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Our aerial tour of Kiata was over, and Khramelan had the gall to land in the middle of Gindara’s commercial square—right in front of the capital’s temple. The crowds parted in waves, screaming in terror as they ran. Carts toppled, mules and horses crashed into streetlamps, and boats in the canals rammed into one another, crates of precious cargo tumbling into the water.
The earth shook under Khramelan’s feet, and lanterns and rusted green tiles fell from the temple’s eaves. He deposited Takkan and me on a spice merchant’s tent.
“You asked for my help?” he said amid the screams. “This is it. You are welcome.”
“How is this help?” was all I could manage. My gut had gone up to my throat, and I could hardly hold in my nausea from Khramelan’s erratic flying.
He turned his back to me. “I’ve lived in a nightmare for sixteen years, and your country’s been in a dream for a thousand. Everyone needs to wake up.”
Those were the last words he spoke to me before he vaulted back into the sky.
Stones and oranges and melons pelted after the demon, and I knew that once he was out of sight, they’d be aimed at me. Takkan and I had started to climb down from the tent when something rose behind the striped purple canopy.
The pearl. Perhaps it was a trick of the sun, but I swore that it slanted its crack to face me, and its light winked. A “you’re welcome” of sorts, for all the trouble it had wrought upon my life.
Then it blasted after Khramelan, who was hovering just below the clouds, and enveloped the half demon in a flash of light. At last, he began to transform.
His scales suddenly shone, turning from black as onyx to blue-green like a forest of sapphire and jade. The spikes on his wings were sanded away, and when his wings parted, I saw that his eyes too had changed. They were mismatched—one a crisp blue, like the sky above us, and the other still red, though no longer the demon blood-red it had once been. The color was warmer, deeper. An eye befitting a dragon.
The arrows came to a halt, the flying stones and oranges too. Fear slowly turned into awe, and adults and children alike crawled out of their hiding places to watch the sight unfolding.
“A dragon!” they murmured. “A dragon!”
A few people began bowing, and priestesses and monks from the temple prayed aloud. Drums pounded, and bells chimed, and some of the elderly were even crying.
“The gods have returned.”
“Quick, make a wish. Wish on the luck of the dragons.”
“By the Strands, a demon transforming into a dragon? It’s a sign from the heavens!”
I flattened my palms against the tent to lean forward. My attention turned from Khramelan to the people; I was astonished by how rapidly their reactions had changed toward him.
“I guess Seryu was right about how much people love dragons,” I remarked to Kiki as she perched lightly on my head. A bittersweet tightness returned to my chest. “Can you imagine how smug he’d be if he were here? He’d be insufferable.”
He’d be collecting coins, said Kiki. She pointed a wing at someone on the street. Look, one person already is. I bet they’ll be selling dragon masks everywhere by the end of the day.
That made me chuckle.
“Shiori,” Takkan whispered, nudging my attention toward the temple pavilion where my brothers had landed. “Look.”
They were changing too, their enchantment finally undone. For the last time, their feathers smoothed into flesh, and their wings melted into human arms and legs. The crimson crowns on their heads blackened into mops of hair that badly needed to be washed.
“Andahai!” I cried, jumping down and running. “Benben, Reiji, Wandei, Yotan! Hasho!”
Before my brothers could even rise to their feet, I threw my arms around Wandei and Benkai—the closest to me—and hugged them tight.
“Our bones are still stretching, sister,” Wandei said with a cringe. “We could use a moment.”
I let him go, but only to hug Yotan and Reiji. Hasho kept his arm behind his back, but he smiled so widely I did not ask what was wrong.
In the distance, Khramelan gave a small, almost imperceptible nod. His wings were gone, but he could fly, his body kept afloat by the pearl, whole at last, shimmering in his chest.
He launched into the sky, threading into the clouds and disappearing among the birds—the same as he’d done in Channari’s memory.
Dragon and pearl had been reunited, my promise to Raikama kept.
As I turned to join the others, a silvery ray of light danced over my arm, illuminating a bracelet of red threads on my wrist. Two shone brighter than the rest: the one connecting me to Takkan, and the other…to an unseen end high above the clouds.
