War of the Princes 02: Dragoon (28 page)

C
hapter 48: No Sister of Mine

Margrave
Hest was writhing in the middle of the street that led to Cape Hill's palaces. Just beyond her lay all the Dragoons, grievously injured or killed by Dylan's attack of the Lift. Rune and his allies barricaded the installment, temporarily trapping reinforcements within. The entire city might as well have been abandoned for how empty of people it was. Wind blasted from beneath the copper mass of the Flying Fish. Her sails furled back into the mast tubing.

The morning was a rivalry between storm and sun, and the chill in the air was biting. White sea birds with long tails flocked toward the ocean. Somewhere in the distance, a bell began to chime. It would have been a beautiful day if
Hest hadn't just killed one of my friends.

My nails cut into my palms with the force of my constricted fists. Slowly rising to stand over Sterling's empty grey body, I stared at my enemy with the kind of gaze that directed a force of hatred strong enough to implode the sun. The tendons in my left leg had been severed and sealed. I could barely walk. That didn't stop me. I shambled toward her, knowing that I was in pain, and letting it feed my rage.

Something was wrong with her. She was shaking as though having a seizure. Seeing my approach, she flipped onto her belly and looked at me. The long twisted growth that pointed off her face looked less like a beak and more like a snout now. Half of her lips were gone, growing into the mutation. I knew what was happening to her. She was digesting Sterling's power and it was changing her.

She began to laugh and wail from the agony of it.

“You would pursue me now? You would not flee?” She snaked along the ground toward me, sounding thrilled. “We truly are alike, you and I. Sisters in spirit. We were different than the rest. No one ever- ugn... understood us. We never belonged. It is our right to carve ourselves a place in history, carve it of flesh and blood and power.”

Her leg snapped, growing wider, longer. Metal tendrils erupted from her body, piling over the others. One of her clawed hands doubled in size, and ridges rose from her forearms. She
quaked and seethed from the pain, but the remaining half of her lip smiled. “He was a Lodestone too, your friend. Simply incredible. I was once the impoverished daughter of a farmer, graced with the Ability to grow, mend, and break bones. I would have been nothing if not for the Ivory. Look at me now, the first person in more than six hundred years to drain a human Lodestone.”

Long
talons burst from her back, reaching out like spider legs.

Her voice was warped and sounded like the crumpling of aluminum.
“Won't you say anything to me, little sister?” she crooned. “No? Nothing? How about for the sake of your other friends here.”

Rune and Dylan appeared beside me, standing straight and still. They blinked and breathed, but she had stopped them from being able to speak or move.

Hest produced a tall scepter of curving white bone in her hand as similar horns grew from her twisting, beastly head. The last of her lips was gone. I could see no more skin on her. She had lost the last shred of her humanity.

Her eyes turned liquid silver.

A siren began to wail.

The change was not complete
. A ridge crested her back, forcing her to slump over until she stretched and straightened it. Jagged metal bones wrapped over one another. At her full height, she was ten feet tall. The claws of her feet dug into the brick street, cracking the blocks and mortar. She coughed in a horrid, grating sound, and then began to laugh again. “Wouldn't... wouldn't they look much better with a few improvements?”

“
Stop!” I shouted at her. “Leave them alone.”

Her eyes shon
e from beneath the tangle of her brow. Her head looked like the combination of bird, goat, and auto wreckage. Her stretched body was elongated and insect-like. “I'm afraid not, dear, you've already hurt my feelings. Now let me show you what I was imagining.”

I took a step forward, but she stopped me with the Command. My arms snapped behind my back, and with a touch of the scepter, the bones in my wrists spiked
out and fused together. I cried out and growled at her, breathing raggedly. Lightning bloomed around my arms, but they were bound and I couldn't direct the energy well enough to reach her.

“
How about this?” Hest raised her scepter, but it began to shake, and it nearly slipped out of her hand. “Why young Lord Axton. Are you fighting back? We both know you're spent from your little show earlier. I'd even call you helpless.”

She prodded his chest with the end of her scepter.
“What's this? You're a Commander! I can feel the attachment to your bones. But how? Ah... Stakes, that psychopath. Now this
is
interesting. A bastard Commander! How ever did you escape? You know we would have killed you. It must pay to have a royal brother in power.”

