looking at a creature that was, like himself, the child of a forbidden union. Finnegan had been born of a Father of Day and a Mother of Night. But Deetha Maas, the keeper of this ossuary, had been made from a far stranger marriage: that of dragon and man. For sixteen years Finnegan had been slaughtering members of the Dragon Nation, but he had always let Maas see that in some secret place he knew that he was taking the lives of innocents. And that in allowing their corpses to be recovered and brought to this place was his way of making peace with that fact.
Once, perhaps, Maas had been an intimidating figure. He stood eleven or twelve feet tall, even stooped. His head was a calamitous mismatching of the infernal reptile—the long snouted skull, the slitted eyes, the gold-green scales, the teeth in a barbed array in rotting gums—with the humanish parts, the most significant part the fact that he was standing upright on his crooked back legs. He had fashioned a primitive walking aid out of bones bound with strips of cloth, on which he leaned his entire weight only advancing with the greatest difficulty, each step exacting its price in pain. There were other subtler signs of his human aspect: small places where his scales gave way to areas of translucent skin under which a network of dark blue veins was visible, pulsing against his pale purple sinew, his dirty white hair, which grew down to his waist, and here and there portions of a beard in the same wretched condition, which sprouted from pieces of flesh between the scaly patches beneath his snout.
“I’d expected you to be younger,” Finnegan said.
“I’m alive,” Deetha Maas said. “That’s some kind of triumph surely. I got to be one hundred and thirteen. And now I presume you have come to make sure I don’t see a hundred and fourteen.”
“You were the one who called me here,” Finnegan reminded him.
“Yes. Well, we go back sixteen years, Finnegan. I thought with what’s going on above we might never have another opportunity to meet face-to-face. So I seized the offer while it was there in the dust, so to speak.”
“What offer?”
“From the true dispatcher of the message I sent.”
“If not you, then who?” Finnegan said, raising his sword. It was a heavy blade, hard to wield with any great ease. Much broader, fuller, stronger men than Finnegan had attempted to use it and found it virtually impossible to wield. But Finnegan had its measure. It made him feel lighter on his feet to have it in his hand.
If—as he suspected—that this summons from Deetha Maas was a last attempt by the surviving dragons to kill him, he would not go easily. This was, after all, the night of Midnight’s Empire. He’d seen all the stars go out as he’d made his way here. If this was not the end of the world he would be surprised—in truth, disappointed. He wanted an end to his loneliness and to his rage. And if it was going to be anywhere, where better than here? And who better to cure him of life than one of the very species who’d also cured him of hope and happiness? One last battle then, fought to the death, his own.
“I’m ready,” he told Maas.
“I doubt that,” Maas said.
“Death holds no fears for me,” Finnegan replied.
“I didn’t imagine for a moment that it did. But it isn’t death that’s waiting for you.”
“What then?”
“Your love.”
“I have no love!”
A spring of clear, sweet laughter appeared from behind a litter of bones and echoed around the ossuary. An elegantly dressed woman emerged from the shadows. Finnegan let his raised sword sink down under its own tremendous weight.
“Hello, Finn.” Boa smiled.
Chapter 41
Dragon Dust
“YOU CAN’T BE HER,” Finnegan said. There was a tremor in his voice. “She was dead. I held her in my arms.”
“I know. I was there.”
“No!”
“I thought you’d be happy—”
“If you were real—”
“Do you remember the letter you found? Written by your grandfather from the battlefield of the Nonce, during the last war? The letter to your grandmother? You read a part of it to me.”
“Go on,” Finnegan replied. His voice was hushed now.
“I remember there was a part of it that made you angry because it was your grandfather’s story about what happened after death. You thought he was wrong. It was a selfish letter, you said. Because your grandfather wasn’t thinking about how it would affect someone who read it. You were so furious, you wanted your grandfather to know how you felt.”
“Yes. I remember. I couldn’t tell him, though, because he was dead.”
The smile came back to Boa’s face, bright as ever.
“You’re trying to trick me, Finnegan Hob. You’re trying to catch me out, aren’t you?”
“I don’t see how.”
“You know he wasn’t dead. He was alive when you read that letter to me.”
Both members of her audience, man and dragon, gazed at her in astonishment.
“All right,” Finn said. “It’s you. I don’t know how, but it is.”
“I thought you’d be happier to see me.”
“Well . . . you know . . . you were dead. I’ve lived thinking you were dead. Buried in that royal mausoleum on the Nonce. And you weren’t.”
“No. I was a prisoner. But I escaped.” Her smile became laughter. “I escaped, Finn! And I’m back, to love you.”
Finnegan tried to put on a smile but it didn’t quite stick. “It just seems so impossible.”
“Of course it seems that way. But then yesterday you wouldn’t have thought you’d be seeing the stars go out, would you?”
“Is that why you’re here? Are you responsible for that?”
“For murdering the stars?” she said. As she spoke there was a subtle change in her very being. Something caught fire in her, and threw off a garish light. It was in her skin, in her eyes, in her throat. “Do you think I’m capable of that, Finn? Of throwing the world into darkness?” She had lowered her head, like a wild animal preparing to charge. “Well . . . do you?”
“I don’t know what you’re capable of,” Finnegan said. “How could I?”
“Because I’m your Princess.”
“Stop saying that.”
“But it’s the truth. Look at me, Finn!
“Too much the same,” he said, half turning his face from hers, as though he might better break the spell of her perfection if he looked at her askance, and in breaking it, might see what hid behind her beauty. But it didn’t work. He still had to ask her: “How can I believe what I see if I don’t understand how it happened?”
“Touch me, Finn, and I’ll tell you.” She offered him a playful little smile. “I promise I won’t turn into a monster when you touch me.” She walked toward him raising her arm to proffer her hand. “Please, Finn. I’m begging you. I’ve waited a long time.”
“Waited where? Who was holding you prisoner?”
“Touch me and I’ll tell you.
“I don’t know.”
“There is none,” she said. “Here. Look.” She took hold of his hand. “I’m real. I’m warm.”
Finally, Finn smiled, his hand moving up over the back of her hand, his thumb tenderly brushing the bone of her wrist. He could feel her blood pulsing through her veins. And, as promised, Boa told him everything, more or
