A Night of Dragon Wings - By Daniel Arenson Page 0,16

But we defeated them! We toppled their courts and we captured their vile princess. Tiranor lives, Tiranor grows strong, Tiranor lights the world!"

The crowd chanted, fists pounding the air. "We will never fall! Hail the Sun God! We will never fall!"

"Hail the Sun God!" cried Queen Solina. "Today is the Day of Sun's Glory. Today the light of our lord banishes the night." She turned to her guards. "Let the reptile taste our glory."

The soldiers raised whips.

Treale winced and her heart wrenched. "No…"

The whips fell and Mori screamed.

"No!" Treale cried, but nobody heard her; the crowd shouted around her.

The whips fell again, and Treale bit her lip and looked aside. Her fists trembled. Tears ran down her cheeks. She wanted to shift, to turn into a dragon, to fly to Mori and save her. Yet how could she? How could she fly with a thousand wyverns around her, with phoenixes covering the sky?

"Please," she whispered, as if Solina could hear her across the crowd. The whips fell again and again, and Mori finally stopped screaming. Her chin fell to her chest, and she hung limp in her chains.

The crowd roared as the soldiers dragged the unconscious princess back into the temple. Treale shook and wanted to turn away, wanted to run, wanted to fly, wanted to race toward the temple and leap in after Mori. She tried to elbow her way forward, but the crowd was too thick, suffocating her. She could barely breathe. Her limbs trembled, and she'd have fallen were the people not pressed against her.

"See how the weredragons suffer for their crimes!" Solina shouted, arms raised. "See how the cruel scream in pain! They tried to kill us. They tried to extinguish the sun itself with their darkness. We shall beat the creature every Day of Sun's Glory! We will find their king, who hides like a coward in the wilderness, and flay him for the sun to burn his naked flesh." As the crowds roared, Solina raised her hand high in salute, and the sun itself seemed to glow within it, a beacon of her might. "Tiranor is strong, and Requiem's last children will die under our heel!"

Treale panted, belly roiling and eyes stinging, as Solina vanished back into her temple. The doors of gold and ivory closed, sealing the queen, her men, and Mori within. As the crowd began to disperse, growling about the evil of the weredragons, Treale stood in place. She lowered her head, fists clenched at her sides. She tasted a tear on her lips.

"I'm sorry, Mori," she whispered. "I'm so sorry I left you, that I flew from battle, that I abandoned you." She trembled, remembering seeing the fall of Nova Vita… and fleeing it. "I will never find absolution from my shame, Mori, but I will save you. I promise you."

She stood in the square until the sun set and all but a few stragglers remained. Then Treale turned, walked in silence, and entered an alley between shops and taverns. The sun fell and darkness spread. Between the roofs of the buildings, Treale saw the Draco constellation, the stars of her home, and they soothed her. She missed her parents and her brothers so badly; they lay dead. She missed her king Elethor; she did not know if he too had fallen. She missed her home, Oldnale Manor; it had burned to the ground.

But Mori still lives. A last light shines. I am not alone.

Treale curled up in a shadowy corner, placed her head against her knees, and quietly wept.

NEMES

As the rain fell and the sun set, Nemes was digging a grave.

He was not a gravedigger; Requiem had employed three, and they had fallen in the war. Nor was he strong; his arms had always been thin, and others of the camp—surviving soldiers—were better suited for manual labor. But Nemes had volunteered to bury the tortured spy, for he had always loved three things above all else: solitude, corpses, and Lady Lyana.

"I have two here with me," he said softly among the trees, shoveling dirt. The camp lay far behind, and the dead spy stank beside him. "And if my Lord Legion wills, I will have the third soon enough."

He tightened his pale, bony fingers around the shovel's shaft. In the fading light, his flesh seemed gray to him, rubbery and old despite his youth; he was not yet thirty. Strands of his hair hung over his eyes, prematurely silvered—the hair of an old man. But Lyana was fair. Lyana's