The Dragons of Nova (Loom Saga #2)(77)

“I don’t understand.”

“When we discovered we’d been betrayed, that the Dragon we’d trusted was not a double-agent for us, was not an ally against the King, but a man under the King’s own thumb, we destroyed it all—or tried to.” The smell of burning flesh and reagents gone sour singed her nose anew. Her hands were caked in invisible blood that would never wash away, black and red alike. “I was the only one who could do it. The rest of them had been poisoned. My stomach saved me.”

“So the schematics I carried...” Realization was beginning to take over.

“Shouldn’t have even existed. They were stolen at the onset of our betrayal.”

“Why didn’t you kill yourself?” It was a fair question, based on what he knew of her, what she was.

“You know how hard it is for a Dragon to kill themselves. It’s no easier for me.”

“You really are, then?”

“I’m a Perfect Chimera.” Arianna finally brought her eyes to meet his. She wanted him to feel the weight of the truth. She wanted him to cower in fear or see her purely as a tool. But he did something far more dangerous: He didn’t change the way he looked at her at all. “More important than overcoming the logistical challenge of killing myself, Eva and Master Oliver asked me to live. She died knowing all our research, everything we’d worked for, was being destroyed. I don’t expect you to understand, but for a Fenthri, there is nothing more horrible.”

“You fled, detaching from everything, and became the White Wraith. You worked against Dragons,” he finished, painfully simple.

“In the hopes that I would someday find my way to the man who betrayed all I loved. In the hopes that it would bring me vengeance.” She felt a sudden wave of guilt. He now knew everything, and she had never even told Florence the beginning of her story. When she returned to Loom, the girl would know the truth, Arianna vowed. The girl—no, woman—had more than earned it.

“The boon?”

“Was an opportunity to find that man.”

“Why haven’t you demanded it of me yet?” Cvareh’s confusion mirrored her own.

She stared at her hands. The moment she’d inhaled their scent—a scent etched on her memory by pure hatred—she knew she was close to finding the Dragon who’d called himself Rafansi. But she had yet to speak on it. She had yet to utter those words, “Take me to the man whose hands these are.” If she did, she would kill Rafansi on sight. Only she now knew he was a Xin, and an ally of Cvareh. It tore at her gut on so many levels.

“I can only ask once,” she whispered. “I want to make sure what I am asking for is what I really want.”

“Boon or not.” Cvareh sat and took her hand. “I will give you whatever you ask, Arianna.”

“Don’t offer me that.”

“Why?”

“Because you know who I am.”

“And that is precisely why I offered.”

For the first time, she was at a loss for words. She didn’t know if she should capitalize on all the closeness they’d shared over the day to have him bring her to the Dragon who had betrayed all she’d loved. She didn’t know if she should cross the remaining distance between them and kiss him. Rusted rivets, the mechanisms that spun her world whirred and Arianna was stuck in place, no longer grasping their logic.

“His name was Rafansi,” she whispered, bracing herself.

Cvareh blinked, and burst out into laughter. Arianna withdrew her hand. She didn’t know what reaction she expected, but his amusement had not been it.

“That couldn’t possibly be his name.”

“I would never forget it,” she insisted.

“Then he lied.”

It was certainly a possibility, one she hadn’t ever ruled out. Yet to affirm that she didn’t even know the man’s name yielded a certain sort of disappointment. “How can you be sure?”

“Because no Dragon parents would ever name their child that willingly.”

“Why?”

“That was the name of Lord Rok’s failed first—and only—attempt at the creation of life. The lore says Rafansi was a deformed and useless wretch of a creature who only earned his existence from Lord Rok’s pity.” Cvareh shook his head. “A life earned by pity would be the ultimate disgrace… What an awful name to even be called in secret.”

“But fitting,” she snapped in annoyance, at both Cvareh’s sympathy for the traitor and the fact it left her without a name for the man.

“Perhaps we could find him another way?” he offered, frustratingly helpful. “Do you know his House? Was he marked? What color—”

“He was Xin.”

Cvareh straightened instantly, putting distance between them.

She read him like an open book. She felt the pulse in his magic, withdrawing on instinct, reminding him that this was not a woman he should be involved with. He fought against the pull of his upbringing, though, and took her hands with renewed passion. He held her fingers tightly, his eyes pleading as if she could explain why he was doing what he was. As if she had a neat solution for everything that drove them apart.

“Be careful what you offer me, Cvareh,” she cautioned grimly, with all the sorrow of an ugly reality. “Your house looks to me to be the herald of victory. But I may well still decide to watch it burn.”