Eona - Alison Goodman [191]
The black folio is open on the table, ready for the final task. I touch the hilts of the jade and moonstone swords, feeling my rage woven into their steel. I have not told Somo this part of the plan, and the small deception settles in my heart like stone. But he would not have let me put my spirit at such risk. I pick up one of the swords and draw the tip of the blade across my palm in a hot sting of pain. Bright red wells in its wake. With a deep breath, I press my hand against the open pages and gather my Hua through the flow of my blood. The black folio grabs at me, weaving my energy into the heat of the dark force that already holds the dragons. Bound together now. If I succeed, my Hua will be released with the dragons. If I fail, I will be locked alongside the dragons waiting for another chance. Waiting for Pia or another of my bloodline to make it right—
“Return!”
Sethon’s voice ripped me from my dragon and slammed me back into my brutalized body. I screamed, every part of me alight with pain. His hand snaked around my throat, fingertips digging into the round of my windpipe.
“If you try that again, I will not be so generous with the healing power,” he said, choking off my sound.
My pulse pounded in my ears, its frantic rhythm holding Kinra’s words.
Make it right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I SQUINTED ACROSS the battlefield, trying to recognize Kygo and Ido among the tiny figures that stood along the edge of the escarpment. Could they see me on this command tower, kneeling at Sethon’s feet? They could hardly miss me: we were in the center of the assembled army, raised twelve tiered steps above it on a wooden platform. To add to that, we sat upon a small throne dais marked out by a tall canopy. The bait in plain sight.
Sethon reached down and stroked my hair, his touch making my skin crawl.
Perhaps Ido was not standing on the ridge at all. He no longer had the threat of my compulsion hanging over him, so why would he stay?
I glanced up at the purple silk canopy that billowed over us, its long fringe of red blessing banners snapping like whips. There was some strange quality in the hot gusts that swept the flat grassland, and in the bank of silver clouds closing in around us. I wet my cracked lips, tasting the air: it held the harsh edge of dry lightning, the same acrid energy I had smelled and tasted on the beach with Ido. Every Dragoneye sense within me said he was making this searing wind. He had stayed, and he was going to fight alongside Kygo. The certainty straightened my spine.
“You have something else to say?” Sethon asked High Lord Tuy, who was bent on one knee before him at the base of the small dais. He was another of Sethon’s half-brothers, closer in age, with wary, narrow eyes and deep lines cut from nose to mouth; a permanent sneer etched into his face.
“I have a concern, Your Majesty,” he said. “This plan to take the ridge. All conventional wisdom says that attacking uphill is a fool’s strategy.”
Sethon’s hand traced the moonstone and jade circles on the hilt of one of Kinra’s swords, slung in the back sheath over the arm of his chair. “A fool’s strategy?” he echoed softly.
“Xsu-Ree cautions against it specifically, brother,” Tuy said, his fist clenching with the effort to moderate his tone. “Why go against his wisdom? It has always stood us in good stead.”
My knees ached from kneeling on the hard wood, but I did not dare shift in case the movement brought Sethon’s focus back to me. Except for my hands—still bound by the pearls, and useless—he had released my body from his physical control. I could not bear to lose that freedom again. As it was, I still felt his choking grip on my power like a tight rope around a dog’s neck. Hot shame swept over me; this was what I had done to Ido, and what we were doing to the dragons.
“We should march around