A Memory of Fire (The Dragon War, Book 3) (29 page)

I
chose Rune then,
he thought.
I
chose hope for Requiem.

He looked at Rune now, a grown
man, a man he could crown tonight. He looked at Kaelyn, the woman
he'd flown with for so long, the woman he loved, the woman who filled
his heart with so much light.

When
Marilion died,
he thought,
I
broke. I fell into darkness, into drink, into madness.
He looked into Kaelyn's hazel eyes.
You
saved me, Kaelyn. You saved me from the wreck that I was. You gave
me strength to fight. You gave me something to fight for. I cannot
lose you too.

"Choose!" Frey
shouted. "Choose now, Valien!"

Valien lowered his head.

All sounds faded.

He closed his eyes.

"Spare Kaelyn," he
whispered.

For a moment the silence
continued. Then Frey began to laugh—a dry, crackling sound like
twigs breaking. His laughter grew until he was cackling.

He pointed his gun at Rune.

Tied
in the chair, the young man looked up and gave Valien a last look.
Rune nodded and Valien's eyes dampened. In his eyes, Rune was
saying:
I
understand. I accept. Goodbye.

A scream rose outside.

A shadow darkened the window.

Frey pulled the trigger.

The arquebus blasted smoke.

A red dragon crashed through the
window, roared, and shifted into human form.

"I will kill you, Father!"
screamed Leresy, leaping through the air, a dagger in hand. "Die,
bastard!"

The iron round slammed into
Leresy's chest, spraying red mist.

Still screaming, the prince
slammed against Frey and drove his dagger into the man's neck.

Father and son crashed down,
screaming and struggling. Leresy howled, pulled his dagger back, and
thrust it down again and again, stabbing madly and screaming. Frey
gasped, blood spurting from his neck and cheeks.

"Die, you bastard!"
Leresy cried. His tears poured and blood covered his arms. "Die!
Die... I..."

The prince coughed blood, fell
over the corpse of his father, and trembled.

Valien raced toward the
shattered window. Rune and Kaelyn still sat tied to their chairs,
glass shards in their hair. Valien cut through the ropes, freeing
them.

They rose on shaky limbs, and
Valien pulled them into an embrace, a crushing grip, and his eyes
watered, and he held them and gasped and wept.

"It's over," he
whispered, chest shaking, and held them close. "It's over.
You're safe. You're safe."

He kissed their bloodied cheeks
and tasted their tears.

 
 
KAELYN

Countless thoughts rattled in her
head, vying for dominance.

We
won the war.

I'm wounded and bleeding.

My father is dead.

Rune is alive.

My
fingers are gone.

She trembled in Valien's
embrace, and each thought howled inside her, each alone enough to
overwhelm her. Yet as the voices rattled, one emerged above the
rest, bringing tears to her eyes.

My
brother is hurt.

She disentangled herself from
Valien, limped forward, and fell to her knees above Leresy.

"Oh, Ler," she
whispered.

He had fallen off their father.
He lay on his back, smiling wanly. A hole gaped open in his chest.
He placed a hand against the wound and coughed weakly, blood on his
lips.

"Look at us, sister,"
he said. He coughed again but did not lose his soft smile.

She wept. She knelt over him,
touched his cheek, and placed her second hand above his.

"I'm going to take care of
you," she whispered. "You're going to be all right."

He laughed—a weak, choked
sound. "I've got a hole in my chest a rodent could crawl
through. But I killed him, Kae. I killed him for us." His
smile turned into a sob. "He can't hurt you anymore. Never
again."

She nodded. Her voice was so
soft she could barely hear herself. "He can't hurt anyone
anymore." She looked over her shoulder at Valien and Rune who
stood watching. "Get bandages! Get medicine! We have to heal
him, we—"

Leresy gripped her hand. "It's
too late for me, sister. Look at me again. I want to die seeing
your face."

She turned her eyes back toward
him. "You can't die. I won't let you."

With a shaky hand, his fingers
bloody, he reached up and touched her cheek. He whispered so softly
she had to lean down to hear.

