The kingdom isn’t completely in ruins. Not yet. Hopefully, it will stay that way. But if it doesn’t, Vihira will rebuild. She sits straighter atop Esmerys’s back, braces her armored boots against both crooks of the dragon’s wings, and takes in the wreckage on the ground far beneath them.

Bodies piled on scorched battlefields, all clad in the same drab gray livery bearing the King’s crest on their shoulders. They’re blood-stained and limp.

No survivors, she’d said. And there were none.

Then there are those still standing, lining up in four sections at the bottom of a hill toward the forest they stormed out of hours ago, all dressed for battle in their armored coats as blue as the Laskavan Sea. That color belongs to Vihira’s followers. She wears a matching coat, embroidered in silver along the sleeves. It sets off the brown of her skin, high collar meant to protect against the cold of the rushing wind.

Those are her people down there. Her victors. Pride pulses in her veins, riding the beats of her heart. Is this happiness? she thinks. It is addictive. Esmerys grumbles, and Vihira feels it more than she hears it due to the wind. Esmerys banks sharply left, and air cuts at Vihira’s skin, whips her warrior braids behind her.

Minutes ago, the world was drenched in dragonfire. Up here, with Esmerys, is the closest to freedom she’s ever been. She only lets herself feel peace for a moment before pressing a hand to the obsidian scales of Esmerys’s neck. Down, she thinks. Understanding ripples through their bond. Vihira braces herself for the small moment her body becomes weightless as Esmerys’s horns dip from view, then she’s forced against her dragon’s back as they descend toward the hill.

Her people wait for her. Esmerys lands with a natural delicacy, and Vihira squares her shoulders before sliding off her back behind her wing. They stand together on tattered ground, a legion below them. When Vihira faces the army that she’s fostered for years, the people who’ve just won this battle with her, she’s reminded of where it all began.

Her sister’s voice reaches for her right out of the pool of the past, lapping against her memory.

 

“They are coming for me,” La said years ago and half-way across the world. They were hiding in the shared bedroom of their stone house. At their feet was a trapdoor that was usually covered with a vibrant woven rug. But that night, the rug was tossed aside, and the door was open. It led to tunnels Vihira knew well. Had to know well, for a situation like this.

It was near midnight. Soldiers barked orders outside the barred window, stomped ugly footprints into the empty mud streets. La tensed in front of her, and moonbeams bent around her form. The soldiers were close. They’d find their home soon.

“Don’t go with them,” Vihira said again and again, gripping her sister’s tunic, chest heaving. La rested her hands over Vihira’s and held her gaze. She had their mother’s black eyes, soft and round, and their father’s hair, inky like raven feathers. Vihira didn’t remember their parents’ deaths, but it still ached to see their features in her sister.

“I must,” La said, voice watery, “and you have to run away from here. Get the bag we packed behind the western stable and don’t stop moving until you’re in Krishani, just like we talked about. Okay?” Vihira nodded. Despite how much she wanted to be strong, she felt her face crumpling, and La pulled her against her chest. “Let yourself live. Make sure of it. They don’t know about you, yet, so this is your chance to slip away. Take it.”

Vihira squeezed her sister and wished with everything she had that they could stay in this moment. That they wouldn’t have to stay goodbye. That La could come with her. But Vihira knew that was pointless. The guards would catch them both then. They’d seen what La could do, felt her power and watched it move the earth, singe the air.

It was hopeless. They’d never stop until she was dead.

Vihira couldn’t swallow down her sorrow as La gently rocked them in place, filthy clothes sticking to their skin in the Wilaki heat.

La was only eighteen. Vihira was barely ten. Simply because they were born different, they were feared. Damned to die because magic had chosen to give them a glimpse of a gift. La rested her chin atop Vihira’s head, buried her nose in her wiry braids. “If I could, I’d steal all the fear in the world so that you might never feel it again,” La said. Vihira would do that, too, but for La instead.

In the main room of the house, a fist thumped against the door. The sisters froze.

“Open up,” shouted a soldier.

“Now,” La said sternly, “climb down. Go!”

Vihira’s arms tightened around La’s thin waist. “I can’t leave you.”

