to trust me until I have proved myself. What is your name?”

  “Have the Stars not shown you?” Ayden asked, testing.

  “The Stars show me what pleases them. You remain shrouded in mystery, but ah!” Her sparse eyebrows rose in surprise. “You gleam like the morning sun in the eye of the Amulet.” Her dim gaze stared over his head, her expression miles away. “You and the Lismarian King are tangled within the fibers that make up that talisman, both as brilliant as fire. Tell me, have you mastered the four Touches of the Amulet?”

  “I—I don't know,” Ayden managed, surprise tripping his tongue. “I've had the Ash-Touch for years, since I was eight. This past spring, I tried to break the curse, but rather than leaving me, the curse redirected, and for four long months, fire burned inside my skin until I learned to control it. Recently, my skin has healed wounds with far too much ease—” He broke off. “Is this good news?” he asked, confused at the absolute glee that radiated from Kayeck's face.

  “The Ice-Touch? Have you manifested the Ice-Touch yet?” Her voice rasped too close to Ayden, her breath hissed across his face, and Luasa snapped at the Seer Fey. Kayeck stepped back.

  “Peace, Luasa,” Ayden chided. “Nay, I have not, but I understand that it is inside me, and that it will manifest when the Amulet decides.”

  “Aye!” Kayeck was fairly dancing now, her bent figure bouncing on the rock. Ayden couldn't see her reasoning. “Aye, it will manifest when the Amulet decides, but you can help it along. You can practice!”

  Ayden stared at her. “And why would I practice an affliction that causes me nothing but grief and pain?”

  Kayeck laughed deep in her throat, and her milky gaze looked directly into his. “Because, my dear boy, I've just discovered who will destroy the Amulet forged beneath the Stars during the Bond of Blood and Fire!”

  “I—don't understand. You—wish to destroy the Amulet? But is it not a gift? Do not the Ancients cling to the Bond of Blood and Fire and the Amulet that binds it?” Ayden asked.

  “Aye, those who follow Paik, the Grand-Master, do indeed.”

  Ayden stared at her. Luasa huffed warning smoke from her nostrils toward the Seer Fey. Her edginess increased. Ayden touched her muzzle softly. “And you—are saying you do not follow Paik?”

  “I follow the Stars, boy. I follow good instead of evil. But evil no longer looks as it used to. It now has swallowed the shape of the Amulet, and what once was a good gift from the Stars must now be destroyed.”

  Ayden considered her words. His own unease matched Luasa's, but the Seer Fey possibly held answers to the Touches that had plagued him for months. “And if the rest of the Seer Fey Council were to gain wind of the fact that you are at odds with their ambitions?”

  She released a raspy laugh, which dissolved into a cough. “Then we will be at war. I hold the key to the Amulet's whereabouts, boy. They will not find it; it was hidden behind powerful taibe by my Ancient sister, Helga. She had hidden it in taibe before, and the journey to gain it caused her great pain when she retrieved it for use in the battle of ClarenVale. Immediately following the battle, she and I realized our error—if it were possible for a Seer Fey to regain it from behind those safeguards, what is to stop any on the Seer Fey Council from obtaining it? Helga safeguarded it again, and this time, only one from the line of Andrachen heirs will be able to touch it. Such taibe greatly weakened my sister, but it is safe from the Seer Fey Council—for the time being.”

  “I still don't understand what you wish me to practice.” Ayden stepped closer to Luasa, and the Dragon rumbled low in her throat.

  Kayeck placed both her hands on top of her cane, her gaze pinned to Ayden. “You must gain mastery over all four Touches of the Amulet. It is the only way to destroy it.”

  “So I must retrieve the Amulet to do so?” Ayden asked, his brow wrinkling.

  “Did you not just hear me say only an Andrachen heir can pull it from its safeguards? Nay, boy, you do not need the Amulet to control the Touches, obviously. You need only yourself. Come with me.”

  She turned up the slope, hiking with an agility that her appearance belied. “Come, come, Ayden Dragondimn,” she called without looking over her shoulder. “Time wastes, and you have much to do.”

  Ayden took a deep breath, starting after her, but Luasa snorted, flames flickering from her mouth.

