? She’d already lost Navin.
No. Donna forced her mind away from terrifying possibilities. If she even allowed herself to think that way, then Demian would have already won. She still had some strength left. She just hoped that it was enough.
She ducked a flying blast of energy and limped further into the Ironwood. The ley line was close, she knew that much. It had been marked in the Silent Book, and she was surprised to find that she could recall the hand-drawn map almost perfectly. She just had to find it, walk into it, and then … activate her powers.
It sounded easy.
It was the hardest thing Donna had ever done.
Call the dragon? How did you even do something like that?
The Blackening, Donna thought, dizzy with pain and power. This was what her mother had feared, when she and Miranda had tried to protect her during the negotiations. The air around her burned, buffeting her as she held the Philosopher’s Stone in both hands and focused all of her energy on it.
The sound of screaming forced her to her knees. She wondered if it was her screaming or something else. She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything anymore, only that she felt like she might be dying for real this time. Her chest hurt, she knew that much—almost as if she could feel the shining piece of first matter inside her soul pushing itself out like a living splinter.
Pressing her hands to her chest, Donna tried to hold back the pressure and pain. Terror threatened to take away her reason—whip it up and carry it away in the howling maelstrom that surrounded her.
“Accept the dragon,” Maker had said. But how was she supposed to do that? How did you accept something that hurt so much? She couldn’t even see what she was supposed to be accepting.
She crawled through the fiery air, clutching the Philosopher’s Stone tightly in one fist, until her other hand came to rest on the trunk of a tree, the feel of the bark rough against her palm.
It felt like … scales. Donna swung around and touched the tree with both hands. Scales. The bark of a tree felt just like scales. She looked at the ground—it was churned-up dried mud, as if giant claws had gouged out a path of their own. Lightning flashed in the sky—like the forked tongue of a great serpent—and the booming thunder sounded like a dragon’s roar. The wind, perhaps, resulted from the flapping of monstrous leathery wings.
And Donna understood what all the alchemical texts had been trying to tell her, throughout her life—the dragon was in everything. Just as the first matter was everywhere and nowhere, so was the dragon.
Blackness filled her eyes and her mouth, and Donna collapsed onto the ground.
Twenty-six
The presence spoke, inside her head and all around her: Donna Underwood of the Alchemists, Daughter of the Dragon, thank you for awakening me.
Donna gasped, trying to push down the visceral urge to heave.
“Are you in pain?” asked the voice.
“It’s … ” She licked her lips, trying to form the words
in her head but still having to whisper them aloud. “It feels like too much. Too … loud.” She pressed her hands over her ears and crouched on the floor of a shadowy version of the Ironwood, keeping as low as she could, somehow figuring that might protect her. It was pure instinct to make herself small against the sheer power of that voice. A voice that belonged to a creature as old as the stars.
“Is that better?”
The voice still vibrated through her body, making her bones ache, but her ears no longer felt like they were going to start bleeding.
She peeked out from behind her hair and gave a tentative thumbs-up. “Better.”
The dragon—oh god, the dragon—took a gliding step toward her. It moved with the fluidity of water, its wings iridescent in the dawn light and its sinuous body reminding her of a giant snake. Where its tail flicked back and forth, trees fell and small animals ran for new cover. It was magnificent and just so, so big, its beautiful scales the color of silver and gold, each one as large as her hand.
The battle seemed to have disappeared, but Donna knew that wasn’t possible. Somehow, her own power combined with that of the Philosopher’s Stone had transported her into a pocket of existence one step removed from reality. Maybe they were somewhere like Halfway, although she could still recognize her surroundings. It was like a mirror image