Song of Dragons The Complete Trilogy - By Daniel Arenson Page 0,129

teach you to fight back, to kill those who hurt us. Do you understand?"

She did not, but said nothing. He took her to this city, to a palace of light and gold. He took her to a room of blades, shields, and poison. She trained. She hated. She fought and she killed. She wore gold, steel, and fury.

"I am Gloriae the Gilded," she cried to the city, a woman, a huntress, a ruler. "The weredragons cannot hide from me."

She ruled, and she warred, and she killed. She freed the nightshades, and she lived inside them, and her soul shattered. She tore into the soul of the red weredragon, this Agnus Dei. She scattered the pieces into the worlds beyond this world... all but one shard, a whisper inside her, a voice and memories.

"Do you see?" Agnus Dei whispered, a ghostly child. She was fading fast, dispersing like smoke.

"I don't understand," Gloriae whispered.

But she did. She trembled, shook her head, and wanted to scream.

She understood. She remembered.

"Now you must help me, Gloriae," Agnus Dei said. She was nothing but smoke, her voice an echo. "Return this shard of me, this bit of soul, into my body. Breathe this smoke into my lips. Return me to my body, so that I may wake, and hold you, and see you in life."

Gloriae shook her head wildly. "How can I? You are but one piece. One of a hundred."

"I will find the other ninety-nine. I will reclaim them. Please, Gloriae! Please, sister. I love you. Please. Only you can save me now. Open your eyes. My body lies here beside you. Only you can wake it."

Agnus Dei flickered like a guttering candle. Her voice faded into nothing.

"Please, Gloriae. Please...."

Gloriae's eyes snapped open.

She took a deep, desperate breath like a woman saved from drowning.

"Agnus Dei!" she cried.

The weredragons crowded around her. She was back in the true world. She was captive in the night, her limbs bound.

"Mother!" she said. Her arms trembled. "Mother, help me. He's taking me with him. He's taking me from you. Mother!"

Above her, Lacrimosa and Benedictus looked at each other, and their eyes softened. Kyrie's eyes filled with confusion.

"She's lost her mind," the boy said. "I didn't think I hit her that hard."

Gloriae turned her head, and saw Agnus Dei, not the ghostly child, but the soulless woman. Her empty body still breathed, but her breath was shallow.

Please, the voice whispered inside her. Please.

Gloriae took a deep, shaky breath, then looked at Benedictus.

"I think I can cure her," she said to him.

"How?" the three Vir Requis asked together.

Gloriae lowered her eyes. "I was in... inside the nightshades. When they attacked Agnus Dei." She took a deep breath, prepared for a storm of anger. "I was controlling them. Well, not truly. Mostly they controlled me, but I could see through their eyes. I know where they hid Agnus Dei's soul. They did not claim all of it. They wanted to. I wanted to. But a piece still remains inside me."

Kyrie took a threatening step toward her, fists raised. "I'm going to kill you if she dies."

Lacrimosa placed a hand on Kyrie's shoulder, holding him back, and looked at Gloriae.

"What can you do to help her?"

Gloriae shuddered. "I don't know. I understand little of it. Agnus Dei fought well; I felt it inside the nightshade. She is strong. Her soul still remembers its name. When the nightshades sucked her soul, part of it went into them, and part into me. I think I can give it back. The jolt might cure her, suck in the rest of her soul, and wake her up."

Kyrie blew out his breath loudly. It fluttered his hair. "Fighting griffins was easy. You bit, you clawed, you blew fire. These nightshades... none of it makes any sense to me."

"I understand little too," Gloriae confessed. Her head still spun from the memories. "I feel more than I understand. Their world is so different from ours. It's not a world our language has words for. It's not a world of objects or flesh. It's of endless dimensions, of emotions rather than thoughts, of smoke and shadow and darkness, not material things. They don't understand our bodies. They only see our minds. Let me go to Agnus Dei. Can you free my hands?"

The Vir Requis glanced at one another, and Gloriae knew they didn't trust her. She herself wasn't sure what she'd do with free hands. Would she try to attack them? She had spent years wanting to kill them. But... her