The Dragons of Nova (Loom Saga #2)(30)

Movement caught the corner of her eye and Florence looked up to the top of the waterfall. Long, clawed, horribly joined and gnarled fingers curled over the edge of the rock. Cresting the edge was a set of horns woven like frozen flame. They were attached to a skeletal face, skinless and pointed in a sharp-toothed snarl.

Eyes like those of a Dragon glowed in spite of the darkness. White on a field of obsidian sockets sunk far into the depths of the creature’s head. It was all arms and legs and sinew, a monster that looked as though it had woken from a thousand-year slumber and now sought its first meal.

Its low breathing dulled her senses. There was a wicked sort of magic at play here. Not like the Dragons, not like Chimera. This was a creature born of malice and murder...

And it was not alone.

One by one, horned monsters crested the rocky bluff. Each sang their sense-dulling requiem. Their eyes turned to her with instinctual purpose.

Florence’s sweating palm slipped off the handle of her revolver. Her legs had been disconnected from her body. Her hands didn’t move as commanded. She could hear nothing other than the mind-numbing, low breaths of the monsters. She could see nothing other than their glowing eyes.

In the fading twilight, she stared at a nightmare made flesh.





13. Arianna


The sun and moon were not even close to the same thing. While they both gave off light for nearly equal portions of the day, one was bright and painful to stare at, while the other was muted and ghostly. Arianna had known this before arriving on Nova, but even after nearly two months of her useless tenure in the Xin manor, she remained fascinated by the moon’s shifting phases.

The sun was constant. Every day it shone in its perpetual orb-like manner. Bright, blinding, and filtering down through the clouds onto Loom below. But the moon shifted. It went through its phases with no regard for any who might be depending on its light for guidance through the dark night. And once every month, it winked out of existence entirely, as if to remind the world below that they were lucky to have it at all.

Arianna had been forced to be like the sun on Nova: constant, present, dependable. On Loom, her true nature was that of the moon. She could be an evolving creature, growing with every turn of the calendar.

The stagnancy she found herself in was nearly coming to an end.

She’d moved the small table over to the western facing window so she could watch the moon trail through the sky. Arianna enjoyed its ghostly play on her papers, the way it set her firm black lines of ink against the white. She kept diligent records of everywhere Cain showed her, adjusting her map regularly.

There was something in the rock of Nova, Arianna had decided, that made it defy gravity. The islands floated, that much couldn’t be argued. Why they were floating she had yet to fathom, and likely never would. Magic was as good an explanation as any. But even magic had rules it must follow, and if some of the rock could float, then why couldn’t all rock float?

Arianna continued to push the question aside, focusing on what was of most direct importance to her.

The second she’d wrapped her mind around accepting that rock could float, she threw out the parameters she’d been relying on for her mental reconstruction of the manor. If there was no need of support beams, load bearing walls, or secure foundation, the structure could indeed evolve in whatever way the Dragons saw fit. That led her to her next string of logic: What way did they see fit?

Cain had been hard to unravel, but unravel he had. Day by day, Arianna had prodded and worked her way under his thick skull to try to understand what was important to him and the other inhabitants of this world. It was surprisingly simple from there.

Gods. Hierarchy. Beauty before reason.

It was a language Arianna didn’t speak, but she was learning. And, in the process, she’d nearly zeroed in on where she suspected the glider was being kept. Her pen paused mid-stroke, the detailed blueprint forgotten.

Her nostrils flared, her mind trying to process the thick scent assaulting her nose. She knew it from all similar aromas like a lock-box that could be fashioned by a thousand Rivets but bore a single maker’s mark. It was familiar in the worst of ways. One whiff and a hundred memories assaulted her with vicious purpose.

Arianna stood slowly, reaching for her daggers, sliding them out from under her pillows. She gripped them tightly, her eyes focused on the door as she rounded the bed. The scent grew.

It couldn’t be this easy. Her lips curled back, baring her teeth in a ferocious snarl. Bloodlust churned through her veins with every mechanical beat of her heart. Her mind screamed for death—for vengeance.

The door lock disengaged and the handle turned. Arianna flipped her dagger into an ice pick grip and reared back. The door opened and the scent clouded every sense. She lunged forward and… stopped short.

Cvareh stared back at her, wide-eyed and caught completely off guard. The edge of her dagger rested between his eyes. Blood beaded around its tip, cutting the smell of cedar with potent woodsmoke. In his hands he cradled a box, one whose contents were so important that he clearly did not risk dropping it even for the sake of defending himself.

Arianna panted, her mind clearing slowly. She blinked and her eyes darted with every close of her eyelids, trying to find the source of the offending scent. They landed on the box.

“What do you have?” she hissed.

“Only what you asked for.” Blood ran down his nose in a thin golden line. He had yet to step away from or move aside her dagger. The Dragon placed a foolish amount of trust in her to assume she wouldn’t plunge the blade straight into his brain.