Chapter 324: Get Away From Her!

"Who?"

"The old one. The one who hid you." The silver dragon’s voice was very low. "He did well. Gods, he did well. Years of that wall, and not a single crack until the kings found you. Even now, with it breaking, there are threads of him all over you. In your hair. In your bones." She drew a long breath. "You smell of mountain, child. And chain, and cold, and old, old fire."

Morgana’s heart stopped.

"What are you...."

"Atheris," said Pyros.

The name rang in the Sanctum like a bell.

---

She never remembered, afterward, what she did.

She thought that she might have cried out. She thought that she might have fallen. Something went through her, hot and cold at once, like cold water poured over a fever, and the soft drowsy fog in her head ripped open all at once. She was awake. She was completely awake. She was standing in a freezing cavern in a nightgown, barefoot, in front of three dragons the size of cathedrals, and every sleeping thing in her had gone suddenly, brilliantly alert.

"*No,*" she said.

Her voice was high and thin.

"No. You can’t....how do you....."

"Easy," said Pyros. "Easy, hatchling."

"Don’t *call* me that."

"Morgana." Auryn’s voice was low. "Listen to me."

"No." She stepped back. Her heel struck the stone, and she nearly fell. "No, I don’t....I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know any....any Atheris. I’ve never...."

"You have."

"I haven’t."

"You went to him at ten," said Aeris, very softly. "With a stolen candle. And you did not leave until dawn."

The cavern spun.

It spun slowly, a great grey wheel of stone and torchlight, and Morgana heard her own heartbeat roaring in her ears. She was shaking. She was shaking so hard that her teeth clicked together. She could not breathe. She could not think. There was only one thought in her head, bright and cold and absolute.

They know.

They know, they know, they know, and the kings are going to.....

"MORGANA!"

The voice cracked through the cavern like a whip.

She spun.

---

They came through the great bronze doors like a storm.

Kaelen was first. He was barefoot and shirtless, in a pair of rumpled trousers, with his pale hair wild and his eyes blazing white. The air around him went arctic. Frost raced across the black floor in a crackling ring. He took one look at the three dragons, and at the small figure in white between them, and let out a roar.

"Get away from her!"

"Kaelen!" shouted Draeven.

"They took her! They.....she’s in her nightgown....."

"Kaelen, stop....."

But Kaelen was already moving. His body was changing as he ran. Scales rolled up his arms and across his shoulders in a silver tide. His nails lengthened into claws. His jaw thrust forward, and a low, rolling, inhuman snarl came out of his throat, and the whole vast cavern trembled with it.

"Kaelen!" Draeven caught him by the arm.

It was like trying to stop an avalanche. The first king was dragged two paces, three, his boots skidding on the frost, and then Thorne was there on the other side, gripping Kaelen’s shoulder with hands that had turned black and clawed. Shadows boiled up from the floor around them, thick and writhing.

"Brother," said Thorne. "Brother. Look at me."

"They called her like a dog!"

"I know."

"They put her in a trance!"

"I know, Kaelen. I know. Look at her."

Kaelen looked.

Morgana was standing in the middle of the cavern with her arms wrapped around herself and her face as white as the gown. Her hair hung in tangles. Her bare feet were blue with cold. She was looking at the three of them with an expression of such naked, wild, trembling fear that something in Kaelen’s face cracked.

"Morgana," he said hoarsely.

"I’m all right."

"You’re not."

"I am. I’m...." She tried to laugh, and it came out a sob. "I’m all right. I’m awake. I’m only....cold."

Thorne let go of Kaelen.

He crossed the floor in four strides, unclasping his coat as he went. It was the black one, the long one, the one he had carried her out in that morning, wrapped around her from neck to knees. It swung off his shoulders like a wing. He reached her, and swept it around her, and drew it closed from her chin to her ankles.

It was warm. It smelled of cedar and night air.

"Thorne," she whispered.

"I’ve got you."

"I didn’t mean to...I didn’t know...."

"I know you didn’t."

"I was *asleep.* I woke up at the door and my hand was on the latch and I couldn’t...." Her voice cracked. "I couldn’t stop."

"Shh." His arms came around her, over the coat, and drew her tight against his chest. He bent his head. His mouth was against her hair. "It’s all right. You’re safe. I’ve got you."

She pressed her face into his shoulder.

She was shaking all over, in great hard shudders. Thorne held on. His dark eyes lifted, over the top of her head, and fixed on the three vast shapes in the center of the cavern, and for the first time in her hearing his voice was not calm.

"This is the second time," he said, "that I have found you standing between them."

Nobody answered.

"The first time, they snarled at me. For taking you away." His arm tightened. "I notice that tonight they do not."

"You are not taking her away tonight," said Aeris, mildly. "You are only angry. It is a different thing."

"I have every right to be."

"You do."

"Then they had no right," said Thorne, very low. "None."

---

The Sanctum went still.

Nobody moved. Torches guttered in their brackets. The great curtains of mineral glimmered faintly on the walls. Auryn, Aeris, and Pyros lay coiled in the dark, six golden eyes fixed on the three kings, and the silence was the silence of ancient things taking a measure.

It was Pyros who spoke first.

"Don’t glare at me, boy."

"I will glare at whom I please."

"You will lower your voice. This is our house."

"It is my house," said Draeven.