burgeoning rage to take notice of her body's complaints.
'There!' Antoum cried. 'Over there!' He pointed at a house as large as a hill, spangled all over with everburning lamps. A large stone fence with a gate of black iron surrounded the manor.
As they approached, the gate formed into an iron face. 'Welcome to the House of the-'
Antoum grabbed the iron lips in both hands. 'It's me! It's me!' Veron lowered him to the ground as the gate creaked open. Beyond, the front garden was all shadow and threat.
'Welcome home,' the gate said.
'Slowly now,' Veron said, drawing his crossbow. 'And all around Antoum.'
Nestrix went first onto the unlit garden path. The summer storms were beginning to roll in and a soft, faraway rumble of thunder made every hair on her arms stand out. The rising wind shook the blades of grass and the leaves on the trees.
It was a good night to die.
Behind her the boy's footsteps padded up the path, Tennora's almost soundless steps beside him. Veron was just a heartbeat behind.
And he was there, somewhere. Too arrogant to run, too foolish to know the score. Dareun would be dangerous.
For so long she'd thought it bizarre to hear the dokaal ask the gods for things. The mere idea of the Dragon Queen granting wishes was too much to bear with a straight face. But as she walked toward the manor of Nazra Mrays, toward their final attempt to defeat Dareun, a prayer rose up in her heart. Don't let these young ones die.
The first motes of the poison gas tickled her nostrils like the tip of a blade as she stepped through the front door. She quickened her steps, following the scent and the traces of magic peculiar to the dragonfear. He was in the house.
She passed through a hallway, without noticing any of its details, and into a long room where a trio of people stood frozen. Nestrix growled low in her throat. He was close, very close.
The thiefs memories surged up-the image of Nestrix crouched over her, a roar building in her chest, an animal hunger in her eyes. Yes, Nestrix thought, a little of that.
The nearest person, a woman in gray, broke free of it and turned to run when she spotted them. Her eyes widened a little at the sight of Nestrix, but then they dropped to Antoum, peeking out from behind Tennora.
'Gods,' she said. 'Nazra!'
Beyond her-beyond the tall, muscular half-orc-the woman from the boot store looked back and saw her son. With a great wordless cry, she broke free of Dareun's fear and started toward Antoum.
A mass of gray energy shot out of the air behind her, breaking on her back and knocking her to her knees. Antoum screamed. The half-orc rushed forward.
Dareun strode into the room.
His eyes widened when he spotted Nestrix, and the scent of his fear and anger was heady and overwhelming. A shiver ran down Nestrix's spine; she'd done this before, she'd taken down others, snapped their necks when they threatened her and her own.
'I warned you, wyrmling,' she said.
Dareun's eyes flared green. He raised his cane and with the tip drew a rune, leaving behind glowing lines that hung in the air like smoke. With a sapphire glow that rapidly suffused Dareun, the rune seemed to burn itself into Nestrix's mind. A cold, whispering voice filled her ears. She cried out in surprise and pain.
When she opened her eyes again, both she and Dareun were standing in a garden.
'You've ruined my plans,' Dareun said. His voice was shifting, changing into something deep and faintly whistling. 'Who put you to this? Who?'
'I have said it before,' Nestrix told him. 'Every move is my own.'
Dareun cried out-half a scream and half a roar that echoed off the house's walls. People were running into the garden, but Nestrix only had eyes for Dareun. She watched with a fear she would blame on Lyra-and her own suffocating jealousy-as Dareun returned to his true form.
For a moment, as Dareun's form began to shimmer, Nestrix hoped and feared in equal measure that the gorget would strangle him as it had the thief so many years before. Those alien memories replayed for her of the feeling of the torque crushing her throat and filled her with anxiety and a twisted hope.
But the gorget had been meant for a shape-changing dragon, and it grew with him, spreading to accommodate a sinuous neck as thick as a barrel. His scales shone a hundred shades of green, bright without the years' patina.
Beside her Veron let out a soft, heartfelt string of curses.
Young though he was, Andareunarthex was as big as a cart and horse together. He spread wings the size of sails and threw back his head, letting another fierce and frustrated scream echo into the night.
He is not so big, Nestrix thought, even if her head was full of dokaal thoughts, even if it had been so long since she'd stood before one of her kin that she was surprised at how tall he stretched. Had she been so large?
The guards shot arrows that buried themselves in the muscles of Dareun's shoulder and neck. He roared again and, with a quickness his size belied, darted forward and snapped a young guardswoman's arm off. Her screams didn't last long.
With her blood dripping from his jaws, Dareun snorted in amusement and snapped again, despite the flights of arrows, at Nestrix.
She dodged. His teeth sank into Veron's leg.
Nestrix snatched Veron's sword out of its scabbard and brought the blade down on the crest over Dareun's eye. He screeched at her in Draconic, but he let go of Veron. The bounty hunter tried to stand and crumpled.
More volleys of arrows. Nestrix looked down at Veron-he had turned a shade of gray that she was sure he hadn't been before. Dareun's bite had been full of poison.
Let him die, she thought. He's a problem waiting to happen. The wyrmling has done you a favor. She smiled down at the half-orc, whose forehead was covered in pinpricks of sweat. The bastard would regret how he'd…
He saved me, she thought. And Tennora. Much as she'd like to think they hadn't needed him, he'd turned the tide of their fight.
Dareun aimed for her again with the sharply scaled edge of his tail. A guardsman managed to get in the way and catch it for her, and by the time his body and Dareun's tail reached her, it was slow enough for her to slash the dragon with the sword again.
She grabbed Veron by the arms and dragged him behind a dense bush. 'Where are your potions?' she said.
He blinked up at her, shivering. 'Don't have them. Tennora needed the last.'
Nestrix cursed. 'Stay here,' she said. 'Don't die.' She waded out of the bush, the sword still awkward in her hands, the itch of the lightning dancing on her tongue. The guardsman lay splayed on the garden path, a pool of blood spreading from somewhere beneath him.
Two metal vials, the same sort Veron had been carrying, hung from his belt. He wouldn't need both of them, surely, and Nestrix snatched one free, and bounded over the shrubbery, back to Veron.
'Here,' she said, but the poison had seeped into him and he couldn't lift his arms. She scowled. 'I am not your nursemaid, dokaal.'
At that moment, Dareun gave a great roar. A set of claws came down on the protective wall of the bush, crushed it and wrenched it away in a shower of dirt.
'Come and face me,' he said in Draconic, 'Clytemorrenestrix of the Calim. Reveal yourself and we shall decide the game.'
TWENTY
With an explosion of blue light, Nestrix and Dareun vanished. In that moment, Tennora felt the edge of panic, the same panic that had wrapped around her chest the first time he had taken Nestrix. Dareun's shouts from the
