At the same time that something cool and repellently solid flowed into Lily’s nose, flowed down inside her, dragonsong flowed into her, too. In through her ears, and in through some channel that had nothing to do with her ears.
In that song, she heard what she knew. What she was.
How did you know? she asked, even as the world grew gray and hazy to her vision and her lungs filled with unbreathable otherness. How did you know?
Child, he said, and his voice was tender as she had never heard it, gentle and large and intimate, I held you as you died. How could I not know your Name?
And then he gave her another word. This one was cold, colder than any word could be, and it cut into her, cut all the way to the core of her.
Remember.
SHE leaped from the cliff—leaped willingly, but not peacefully, her heart in a riot of love and grief for all she surrendered, her mind blanked by terror of what she did.
THE Chimei shuddered inside Lily. And began to withdraw. Slowly, then more quickly.
LILY fell and fell—as she had in dreams, but this was no dream; this was what had happened, was happening, the air whistling past so fast, burning her eyes. Her body tumbled helplessly.
THE whiteness left her lungs, her throat. Her nose. She dragged in a breath, her chest heaving. No, she said to the Chimei without using any of the precious air—but she said it gently, for she knew. She knew what to do.
Lily—all of Lily, for her soul was no longer sundered, nor any of her memories hidden—wrapped her arms around the whiteness, not letting it escape as she fell to the rocky beach below. Held her, held on to her with the Gift that was hers, the dragon’s gift. She held the Chimei as she died.
“LILY? God, Lily, I can feel you, but if you don’t wake up and answer me, I’ll—I’ll—”
Lily opened her eyes on Rule’s frantic face. “I’m here,” she whispered. She was lying on her back, she noted dimly. On the ground.
Rule’s eyes closed. He shuddered. “Thank God. Oh, God, I thought I’d lost you. Are you hurt?”
“Dizzy,” she murmured. “Help me sit up, okay? Oh, shit—your father—”
“CPR works on lupi as well as humans,” Isen said gruffly. “Once you pulled that creature out of me, Remy got my heart started up.”
Lily turned her head and saw Isen sitting nearby. A tall young man she vaguely recognized kneeled beside him. Remy, she assumed.
“I want to sit up,” she repeated. Rule helped, moving so that his body braced her. That was good. Wonderful. “Was I out long?”
“No, it just seemed like forever. Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked. “The Chimei’s gone,” he added hastily, as if she might not know this. “All at once, she vanished.”
Not vanished, Sam said. She is dead.
“What?” Rule looked up.
Sam was coming in for a landing again—this one much slower than the last. He still held Johnny, but the sorcerer was limp—unconscious, maybe? Or had losing his lover killed him? It is the only way to kill a Chimei. Created to not-know death, they cannot die until someone shares a death with them.
“Shares a death?” Rule repeated blankly.
Dragons are the only ones who can do this—or we were, until tonight. In Dis, Lily died. That she also lived does not make her death less real. She shared that death with the Chimei.
“I broke the treaty,” Lily said dully.
No. Small actions accumulate. As an agent of order, you tried to stop the Chimei without killing her. She thought your attempt to drain her power broke the treaty, but her thinking was badly warped, or she would have sensed it still in place—strained, stretched, yet still intact. When she tried to kill you— that broke the treaty.
Rule looked at her, questions in his eyes.
“If you’re trying to ask how I did all that, well . . . I lack words.” That’s what he’d said to her often enough. “Rule, I remembered. Because of Sam, I remembered everything. The part of me that was with you in Dis—she’s here now, all the way here. I mean I’m here now. I’m not . . . I’m all of me.”
He wrapped his arms around her and held her gently, pressing a kiss to her hair. She smiled and let her eyes close again. I love you.
He jolted. “Lily?”
“What?”
“You didn’t say that out loud.”
That startled her eyes open. “Shit.”
Grandmother arrived at the same time as half a dozen lupi—some clothed and two-legged, some naked and two-legged, a couple still on four feet. She was propping up a wobbly Cullen. Cullen’s face was strained, his eyes frantic. “Cynna?” he said hoarsely.
“She’s all right,” Lily said quickly. “She’s fine, and so is the baby. The gnomes got her out.”
His eyes closed. “Okay,” he said simply—and slid to the ground.
After a few frantic seconds, they confirmed that he’d passed out, not died. His heart still beat.
He is well enough, Sam said, sending dust flying as he settled to the ground several dozen feet away. He set the sorcerer’s body aside. This one is not.
Lily looked at Grandmother, standing unnaturally quiet in the midst of the lupi, her face tender and sad and happy all at once. “You arrested her. The Chimei.”
“You heard.” Delight rang through Grandmother’s voice. “I did. It is important to follow the forms of such things.”
“I have a few questions,” Lily began—and broke off, frowning.
For some reason everyone—well, everyone but Cullen, who was unconscious—seemed to find that terribly funny.
FORTY
ON August eleventh at shortly after one in the morning, Pacific Daylight Time, in cities around the world—in Seattle, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, and Beijing, and twenty more—dragons flew. As they flew, they sang. In every city in the world that had a dragon, people for the first time heard dragonsong.
Not everyone heard it, of course. Those who did stopped their cars or their feet, stopped whatever they were doing, and listened. Just listened. Many of them wept, but later couldn’t say why.
No one recorded it. No one who heard it even thought of trying. They didn’t know the why of that, either.
In the U.S. the TV talking heads speculated madly about the reason for this unprecedented behavior—of dragons and people both. Oprah had three of those who’d heard it on her show. In China and Canada, the governments politely inquired of their dragons what was up. In Hollywood, agents tried frantically to contact the dragons to offer contracts.
The dragons didn’t care to discuss it. Neither did those few humans—and lupi—who knew why the dragons sang.
The most innately sovereign species in existence was free of a binding that had been passed down, through blood and magic, for more than three thousand years. The last of the un-surrendered Chimei was dead. The treaty was no more.
August 13th at 10:09 P.M.
RULE knelt in front of his Rho and shuddered with relief.
Nokolai’s mantle—the heir’s portion—rested in him once more. He looked at his brother, kneeling beside him. “Benedict,” he began . . . and ran out of words.
Benedict’s mouth kicked up at one corner. “Still can’t quite believe I’m happier without it, can you?”
Rule looked at him helplessly. “It’s not that I doubt your word.”
Benedict regarded him a moment. “When you were seven or so, you found a puppy. Brought it home. Cute little thing, about half grown. A basset, wasn’t it?”