She was toying with him. Baiting me.
“Stop!”

“
Or what?” she snapped. The staff connected with Dylan's chest and white horns burst from his head, spiraling down to his shoulders. Dylan screamed through his teeth and fainted, hitting the ground hard.

The monster that was
Hest made a sound of disappointment. “I can't Command you if you're unconscious. Where's the entertainment in that? You then, my freedom fighter. We have unfinished business anyway, don't we?”

A horn wailed from the Flying Fish. The turbines o
n its belly were beginning to spew hot air. The ship was overheating.

I ground my teeth together in frustration.

Hest came closer to Rune, lowering herself down to our level. She hissed, quaking, as a pair of tails tore from her body and thrashed madly behind her. She was trembling more and more. Sterling's energy was changing her too quickly. She was unstable.

“
You would look fine, decorated in bone, Dragoon, but I think I'd rather show you what it would have been like. Just a taste of the power you would have had, if you'd drained that simpering sister of yours. You could have been a Commander! Let that one regret be your final thought before I take it all back.”

I struggled, but her hold on me was firm. My whole body lit with lightning. She hovered over Rune, pulling the syringe end of the draining device from her chest. If Rune
were injected with Sterling's power, he would be destroyed, the same way Hest was being destroyed. I couldn't let it happen. Somehow, I couldn't.

“
Don't! Not him!” I screamed at her. “I'll kill you if you hurt him!”

“
You would harm your own sister?”

“
You are
not
my sister!”

“
Yes,” she roared at me. “I am! We are the same! You know we are. We always have been! No one else understands you the way I do! We were nothing, and we had to fight to make ourselves something. Life changed us, isolated us. People feared us, even the people we loved. We didn’t deserve that. But we are strong! We adapted. We
survived
. Don’t you see? We have each other now.” She sounded desperate. There it was. Even the hard, disciplined Margrave harbored a deep scarring sorrow. That's why she'd been so quick to trust me, so keen to help me as I pretended to be a Historian. It was her own excuse to confide in someone, to not be alone.

“
I'll show you, sister, he'll understand, you all will,” she said, and stabbed Rune in the shoulder with the needle of the draining device.

Thunder sang out, rattling the world around us.
Dizzy with adrenalin, I barely understood what I was doing. I needed to pull the needle out of Rune's body. I needed to stab her with it. So I did.

Electricity so dense
that it was nearly solid poured from my shoulders and formed a new pair of arms and hands, the exact same length and size as my real ones. Lightning burst from my feet, lifting me so that I was easily taller than the Margrave. I tore the needle from Rune's arm with an electric hand and stabbed it right into Hest's neck.

Unable to contain my fury, rogue branches of lightning burst in rays from my back. One of them curved around and shocked her with such force it threw us apart.

Rune screamed, breaking free from her hold, and fell to one knee. He clutched his arm. I wanted to go to him, but I wouldn't make the same mistake with Hest twice. I'd stop her for good if it meant splitting the sky open to do it.

Black hair flying wildly around me in the hot cold wind, I walked to where
Hest had fallen. The lightning under my feet made the ground feel springy, and supported my injured leg well enough for me to move. It was as though I were gliding. The lightning that flashed around me sounded like the shattering glass dome of the installment, ever creaking and crackling.

Hest
was buckling over. She kept changing. Limbs would burst out from her body, spines, and tails and wings, and then they would break down and warp into something else. She was fifteen feet long now, and still the mutations didn't cease.

“
Why won't it stop?” she howled. Her voice was getting lower, more broken. “Don't be afraid. It's me, Lauren Hest, your sister. Don't leave me, please. I'm the finest soldier to ever serve Prince Raserion. I am powerful now, look at me. Please don't leave, I'm you're sister. What's happening to me? This is wrong! There's a drumming in my head! A drumming! What has happened?”

It was pitiful, disgusting, and exactly what she deserved. I let the lightni
ng lower me to the ground, the power dissipated, and exhaustion claimed me. Even my lightning arms faded away. Giving her one last look I said, “Sterling has killed you.”

I turned my back on her and limped
toward the Fish, half dragging my left leg.

