Eona: The Last Dragoneye

arm and chest. Dela and Tozay stood behind him, both of them bloodied. Dela held the writhing bundle of shirt and folio.

“My dragon is gone, Kygo,” I rasped. “My dragon is gone.” “No, Eona, she is here before us,” he said. “I can see her in the circle.”

I balled my fists against my chest, rocking with pain. “She has gone from me.” My voice rose into a sob. “I have no link with her anymore. No power.”

He curled his arm around me. I leaned into him, and the cold ache within me eased a little against his warmth.

“Tozay!”

Dela’s cry raised my head. I saw the general sway on his feet, his weathered face paling into a sickly yellow. Dela dropped the folio bundle and caught him, his solid weight straining her arms and bared torso. There was a nasty gash across Tozay’s temple that was still bleeding, and his sword arm hung useless— broken, from the look of it. But I could not heal him. I could not heal anyone ever again.

“He doesn’t look good.” Kygo rose to help.

“He took a bad blow to the head,” Dela said as they carefully helped Tozay sit on the platform. His normally sharp eyes were unfocused, his breathing short and hard. “He should be all right. Just dazed for a while.” Dela gently pressed his head between his knees.

Kygo crouched beside me again. “Did you get the pearl, Eona?”

I opened my trembling hand. The opaque surface shimmered and flicked as if tiny fish teemed beneath its surface. He picked it up between thumb and forefinger, the loss on his face echoing the ache in my own spirit. He, too, was giving up something: the sacred symbol of his sovereignty.

“How do you renew the dragons with it?” he asked.

Ido stirred. “Renew the dragons?” Slowly, he sat back on his heels and cocked his head at me. “Am I missing something here, Eona? What about our plan?”

Kygo stiffened at the Dragoneye’s tone.

“We never had a plan, Ido,” I said, meeting his stare with my own. “The ancients stole the Imperial Pearl from the dragons. It is their egg. We have to give it back. We have to let them renew their power.”

Ido looked sideways at me, the amber eyes hooded. “I know we stole it. I have always known.”

I gaped at him. “What do you mean?” Indignation pulled me up onto my feet. Both Ido and Kygo stood, too, ranged on each side of me in silent antagonism.

“I’ve read the black folio,” Ido said. “I know what the pearl is and what it does.” He crossed his arms. “The theft changes nothing.”

“It changes everything,” I said. “How could you know all this and still ignore your dragon’s need? His hope?”

“No doubt in the same way as many Dragoneyes have before me. No one willingly gives up their own power when it can be the next Dragoneye’s problem.”

“Not anymore, Ido. We are the last of our kind. We have to give the pearl back.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand. If they renew, we will lose our power forever.”

“I know.” I felt a moment of bitter satisfaction. He was not the only one who knew the secrets of dragon lore. “But we still have to give the pearl back.”

His gaze sharpened. “How do you know? Have you read the folio, too?”

“No.” I wet my lips. “I went into my dragon. To escape Sethon’s torture.” Kygo’s fingers brushed my arm; a fleeting touch of consolation. “I saw memories from an ancestor.”

Dela shifted; no doubt she had guessed which ancestor.

Something flickered across the wary intensity in Ido’s face; a moment of empathy, or maybe it was just his own pain, remembered. He smiled thinly. “I thought you vowed you would never do that to your dragon. You keep drawing your moral lines, and you keep crossing them.” His eyes held mine, his voice lowering into a caress. “You and I are the same, Eona. We cross the lines that others dare not step over. Cross this last line with me.”

He wanted the dragons’ power. He wanted everything. And he wanted me to take it with him.

“I won’t destroy the dragons.”

He jabbed his forefinger against his chest. “Do you want to feel like this for the rest of your life? As if everything important has been ripped out? Do you want to be nothing again? Because that is what will happen.”

“Eona will never be nothing,” Kygo said. “She is my Naiso.”

Ido snorted. “Why would she be your Naiso when she could be a god with me? It is still the same choice, Eona. Either we take all the power or we are left with nothing.” He held out his hand. His smile drove itself into my very core. “You and I can take it all, Eona, together. It would be like the cyclone, a hundred times over. Forever.”

Kygo gripped my shoulder. “If you think Eona would destroy the dragons and take my land, Ido, then you do not know her at all. We would both die a thousand times over before we would let you have anything you want.”

I stared at Ido’s outstretched hand. The memory of the sea cabin — our bodies entwined and the glorious rising energy— held me still. All that power between us.

Kygo glanced at me. “Eona?”

I took a deep breath, fighting my way through the wash of sensation. With so much power, there could be nothing else. It would burn everything in its path. And every minute of every hour would hold the bud of distrust, just waiting to blossom into betrayal.

“I am not the same as you, Ido,” I said. “I will not destroy the dragons.”

Ido closed his hand into a fist. “You would choose to have no power with him when you could have all the power in the world with me?”

I lifted my chin. “That is not the choice, Ido. I choose the dragons and the land. Not my own ambition. Or yours.”

Beside me, Kygo smiled.

Ido gave a low, harsh laugh. “The emperor and his Naiso, standing united.”

Around us, the pitch of the humming pearls changed, the resonance vibrating through my ear bones.

Ido spun on his heel, taking in the swaying dragons.

“What is happening?” Kygo asked.

“The dragons are preparing to lay down their pearls,” Ido said.

I remembered what he had told me on the beach. Once the pearls were separated from the beasts, they could never reclaim them, and the String of Pearls could not be stopped. It was now either the dragons’ renewal or the land’s destruction.

Ido faced me, his eyes narrowed with fury. “Your misguided loyalty has lost us both our power. All we can do now is avoid annihilation.” His eyes fixed on the white bundle in Dela’s tight grip. “Give me the folio.”

Dela pulled back from his reaching hand. “I do not follow your orders.”

He sucked a breath in between his teeth. “Listen to me, Eona. The Mirror Dragoneye is the only one who can direct the String of Pearls’ power to the dragons. Otherwise it will raze everything to the ground, including us.”

“I have to direct it?” My voice cracked. “How?”

“With the folio and the Righi.”

I stared at him, my memory conjuring the blistering heat and terrible power of the ancient words. “But that’s the death chant.”

“Isn’t that what Dillon used to kill all those soldiers?” Dela asked uneasily.

“It not only destroys,” Ido said, “it creates. It holds the dragons’ Hua in the black folio so we can use their power. “

“How do you know all this?” Kygo demanded.

“I have been studying the String of Pearls for years. The Righi ignites the Imperial Pearl to start the renewal, and it will release the dragons’ Hua from the folio.”

“The dragons’ Hua is in the folio?” Kygo echoed.

I searched Ido’s face, trying to read beyond the fury that pinched his features into a snarl. I did not trust this