Eona - Alison Goodman [207]
Kygo stiffened at the Dragoneye’s tone.
“We never had a plan, Ido,” I said, meeting his stare with my own. “The ancients stole the Imperial Pearl from the dragons. It is their egg. We have to give it back. We have to let them renew their power.”
Ido looked sideways at me, the amber eyes hooded. “I know we stole it. I have always known.”
I gaped at him. “What do you mean?” Indignation pulled me up onto my feet. Both Ido and Kygo stood, too, ranged on each side of me in silent antagonism.
“I’ve read the black folio,” Ido said. “I know what the pearl is and what it does.” He crossed his arms. “The theft changes nothing.”
“It changes everything,” I said. “How could you know all this and still ignore your dragon’s need? His hope?”
“No doubt in the same way as many Dragoneyes have before me. No one willingly gives up their own power when it can be the next Dragoneye’s problem.”
“Not anymore, Ido. We are the last of our kind. We have to give the pearl back.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand. If they renew, we will lose our power forever.”
“I know.” I felt a moment of bitter satisfaction. He was not the only one who knew the secrets of dragon lore. “But we still have to give the pearl back.”
His gaze sharpened. “How do you know? Have you read the folio, too?”
“No.” I wet my lips. “I went into my dragon. To escape Sethon’s torture.” Kygo’s fingers brushed my arm; a fleeting touch of consolation. “I saw memories from an ancestor.”
Dela shifted; no doubt she had guessed which ancestor.
Something flickered across the wary intensity in Ido’s face; a moment of empathy, or maybe it was just his own pain, remembered. He smiled thinly. “I thought you vowed you would never do that to your dragon. You keep drawing your moral lines, and you keep crossing them.” His eyes held mine, his voice lowering into a caress. “You and I are the same, Eona. We cross the lines that others dare not step over. Cross this last line with me.”
He wanted the dragons’ power. He wanted everything. And he wanted me to take it with him.
“I won’t destroy the dragons.”
He jabbed his forefinger against his chest. “Do you want to feel like this for the rest of your life? As if everything important has been ripped out? Do you want to be nothing again? Because that is what will happen.”
“Eona will never be nothing,” Kygo said. “She is my Naiso.”
Ido snorted. “Why would she be your Naiso when she could be a god with me? It is still the same choice, Eona. Either we take all the power or we are left with nothing.” He held out his hand. His smile drove itself into my very core. “You and I can take it all, Eona, together. It would be like the cyclone, a hundred times over. Forever.”
Kygo gripped my shoulder. “If you think Eona would destroy the dragons and take my land, Ido, then you do not know her at all. We would both die a thousand times over before we would let you have anything you want.”
I stared at Ido’s outstretched hand. The memory of the sea cabin—our bodies entwined and the glorious rising energy—held me still. All that power between us.
Kygo glanced at me. “Eona?”
I took a deep breath, fighting my way through the wash of sensation. With so much power, there could be nothing else. It would burn everything in its path. And every minute of every hour would hold the bud of distrust, just waiting to blossom into betrayal.
“I am not the same as you, Ido,” I said. “I will not destroy the dragons.”
Ido closed his hand into a fist. “You would choose to have no power with him when you could have all the power in the world with me?”
I lifted my chin. “That is not the choice, Ido. I choose the dragons and the land. Not my own ambition. Or yours.”
Beside me, Kygo smiled.
Ido gave a low, harsh laugh. “The emperor and his Naiso, standing united.”
Around us, the pitch of the humming pearls changed, the resonance vibrating through my ear bones.
Ido spun on his heel, taking in the swaying dragons. “What is happening?” Kygo asked.
“The