"Sister... make this a good
kingdom. Whoever takes this throne... make sure they do a good job."

She nodded. She could no longer
even whisper, only mouth the words. "I will."

"Find Erry." Leresy
blinked his damp eyes. "Look after her. Give her gold and a
house to live in. Make sure she has a good life. Tell her... tell
her that I forgive her. No. Don't tell her that. Tell her that she
was right and that I'm sorry. Tell her that I love and that I'm so
sorry."

She pulled him into an embrace.
"You will tell her."

He shook his head. "Goodbye,
my sister, my twin, my Kaelyn." He smiled and suddenly all pain
left his face; he seemed at peace, as if already floating toward the
starlit halls. "And make this a good life for you, Kae. May
your wings always find our sky."

He went limp in her arms.

She held him against her for a
long time, whispering to him, praying as his soul rose.

 
 
TILLA

She stood atop the tower of
Tarath Imperium, gazed upon the city, and closed her hand around the
hilt of her sword.

It was too quiet.

Frey Cadigus was dead, but the
sun rose as always. Below in the streets, people emerged to their
daily routines. Merchants hawked food in distant markets. Shops
opened their doors. Hammers rang on anvils, smoke rose from
smelters, and saws ground in sawmills. People moved along the
streets, busy selling, buying, working, and living.

Tilla shook her head. This...
this was wrong. She had expected... what? The Legions still
attacking, sworn to slay the Resistance even with their emperor dead?
A hundred claimants to the throne, bastards or madmen or distant
relatives of Cadigus? She did not know. But when hearing of Frey's
death, she had expected... not anvils ringing but cannonballs
blasting, not smoke pumping from chimneys but the blaze of
dragonfire.

Yet here she was. Frey lay dead
and the city bustled with life.

"But I cannot forget,"
she whispered from the tower, eyes stinging. "I cannot just go
on with my life."

She raised her chin and closed
her eyes. Rune had won his war. He had slain the tyrant. But Tilla
still had her war to fight. She still had her vengeance to claim.

She opened her eyes and nodded.
She would do what she must.

With a deep breath, she leaped
off the tower.

She tumbled down, shifted into a
dragon, and caught the wind. She glided toward the Square of Cadigus
below—or whatever its name might be now—and landed outside the
palace gates. They still stood smashed, guarded by a handful of
surviving resistors. Tilla walked between them—they knew her as
Relesar's ward, the woman they had unchained from the Citadel—and
entered the palace hall.

She walked between the columns,
boots thudding against the mosaic, and drew her sword. Ahead rose
the throne.

They stood around it, the
survivors of the Resistance, no more than fifty men and women, most
still wearing their tattered, bloody clothes. They were bandaged,
weary, and covered in grime, and they ruled the world.

As Tilla stepped closer, her
eyes stung and her breath shook.

"Which one of you is him?"
she called out, voice hoarse. "Who among you is Valien Eleison,
leader of the Resistance?"

She did not even need to ask.
As she stepped closer, she knew who it was. Only one here stood with
the aura of command. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered but
haggard. His shaggy hair framed a weathered face and eyes full of
scars—not the scars of knives, but the deeper wounds of the soul.
Tilla almost lost her step. She had expected to see a demon, a
barbaric warrior leering and drinking the blood of his enemies. Yet
this man seemed weary beyond reckoning, an aging, outcast knight who
longed to lower his blade. He seemed almost pathetic, a man who
hated battle yet whose honor forced him to fight on.

Tilla sucked in her breath,
raised her head, and banished all sympathy from her heart.

He
might seem weary, even kind, but he killed my brother.
She stepped toward him, sword raised.
He
would not have seemed so harmless that day years ago.

"Are you Valien?" she
said.

His
warriors—perhaps they were no longer
resistors
,
for their Resistance had triumphed—drew blades and stepped toward
her. Valien raised his hand, holding them back. They froze.

"I am Valien," he
said. His voice was but a rasp, the sound of a strangled man. "Will
you give me the courtesy of your name?"

She took another step toward
him, sword raised. She considered giving him her new surname, the
noble one Shari had bestowed upon her, but decided against it. She
was no longer Tilla Siren; that woman had died with Shari.