La pried out of her grip and cupped Vihira’s face in her hands as soldiers pounded again. “I don’t want you to go, but you must. Please.” Vihira stepped out of her embrace, a sob clinging in her throat. La nodded at her, mouth stretching into a shaky smile. “They won’t notice you. I promise. They’re only here for me. Go.” Something big thumped against the door. Vihira closed her eyes against the sound and turned to the hole in the floor. Squeezing her hands into fists, she stepped down the rotten wooden stairs into the cramped tunnels that led to the main system beneath the city. When her slippered feet touched loose dirt, she inhaled the damp must of the shadowed path. She turned to stare up at La, lips trembling.

La kneeled over the hole, that wobbling smile still on her face. The trapdoor’s hinges protested as La began to shut it, but she stopped herself. Vihira had a horrible hope that she’d changed her mind, and they’d run away together, even if they’d get caught in the end. But then La’s shoulders shrunk inwards against the sound of soldiers yelling and wood cracking from the front door. Tears slipped down her cheeks. “Remember, Vi. Anaha’alin naivishi. Kuva uiha’alin akan.” The night is not a close. It is a pathway into tomorrow. An old Lanayu proverb their father used to whisper to them before bed.

Vihira had never understood true anguish until that moment. “La—”

“We will be together again,” La said in a rush. Then she shut her eyes tight and closed the door, sliding the lock into place with a dull thunk. Vihira flinched. Her heart felt as if it had shattered.

That was the last time Vihira ever saw her sister. She didn’t stay to hear the soldiers break their door and drag her sister out of their home. She stumbled around in the dark for hours before she found the tunnel that led to the west side of the city, where she surfaced and made her way to the stable to retrieve her bag. Only when she was in a deserted field close to Krishani and dawn broke over the world did she stop and sink to the ground, unable to hold back her grief any longer.

She felt as if her bones vibrated. The grass around her wilted.

No, not now. Please.

Vihira imagined wrapping her arms around a body, a physical aura outside of herself, and reining it back in like La had tried to teach her, but she was too tired to control it. She knew what was about to happen. As if she was trying to build a house out of dry sand, Vihira was helpless as she watched the field turn gray and lifeless, eaten away under the thick waves of power leaking out of her skin. It only made her eyes sting more, fresh tears spilling over.

This gift, La had it as well. It was why the soldiers took her. To kill her. Or worse. Vihira didn’t understand it then—just how different they were from the others with gifts. This was not an elemental power. It was something more.

It was pure energy. Something the world had not yet seen.

Vihira flexed her hands open and closed, attempted to match her breaths to the rhythm.

It wasn’t fair that they were hunted for something they didn’t choose to be.

It wasn’t right.

They weren’t demons, not like the world deemed them. They were just people, and they deserved to be free like everyone else. She buried her fingers into the tangled braids at her scalp and saw the soil at her feet squirm. It made her stomach flip with unease.

She couldn’t stop it.

Why me? Why La?

She felt her gift crawling behind her ribs, searching for a way out. She curled her knees closer to her chest.

Why?

Her pulse kicked in her veins. Nausea swelled in her.

Why?

Vihira didn’t know what else to do. So, she screamed.

The sky shook.

Vihira gasped, and a sudden calm washed over her as she looked upward, expecting catastrophe. A strong breeze rolled over the area, and the sun was out. Everything seemed normal. But Vihira knew she had caused whatever just happened. It came from her.

Things were quiet after that. A numbness settled inside her. Vihira sat there until her angry stomach forced her to unpack some of the food in her bag to settle it, and then she moved on.

It was that day, as she stepped into the tree line and left the dead field that she found resolve. One day, she told herself, the world will be different. I’ll make it different. Even if I die trying.

Vihira spent months on her own, wandering from town to town, staying far from the Key Road that drove straight through the heart of the country of Lanayu. Her strange magic grew stronger as the years passed. She learned how to survive on her own, how to keep secrets for the sake of her soul. She witnessed the horrors done to those who had gifts, saw the way they—the ones like her, but unlike her with their powers—were enslaved. Murdered. She saw and she didn’t forget. For her people, for her sister, Vihira vowed to change the world.

 

Vihira stands tall next to Esmerys, the crown of her head reaching up to the dragon’s shoulders. Sorrow lingers in her, and Esmerys twists her long neck around to stare at her head-on, waiting for her to make the first move. To take the first step. Her iridescent scales catch in the honeyed twilight. Vihira’s eyes meet hers, and she feels a pang of nostalgia in her chest. Ever since they’d found each other a decade ago, there was something familiar about Esmerys that Vihira couldn’t place. But she recognizes it now, in the light of her fiery breath. In the distinct tempo her twin hearts beat. The protective glint in her prideful eyes. They’re all shades of La.

