Page 99 of House of the Iron Reaper

“Hide in the tunnel,” I tell her. “The arena will not break, you’ll be safe there.”

She looks nervously between Novalie and I before grabbing the front of my shirt.

“Please,” she says, trembling. “Please keep her safe.”

I look her in the eyes.

“Always.”

I ease her fingers from my shirt and she runs for the tunnel, stumbling as she looks back. I turn to Aythora.

Done with Lysandra, she looks at us. I push Novalie behind me, nervously eyeing my mother. Black blood coats the ground and her arm is bent awkwardly. She remains still but I can see the brief rise and fall of her chest. Relief floods me. She’s alive.

“Move, Novalie,” Aythora rumbles. “I have no need to kill you.”

“You had no need to kill anyone!” Novalie shouts back, trying to push past me.

Aythora shakes her head.

“You do not understand now, but you will. We will work harder, train harder, and you will Ascend, like a dragon of the upper Houses should. You will be an incredible weapon.” Aythora pauses, and the angry red of her krata glows through her rocky skin. “Now, move.”

“Novalie, do as she says,” I plead.

“If I leave, she will kill you,” she says. “I will go nowhere.”

Aythora breathes smoke through her nose.

“So be it.”

I only have a second to react but a second is all I need. I spin and throw myself over Novalie, sending us both to the ground. Fire roars over us, screaming across my back. The pain is blinding but I grit my teeth and focus.

Keep Novalie safe.

Some dragons spend their entire lives chasing that clarity of mind, my father once told me. But I have it when I look at her. Keep her safe—nothing else matters.

Faeth pours from my skin. I grow bigger, and bigger, wings sprouting. I fold them over Novalie as I hunch over her, keeping her under me, keeping her safe.

“Dey!” she screams, thumping at my chest. “Stop!”

I don’t. I won’t.

Aythora’s fire is relentless, curling over me and peeling the scales from my skin. I squeeze my teeth together through the pain.

“It’s okay,” I say, voice lilting with a groan. “It’s okay.”

And it is. Even as she beats at my chest and screams, as tears pour down her temples, as the flesh sloughs from my back. It’s okay. I think of my father, hunched over me and whispering as I now whisper to Novalie, and a weight lifts so quickly from me, it nearly leaves me breathless.

The fault does not matter—only that I would give myself to protect her, always. I understand my father now, better than I ever have.

“Svellenta,” I whisper, and the world goes dark.

Chapter 52

Ronan

Obsidian House. Obsidian House. Obsidian House.

Tearing through the streets in wolf-form, I spy the glint of black under the pearly moonlight. It gleams a strange purple-green. That must be it.