Before She Ignites (Fallen Isles Trilogy #1)(69)

Slowly, with the ship rolling on the sea, we made our way up a narrow set of stairs and onto the upper deck.

At first, sunlight overwhelmed me. I’d been underground for so long, then trapped in a carriage and ship, that my eyes refused to adjust to the brilliant light. I hid my face behind my elbow and blinked, listening to the sound of ropes creaking, seabirds cawing, and crewmen calling out to one another.

Cool, salty air fluttered across my body, tangled through my hair, and made the red cotton of my dress flap.

“Come along,” Elbena said. “We don’t have all day.”

I peeled my face from the safety of my elbow and squinted at my surroundings. Sun-darkened crewmen watched me with raised eyebrows. Only one met my eyes.

Then, not quite casually, she placed three fingers against her lips.

What was that supposed to mean?

I risked a faint smile before smoothing my expression. I glanced around, praying no one had noticed her. There was no telling what my keepers would think if they’d seen what she’d done.

Maybe she hadn’t done anything and I was just imagining things.

As I followed after Elbena, I finally lifted my eyes to see where we’d berthed. Above, the sky was mostly clear, though a mass of clouds boiled on the western horizon. And to the north, I saw the Shadowed City, capital of Bopha.

For a place devoted to shadows, the city sang its love to the sun.

The buildings were tall, graceful spires made of white marble, threaded with copper in intricate, spiraling patterns. Twenty-five of these stood in the exact middle of the city, one for every phase of shadow—or so Father had told me when we’d come here years ago.

The central tower stood the tallest, and brightest. In the highest floor, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows that sparkled in the late-afternoon sun, the Twilight Senate met.

Without Chenda. “I am here because I stood up for what was right,” she’d said. She was like me: betrayed by the people she had once trusted to do the right thing.

Elbena nudged me down the gangplank. “Don’t dally.” Her tone was pleasant, but held an edge of ice.

I hastened to follow her orders. “Sorry.”

Smaller buildings surrounded the Shadow Spires, but low hills and broad-leafed trees blocked most of the view from the docks. On the western horizon, the mass of clouds darkened.

Before we’d finished walking off the docks, the rest of the Luminary Guard had joined us (or, at least, ten of them). A white-and-copper carriage waited ahead, standing out against the crowd of carts and wagons on the road. It had the air of importance and authority. Trunks already sat on the stowage areas on top and bottom.

All around us, dockworkers carried crates to and from ships. Sweat poured down their faces and backs; their clothes clung to their lean frames. They had to move around a group of people holding signs that said things like This is our land and They destroy shadows. Were they talking about Hartans? Briefly, I thought of Chenda and the way she’d fought to help Hartans. And how she’d been punished.

And how people were being burned alive here.

For all the beauty of the Shadowed City, it was not without ugliness.

A busker played an unidentifiable tune on a tattered fiddle, not quite keeping a beat to keep the workers moving. People from the ships hollered orders. And a pair of police officers strolled down the boardwalk, batons swinging at their sides. But if they were worried about trouble, they didn’t show it; their faces were bent together in deep discussion.

As for our procession—most people ignored us at first. Then, a few workers looked up, met my eyes, and seemed to recognize me, even as changed as I was. Suddenly my name rode on a small ripple of voices.

“Hopebearer,” they whispered, and the enormity of that duty weighed my steps.

We approached the carriage, and the door swung open for me to enter.

Just as I was about to climb into the cavernous space—black velvet cushions trimmed in copper—an explosion sounded toward the west.

Everyone stopped. Turned. Gasped.

Wooden debris fell onto the docks and ship and into the sea. Calamity reigned as people hurried out of the way, but that wasn’t what held my attention.

From the ruins of a huge galleon, an enormous red dragon erupted.

And screamed fire.





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO




A DRAGON.

Here.

In the Shadowed City.

But this wasn’t just any dragon. I knew the shape of this one, the flash of brilliant red scales, and even the pitch of her scream as she clawed her way toward the sky.

“Lex!”

Her name tore from my throat, and before I could think better of it, I was running toward the raging dragon. Slippered feet pounded on the dirt, then the docks, and then the thuds vanished under the cacophony of shouts and cries and chaos.

Everyone was running. Dockworkers, buskers, vendors—most fled the spray of fire and rush of smoke. Others stared in wonder and terror, because there was a dragon on the docks.

But I ran toward the flames as they caught on barges and pillars. “Lex!”

Someone screamed my name, but I felt as though I were flying. My whole body was hot with fury, and my thoughts an inferno of anger. Some foreign instinct took over, guiding me through the crush of people trying to escape the fiery wrath, and once they were behind me, I saw her fully.

Lex was coiled around the mainmast of the galleon from which she’d erupted, her talons gouging into the wooden flesh, wings pumping. She hadn’t finished her climb into the air, and now that I could see her more clearly, it was obvious why: jagged rips left the bottom of her left wing in shreds like a decorative fringe. No matter how she flapped, the wing prevented her from scooping enough air to escape. Maybe in time she’d be able to compensate, but not now. Not half-crazed with hunger.