Eona: The Last Dragoneye

I stopped Dillon or everyone died.

After helping me dismount, Yuso hoisted himself back into the saddle, his attention on Ido. The Dragoneye had walked out a few lengths across the grassland to watch the distant dust cloud. Sethon’s soldiers — both infantry and cavalry — had finally fallen back, leaving Dillon to his single-minded march toward us. Ido could now barely stand upright. No doubt Yuso was asking himself the same question that was on my mind: would the Dragoneye collapse before Dillon even arrived?

I passed Yuso the lead rope of Ido’s horse, the animal tossing its head against the sudden pull on its bridle.

“Is it true what you said about your ancestor’s swords?” Yuso said. “They have power, too?”

I stared up at him. What did that have to do with the ordeal ahead? Then I flushed — no doubt all the men had heard the painful revelations between myself, Kygo, and Ido. “Yes,” I said tightly. “What of it?”

“It is a wondrous thing.” He bowed and turned the horses. The bland response from the man was as strange as his question.

I turned from watching Yuso’s retreat back up the escarpment and, with a deep breath, walked across the grass to join Ido. He was transfixed by the lone figure on the horizon and did not mark my arrival. Suddenly, he doubled over, hands on thighs, as a bout of shivering racked his body. I closed my eyes against a surge of pain in my head; as it subsided, I squinted Dillon back into view.

The boy seemed a lot closer than before. Far too close for the brief time that had elapsed. I craned my head forward, trying to make sense of it, and fear crawled across my scalp. Dillon was moving at a speed that was not quite human.

“Ido, look how fast he’s moving,” I said.

“I know.” He straightened and sucked in a pained breath. “I think there is very little Dillon left now. He is all Gan Hua.”

I touched the blood ring on my thumb. “There are too many maybes in this plan,” I said. “Maybe the black folio will hold off the ten dragons. Maybe Dillon will have to get close to use the Righi. Maybe this ring will work.”

Ido turned his head, the long angle of his profile and his steady eyes reminding me of a watchful wolf. “Eona, it is time that you faced the truth. If we can defeat Dillon and get the black folio, we must not give it to Kygo. We must keep it ourselves.”

“What?”

“The black folio is our only chance to take the dragon power.”

“What do you mean, ‘take it’?”

“With the String of Pearls,” Ido said. “We can have our power a hundredfold. Just think of what we could do.”

I stepped back. “That’s insane. It’s a weapon.”

“No, listen to me.” He shot another glance at Dillon, gauging his approach. “We are the last two Ascendant Dragoneyes. If anyone can contain all the dragon power instead of releasing it as a weapon, it is us.”

“Contain it? How?”

“In our bodies, together, like we do when you compel me.” He licked his cracked lips. “Do you remember what I told you after the King Monsoon? What I read in the black folio? The String of Pearls requires the joining of sun and moon.”

Sun and moon: it was Kygo’s endearment. The resonance caught in my chest like a hand gripping my heart. “I remember you coercing me,” I said, pushing my desolation into anger. “I remember you taking my will.”

“I think you’ve had your revenge,” Ido said dryly.

It was true; I had done the same to him, over and over again.

“We are a pair, Eona,” he said. “I know you are as drawn to me as I am to you.” The intensity of his eyes held me. “We are the sun and moon: the male Rat Dragoneye and the female Mirror Dragoneye. Together we can have all of the dragon power.”

“To do what, Ido — rule the land? Is that your plan?”

“I told you before, chaos brings opportunity.”

“So you brought chaos upon us to create your opportunity?”

“And yours,” he said.

I shook my head at his arrogance. “Even if we get the folio, two Dragoneyes cannot control everything.”

“If we take all the dragon power, we’ll be far beyond Dragoneyes. We will be gods; it is the real promise of the black folio.” Dillon was closing the distance rapidly: less than five hundred lengths. Ido’s voice quickened. “You felt the hunger for more power when we moved the cyclone. Do not deny it.”

I had felt it, and I knew he could see it on my face. “That does not mean I want all the power.”

He gave a pained laugh. “Eona, wake up! The choice is either no power or all the power. There is no middle ground. Kygo will not give up the pearl, and that means our power will soon be gone with the beasts.”

“But we would destroy the dragons.”

He gripped my shoulder as if I was a young child having to hear a hard lesson. “You know by now that there is always a price.”

“But we can’t do that,” I said. “They are part of the land.”

“I do not wish to lose my power, Eona. Do you?” He doubled over again, struggling to keep his head up. “We must keep the folio.” Urgency and pain stripped his voice into breath. “Are you ready?”

Dillon was less than fifty lengths away.

For a moment, fear sucked all sense from my mind. All I could see was a demon running toward me.

There was no flesh left on his bones. His face had been reduced to yellowed skin stretched across the sharp shape of his skull, his pumping arms and hands all swollen joints and knuckles. His eyes were dark holes of black power — ghost eyes — sunken into their sockets. Every step he took sprayed blood and matter, both feet worn to pulp from days and days of relentless running. Everything had been carved away by the driving force of the folio.

Ido grabbed my hand, bringing me back to myself. His hard grip dug the edge of the blood ring into my flesh. “Together,” he said.

He took a breath, seeking a path to the celestial plane, his usual smooth rhythm broken by the ragged draw of pain. I held my own breath as he fought to shift into the energy world. Finally, his eyes silvered into union with the Rat Dragon. The moment echoed deep in my core, bringing an ominous wave of nausea.

Ido’s hand convulsed around mine. “Holy gods!”

Black power surged across the silver in his eyes, like oil across water. I jerked back in reflex, but Ido’s iron grip held me at the length of our outstretched arms. The black folio was inside his dragon power. I could feel the sour slide of its words, the whispering call of it through our linked hands.

I pushed through the seep of dark energy and found Ido’s heartbeat. His pounding pulse folded into mine, our melded Hua roaring through the deep pathways made of our desire, as dark and dangerous as the folio. I could taste acid as the folio’s power surged from Dillon into Rat Dragon and Dragoneye, tainting the sweet vanilla orange of the union.

“The Righi,” Ido panted. “He is chanting the Righi again.”

Twisting around, I fixed on Dillon. He was only twenty lengths away, the black folio bound to his left arm, the white pearls shifting and heaving.

“My lord!” Dillon called, his voice like the hollow scrape of dried bamboo upon itself. “I am coming to you, my lord. I will watch your blood and dust scatter into the wind.”

I felt him drop back into the deep chant of Gan Hua, the bitter song ripped from the earth and the air around us.

I took a shuddering breath, and another, focusing on the pulse of Ido’s energy to guide me to the celestial plane. A third breath and the world shifted and buckled into violent, writhing color. Dillon’s energy body swarmed with black, bloated power, every point spinning the wrong way, every pathway thick with darkness.

Ido’s energy body was a battleground: pounding silver energy forced its way through the thick black veins of power that twisted and coiled around his pathways, anchoring themselves into his life-force. Screaming, he dropped