Dragon Empress

Chapter 15

So much had changed since their brief fling and subsequent breakup. The world had changed several times over . . . yet part of Roxanne felt stuck in place, unable to move forward. Unable, perhaps, to let go of what once had been.

Something within her yearned for Effrax’s attention, yet when he gave it to her, she often ended up frustrated or furious. The unfortunate fact of the matter was that she had no idea how to behave in his presence anymore.

Once burned, twice shy.

That was a Flame’shikrim saying, a nugget of wisdom from G’shídrian. She’d rarely identified with it as strongly as she did now. She longed for the intimacy they’d once shared, but she’d been burned too many times. Humans had too often wounded her heart. Now she was caged, constrained by her own fear.

Roxanne pursed her lips, observing Effrax in silence. His eyes shone with worry as he spoke, but also with determination.

That fire, that spark of resolve in his gaze—it was dangerously alluring.

She stifled a sigh of regret. Maybe I’ve been a stupid human, too.

CHAPTER NINE“The future is shaped through the actions of the past.”

~ Zaliki Madzi, Twelfth Age

A woman and a man walked together. A dragon soared through the mist to join them. It collapsed when it landed on the mountain path, writhing in torment as invisible power gripped it. The woman strained to help. The man held her back from the flailing mass of talons.

The humans exchanged heated words. The woman sank to her knees, weeping. The man knelt before her and placed his hands on her shoulders. He gently kissed her and whispered in her ear.

The woman jerked away from him and drew her sword from its scabbard. Light from the glowing river in the canyon winked off its blade.

She turned the sword upon the man and drove it into his chest. He fell to his side, dark liquid spurting from the wound.

Keriya Soulstar stood alone, triumphant in destruction.

Maxton Windharte lay dead at her feet.

The ground shook, quaking with the aftershocks of the murder. Lightning forked from the black sky above, striking the slope, incinerating Maxton’s corpse. A shockwave emanated from the scene of the crime, rushing outwards to devour the canyon, the river, the world—

Sebaris Wavewould, sole surviving member of House Ishira, Queen of the Galantasa and Honorary Nereid Ambassador, woke from her dream with a start. She straightened, glancing around to see if anyone had picked up on the fact that she’d dozed off in her wheelchair.

They hadn’t. The members of the Council of Twelve—dragons, nereids, and Jidaeln had joined the roster—were too busy fretting about Keriya’s latest antics.

“I thought this behavior was behind her,” growled Commander-General Caelburn, his fists planted on the council’s round table. “She abandoned us—”

“She did it for the sake of Allentria,” Fletcher cut in sharply. “And you’re hardly abandoned, Commander-General. You have Khyvette and me.”

“We are grateful for your support,” Caelburn said in a strained voice, bowing to Khyvette. She loomed behind them, for the circular chamber in the north tower had been magically expanded to make room for her last year. “That doesn’t change the fact that Soulstar committed another act of insubordination, possibly treason.”

“Treason?” repeated Roxanne. “How the blood do you get treason out of this?”

“Leaving Allentria at this delicate juncture is a gross betrayal of trust,” said Alisa Belbreeze, who’d been sitting in as the acting human representative for the Erastate. Her coiffed hair and flawless skin shone beneath the grand crystal chandelier.

She was too perfect. Seba disliked her on principle.

“Allentria has made promises to powerful nations,” Belbreeze continued, “and if Keriya is not here to see them through, we’ll face serious repercussions.”

“Plus, her opening of the Vale portal affected wielders across the globe,” said Caelburn. “Reports and complaints are pouring in from our allies.”

“Enough.” Empress Aldelphia spoke, and her voice silenced all others. “We can only do as Ambassador Kvlaudium has suggested: we must brace against the rise of imbalance, and prepare for the inevitable conflict that will follow Keriya’s return.”

Everyone was given new directives—everyone but Seba, who didn’t volunteer for anything. She had plenty of problems back home in the Galantasa, and those consumed her full attention.

When the council disbanded, its members scattered to their assigned tasks. Roxanne, Effrax, and Viran offered Seba brief greetings before hurrying off. She’d hoped Fletcher might visit with her, but he was knee-deep in his own problems. The empress drew him aside to speak to him and Khyvette privately before sending them away by wing.

Seba knew it was silly to feel miffed. The world teetered on a dangerous precipice, and here she was, irritated by the fact that her friends hadn’t paid her enough attention.

And they were her friends, she supposed. What other word should she use for people who’d seen her through the most trying times in modern history? It had taken Seba two decades and a debilitating illness to reach the point where she could admit that she cared for these creatures. Yet now it seemed her friends had forgotten her.

Just like Max.

Shaking her head to clear it of foolishness, she wheeled out of the council chamber, joining Amanzi in the corridor. The nereid’s narrow torso faded seamlessly into a muscular, serpentine tail. Its finned tip lashed to and fro, like that of an irritated house cat.

“Will you remain here, or return to the lake?” her cousin asked, iridescent scales flashing as she snaked down the hall alongside Seba.

“Return. I must meet with the representatives from Isula.” The Isulans had strong opinions about Seba’s ability to rule, given her worsening condition. She’d assuage their fears about her state’s future—or browbeat them into submission so they’d never challenge her again.

Amanzi’s fishlike eyes, overlarge and abnormally round, narrowed. “I am capable of meeting with them alone.”

