Secrets are sacred. To break an oath is disgraceful, but to break an oath of secrecy is to spit upon ones honor. To cast it into the dirt.

-From the Tusk Dragon Teachings, sixth stone, third sequence of the spiral of Black Reach,

Author unknown

I’m too weak and broken to drink my master’s blood, or even to accelerate my own healing with the moonlight already emanating from my skin. So they bring in a Middleborn, one of the Blessed—the first I’ve ever met.

While most children born with neither moon nor sun at greater position in the sky have no power of light whatsoever, the Blessed have both. They can even feed in both ways. And with that sacred intermingling of sun and moonlight comes another power entirely—the ability to heal others.

But the Blessed are a rare people, perhaps one of them born for every few hundred ordinary Middling children. So when I recognize the disdain in her icy blue eyes, it actually hurts me…and not in the good way.

“I’m to heal her?” she sniffs. “Would it not be in better service to justice that we let her suffer?”

“Perhaps,” replies Khavad, pouring himself a glass of golden liquor from a decanter of what I think must be dragon bone. It’s hard to be sure. My vision is blurred and reddened, swimming with dark shapes. With each moment that passes, the voice of the Shadow grows louder and louder, calling to me. Singing to me. Begging me to summon it. But I resist. My master wanted me to hide that particular ability from the princes—and I’ll hide it from everyone else too until he orders otherwise.

“But do you think it worth the price you’d pay for it, refusing me?”

“Hm, I can’t say that I do,” says the woman, calm as she takes a seat beside me on my master’s bed. She knows her own value enough to doubt his threat, but not enough to dismiss it. Her hands dance slowly through the air a finger’s length from my skin as swirling silver and gold light builds in her palms.

Starting at my head, she works her way down—integrating the mingled energies into mine. A delicious tingling sensation sweeps through my veins, cool and warm in turns. Under her guidance, my body begins to mend itself.

The Middelborn’s task complete, she withdraws her hands and allows the light to dissipate. Then she stands, inclines her head in the shallowest of bows to General Khavad, and leaves without a word. In a few steps, he closes the space between us and takes her place at my side.

“Drink,” he orders, and I obey. In spite of the Blessed One’s work, I’m still sore and aching in places, but that only adds to my pleasure as I take my fill.

“You did well, to contain the Shadow,” he says when I’ve had enough. “Now rest. We’ll depart at dawn.”

“But I thought—“

“We’re leaving early. After what happened to you, the King has no place demanding I linger here. He knows it.”

I swallow compulsively as a thrill trickles down my spine.

“Very well, my Khai.”

He glances down at me without turning his head, his lip twitching upward almost imperceptibly.

But when I start to get up, the hint of a smile is gone.

“Where are you going?”

“To my bed, Khai.”

“No. It’s too dangerous for you in this place. Sleep here.”

So I edge back onto the mattress, already naked, and pull the blankets up around myself. Khavad dims the lanterns still further, sitting down at the table near the hearth to finish his drink. I turn to face away from him, the only way I can think of not to stare.

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He wakes me well before sunrise to feed, and I don’t remember him ever lying down. Did he sleep at all? There’s a subtle deepening of shadow beneath his eyes, and I bite back the urge to offer him energy. For a moment, the idea that he may never feed from me is like a spike through my heart.

Khavad says goodbye to his sisters shortly before our departure, kneeling to fold them into his embrace and speaking quietly with them for a time. I hang back with Bastren and Zhama, unsure what to make of this side of the War-Eater.

And then it’s back to the sky, the general out of sight above and the beating of Avathor’s wings all around us. I drink up the view like it’s my master’s own blood as the terrain transforms below us. I’ve never seen such an arid land, at least not in this lifetime. The slow rise of the sun paints it all in red and gold and ochre. It’s beautiful, in an alien way. Rolling hills of tumbled sandstone dotted with scrub and twisted trees give way after a time to a land that looks like it tripped straight out of a drunkard’s dream.

