Song of Dragons The Complete Trilogy - By Daniel Arenson Page 0,121

Agnus Dei was not here, not in this body. Her soul was shattered and lost in the night worlds.

She and Benedictus both held Agnus Dei's other hand. The sunlight fell upon them, but would not find their daughter. She seemed cloaked in shadows. They tried shaking her, slapping her face, pinching her, singing to her, pleading with her. Nothing helped.

Kyrie looked up, eyes huge and haunted. "What do we do?" he whispered.

He looked so young to Lacrimosa. Sometimes she forgot he was only seventeen, still a youth despite all the battles and fire he'd been through.

"I don't know," she said and hugged Agnus Dei.

Her daughter was cold and limp in her arms.

GLORIAE

She rode across the countryside, eyes narrowed. She had taken little from Confutatis: Her horse, a white courser named Celeritas; her sword, crossbow, and dagger; her gilded armor, the breastplate curved to the shape of her body, the helmet a golden mask shaped as her face. Celeritas's hooves tore up grass and dirt, and Gloriae spurred the beast and lashed it with her crop.

"Faster, damn you," she said. Once she had ridden griffins, could cross a hundred leagues in a flight. Horses were slow and stupid, needed more rest than griffins, and frayed her nerves.

"Move your hooves, you mindless beast," Gloriae said and lashed her crop. Celeritas whinnied, and her eyes rolled, but she kept galloping.

Mindless beast. That was what she herself had been only yesterday, was it not? Yes. She had floated, naked and mindless, among the nightshades. Her soul had been broken, had filled thousands of nightshades across Osanna. She'd seen through their eyes, travelled through their planes. She had seen the weredragons fleeing into the east. She had seen Lacrimosa, the silver dragon who had infested her with the reptilian curse. She had seen Kyrie and Agnus Dei, the youths she had fought. And she had seen Benedictus, the Lord of Lizards, the man who claimed to be her true father, the man she had sworn to kill.

"I know where you are," Gloriae hissed through clenched teeth, the wind claiming her words. "I will find you, weredragons. I will slay you with my crossbow, and sever your heads with my sword. I will drag your heads back to Dies Irae, to my real father, and he will forgive me."

Gloriae nodded and tasted tears on her lips. Shame burned within her. Dies Irae, her real father, had trained her from birth to hate and hunt Vir Requis. She had killed many for him, but failed him now. She had failed to set the nightshades on them, had allowed the creatures to destroy the empire.

"But I will make amends," Gloriae vowed into the wind. "I do not need the nightshades. I will kill the weredragons with crossbow and blade."

Dies Irae's men hunted them too, Gloriae knew. Those who'd survived the nightshades would be patrolling every corner of the empire, armed with blades and ilbane. Whoever killed them would become a hero, a favorite son of Osanna, a lieutenant to Dies Irae. But they did not know where the weredragons cowered. She, Gloriae, had seen them through the nightshades' eyes. She had felt the nightshades tug Agnus Dei's soul, bite it, and rip it apart. Dies Irae might control the nightshades now, but Gloriae had seen enough.

As she rode, spurring Celeritas, she gazed upon the ruin of Osanna. It was daytime now, and no nightshades crawled the empire, but she saw signs of them everywhere. Forts lay toppled upon hill and mountain, blackened with nightshade smoke. Cattle lay dead and stinking in the fields. Farmhouses smoldered and bodies lay outside roadside inns.

I did this. The thought came unbidden to Gloriae's mind. She forced it down, refusing to acknowledge it.

"No," she whispered. "I will feel no guilt. The weredragons made me do it. I will redeem myself when I kill them."

She drove Celeritas out of the fields and down a forest road. The leaves were red and gold. Autumn was here, and cold winds blew, biting Gloriae's cheeks. Other than her armor—a breastplate, helmet, greaves, and vambraces—she wore little. White riding pants. A thin woolen shirt. She had brought no cloak in her haste, and she regretted that now. It was cold, colder than autumn should be. She saw frost on grass and leaf, and even Celeritas's hot body could not warm her. She shivered.

"The light and heat of the Sun God are leaving the world," she whispered. "Nightshades and weredragons have filled it, but my heart still blazes with