The sky woke with the light of a thousand suns.
And it wasn't even midnight.
Tish looked at the clock. It was barely past seven. And then she looked at the window—the vast expanse of Rā Riverland glittered and shimmered, so bright she could see each individual house, each person on the street.
The birds had woken up too.
But it wasn't the happy chirping of morning. It was a cry for help. They were afraid. And then she heard a terrible screech, or something deeper—the sound came from everywhere and nowhere. It was a sound like a thousand hawks crying in unison- stretched and warped until it became one long, grinding shriek.Tish clapped her hands over her ears, but it didn't matter. The sound wasn't in the air. It was in her teeth, her bones, the marrow humming beneath her skin.
The glass of the window trembled and cracked while Tish sat frozen in her chair, her breath held.
What was that.
What the HELL was that.
The light became brighter and brighter with the screeching sound, until Tish's ears rang, her stomach flipping with nausea.
And then the light was gone. So was the awful sound.
It was so quiet Tish could hear her own heartbeat, could hear herself breathing through her mouth.
And then the sound returned, but not the light—which was somehow worse. Because Tish knew that terrible shade of red, hotter than the sun—the kind that didn't give life, but took it.
It was the light of Rudra's fire.
She had witnessed it a month back, when the dragon prince had almost burned down all of Benevia to force her to marry him.
And now it was back. She didn't know why or how. But he was out there in the sky, breathing fire. And Tish had never felt colder.
This wasn't how Tish's evening should have gone. As Tish scrambled out of her bed, she noticed a shower of gold leaf and old plaster dust drifted down like dirty snow. She flinched , arm thrown up over her head, as the candle-wheel swung wildly on its chain, empty sconces clattering against each other like teeth. She looked up to see the upward shallow dome of the ceiling had cracked- a hairline fracture splitting straight through the painted firebird's wing . She didn't know if the ceiling would even hold. She didn't want to wait to find it out either.
Tish threw open her wardrobe, hastily pulling out a furred coat to drape on her shoulders before she ran outside- she didn't know whether to call for help or help others.
The corridor outside was painted red from the red light pulsing through the narrow windows lining the wall. Another screech tore through the sky, closer now, and the whole tower groaned in answer—stone against stone, ancient and grinding, like the keep itself was bracing for impact.
Tish ran, her body making choices for her survival that her mind was too slow to catch up with, her fur coat half on and half hanging off one shoulder.
"Percy!" she screamed. "Percival!"
She didn't know if she was running toward the door to scream for the guards, or down toward the sanctuary halls where the acolytes slept. Or if she ran because that was better than just standing and doing nothing.
"Tish!"
There he was. Dressed in as much of a mess as she had been, one of his collars sticking out, hair tousled, eyes wild. He'd brought his sword, as if that could protect her from the world-ending nightmare they were about to face.
But still. Tish felt safer the moment he came and took her hands. "Are you alright?" he asked, breathless. "Are you hurt?"
Tish couldn't answer, not really. "What—" she asked, "What—" Her voice came out shaky. She hadn't realized how out of breath she'd been until now.
"...you are not going out there," she finally managed to croak out. "He's going to kill you, he is—"
"Tish." Percy's voice sliced through her panic like a blade. "He's not the one attacking Benevia. Nobody is attacking Benevia."
Tish stared. Confused.
"He's the one," Percival whispered, lips twitching, "getting attacked."
Tish almost laughed. Almost. Who in the whole world was stupid enough to attack a Parthan dragon. But there was something about Percival's eyes that stopped her dead.
He was telling the truth.
"Come," he said. "Everyone is up on the wall, celebrating. The dragon has met his match!" And then he was dragging her—down the corridor, down the stairs, and toward the outermost walls around the High Bank of Rā—the ones Rudra had burned down just a month ago.
There were people in the street, gathered with family and friends, as if they were standing for a fireworks display during the harvest festival. Percival pulled at Tish's hand, leading her through the tightly packed bodies. And then they reached the walls.
They weren't fully built. Not yet. But they were high enough to see what was happening beyond the city, where the never-ending forest of Perma stretched out. Tish climbed the wall behind Percy, up whatever narrow stairs led there—smooth stone on one side, open space with a sharp fall on the other.
At first, Tish couldn't make sense of what she was looking at.
From this distance—miles and miles, past the dark tangle of the Perma forest, past the place where the land dropped into shadow and the horizon blurred into night—the battle looked almost small. Almost gentle.
She spotted Rudra first because of his fire. He had been reduced to a distant ember against the black. It seemed he had stopped breathing fire, for reasons Tish didn't understand. She could still see the shape of him—wings spread wide, his obsidian scales catching what little light there was. Down the length of him, seams of orange-red light pulsed and flared with every wingbeat, veins of fire running beneath armor, brightening and dimming like something breathing.
And there was something else. Something so dark it looked less like a living, breathing creature and more like a piece of the night that had learned to move. Tish had never seen anything like it. It didn't have the solid, molten menace of Rudra. It looked like something actually capable of wounding, or even killing, a dragon.
The first thought that chilled Tish down to her bones was— where the hell did that thing come from?
She watched it dive, screaming that horrible ringing shriek—one that made her ears ring even from a hundred miles away—as it slammed into Rudra.
The crowd gasped and cheered in the same breath. "He's falling! The dragon is falling!"
"The scum met his match, hah!"
"Is he defeated?"
"Bite his head off!"
Torches and lanterns were raised high, someone laughing, someone praying, someone sobbing with something that might have been relief.
Tish felt none of it.
She turned away. "I'm going down there."
Percival didn't hear her at first. But as Tish started down the stairs, she felt his hand grasp her elbow. "Are you an idiot?" he asked, furious and horrified. "What do you even mean, you're going down there?"
"You heard me."
"Tish!"
"Didn't he say he would die by your hands?" Tish asked. "That you're the one he's fated to meet his demise from?"
"And?" Percival asked back, angrier now. "Does it matter who kills him? I'm happy to let that thing bask in the glory of killing that monster!"
Tish couldn't breathe.
Was he a monster? she asked herself. But all the reasons she had come to hate him so far had already been tainted.
When he had reacted rudely to her being a Saintess—a healer—back when they had first met, perhaps it was because of his experience with Saroth. When he had killed her friend Saya, it had definitely been because he was saving her life.
Still, she tried to hold onto the hatred. But when she did, she recalled how it had felt to hold the coat made from the shed skin of a six-year-old Rudra, forced to transform through what she could only imagine was pure, unspeakable torture.
She looked at the crowd cheering, the glint of something unspeakable in Percival's eyes.
"He's dying out there and we're standing here watching it like a grand show," she said. "Tell me, Percival—between him and us, who is the real monster?"
Percival didn't answer. But his hand went slack. He was letting her go. For the first time in her life, he was so cross with her that he was letting Tish go.
"Then go alone." He turned away, voice suddenly rigid. He wouldn't even look at her.
"Go save the monster. Or die by his hands."