Bizarre formations of stone that resemble great arches and towers and giant petrified mushrooms dot the landscape, the ground a swirl of pastels that must be some kind of plant-life, but which I can’t quite make sense of.

Convoys of armored carriages and supply wagons grow more numerous on the twisting roads below. Then the terrain evens out somewhat and the plant life gives way to beaten, sandy dirt. Beyond that lies a sprawling city of tents, and then the jagged line of Southfort itself like a row of teeth on the horizon. It closes the gap in the long, trailing tail of the mountains—a wall between gods-given Skyfolk lands and the contested territories beyond.

The sky carriage veers toward the eastern end of the fort where it melds into the foothills, to the dragon rooks and landing platform jutting from the rock. Bastren, Zhama and I pile out just as the wind picks up from the south, carrying a bizarre scent of rich earth and spices and something else that I can’t quite place. It’s a fleshy smell, one that reminds me of sweat, naked bodies and meat.

A bare lift—little more than an iron cage—carries us down from the platform as the dragon launches back into the air. The wind howls suddenly harsher through the mountain’s gap, intensifying the strange aroma and blowing my hair across my face as I follow the others into the fort.

~*~

While my master attends council and oversees training and other preparations, I spend the next three days sequestered in our suite of assigned rooms, where Bastren and I share a chamber. There, my bond-brother begins to train me in the ways of lightshaping.

“It’s more than simply envisioning what you wish to summon,” he reminds me, as on the third evening yet another amorphous blob of moonlight escapes me, dissipating into a haze of light. “You must imagine that you can feel it, there in your hands. You must convince yourself you already have the blade, and must only now make it visible.”

With no little effort, I keep my face composed. It’s bad enough I’ve proven such a poor student without allowing my displeasure at my own incompetence show as well.

But Bastren’s eyes flash and his lip curls up to one side. Already, he’s learning to see through my mask.

“Patience, sister. You will learn.”

“We leave for the battlefront tomorrow, Bastren. For the Sunderlands. And I am as useful as a thorn in the foot.”

The other Lunarborn scoffs. “Hardly. You have power in you, Vi. More than most of us,” he lowers his voice towards the end, eyes flashing to the raven’s head construct mounted on the door. “But that also means you have more to learn.”

I’m only just beginning to form a response when everything is drowned out by a thunderous, bone-sawing roar. My hands fly to my ears as Bastren’s eyes go wide. Only a step behind him, we both rush to the window. It’s a nearly lightless night, the moon a fragile sliver veiled in clouds. Shouts fly up throughout the fort, and swathes of lanterns flare to life across the tent city as its occupants swarm from their shelters.

There’s another earth-shaking cry from the direction of the dragon rooks. Heartbeats later, one of the beasts swoops into view—silvery-pale and luminous, its rider a speck between its wings. But everything seems to grow suddenly darker, as if the fort’s been cast in shadow. I stare up into the sky, where the clouds have built into an inky-black mass—born swiftly forward by the wind.

And then the concentrated darkness breaks, trailing away in writhing coils, and I realize it hadn’t been clouds at all but pure Shadow. A form emerges from the murk.

Sinuous and prickling with antlers the size of trees, dotted with green foxfire, dark droplets streaming from its body to fall in its wake. An Earthenfolk dragon.

My skin goes cold and Bastren freezes in place, statue-still, gaze fixed on the sky. The silver dragon wheels around to meet the enemy mount, high above the tent city’s eastern outskirts.

For a heartbeat Bastren tears his gaze from the sky as we look to one another, and I know in that moment that we’re both acknowledging the same terrible truth.

Then our eyes are back on the scene unfolding above, the earthen dragon veering away just as the other gapes its jaws to unleash a blast of light shards. It shrieks as several of them converge with its trailing body, dappling its flanks like a swathe of stars. Crying out again in pain, the enemy dragon speeds suddenly northward, the lighter beast diving after it.

A third set of wing-beats joins the others as the familiar form of Avathor surges across the sky, joining the silver in its pursuit of an enemy that only made it this far because it was shrouded in darkness.

A darkness that could only have been conjured by one of our own.