Alison Goodman: Eona: The Last 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 dragons glimpsed behind it. Carefully, I settled Kygo’s head onto my lap, the pain of the shift shivering through his body. The knife hilt still protruded from his back. Dark blood seeped from the sucking wound, the gloss of it catching the flicker of the gold fire. I carefully pressed my thumb and finger around the wound, trying to stop the leak of his precious breath.

The Mirror Dragon lifted her head and sang — a long rising scale that called beyond the earthly plane. The sound was like kindling to the gold flames. Every pearl flared up into high, bright heat. One by one, the male dragons moved forward and stepped into the fire of their pearls. A scorching wind rolled off the fierce combustion, the intense blaze snapping and roaring around the old beasts. The charred smell of dragon death was thick and harsh in my aching throat as each one of their huge bodies was reduced to ash. Finally, only the Mirror Dragon stood behind her pearl. She turned her head toward me, her gold and bronze flecked mane already ablaze as she stepped into the fire of her rebirth. I moaned as the flames overwhelmed her, drying the tears in my eyes into stinging salt.

The circle of fire exploded upward into bright embers that swirled and danced in multicolored streams. The huge dragon pearls cracked and split.

My breath caught as shapes emerged within the flames: curled horns, long, elegant muzzles and muscled legs, talons that sparked with the hard color of precious stones. The new Horse Dragon emerged first from his flaming pearl — bigger than the old beast, his magnificent orange scales steaming with heat, pale watersilk wings flicking out into a tentative stretch. He shook himself, his soft ocher beard shifting to show the gleam of the apricot pearl beneath his chin. The neverending cycle. As he launched himself up into the dark clouds, the flames of his pearl guttered and died. I craned my head back to watch his flight; a wide circle around the plain, his big body sleek and supple in the air. With a loud, triumphant call, he disappeared into the celestial plane.

“The land will be well,” Kygo whispered.

We watched as, one by one, the male dragons were reborn.

New wings stretching, tongues tasting the air, the huff and blow of spicy breath, and the first flights that circled above us, ending in the long call of triumph and return to the celestial plane.

Only one flaming pearl remained. I held my breath as it split and fell apart, the leap of gold flames around it tinged with crimson.

Her horns emerged first, curled and tapered over her broad forehead, the fall of gold mane shifting in the fire-wind of rebirth. She rose out of the dying flames of her egg, her massive body gleaming with red scales that graduated from rose-blush around her eyes to a deep crimson across her muscular shoulders and legs. She lifted her flared muzzle and sniffed the air, the new pearl nestled under her chin a paler gold than the one before. Silk-thin wings spread and flapped once, then folded back against the long sinuous curve of her scarlet spine. She opened a curl of ruby claws, and I saw a tiny, luminous orb cupped within; the Imperial Pearl, reborn with the dragons. The ruby talons closed over it. Lowering her head, she looked directly at me. I leaned forward, hoping to see recognition in her great spirit eyes. Their dark endlessness held the wisdom of the world, but they did not hold me.