"I am Tilla Roper,"
she said through a tight jaw. "Does that name mean anything to
you?"

She saw that it did.
Understanding filled his eyes. At his side, a young archer with
long, golden hair breathed deeply, and her eyes softened.

Valien's rasp dissolved into a
whisper. "Rune told me about you."

Her sword wavered in her hand.
"Then draw your blade! Draw it and fight me, if you wish to die
like a man, or I will kill you like a dog." She spat at him,
narrowly missing his boot. "Draw your steel. Fight me and I
will kill you like you killed my brother."

Her eyes burned and her chest
heaved. She waited for him to rage, to draw his blade, to howl and
lunge at her. But he only stood still, and no bloodlust filled his
eyes, only sadness.

"I won't fight you, Tilla,"
he said. "I have fought for too long. I have swung my sword
too many times. The war is over. Let no more blood spill."

She stepped closer, sword
pointed at Valien, close enough that if she just leaned forward, her
blade would cut him.

"Do you confess then that
you killed him?" She wanted her words to sound strong, to speak
with the authority of an officer, but today her voice cracked. "Do
you confess your murder? Confess now before you die."

He looked into his eyes. There
was no hardness to his stare, no malice, no fear, no hate... only
weariness.

"I confess," he said,
and Tilla snarled and prepared to thrust her blade, but he continued
speaking. "I confess to killing many. I killed dozens with my
own hands, Tilla Roper of Lynport, maybe hundreds. I sent tens of
thousands to die; their blood stains my hands too. If you kill me
now, you would be justified in doing so, perhaps. Thousands across
Requiem grieve for brothers, sons, daughters, fathers... people I
killed. Their deaths still haunt me. I will grieve for every soul I
had to extinguish. Did I kill your brother too? Perhaps. You might
find me heartless to say this, but the truth is, I don't know. I
killed too many; I don't know their names. But know this: If your
brother fell to my sword, his death too weighs upon my soul."

Her tears fell and her sword
wavered in her grip. "Do you think contrition can save you now?
Do you think some convoluted apology, if that's what this was, can
save your life?"

He smiled thinly. "I don't
know. But I know that I won't fight you; as I've said, I've fought
too much already. And I know that Rune loves you. And I know that
you saved his life. If you are a person he loves, I don't think you
will slay me here."

Tilla's nostrils flared, her
tears fell, and she panted.

You
are wrong, coward,
she thought, barely able to see, and readied her sword to strike.

"Wait!" rose a voice.

Tilla froze, her sword an inch
from Valien's neck. She turned to see the young, golden-haired
archer reaching out toward her. Tilla noticed that the woman was
missing two fingers on her right hand; the stubs were bandaged.

"Wait," the young
woman repeated. She heaved a sigh. "Valien did not kill your
brother."

"How do you know?"
Tilla demanded, teeth bared.

"Because I killed him."
The archer lowered her head. "I am Kaelyn Cadigus, daughter of
Frey, fighter of the Resistance." She looked back up at Tilla,
and her eyes were damp. "I don't know the names of all my kills
either, but I know some. I know the first one. I'm sorry, Tilla.
I'm so sorry."

Tilla could barely stay
standing. She hated herself for it, but her tears kept falling. She
howled, the howl of a wounded animal, and spun her sword toward
Kaelyn.

"Why?" she said. "Why
did you kill him? He was only a ropemaker. Oh, stars. He was
good."

Kaelyn nodded. "I know.
Many who are good fight for evil men. He fought for Frey, same as
you did, same as almost every youth in Requiem did. He flew against
me. He fought well. We fought as dragons over the eastern skies.
He was the first man I killed." She closed her eyes. "I
was only sixteen, only a child, but... even a young dragon's fire
burns bright. I still see him dying in my dreams."

Tilla closed her eyes too.

And
I still see my first kill,
she thought. She saw him now too, the quarryman in the hut.
I
burned him. I sliced open his belly and let him bleed out. And
every night, I still hear his screams.

Tilla heard a clang and realized
she had dropped her sword.