There was a sickening crack, and the noises behind me stopped.
My wrists, pinned together behind my back, separated. Shards of bone dusted my hands and wrists. I could barely move my fingers, but everything looked normal. The extra bone that fused my hands together was Hest’s own making, and dissolved with her demise.

Fatigue from expending so much power
so quickly, fogged my head and blotted my vision. It felt a little bit like not eating for two days, laying down, and getting up too quickly. The agony that pulsed up my leg made the rest of me feel exquisite in comparison.

Hot air
gusted over me as I limped back to Rune. He was standing now, cradling his right arm and squeezing his jaw against the pain.

“
We have to go, now,” he said over the siren.

Dylan groped the ground, crawling over the crumbled bones that had broken free from his head. He scrambled to his feet, nearly falling.
“I-s, is she dead?”

“
Are you alright?” I asked them both.

Rune nodded with a stony expression. His icy blue eyes settled on Sterling's body.

“Of course I'm not alright,” Dylan said, running a shaking hand through his long hair. He looked as though he was seconds from panicking. “Let's get out of here.” He moved to flee up the ramp.

My hand shot out and sent a mild static shock into his back.
I may have been tired, but I wasn’t down and out just yet.

“
Augh! What the hell was that for?”

“
We are
not
leaving him.”

Together, the three of us, mangled as we were, carried Sterling aboard the ship. The last one inside, I practically fell
through the door. Rune cranked the rotating lever that worked the ramp hatch. It slammed up behind us, hissing as the airtight mechanisms locked into place.

We were in the corridor outside the engine room. It was hot, blistering hot, and humid, like a pot of boiling soup. Kyle flew out of the engine room with a crooked grin large enough to climb up the side of his face. He reached
up to a line that ran above us and pulled on it hard. A sharp horn blasted, and within seconds, I could feel Carmine revving the engines, and pulling us into the air.

Kyle's curly brown hair was soaked and hung in ropy strands
. His clothes were completely drenched with grease, oil and sweat. He looked exhausted, stressed and relieved... until he saw Sterling.

C
hapter 49: Silver and Green

“Can you do anything to help him?” I was at Sterling's bedside, watching his chest rise and fall. His eyes were open, vacant, unblinking. Everything about him had gone ashen, monochrome.

Kyle stood at the end of the bed with his hands in his pockets. He shook his head.

“Well can't you
try
?” I pleaded, squeezing the sheets of the cot in my hand. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. I... he... we were so
close
. We were right
here
! Why did it... have to... if he hadn't come down...”

“
Kat, don't,” Kyle said, shifting, his expression grave. “If he hadn't left the ship, it might have been you.”

“
It
should
have been me!”

“
Don't tarnish his sacrifice by being selfish,” Kyle said. His wisdom was harsh but his tone was soft. “He knew what was at stake. He'd given me enough lectures on courage and honor for a three-year headache. He was my friend too. Gravity, I didn't want any of this to happen... but it did, and he'd do it all over again. For all of us.”

He walked over to me, and I couldn't meet his eyes.

“Can I see your leg?” he asked.

I turned in my seat, extending my calf. As soon as the
adrenalin had worn off, the pain in my hands and leg was intense.

I'd had worse.

Kyle gently peeled back my torn pants around the calf, carefully removed the bloody strip of scarf, and put a hand up to the spot where Rune had cauterized my flesh.

He didn't say anything about his Ability to heal. Not a single comment. But it worked. Within moments, I felt normal again. I rotated my ankle and flexed my muscles. The pain was gone and my leg was stiff, but functional. The spot where my skin had been melted remained, a long, smooth slash across the back of my leg.

“Thank you,” I said awkwardly. It was a strange thing to have your boy-next-door best friend suddenly put your broken body back together. “She did something to my wrists too.”

“
Dylan’s head was scraped up pretty badly too, but I took care of it. You know, he actually said thank you. I didn’t expect that. Let me see?”

I held them out, and he cupped them in his hands.

“How are you so okay with this?”

Kyle’s hands twitched. “What makes you think I’m okay?”

“You don't know how it feels,” I said, looking at the sheet that covered Sterling's body. Beneath the cloth, we had matching cuts in our chest. “To be drained. There's no pain like it. If Stakes had drained me, it would have killed him, just like Sterling killed Hest. If he would have drained me then, none of this would have happened.”