“You won’t want to. They’re insufferable.”

“Then it follows that you should not force yourself to suffer,” Amanzi retorted.

“I’m capable of handling the riffraff.” Seba was tired of talking about this; she was even more tired of defending her capabilities every five seconds. “I am Queen of the Galantasa, and I won’t be intimidated into abdicating my throne.”

Never mind that she would soon be doing exactly that. She’d had it planned for months, after she’d realized it was too late to stop the progression of her land sickness. The disease had metastasized from her body to her soul.

Now it was only a matter of time. A long, slow march to the end.

Seba had told none of her friends she was dying. A small, irrational part of her still clung to hope, though every healer had confirmed the bleak prognosis. If she told anyone, if she said the words, acknowledged the truth . . . then there would be no more escaping it.

It would be over.

She rolled down the corridor, lost in thought. The hall was silent but for the swish of Amanzi’s tail and the faint squeak of the wheelchair. Though Seba could walk, she was prone to spells of faintness, moments when her respiratory system gave out. The chair was a safer mode of transportation.

“Something is wrong,” Amanzi hissed. “I feel weak.”

“That’s to be expected.” Seba angled her wheelchair toward the newly installed earthmagic elevator beside the central stairwell. “When the Dragon Speaker returns, everything will return to normal.”

Amanzi’s gill nostrils flared with ill-suppressed worry. “I wish I had your faith.”

“I need to draft a new decree,” said Seba, studiously ignoring her cousin’s negativity. “No prolonged or high-risk wielding while entropy makes our magicthreads volatile.”

“Tch.” The nereid made a sound of disapproval as the elevator arrived, its marble doors snicking open to reveal a polished interior. Amanzi disliked the monarchy—nereids made decisions by vote—but she didn’t argue with Seba.

Seba almost wished she had. No one challenged her anymore, because no one thought she was up to the task of arguing.

“When you’re queen, you can bring democracy to Allentria,” she snapped. “Until then, we do things my way.”

“I do not wish to be queen,” Amanzi replied softly, not rising to the bait.

They rode to the ground floor and left the palace, taking the ramp to the main teleportal. Two boundary poles stood on a cordoned-off dais, an expanse of pearly changemagic sparkling between them. Seba produced her old enchanted switchblade. The nereids had returned it to her—they’d found it at the bottom of the riverbed where she’d lost it during the battle for the reclamation of the Galantrian capital.

She pressed the knife point against her left wrist. Her flesh stung at the point of impact.

Maybe Amanzi’s right. Maybe I should stop torturing myself and focus on comfort.

It was a tempting thought, but Seba brushed it aside. Allentria was in peril, the Galantasa most of all. If she ran scared from her detractors, she’d be run right off the continent.

A drop of dark blue blossomed beneath the switchblade. Seba offered her blood to the portal and thought of home. Responding to her thoughts, an image shimmered into visibility between the poles. Her palace appeared, its coralstone halls familiar and bittersweet.

She and Amanzi crossed from Noryk to the Galantrian Lake. They’d come to the hall outside the towering doors of Seba’s throne room. Though she’d officially ceded the lake to the nereids last year, she still utilized the palace as her seat of rule.

Upon arrival, a burn erupted in the space between Seba’s stomach and heart. This wasn’t one of her land sickness symptoms—she knew those all too well. She gasped and hunched over, both hands flying to her chest.

Amanzi pointed a webbed finger at Seba. “Something is wrong. You feel it, too!”

Seba had just opened her mouth to respond when a shout reached them. Straightening and scraping together her composure, she saw a contingent of Galantrian soldiers hastening toward her, containing equal numbers of humans and nereids.

“Queen Sebaris, Aquess Amanzi!”

“Yes?” said Seba, fighting to mask the resignation in her tone. A litany of disasters had plagued the Galantasa for the past two days, and she was loath to hear what new horrors had cropped up while she’d been in Noryk.

“It’s a disaster,” said Inido Rainsword, captain of the servicemen.

There’s a shock, Seba thought dully.

“The Red Tide has returned!”

Had she not been sitting in her wheelchair, Seba likely would have collapsed. She gripped her padded armrests as she struggled to draw breath. In one sentence, Rainsword had reached into her lungs and yanked the oxygen out of her.

“How long since the first bloom of algae?” demanded Amanzi.

“Sightings began four hours ago,” said a mottle-scaled nereid. “Already the river moat is turning color. Fish are dying in droves.”

“We must evacuate the Galantrian Village,” said Seba, wheeling around and heading for the ice shuttle. Memories of the last Red Tide crested in her mind like whitecaps. Still she was haunted by the water creature corpses, the stench of death riding on the waves.

Rainsword and the others trailed Seba down the coralstone corridor. “What of the palace?”

“We will be protected by the enchantment of the ice bubble,” said Amanzi. “Those who live in the water will not be so lucky. The Red Tide causes paralysis and death.”

Seba’s heart sank. She wasn’t the only one who’d been scarred by the previous bloom of toxic algae. The nereids had suffered far worse than the landlocked Allentrians.

“Gather our strongest mages,” she declared as she entered the colonnaded gallery that connected the palace and the annex. To her right sprawled a garden lit by glowing starblossoms. The crystalline wall of the ice bubble sparkled beyond. “They will assist the nereid and sprite populations in safeguarding pockets of water from the—”