Eona: The Last Dragoneye

but we followed, slashing at his deep chest.

Ido! I tried to force my mind-voice through the barrier of the folio, but it was like trying to call to him through a thick stone wall.

We charged, the blue dragon ducking under our impetus, one of his curled horns scraping along our belly. We twisted through the air.

Below us, the resistance streamed down the slope between the trenches Ido had carved into the earth. The soldiers caught in the corridor of land rushed to meet them. The two forces clashed, the tiny points of Hua smashing together into a morass of heaving energy. The gossamer thread between blue beast and Ido shone like an arrow pointing to his position.

“Send the hunters,” I heard Sethon order the flagmen. “Ido is straight ahead.”

The swish of the flags sent his command below. At the foot of the platform, the tight formation of the hunters broke apart, their bright points swallowed into the huge pulsing energy knot of the battle.

The blue dragon roared, turning with sinuous speed toward the unfinished chasm. We swept around, massive head down as we rammed him, the impact shuddering through the red dragon into my human body. Our huge jaws closed on his neck. Sethon laughed beside me as the blue dragon flailed with desperate opal claws and plunged, ripping himself free from our vicious grip.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I screamed in my mind, but I knew Ido could not hear me.

“Send in the rest of the red battalion,” Sethon ordered the flagmen. “We will finish this now.”

Reinforcements surged around the end of the unfinished trench. The thin silver line of their progress bunched, then pushed through the ragged lines of the resistance. We streaked after the blue dragon, screaming our defiance but unable to stop the attack compelled from within. Below, the gossamer thread of power that linked Ido to his beast was under siege. A shifting circle of bright Hua surrounded Ido, a smaller circle within it desperately holding back the assault: resistance fighters shielding the Dragoneye, trying to repel the hunters intent on capturing him. The circle broke, then regrouped, but not fast enough. The shield had been breached by two points of Hua. The thread of power flickered, and snapped. The Rat Dragon shrieked.

“They have him!” Sethon exulted.

“No,” I screamed. “No!”

“End your union.”

I felt the compulsion close around my power and tear me from the Mirror Dragon. The vibrant, pulsing colors of the energy world slid and buckled into the solid flesh of Sethon’s triumph. I lurched at him, pearl-bound hands useless, but in my mind I was clawing at his smug face. He caught me by the shoulders.

“It is just a matter of time now,” he said. “Look.” He forced me to face the battlefield.

Before us, the plain was no longer swirling Hua. It was straining bodies and screams and clashing steel. Mud made of dust and blood sprayed through the air as men whirled and lunged. But even to my untrained eye, the resistance lines were falling back. They could not hold out.

Sethon surveyed the chaos. “How does it feel to be the agent of your friends’ defeat, Lady Eona?”

It felt like my heart was being ripped from my body.

It took longer for the resistance army to surrender than Sethon expected. They fought to the end of their strength and hope, finally succumbing to the greater numbers and the loss of their Dragoneye support. I watched silently as each group of valiant fighters was defeated — either killed or taken prisoner — until the narrow battlefield that Ido had carved from the earth became a picking ground for looting soldiers and the scavenger birds that hopped from body to body in black-hunched eagerness. I was long past tears, my spirit so arid I could not even dredge up enough wet to whisper a prayer to Shola for the dying and dead. My mind had withered into only one thought: I had failed them all — Kygo, Kinra, and the dragons we had enslaved.

Sethon’s impatience finally took him down the steps to wait for the prisoners. He kept me by his side, his entourage of aides and attendants scrambling into positions behind us as he paced, one of Kinra’s swords swinging from his hand, his other arm hooked through mine as if we strolled in a garden. The wind that Ido had created was long gone, leaving a heavy humidity that was already pulling a meaty stink from the corpses. Soldiers gathered around us to watch Sethon’s final victory. Their morbid curiosity pressed on me, as hot and weighty as the air.

Another terrible thought wormed its way into my horror; was Kygo still alive? Was Ido? Sethon had ordered their capture, but things went awry in battle.

A murmur through the waiting throng announced the arrival of the prisoners. Sethon’s hold on my arm tightened as the crowd parted and a straight, proud figure slowly walked into view between two guards: Kygo, his hands clasped behind his head like a common prisoner, the Imperial Pearl on defiant display above the open gorget of his armored vest. He was alive. Behind him, two hunters dragged the limp form of Ido between them — delivered senseless, as ordered.

Kygo’s head was high, but I could see the pain and regret breaking through his body with every heartbeat. The defeat had stripped his spirit bare. Everything that was left was written upon his hollowed face — desperation, despair, and the core of courage that kept him upright. As the distance closed between us, his dark eyes sought mine, and I saw what else was left within his spirit. Me.

Sethon stopped Kygo’s guards with a raised hand. They pushed him to his knees, a length from us. The hunters released their hold on Ido, and he collapsed onto the ground, his eyelashes and brows the only color in his pale face. I found Ryko, Dela, and Tozay, too; bloodied but alive and kneeling behind Kygo, among the weary ranks of resistance prisoners. There was no sign of Vida. I prayed that she was safe back at the camp with my mother, and Rilla and Chart.

Kygo’s eyes fixed on the blood caking the front of my tunic. “Eona, what has he done to you?” he rasped. “Are you all right?”

I nodded, although I was not. “I’m so sorry,” I managed. “He’s compelling me.” I tried to raise my hands, but they would not move. “The folio.”

“You have less honor than a piece of shit,” Kygo spat at his uncle.

“And you have all your father’s honor,” Sethon countered.

Kygo’s jaw clenched, the outline of each muscle ridged along the strong bone. “I hope so.”

“It was not a compliment.” Sethon inhaled deeply, as if savoring his next words. “Bow to your emperor.”

Kygo’s voice was steel. “No.”

“Bow!” Sethon said.

“I will not bow before a traitor to this land,” Kygo said loudly.

His words sent a wave of anticipation through the watching soldiers, as if the gates had opened on two fighting dogs.

Sethon jerked his chin at a soldier standing guard. “Bring me one of his men.”

The guard dragged a kneeling prisoner in front of us. It was Caido, his body bent with exhaustion. He lifted his eyes to Kygo, his bloodless lips shifting in a prayer.

Sethon hefted Kinra’s sword. “Bow, or I will kill your man.”

Kygo stiffened, but before he could say anything, Caido suddenly lunged at Sethon, his thin face twisted with desperate rage. “He does not bow to you!”

The sword swung, the heavy crunch of bone coming a moment before the spray of blood through the air. Caido’s body slumped to the ground. I closed my eyes, the image of the man’s head half hacked from his shoulders stark against my lids.

“Yuso,” Sethon snapped. “Which of these prisoners are important to my nephew?”

My eyes flew open as the captain stepped out from the small entourage behind us. I held my breath as he slowly walked the line of prisoners, keeping a wary distance from the palpable hate that rose from the kneeling men. A gob of spittle arced out from their ranks and landed near his feet.

He stopped in front of Dela.

“This is the Contraire, Your Majesty,” he said.

Dela wore men’s armor and had pulled her hair back into a man’s high queue, yet she was all female warrior, fierce and sharp. The wound across her face had opened again, and her cheek was smeared with blood like war paint.