&nb
sp; Ayden turned back to her. “I know, Luasa. I want to get back to them, too. But I must find out what this is about. If I could control the Touches, I could help Kinna and Cedric, truly help them. You heard Kayeck; they face an impending attack from Paik, the Grand-Master of the Seer Fey. They prepare for war, and if I control the Touches, I could be invaluable to them.” He ran his hand thoughtfully down the silvery scales coating her neck. “Will you come?”

  Her thoughts crowded thickly through his head: hesitancy, reservation, fear, urgency to return to Chennuh, thoughts of West Ashwynd and home. Central among those thoughts was Ayden, her psuche partner. At last she nudged his chest with her muzzle, pushing him up the hill in the direction the Seer Fey had gone.

  She wouldn't leave him.

  Ayden stood on a rocky outcropping in the northern peaks of the Marron Mountains. He had never returned to the forest glade where Iolar had found him, and he guiltily wondered how long the Elf had searched for him before giving up and returning to Queen and country. He should have tried to get word to him, but it was too late. It had been at least four weeks since he'd followed Kayeck into the mountains. Her insistence that he come with her and learn the Touches couldn't be redirected. He must come; he was the only hope for the destruction of the Amulet.

  So she claimed. He couldn't imagine he was anyone's hope for anything. Although, the fact that she thought he was the only one who could destroy something sounded about right.

  “Why is this necessary?” he asked one final time, staring at his hands where they rippled with fire.

  Kayeck sat on a stone, her back against a tree. Her white eyes looked as blind as ever, but she tracked his movements as he crouched before the stream, his hands at the ready. “Because, as I've said, you gave Sebastian the Amulet, and its power split between you. While you both live, you both maintain the same power. I must teach you the four Touches so that, eventually, we will be able to conquer him.”

  “Helga told me, when I first met her, that I was not to kill Sebastian, that the taibe in the Amulet would turn and destroy me, too.” Ayden's hands shook with his exertion. The flames he'd so long controlled barely rippled on his skin, refusing his efforts to increase them.

  “That was when the taibe split between you. When you ritual to end the Amulet, your combined taibe will return to the Amulet and destroy it.”

  Ayden shook his head. “Why not teach another? I can do so little.” Discouragement blanketed him as he stared at his smoking hands. He clenched them into fists at his side.

  Kayeck snorted. “Teaching another would do no good; the Amulet has bestowed its Touches on you and Sebastian. Sebastian holds the other half of your power, just as you hold his. No other person wields such taibe.”

  Ayden sighed, resigning himself to Kayeck's instruction. “Tell me how to begin.”

  “Go slowly, now. Concentrate on the good around you, the happiness that you've found since you've discovered friends, since you've sought out the light.”

  Ayden closed his eyes in concentration. Fire returned to his fingertips; he was used to it, aware of the heat that licked up his arms, and he had also learned how to control it, to release it when it gained too much intensity.

  “No, you're focusing too much on the fire. Find the opposing force, the cold where the fire is absent.”

  Ayden searched, his jaw tightening with determination. It had been thus every morning for weeks. Seek light, seek hope, Kayeck's voice demanded over and over. In the hope, you will find your power over the Touch.

  Ayden shook his head. He knew the feel of the Ash-Touch; darkness and death swirled around him when he felt it in his fingers. He was aware of the Healing-Touch, though he still handled it clumsily, as a babe would a small toy. He was adept at controlling the Fire-Touch; he'd had much practice over the months after he'd given Sebastian the Amulet and unintentionally strengthened the curse rather than shattered it.

  But the Ice-Touch eluded him. On the rock nearby, Kayeck sighed.

  “You have not found it, Ayden Dragondimn.”

  “Nay,” Ayden snapped, exhausted with trying. “Perhaps it isn't there.”

  “Nonsense. It is there, and the Amulet gives it freely when you find your way of accessing it.”

  Ayden frowned at her. “What are you saying? My way?”

  “Aye. The Amulet responds to how you find what is most important to you, the core of your being, who you are.”

  Ayden stared at her, his hand rubbing across a bristled jaw. “Assuming that's true, how would Sebastian channel the Touches?”

  “Likely through thoughts of control and domination, as that is at the core of who he is.” Kayeck's voice held disdain. “But I'm not worried about Sebastian at the moment. I want to know, Ayden, who are you?”

  Ayden gritted his teeth. “I am Ayden, Dragondimn.”

  Kayeck waved the words aside with an impatient grunt. “Not your name, lad,” she snapped. “Who are you?”

  Her meaning washed over Ayden with the suddenness of crashing surf.