Kyle's eyes flashed to mine
. “Kat, I love you and everything, but you're being an idiot. Don't bother talking to me until you're done being a victim.”

He
stalked out of the room, hands in his pockets, leaving me to study my mended hands, and stew in my self-loathing. He was right. Regret and blame served no purpose but slow torture. I needed to press on, do my best, and focus on what I could achieve instead of what I couldn’t.

*   *   *

The high-pitched horn keened persistently, calling us to the bridge of the ship. I hurried down the narrow hall through the forward cabin, the tightness in my calf still forcing me to limp. Several of the doors to the bunkrooms were open, and I could see children playing, talking and napping inside. The Fish was filled beyond its capacity.

The horn sounded again, right as I swung in the door to the bridge.

“Out,” Carmine barked from her place at the helm. She was flipping switches and pressing levers into position. Lights flashed on her control console, and she spun her hand on the wheel. “I'm dealing with enough, now get... out!”

“
If you'd just listen to me,” a boy was pleading. It was Merritt. He was standing behind a ten-year-old girl with dull, flat brown hair. His hands were on her shoulders.

The world outside the glass nose of the Flying Fish was a blur. We were over the harbor, wreaking havoc on the ropes, planks and cargo stored on the piers. We tipped off the side, finally hovering over water. The force of air beneath us capsized a pair of small fishing boats, and tore a sailboat free of its mooring. Water sprayed up around us as the Fish
stabilized and began to pick up speed.

Carmine breathed a tenuous sigh of relief. Her piercing eyes held the horizon.
“Good. Katelyn, get these children out of here.”

“
Please, Miss Katelyn, she won't listen,” Merrick said.

“
We may have gotten out of the city, but the Cape is filled with Raserion's warships and defensive towers. Some of them have
cannons
.” Carmine was livid. “If we're lucky enough not to be struck, they're still going to chase us. There's no chance of us outrunning them if our engines overheat again. If it weren't for Kyle, we'd all be dead, and I'm not sure how long he'll be able to work engineering miracles. The last thing I need to deal with is a child asking me questions.”

Carmine was right. There was a massive ship up ahead and there was no way we could maneuver around it without being seen.

The young girl looked up at me with wide, round eyes. One of those eyes was green, the other was a silvery grey... the natural color of my own eyes.

She broke away from Merritt, ran ahead of the helm and threw herself on the floor, planting her palms firmly on the ground.

“Get. Her. Out!” Carmine repeated.

“
No,” I said, hobbling gingerly forward. “Wait.”

We were in range of the dark hover ship now. They didn't move to intercept us. We grew closer, and I could see tiny figures atop their high deck. They were pointing at us... or below us. I walked to the glass at the front of the ship and looked down. All I saw was mist, and churning water.

I looked down at the little girl. “What are you doing?”

She looked up at me again. Those eyes were so strange, so bright. Keeping one palm on the ground, she used her other hand to draw the symbol of the Shadow Chasers in my shadow. Two dozen of the little salamander-like creatures climbed out from the darkness. They made tiny burping sounds, and crawled over one another, looking up at us with milky white eyes. I'd always found them cute. Now they reminded me of the Voice of the Prince. I shuddered.

The little girl with the mismatched eyes held her free hand over them, the way I would if I was to offer them lightning. As her hand moved out over the Shadow Chasers, they vanished. Two, eight, fifteen, twenty-four. They were gone!

I looked up from the creatures to the little girl, astonished. A smile grew on my lips.
“You've made us disappear!”

She smiled at me, and put her other palm back on the ground.

She's half Lodestone. That's where she gets the power to do this.

“
What?” Carmine blinked.

“
That's what I was trying to tell you,” Merritt said with annoyance.

“
Why didn't she say something?”

“
Holly doesn't speak,” Merritt told her. “Now can we please stay?”

“
Yes,” Carmine said, distracted. “Yes, of course.”

Merritt smiled and went to sit beside Holly.

The world spread out before us, beyond the panoramic panels of glass. We were speeding through the cape, gliding past the menacing ships, leaving only the trail of disturbed water behind us. At this rate, we'd quickly reach the open ocean.

We were nearly safe. My happiness
about it snagged in several places. I found no good reason to celebrate just yet.

I limped back over to Carmine, and she gave me a beautiful smile.

