Her body was the charcoal of darkly tinted glass, her frills and horns in the purples of her wings. Her tongue was a black leathery thing, split in two at the tip, and she flicked sulfur water from herself. Ten feet long, she was fully dragon formed, and her gigantic eyes were the color of bluest labradorite.
I had never seen her before. She was . . . new.
There was something that suggested that she was not only young, but powerful, and used to going her own way. And maybe she was hungry.
Beast is not prey.
Beast is not at the top of the food chain right now, I thought.
Beast is best hunter.
Yeah. Beast best be quiet as the night.
There had been discord in the arcenciel world, with most of the species wanting to kill Leo Pellissier and others wanting to try to go back in time to wipe out all the vampires. Soul had walked protection around the island where Leo had fought his Sangre Duello to keep him safe, but it hadn’t been enough. Leo had died. And I had to wonder if Leo’s death was the one thing Soul had been forced to give up to keep the arcenciels from going back in time, to keep the arcenciel war from happening. Leo’s death. And the death of Titus, the emperor. And . . . crap. The death of the Son of Darkness, Joses Bar-Judas.
I had given her all three.
One way or another, I had killed them all.
I still didn’t know what the rainbow dragons needed to be able go back in time far enough to kill both of the SODs, and what that might do to the timeline of human history. Hayyel had shown me many timelines.
One had been war among the arcenciels.
I tensed. If this young one was here to join or instigate a war between Soul and others of her species, should I try to kill her?
I had ridden on Soul’s back. I still had a scale from the arcenciel Opal. I wondered if I could shape-shift into an arcenciel using the scale. And if so, what would that do to me? Would it be the same kind of black magic that turned my kind into u’tlun’ta—liver-eater? Would it be the same kind of evil that shifting into the living form of a human was? Or would shifting into an arcenciel heal me?
Could I . . . Should I try to stop the war? Which action was the most moral, which the most immoral? How horrible to allow my worst nightmares to live because I knew that even worse things would happen if I killed off the known and existing horror.
Even thinking about such a thing was a slippery slope.
The arcenciel snapped her wings closed, tilted back her head, and opened her long mouth. And she began to sing.
If magic was notes, it would be this. This sound that was the taste and scent and sight of light, like honey and buttercups and daffodils and the scarlet of sunset. It was the sound of light, like lightning and the shoosh of a crimson leaf settling to the ground. It was the texture of pearls and the chill of cut sapphires. It was the sound of silver bells ringing in an ancient temple. The vision of the rubies glittering. All that magic shivered through Beast’s pelt. The song called and cajoled and promised the answer to mysteries and the offer of the peace of death.
Midnote, the arcenciel snapped open her wings and jumped high, flying straight up. Singing. Calling. And she was gone. Cats don’t cry, but Beast blinked away tears. Her entire body was quivering like a violin string beneath the bow.
Go back. Go back to littermate. Do not like it here, she thought at me.
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Her paws on a narrow branch, she rotated and raced away from the rock walls, around the fae garden, and up a more gradual slope, climbing trees and leaping from stone to stone, not resting, not slowing. We raced through the glowering dark and up the crevasse walls, leaping. Too fast for the lack of light and the ice buildup on the protrusions. I withdrew from the front of her mind, letting Beast have her body back.
Her front paws slipped. Beast tumbled. Thick tail rotating. Above us, a grinding rumble sounded and stone broke lose. Plummeting. Bouncing off, stone on stone. Crashing echoes. Beast caught her balance on a dead tree, branches wedged in stone. A branch cracked and the