DARKHAVEN | "Three Sisters" Book One

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Roslin

The world was shaking.

No, not the world this time.

Just Roslin. Hands were on her, shaking her, and a voice—or many voices, actually—were calling her name.

"Roslin," they called again, again, again. "Get up, get up! We did it! You did it!"

We did? she thought even before the world came into focus. We did?

Only moments had passed since...since the banishing. Since—

Roslin bolted upright. Her senses were coming back to her. She was on the floor of the Great Hall, the grimy red carpet beneath her stained with blood and weeks of filth and wine. Her father and his men knelt around her, and Aleksander, too.

"My sisters," she managed hoarsely to Aleksander as the recognition of his face clicked into place. "Find my sisters."

Aleksander's eyes were swimming. "You three—"

Her father stood so suddenly that the movement startled Roslin. "You heard her," he barked. "Find the other two!"

"The lake," she told him from her spot on the floor. "And the sanctum—there's a sanctum below the castle, below the dungeons. But it's easy to get lost—"

"The lake and the dungeons!" yelled the man who was as familiar as he was unfamiliar. "Go!"

And then, head still spinning, Roslin remembered the detail that had felt so unreal that she'd thought, for these few moments, that she had dreamt it.

But when she saw Aleksander looking over her shoulder, she knew it wasn't a dream at all.

She turned, and there was Lord Novak, still in that great, golden, beastly form. Torren approached him with his hands up. "M'lord?" asked the red-bearded ranger, who had returned with Daeron's men. "You...you in there, m'lord?"

The beast snarled in response. Smoke blew from his nostrils when they flared, and wicked sharp teeth snarled.

Roslin pushed herself onto her feet, leaving her father, Aleksander, and the others behind as she staggered toward the once-Lord.

He turned as if sensing her.

His eyes saw her, but she...she wasn't sure he did.

"Lord Novak," Roslin said, approaching. "Thank you. This is—incredible. I can't believe—"

His wings flapped and he threw back his head. A warning.

With a shaky breath, Roslin held out her hand. "I see what you are," she told him, "but it's time for you to come back now."

The dragon stared at her. The only movement came from his eyes, which darted back and forth across her comparatively small form.

"Come back, my Lord," she urged him gently, reaching for his muzzle. "Come back to us." Her fingers traced the golden scales there, hot beneath her touch. He was gigantic. Monstrously so. Roslin had to rock onto her tip-toes to touch his face, and had he unfurled to his true height, she would not have been able to reach him at all.

"You did well," she told him. "Come back to me, now."

Novak turned away.

He turned, instead, to the gaping hole in the castle where the doors to the Great Hall had once been. One now hung from a singular, bent hinge, while the other had been flung into the hallway and buried beneath the rubble.

He moved toward those doors.

"My Lord—" Roslin stepped forward and threw her hands up. "Don't. Please. I know—I know you're still in there. Don't leave us, don't leave me. We need you here."

Novak was studying her with those green dragon's eyes. The beast had always been visible behind the Lord's eyes, hadn't it?

And now, the Lord wasn't visible behind the beast's eyes.

He turned again. Without thinking, Roslin lunged forward, reached up, and caught him by the lowermost horns that jutted from the sides of his jaws. "Don't," she told him, her voice high and pleading. "I know you're still in there, my Lord. I know it."

His words came, then, clear as day in her mind.

Goodbye, human.

It was not the voice of the Novak that Roslin had known.

Not the voice of the human body that had contained him.

The dragon jerked his head from her grip, turned his focus again toward the doors, and took off at a run. People dove out of his way as he tore a path through the hall, not caring who or what he barreled through.

Wordlessly, Roslin raced after him, but she was hurt and he was faster.

He cleared the doors, beat his great wings three times, and with a single leap, soared into the air.

Roslin watched him go. Watched him disappear into the sky. Her voice finally cracked when she yelled, helplessly, "Come back!"

The beast climbed higher as those golden wings carried him toward the lilac sliver of horizon, toward the rising sun. He burned bright and brilliant against the starless sky, a creature too vast, too ancient, too other to be bound by mortal cries.

Onlookers had gathered, too. Roslin didn't notice who had come, nor did she hear what they were saying.

Her vision blurred, and for a moment, her Lord was nothing but a glint of gold against an endless sea of dark, unending blue. She blinked hard, forcing her eyes to stay open. She wouldn't look away.

"Goodbye, my Lord."

Roslin watched until there was nothing left of him. Nothing at all. No beast. No man. No monster. Only sky.