  He was Ayden the orphan. He was Ayden the untouched for the majority of his life. He was Ayden the unloved, Ayden the dreaded, Ayden the feared. He was Ayden, who could touch only Dragons without fear of causing death. He was Ayden who had never before understood hope, life, love.

  Until Kinna.

  Her fiery-haired visage slanted across his vision, so real, he could brush his fingers across her cheek and bury them in the thickness of her hair.

  Who was he? Ayden was his name. Kinna's likeness seemed to whisper the same words she'd spoken to him so long ago when he'd first met her: A name gives him a sense of belonging, a home no matter where he goes. She'd been referring to the Mirage Dragon, Chennuh, at the time, but her meaning flowered, expanded, blossomed in his mind in the slight space between one breath and the next.

  He was Ayden, a loved son of a woman taken too soon. He was Ayden, a psuche partner to a rare Mirage Dragon, Ayden, truth-seeker, Ayden, upholder of justice, Ayden, who knew the fire of Kinna's touch. He was Ayden, chosen by the Stars to destroy the Amulet.

  Ice erupted from his fingertips, frosting every blade of grass across the clearing and turning the orange and gold leaves clinging to the trees to sparkling, crystalline white.

  Chapter Three

  Cedric

  Cedric tapped the quill against the parchment spread on the table top. It was strangely unsatisfying. He wanted to pound the item into the wood grain, but it would snap beneath the slightest pressure, so he tapped, because that was all he could do without breaking it.

  Restraint tightened his fingers, and he resented it. Restraint, born of expectation—he was rational Cedric, King Liam's son, the tame, slightly awestruck boy who had arrived at The Crossings the previous spring to discover his roots, to find his identity.

  What had he found? An Andrachen history bathed in blood and betrayal, no less coated with the treachery of his own father, Liam, against Sebastian. Ashleen had been the first to betray his father's true and hidden nature to him when she'd told the tale of how he'd entrapped her in slavery. Murmurs from various sources continued to whisper—there was no painful fact all-consuming and compromising in only one instance, but many instances. Many examples of Liam's heinous acts at last led him to believe that his father had been a cruel man who had delighted in tormenting Sebastian.

  Cedric hated Sebastian.

  But now he had a problem; he hated his father as well.

  Fury burned inside of him; he was connected by blood to a power-hungry uncle. He'd known this for at least a year, but somewhere deep inside of him, he'd held on to his parentage once he'd discovered it—the pride of knowing that his father was a well-loved king. He'd clung to that, because having grown up with no identity at all, he could at least know that he'd had a father who would have loved him, even been proud of him should he have lived.

  But in the end, that was ripped from him as well.

  In the end, his father had been no better than Sebastian—greedy for po
wer, grasping for control, and willing to do anything to gain it. And, like all men, corrupted by that power once it was his.

  The letter in front of him—given to him by Helga before the Channel battle—taunted him from the table. The words written by the Seer Fey who had penned it condemned not only his father, Liam, for encouraging and hastening the degradation of the Amulet, but also generation after generation of Andrachen kings.

  Cruelty and corruption seemed an Andrachen curse. And it would pass to him, and beyond him... to his own sons, should he have any. He had feared this for months now, and its effect spread into his daily life.

  Ashleen's beautiful, almond-toned faced swam across his vision, and he squeezed his eyes shut, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled sharply. He hated the throne, and he hated his father, who had sat upon it.

  The quill snapped in his hand, and the feathers floated light as ash to the cold stone of the floor.

  “Your Grace?”

  “Leave me be,” Cedric mumbled to the servant. The servant hesitated in the doorway. “Please,” Cedric added as an afterthought.

  “The maid Ashleen wishes to speak with you.”

  Cedric stood so quickly, the chair tilted behind him, teetering for a moment on its back legs before crashing to the stone floor. “Uh—tell her I'm—”

  “Not here?” Ashleen strode through the doorway behind the servant, planting her feet on the other side of the table, her hands on her hips.

  Cedric swallowed and then dismissed the servant with a glance. When the door had shut, he lifted his chair upright, his hands gripping the back of it as though it were a rope thrown to a drowning man. “Ashleen.”

  “Cedric.” She narrowed her gaze on his face. “I'm tired of—” She broke off. “You haven't been sleeping well.” One fine, dark eyebrow rose as she surveyed him critically.

  Cedric flushed. “I've been sleeping fine.”