Once & Future (Once & Future #1)(62)

“Deal.” Ari searched out Excalibur, finding the blade lodged in a notch on the stone balcony—on the other side of the dragon. Because, holy shit, Kay was right; taneens were totally dragons. Ari called for help again and rattled the doorknob, but it was locked tight. Where is everyone? Did they go into hiding when I broke the barrier? Is Mercer on its way?

Ari made the terrible choice to glance at the sky. The taneen shot toward her and snapped its powerful jaws at her left leg. She jolted sideways, leaping onto the rim of the tower edge, only to reel backward from vertigo. Jumping down, the taneen twisted around itself in the tight space, trying to reach her, and she used its momentarily knotted limbs to climb over its back and dive for Excalibur.

She grabbed the handle and tugged—and nothing happened.

“You’ve got to be kidding me! You don’t budge now?” Ari yelled, yanking harder. The taneen took that moment to bite her shoulder. Luckily, it was the shoulder bearing the pauldron. The leather held back the sting of sharp teeth, but not the immense pressure of those powerful jaws. Ari howled with pain as Excalibur released from the stone.

She whipped the sword around with one hand, smacking the taneen on the large plated head. The top scale cracked, and the dragon gave a loud howling moan. She backed up, shaking her long neck while blood seeped out from the crack and down her wide face. Backing up, the creature lowered her whole body, crouched, eyeing Ari with those blue-red irises, almost… affronted. Sad.

Ari didn’t know what to do with the wildness in that expression. She wondered if she’d had that same overwhelmed, neglected look in her eyes when Kay’s family had found her in that junked bit of ship, starving. “Did you honestly think I’d let you eat me?”

Her mouth opened wide, and she licked the blood dripping down her snout. Then the great lizard shook her head as if ridding herself of a thought, leaped over the edge of the tower and sailed down through the city, four legs splayed, revealing webbed skin between her limbs and body that was, Ari had to admit, more practical than dragon wings.

Ari stared at the gliding taneen, amused to have won, and yet troubled. From beneath the barrier, Omaira didn’t seem as colorful or lively as she remembered. It was also silent. Maybe everyone had gone into hiding, fearing Mercer. She didn’t blame them.

“I have to explain how I broke the barrier. How I can help,” Ari said, mostly to herself, although she knew that Morgana was still listening. Ari used Excalibur to pop open the door to the balcony, then sheathed the mighty blade at her back. “This tower is Ras Almal. The Maj, the elder council, meets here. My family was one of the founding families.”

Ari didn’t know why she was spouting facts except that they steadied her. And she needed it. It felt like something far worse than falling from the heavens, battling an ancient enchantress or even a dragon, was waiting for her in the city.

So she didn’t wait.

Ari flung the door wide and flew down the ornate, spiral steps of the tower. Her feet slipped several times. The stones were coated in sand, as if the wind had swept it inside over many years and no one had swept it back out.

Ras Almal… unkempt? Abandoned?

At the bottom of the tower, she rushed into the street, only to find more sand shifting out of open doorways, coating everything. Shutters were torn, speckled with taneen teeth marks. Ari rubbed her aching shoulder. “Marhabaan!”

There was no answer; and Ari was wrong. The people hadn’t hidden at the sight of the barrier’s destruction. They hadn’t been here for a very long time.

“What has happened? Where is everyone?”

Morgana appeared beside her, nearly opaque for once. “You know. You’ve seen this before. You’ve chosen not to remember.”

Ari stared at her. “I know what happened here?”

“Human minds are delicate, and yet complicated. Like trees. I was an oak when you first met me, remember? Pinned by Excalibur since the last Arthur ran me through. In the centuries I spent there, I learned that whole branches can be cut off when the trunk is in crisis. A necessary dismemberment.” Morgana glanced around. “What you know about this place might stop you from being Ari altogether. Would you risk it?”

“I faced the dragon. I won. You promised to give me all the hard truths.” Ari stared Morgana down. “I’m not afraid. I need to remember! If I know what—”

Morgana tapped the side of Ari’s head.

And Ari was lost.

She was small again, skinny, tiny, enamored with twin brass racehorses, one for each hand. Her family had been off-planet, speaking out against Mercer’s blatantly higher taxation on the poorer planets, while all the economic incentives were heaped on places like Troy. Ari understood more than her parents thought she did when it came to Mercer, but she pretended not to. It wasn’t any fun to feel sick about the cancer of unchecked capitalism.

But then her family returned to Ketch, Ari running to show her cousin Yasmeen her new horses—only to find the entire city silent.

And there were… sleeping figures in the streets.

Ari’s parents screamed at her to stay on the ship while they ran from body to body, crying out. Crying for help. Ari thought they wanted her to help, to do something, and she took light steps away from the empty space docks, toward the small figure of a boy younger than her. Ari told herself she didn’t know him, but the lie made her stomach knot.