Queen Of The Great Underworld

49

Yarrow breathed over my shoulder, reading my note. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” My words were a sob. “I don’t know. Please let him go.”

“I wish I could believe you.”

::Strength through silence.::

“I’m not part of the Luminary Council.” I could barely think around the buzzing anxiety in my head. “They don’t tell me why they do things.”

::Strength through silence.::

Yarrow studied me for a long moment, then shook his head. “No, you know why they’re shipping these, too.”

::Strength through silence.::

“I told you what I know.” But he could see my lie. Hear it.

::Strength through silence.::

“The longer you resist me, the longer he stays like that.”

Aaru strained against the bindings. His eyes were squeezed shut, like he couldn’t bear to acknowledge anything because the fire was too intense.

“Let him go!” Without thinking, I grabbed the pencil, twisted, and jabbed at Yarrow’s face. He was fast; he dodged without a problem, and my momentum carried me to the floor behind him. I crumpled against the wall.

Prison guards stormed toward me, and Yarrow drew back his hand to slap my face.

But then.

Aaru’s screams stopped. A sharp keening sliced through the room for a half second before three things happened at once:

A noorestone exploded.

All twenty-three crystals went dark.

And complete and smothering silence flooded the room.

BEFORE

Sarai 15, 2204 FG

THE DAY Ilydsey, Jan, AND I DISCOVERED THAT dragons had gone missing, we waited in Ilydsey’s parents’ office and riffled through papers and reports. There, we found the shipping order that changed everything. Dragons weren’t the only things being shipped.

“They’re sending ten noorestones as well.” I stared at the paper, numbers filling my head: dimensions, weights, power. . . . These noorestones were as big as Jan. “We don’t trade with our enemies,” I whispered.

“What does it matter?” An angry sob choked her words. “The dragons—”

“We especially don’t give them the ten biggest noorestones in the Fallen Isles,” I said.

“What?” Jan took the paper from me and frowned at it.

Most people cared about one thing when it came to noorestones:

1. They glowed.

Most people never really thought about these five things:

1. The best noorestones came from Bopha, though all the islands had deep mines.

2. Noorestones possessed an inner fire that burned for centuries, but the stones themselves were cool to the touch.

3. Most of the ruins found on the islands had embedded noorestones, which still glowed after thousands of years—long after regular noorestones would have gone dark.

4. Dragons really liked noorestones.

5. Ships used noorestones to traverse the islands quickly, though the stones needed to be fresh (most potent) and giant (larger capacity).

“Most of our ships travel exclusively between the islands,” I said. “Partly because we have nowhere else we’d want to go, but also because of noorestone limits. Only two of our ships have the ability to go beyond, because the noorestones that power them are immense.”

“The Star-Touched and Great Mace.” Jan’s eyebrows knit together.

Panic fluttered in my chest, and I wished I’d thought to bring my calming pills with me today. But I’d never needed them in the sanctuary before. This had always been the one place panic was never triggered. “And four years ago, the Infinity.”

“The Infinity sank,” Jan said.

I closed my eyes and breathed. Once. Twice. Three times. “She didn’t just sink. There was an accident. A dragon—a Drakontos milos named Ives—was on board and got loose.”

“All right.” Ilydsey frowned. “What then?”

“We don’t know much,” I said, “because the only person to get away didn’t see everything. But the Infinity”—I forced the word out—“exploded.”

“What?” Ilydsey’s jaw dropped.

“Why doesn’t everyone know this?” Jan asked.

“The Luminary Council didn’t want to alarm anyone. They said the people might lose faith in the navy if they knew the truth, and it was such an isolated incident. But something terrible happened between the dragon and the giant noorestones—”

“Dragons hoard noorestones.” Ilydsey gripped the back of a chair so hard her knuckles stood sharp. “They lick noorestones. A dragon wouldn’t use noorestones to hurt anyone.”

Jan placed his hand on her shoulder. “I don’t think that’s what Galadriel is saying.”

I shook my head. “Those were the arguments made. I heard the survivor’s whole story when she came before the council. She saw the dragon on one of the noorestones. A lot of councilors thought the explosion was because of the noorestones’ size. The crystals required to power a vessel like the Infinity or Star-Touched are enormous. And rare. They’re not as stable as the smaller stones.”

Ilydsey stared at me.

I nodded. “After an investigation, it was determined the incident was unlikely to happen again. Still, new regulations were put in place for safety.”

“So what does this mean?” Jan handed the shipping order back to me. “Both dragons and giant noorestones are going to the Denneth Empire?”

I touched the descriptions of noorestones, my fingernail scraping across the paper. “Look at this. These stones are huge. Ten stones could power three ships like the Star-Touched. Why aren’t those stones going to new ships of that class for the Fallen Isles?”

Color drained from their faces as they both realized what I had:

Someone was sending our dragons to our enemies, along with objects that would give the empire the ability to travel to us more quickly—or to attack us.

IT WAS AN OPPRESSIVE SORT OF DARKNESS, THE KIND of darkness that smothered even sound.

I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. I’d suddenly stopped existing.

But when I moved my arm, my fingers hit the wall. No thump, though. No auditory evidence of the wall’s existence and no sign the nine other people in the room were still here, either. I couldn’t even hear the pounding of my own heartbeat, though it thrummed against my chest, painful and violent. (Five, six, seven . . .)

I’d never realized how many noises my own body made: the sound of swallowing, the hiss of air through my nose, the c***k in my knees when I crouched and scrambled away from where the warriors had last seen me. Only with the absence of those sounds did I realize how I’d used them to give me a sense of orientation.