Eona: The Last Dragoneye

seething summons that rushed through my pathways. Beside me, Ido flinched as he felt the blistering force reach through our bodies to the dragon Hua caught within the folio. It was a torrent of fire through every vein and muscle, bubbling up behind my eyes and drying my mouth into a silent scream. The agony of it pressed me against the brace of Ido’s body. I felt the bindings around the dragons’ Hua blaze and burn, opening their human-made prison of blood and greed.

And I felt another spirit: the faint cool echo of an ancient warrior woman, my ancestress. Kinra.

They are free! I am free! Her joyful voice soared over the disintegrating bonds of the folio.

Free. One simple word and all of my pain crystallized into a terrible certainty. I could not take the renewal power. I could not destroy the hope of rebirth for land and dragon. This was the last chance to right a terrible wrong. The chant stopped in my throat. Time hung still in a silent, bodiless, breathless moment of truth. I had to release the dragons’ Hua. I had to give it back. And it was going to kill Kygo.

The chant burst out of me again, my scream of anguish swept up into the howling rhythm of release.

Kinra, help me, I prayed. Help me make it right.

The rope of white pearls heaved against my hand. Kinra’s cool presence rushed into me, the liberated dragon Hua following like a tornado made of fire and power. Every one of my nerves was stretched to the breaking point, my mind unraveling into the maelstrom of raw energy, throat shredding with the acid chant that pulled their Hua into the conduit that was my body. It slammed through me and into Ido, the force making us both stagger.

“Eona, hold the power,” he yelled.

“No!”

He thrust his face into mine. “What are you doing?”

The hissing song of chaos poured through me. I bared my teeth into a smile, and in my mind I saw Dillon’s death’s-head grin. The Righi was life and death. And so was I.

Ido closed his hand around my throat, trying to choke off the words, but the Hua still came. Twelve spirit tethers gathering within us with the force of a cyclone. Ido wrenched at my hand, bending my fingers away from the pearls. A thin bone snapped, but I felt no pain. Everything was subsumed by the whirling, blazing power.

Against the backdrop of gold flames and plunging dragons, I saw men scrambling onto the platform, cringing away from the inferno rising from the circle of pearls. The familiar shapes of Dela and Tozay crouched among wild- eyed soldiers and resistance fighters, everyone cowering together against the intense heat and the huge thrashing, screaming beasts.

Ido dug his fingers under the white pearls. “I will not lose my power!” The spittle spray of his rage was cool against my scorching skin. “I am the Rat Dragoneye!”

I heaved against his weight. “I am the Mirror Dragoneye— and I give the power back.”

I felt the Mirror Dragon’s howl shift into a cry of joy.

Ido slammed his fist into my jaw, the sound of bone against bone loud in my head. I felt no pain, although the heavy impact knocked me backward. We both staggered, tied together by Ido’s iron grip on the pearls. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kygo pulling himself along the dais, every tiny shift forward shuddering through his determined face.

Ido yanked at the folio. “Give it to me!”

The end of the pearl rope curled and snapped across his hand. He forced his fingers beneath it again and ripped at the tight coils, his desperate strength sliding the folio down my arm to my wrist. With a grunt of victory he wrenched the folio free, the power unraveling out of me and pouring into his body.

I reeled from the sudden loss and crashed to the ground. The pearls swung out in a snapping circle, then wrapped around Ido’s hands.

He looked down at me, his eyes black pits of Gan Hua. “I do not need you anymore. I can hold this power by myself.”

I scrabbled backward. His body was silhouetted against the flames. Energy bathed his skin, casting him into shimmering silver light. The power of the ages, the power of all twelve dragons. And Ido believed he could hold it by himself.

I drew in a deep breath, hot air scorching the cavities of my chest, and found the pathway to the energy world. The platform around me warped and shuddered into the celestial plane. I flinched under the assault of blinding light and the writhing spectrum of color that leaped from the gold flames around the dragon pearls. Ido’s energy body swarmed with silver and black Hua. His seven points of power from sacrum to crown circled at a speed that blurred them into solid spheres of bright color: red, orange, yellow — and then the stunted green heart point. Never truly changed.

A wedge of darkness in all the bright fury drew my eyes to the purple sphere in his crown, the center of enlightenment. The black gap was still there like a deep wound within its spinning purple vigor. And it was getting bigger. The silver energy in his body pulsed and swelled, again and again. Every throbbing influx of power forced the gap wider and wider. Suddenly it split apart, a white-hot bolt of dragon Hua bursting from its spinning center.

“Ido, you cannot hold it,” I screamed. “Give it back to them. Let it go!”

His silvered eyes found mine. “I have it all, Eona! I am a god!”

“Let it go, now!”

His heart point exploded first. The green sphere burst under the pressure of the dragon power, a bright emerald flare that died into a dark hole in his chest. The orange sacral point was next, its flash cascading into his yellow delta, tiny exploding suns that left darkness in their wake. He writhed in agony as the blue and indigo points heaved and vaporized.

For a long moment, the split purple sphere in his crown spun with all the power of the world. Then it erupted into a blazing torrent of Hua, streaming into the waiting dragons. The roaring power engulfed Ido’s body in gold and silver flames. I saw him reach out toward me. Then he was gone, incinerated into a glowing spiral of ash and dust, our link severed into searing loss. The black folio dropped onto the platform, the white pearls rattling around its leather binding like dry bones.

The celestial plane snapped back into the earthly platform. I stared at the charred space on the wooden boards.

Lord Ido was dead, consumed by the dragon power he had craved. All that ambition and drive, gone. I took a breath, a strangled half-sob within it. We had been bound together through power and pain. And pleasure. But he had betrayed and tortured and murdered: he did not deserve my grief. Yet there was a part of me that mourned him — the part that had smiled at his sly humor, felt the slow touch of his hand and the thrill of his power. The part of me that had once thought he could change.

Lord Ido was dead, and even in death the man divided me.

I hauled myself on to my hands and knees and crawled to the dais. My true grief was waiting for me, sprawled on his side, breath so shallow that it hardly moved his chest. His eye-lids flickered as I stroked his face, cold and clammy although his skin was reddened by the heat. He licked parched lips and opened his eyes. They were already dulled and unfocused.

“Ido?” His voice was just a wisp of wet breath.

“Dead.”

“Good.”

I cupped his cheek, the pain of my broken bones and scorched skin suddenly sharp and full. “I have no power to heal.”

He tried to lift his hand, but got no farther than a shift of his wrist. “Did right,” he whispered. I slid my hand under his curled fingers, the slack weight bringing a sob into my throat. He swallowed, gathering moisture to make the words. “The dragons?”

“They have their power. They are renewing.”

The corners of his beautiful mouth lifted. “Let me see.”

Around us, the flames from the circle of pearls were like a curtain of leaping gold and red, the shapes of the