Thrall - Christie Golden [15]
“Life-Binder,” said Torastrasza’s voice after a time. Alexstrasza lifted her head with an effort and regarded the other dragon.
“Korialstrasz …” Torastrasza began, but she could not continue.
“I know,” Alexstrasza said. Her heart broke a little more at the admission of it, as if saying the words were helping it to become more real. “He … was there. In the sanctum. My love is gone.”
But oddly, Torastrasza was shaking her head. Sudden, irrational hope filled Alexstrasza. “He survived?”
“No, no, I—it seemed to be a suicide venture.”
She stared at Torastrasza as if the majordomo were speaking gibberish. “Your words make no sense!” she said, slamming her forepaw down.
“He was … he did this. What little is left bears his energetic mark. It is green and … and living.”
“You are saying my sister’s beloved consort destroyed the sanctums? Including the eggs and himself?” said Ysera, her voice still calm and detached.
“It—there is no other explanation.”
Alexstrasza stared at Torastrasza. “This is not possible,” she said, her voice harder than stone. “You know Korialstrasz. You know he is incapable of this.”
“Not if he was working with the Twilight’s Hammer!” Arygos’s voice was filled with fury. “This whole time he was urging you to slay my father. Attack the Nexus. And all along he was plotting the extermination of our entire race!”
Anger exploded like a roiling fireball in Alexstrasza’s blood. She leaped upward, her eyes on the blue dragon, and slowly advanced on him.
“While your father whimpered in his madness, Korialstrasz and I fought for Azeroth. We united with whatever allies we could find. We changed time itself; we risked death and worse for this world. Always he was beside me, his heart true and strong. He even loved you, Arygos, saving your life, and Kiry’s, and that of so many others. Time and again, he has saved our world, our race. And now, you stand here expecting us to believe that he would ally with Deathwing? With a cult that wishes only the end of everything?”
“Arygos,” urged Kalec, “there could be another explanation.”
There could be … there was … there must be—Alexstrasza knew it. And yet—
“The battle tactics employed by the twilight dragons were designed to keep us fighting in the air high above the temple,” Torastrasza continued, her voice as gentle as her words were ruthless. “It was a distraction, to keep us occupied … to lure out the Wyrmrest protectors so that—” Torastrasza broke off and looked down, unable to regard her adored Life-Binder as she spoke words that she had to know were ripping the Dragonqueen’s heart to pieces.
“Alexstrasza,” Kalec said gently, “tell us why Krasus chose not to come today. He surely … I am not certain, but you asked him to stay behind, did you not?” His voice was pleading.
She stared at Kalec, her heart breaking even further as she recalled the conversation—the last they would ever have.
Go without me, then, my heart. You are the Aspect. Yours is the voice they will listen to. I will only be as a small pebble wedged between the scales—an irritant and little more.
He was the one who had suggested he stay behind. “No,” she breathed, both in answer to Kalec’s question and in a desperate denial of what seemed now to be the truth—that Korialstrasz had indeed planned this.
Kalec looked at her in anguish. “I … even with the evidence—even with all it looks like—I cannot believe that Krasus would attempt genocide! This is not the Krasus I knew!”
“Perhaps madness does not confine itself to Aspects,” sneered Arygos.
Something snapped inside Alexstrasza.
She threw back her head and screamed her pain, a keening sound that shattered the air and quivered along the frozen ground. She sprang upward, wings beating in time with her racing heart, eyes fastened on the beautiful Orb of Unity.
She flew straight for it.
Alexstrasza lowered her head at the last possible second, like a ram charging at its enemy. Her massive horns impacted the delicate orb. With an incongruously bright tinkling sound, the Orb of Unity shattered into