Somehow, in the span of one lifetime, Vihira found a soul reminiscent of one she loved and was forced to let go. It’s what Vihira sees presently in Esmerys’s gaze that grants her the strength to shake free of the cage of her mind and focus on what’s before her. What lies ahead.

The clarity of the present comes crashing in. The wind dances through trees around the large clearing, bushing them into song. She can smell the ash that Esmerys left in the wake of her dragonfire, the heavy scent of the warzone. Exhausted faces stare up at her from the bottom of the hill. Their fists hover over their hearts—the salute of the Followers to their leader. To her. In the distance behind them, in the hazy, dying light of the day, is the capital of Lanayu. The crimson spires of the castle pierce the clouds.

This was her goal. This is what she’s fought for. The kingdom is close, just out of reach. So, so close. Esmerys rests back on her haunches directly behind her, leathery wings rustling as she stretches them out to either side of her body. Vihira looks down at her people and sees awe angled up at her from the crowd. She knows what she must look like. The last known dragon, framing her in her wings. The ruthless bender of all energy, jeweled rings woven in her braids, her cowl stitched with Esmerys’s scales and billowing around her. To them, she is an entity.

The reality of it drips down her throat, rich like molten gold, a most dangerous form of glory. She uses it to fuel the words that leave her lips.

“Comrades,” she says. “Too long have the ungifted looked at us and feared, instead of marveled. Too long have our people suffered because of this. We were enslaved and tortured. Put to death. All because we were more.” Vihira waits until the hiss of agreement passes through the crowd then addresses each faction. “The sky-wielders, who represent freedom and peace. Earth-benders, who capture immensity and foster tenderness. Sea-movers, who embody certainty and show true harmony. And the flame-casters, who birth courage and challenge terror. You all know we were not allowed excuses—they didn’t care if we were harmless and wanted to live our lives unbothered. Peacefully. We were demons for simply existing. As if we asked to be born into this world,” Vihira yells. “As if we wanted this burden.” A resounding cry reaches her, rattling against her skull and stoking a terrifying flame inside her.

“But they did not expect for us to fight back,” she says, raking her gaze across the crowd. “These wounds of ours are too deep to heal.” She spreads her arms out, and reaches deep within her, to the core where her magic waits. “I’ve promised you shelter from chaos and strife. A home, and a place in this world. A day where you will no longer have to ask, ‘Will I ever be something?’” The power comes to her, slithering from her very bones, stretching beneath her skin. “That day is upon us. The answer you seek is that you already are. You always were. And now you will have time to be.”

A collective shout bursts from the crowd. “Ta!”

The air around her fingers grows menacingly hot, and Vihira exhales, bringing her hands together in front of her chest. “Freedom is ours. No longer will we suffer under the lawless axe of the ungifted. What we are, what we fight for, will live forever.” The world darkens, as if the last sliver of the sun on the horizon had been forced into hiding, and night was dragged in to play. Black tides of clouds roll in above them. Energy crackles at Vihira’s fingers. Her vision sharpens, and she tastes embers on her tongue. “We are deathless. They are not.”

Vihira sees her people tense just before she throws her arms wide.

Lightning tears through the sky. Thunder crashes. Esmerys roars behind her. Vihira watches the terrifying waltz above her, knowing if she snapped her fingers, electricity would answer her call. The world would bend for her. To the crowd, Vihira says: “They feared us when we were nothing but a tranquil people. Now we will give them something to fear. Ta!”

“Ta, Vihira!”

For Lanayu, Vihira says to herself. For La. Her people chant a cry of war. The ground rumbles as Esmerys steps to Vihira’s side, extending a wing for her to climb upon her back. Once seated at the base of her neck, Vihira raises a fist in the air, and streaks of lightning crack, spitting at the distant earth.

“Tonight, we take the capitol,” Vihira shouts. “Tomorrow, we live free for the first time.”

Her people raise their fists with her. Esmerys bends, muscles coiling beneath Vihira’s hips.

“You know the plan, Comrades.” Vihira says. Energy writhes around her, ready to answer her call. “The king is mine. Show mercy to those who recognize where true power lies. Any who don’t surrender—slaughter them.”

And Esmerys launches into the sky.