“Can you believe this?”

I wished I could mirror her excitement.
“Carmine,
thank you
.” If she hadn't pulled such an insane maneuver, I'd be dead. She'd agreed to let me go when I'd left. What changed? My curiosity had gotten the better of me once again. “Why'd you do it?”

She glanced at me quizzically, keeping most of her attention on the controls.

“Why'd you come back?”

“
Your friends wanted to go after you, both of them. When Dylan arrived on the ship and said he knew where you were, I figured there was only one chance for you to get out of there alive. So, I thought, why bloody not? Cape Hill never treated me particularly well, why shouldn't I mess it up a little?”

“
But your ship.”

“
Yeah, she'll need some work. But how many times do you get to pull a stunt like that, hmm? Not many,” she snickered. Her expression became more serious, but the hint of a smile remained. “Besides,” she told me, meeting my eyes. “Not a single thing has been normal since I met you. Profitable, yes, but not normal. I'd like to see how this plays out.”

“
That doesn't sound like something a woman caring for children would say,” Dylan broke in from the doorway.

“
I'm a pilot first,” Carmine said with a sparkle in her eye. “And a guardian second. Life punishes those who ignore their true nature, wouldn't you agree, Lord Axton?”

Dylan snorted and left the bridge.

I trailed after him, knowing what I had to do, and not liking it one bit.

“
Dylan, wait.”

“
Yes, yes,” he said as though talking to me was a tedious occasion. “I shot the puppet, I'm a terrible person, etcetera, etcetera. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known we were still in danger. ‘Oh, that doesn’t make up for it, Dylan, you monster!’ I know, I know. You have to admit it though, I was right about him. Look at what he did to you.”

“
That was the Voice of the Prince! No one would have done any better.”

“
That is true,” he turned to face me head-on. “And it wouldn't have happened at all if you hadn't gone back for a hollow pawn like him.”

And now he was blaming me for Sterling's death, in his passive aggressive sort of way. I should have expected it, but his words lanced me through the chest anyway.

“I'm n-not here to talk about this,” I stuttered, battling off the emotion creeping into my throat.

“
Of course you aren't,” Dylan snorted, looking away from me like he was unimpressed with my existence.

I swallowed hard, looking at the perfect lines of his face, wondering how I had once seen him as handsome. I could hardly stand to look at him.
“If you hadn't found us, Rune would be dead and I... I don't know what would have happened to me.”

“
You'd have died too, eventually,” he offered as though he was being helpful.

I ignored him, forcing the words out of my mouth.
“What I’m trying to say is… thank you.”

Dylan brushed the
blonde hair away from his eyes. His usual wit and cruelty subsided, leaving him genuinely sober.

“
I didn't do it for you.”

*   *   *

I found Rune in the cargo hold with the children. Thin, soft grass sprouted out from the metal floor beneath them, and tiny red flowers bloomed, no doubt the creation of someone's Ability. Rune didn't elevate himself above them, but sat cross-legged on the grassy floor. Even so, he looked like a giant in his glossy black armor. Two rings of kids sat around him. They were smiling, and so was he. I'd never seen him smile for so long before.

No one noticed me come in.

“We thought it'd be fun to tie straw into our hair for the autumn festival,” one of the children said. “Lina braided so much in hers that when she walked by Farmer Nedry's elephant calf, it chased her halfway across town square!”

“
One time, she painted a beard on her face and pretended to be the town magistrate,” one little girl said. “I laughed so hard, I snorted the juice I was drinking and it came out of my nose.”

I pressed my lips together, afraid I might cry.

Just as I turned to leave, Rune spotted me.

“
Excuse me,” he said addressing the children as though they were highly respected adults. He joined me beside the horse stalls. “I wanted to get to know her better. This was the only way.”

“
Rune, I'm sorry,” I told him honestly. I'd known Lina too. Her loss struck me in a personal way. She was just a kid... a good kid. “I'll go with you... to tell your parents.”

“
You don't need to. They're dead.”

“
What
?” I was stunned. How could he have lost so many people in so short a time? “How?”

His face remained perfectly blank, emotionless.
“My father was trapped in our house when the city burned. My mother was working to retrieve people from the homes, give them medical attention. She died four days later from the build-up of ash in her lungs.”