Chapter 327 The Chain Was Forged From Their Fire

"Burn?"

"The chain is our fire. When it snaps, it takes what it was made from. We will go with it. All of us. In an instant."

Nobody breathed.

"And if I don’t?" said Morgana.

"Then we die slowly. Over the year, perhaps two. And the curse goes on without us. And when we are gone, there is nothing left to hold the kings’ dragons in balance." He looked at Draeven. At Kaelen. At Thorne. "Their dragons will break. One by one."

"No," said Kaelen.

"It is the truth."

"No."

"You have felt it already, young king." Auryn’s voice was almost tender. "In the way he claws at you. In the way you lose your temper. It is not the end of the road. It is the beginning."

Kaelen’s hand tightened on Morgana’s. She felt it shaking.

"We would prefer," said Auryn, "that you choose."

"Choose what?"

"Which of those two doors to open."

The cavern was silent.

It was a long, vast, terrible silence. Morgana stood in the black coat with Kaelen’s hand in hers and Thorne’s arms around her, and stared up at three ancient dragons who had spent two centuries waiting for her, and who had just asked her, quietly, which of them she would kill.

"That’s not a choice," she whispered.

"No," said Aeris, very softly. "It is not."

"Then why...."

"Because it is the only one we have."

The torches guttered.

Somewhere in the dark, far above, water dripped, one slow note.

"We are sorry,"said Auryn.

***

Dawn came grey and slow through the study windows.

Morgana had not slept. None of them had. They had climbed out of the Sanctum in silence, three kings and a girl in a borrowed coat, and nobody had suggested bed. It would have been a lie. Instead Thorne had sent for tea, and a servant with a very white face had brought it, a great black pot and four cups, and set it down and fled.

Now it sat steaming on the low table between them, strong enough to stand a spoon in.

She held her cup in both hands. It was the first thing in hours that had been properly hot. Thorne’s coat hung around her like a tent, the sleeves hanging past her fingers, the collar rubbing her chin, and it still smelled of cedar and night air. She had stopped shaking somewhere on the third landing.

"Again," said Draeven. "From the beginning."

He sat very straight in the chair behind the desk, with his shirt buttoned properly now and his hair pushed back. His voice was level. His hands lay flat on the wood on either side of a map, perfectly still, and she knew him well enough by now to understand what that cost. He only went that quiet when something inside him was howling.

"The chain was forged from their fire," said Thorne.

He stood by the window with his back to the light, a dark shape against the grey.

"It holds Atheris. It holds them. And it is killing them, slowly."

"A year," said Draeven. "Perhaps less."

"Perhaps a great deal less."

"And if she frees him...."

"They burn." Thorne’s voice did not change. "The chain breaks, the curse lifts, and the three of them go with it."

"And if she doesn’t."

"They die by inches. And when they are gone, our own dragons lose whatever it is that holds them steady."

Nobody said anything.

Morgana looked down into her cup. The tea was dark as a pond. She could see a small, pale, distorted face in it, and she looked away.

"Two doors," she said.

"Two doors," said Draeven.

"And both of them end with someone dead."

"Or worse." He said it flatly, the way a man reads out a figure from a ledger. "The second door ends with all of us dead, if the old one is right. Slowly, and one at a time, and in the worst possible way."

"Draeven," said Thorne.

"It is what he said."

"I know what he said."

"Then do not tell me to soften it." The king’s eyes lifted, "golden and steady, and for a moment something moved behind them. "She has been told enough half-truths in her life."

Morgana said, quietly, "Thank you."

He looked at her.

"For not softening it." She turned the cup in her hands. "I’d rather know."

"I know," said Draeven.

Morgana looked at him and she noticed that he had pressed his hands a little flatter against the desk.

There was a long silence.

Kaelen sat on the window seat with his knees drawn up and his bare heels against the stone. He had not said a word since the stairs. It was so unlike him that she kept glancing at him, as if he might be a trick of the light. He had pulled on a shirt without lacing it. His pale hair was still wild. He was staring out at the courtyard, at nothing, with a face that had been wiped clean of everything, and the cold that came off him was so faint and so steady that the glass behind his shoulder had begun, very softly, to fog.

She thought, he heard it too.

She thought, what Auryn said, about the dragons breaking.

And then Thorne crossed the room, and bent over the map, and the thought slid away.

"Here," he said.

His finger came down on the vellum. It was an old map, creased soft along the folds, and he had cleared the clutter off it with one sweep of his arm. His nail rested on a small black cluster at the edge of the northern reaches.

"Ashford," he said.

Her breath caught.

She had not seen it written down before. It looked so small. A scatter of tiny roofs and a thread of road, hemmed in on three sides by the dark crinkle of the hills. She had walked every yard of it. She could have drawn it blindfolded, down to the crooked gate at the end of the lane.

"Your mother’s cottage is here." His finger slid east, a handsbreadth. "And the mountains...."

"Yes," said Morgana.

"The cave is few hours walk from the village. You said so."

"Yes. If you go at dawn, and you know the path." She swallowed. "I always went at night. It took longer."

"Which way from the cottage?"

"North. Past the old mill. Then the goat track, up through the pines, and over the shoulder of the hill." She leaned forward without meaning to, and the coat slid from her shoulder. "It’s here, I think. Roughly. It doesn’t show on a map."

"No," said Thorne softly. "It wouldn’t."

He drew a line, light as a breath, from the cluster of roofs to the place she had pointed. Then he drew another, from the palace down along the royal road to the village. He stood back.

The two lines met. They were almost one.

"It is the same road," said Draeven slowly.

"Near enough."

"We were going to Ashford regardless."

"We were." Thorne straightened. "To see to her mother, and make certain Rhen’s men reached her. We would have set out within the week. And from the cottage to the mountain is one more day." His mouth thinned. "It could not be more convenient if it had been arranged."

"Which is what bothers me," said Draeven.

"Yes."

"The dragons called her to the Sanctum. They told her what she is meant to do. And all the while the road to the one thing she must find runs past her own front door." His fingers drummed once on the desk, then stopped. "I do not like it when a path is that straight."

"Nor do I."

"But it is the only path we have."

"Yes."

Morgana looked from one to the other.

They did not argue. That was the odd thing. They simply laid the facts down, one beside another, the way men lay stones on a wall, and the wall that grew between them was not one she liked the shape of. She understood, with a small cold drop in her stomach, that they were already planning for the worst. That they had begun doing it somewhere on the stairs.

"And what do I do?" she said.

Silence.

"When we get there. To the mountain." She set the cup down on its saucer, very carefully, so it wouldn’t rattle. "What do I do? Do I walk in and free him? I don’t know what I’m supposed to be." She heard her own voice rising and flattened it. "They wouldn’t tell me anything. They said it wasn’t theirs to say."

"It isn’t yours to decide today," said Draeven.

"Isn’t it?"

"No." He stood. It was a slow, unhurried movement, and when he came around the desk his face had gone quiet and very gentle. He stopped in front of her chair. "Today, you drink your tea. Tomorrow we make arrangements. You decide nothing until you are standing in front of him."