Mercy straightened her back. “I know my weaknesses better now, and I’ve already started to train my Dream of Darkness again. In the future, I will do my best to represent you better.”
“In the future?” Malice asked. “You’ve failed already.”
The Monarch spoke offhandedly, but Mercy’s heart tightened.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
Malice sighed. “Failure can be a teacher, and of course one can try one’s best and still fail. There is no such thing as an undefeated warrior. But you have my Book. You carry my bow. You represent me. Should you be treated as though you were victorious?”
Mercy happened to think defeat was often punishment enough, and there was no point in disciplining someone who had tried their best.
But then…had Mercy tried her best? It could be hard to tell. She felt like she had, but what if she hadn’t been motivated enough? What if she could have done more?
“There is no physical punishment that could motivate you,” Malice went on, “but you must feel the sting of failure if you are ever to appreciate success.”
Around the room, shadows opened into windows that looked out onto other locations. Other people.
Purple eyes turned in surprise as miniature portals appeared next to other members of the Akura clan. Whatever was about to happen, Malice was displaying it to dozens of people, and Mercy’s cheeks began to burn in shame already.
Aunt Charity appeared, looking faintly disturbed, but she said nothing. When the window appeared next to Fury, he glanced at it and then waved it closed. Pride scowled through his own window.
Then Mercy saw a window opening onto Yerin and forced herself not to squeeze her eyes shut. Malice was spreading her punishment to a wide audience, not just the family.
And she dreaded the window that was going to open next. It would be Lindon, she knew it. Yerin was one thing, but if he witnessed Mercy being punished by her mother like a little girl, that would be even more mortifying.
She waited in agony for the next window to open.
It never did, which was one tiny relief.
Malice’s eyes shone purple in the darkness. “Mercy. Let the family witness my displeasure. You have dragged the Akura name through the mud. Though you use the Book of Eternal Night, though you carry my own bow into battle, even so you failed. You are a disappointment to me, and to all of my descendants.
“You have let me down, and you have let the family down. You will dedicate your mind and soul to repaying this debt, or you will no longer have the right to call yourself my daughter.”
Mercy kept her eyes fixed on the ground.
She said the only words she could possibly say in that moment: “Yes, Mother.”
Lindon stepped into a towering pillar of darkness alongside Eithan, Mercy, and Fury.
As he’d experienced back in the Night Wheel Valley, all his senses disappeared. He was blind and deaf to the world, unable to feel even his body. Only he and Dross drifted in endless darkness.
Not only did Charity have to stay and train Yerin, but Fury needed to return to Sky’s Edge faster than a Sage could carry him.
Even a Monarch couldn’t transport them there directly without a permanent portal, but she could put them on the continent at least. From what Lindon gathered, they would emerge somewhere in the western Blackflame Empire.
[I wonder if we’ll fly over your home!] Dross said happily.
With a strange rush, Lindon realized they just might.
Of course, they might not. They were talking about many thousands of square miles and hundreds of possible routes, so there was nothing to guarantee that they would come out anywhere near Sacred Valley.
But the idea of possibly seeing Samara’s ring in the distance as they traveled by filled him with a strange excitement.
When the darkness lifted, they were standing on the dune of a strange desert. The corner of a building stuck up from the sand alongside a startled-looking creature bigger than Lindon. It resembled a cross between a mole and a lizard, and when it saw them—or maybe when it sensed Fury—it clawed its way rapidly down into the dune.
Lindon felt power radiating from above him, and he looked up.
Miles across the desert, huge green stalks rose from the sand. They stood higher than Elder Whisper’s tower back home, and at the top bloomed massive flowers supporting what looked like cities.
If they hadn’t been under such a time limit, Lindon would have wanted a closer look. Mercy shaded her eyes to stare at the flowers and made noises of amazement.
Fury stretched his arms up and yawned. “Okay, let’s get on with it. Who’s got a cloudship?”
“I have been reliably informed that mine is one of the fastest in the world,” Eithan said. He swept his arm in a grandiose gesture, and a gold light manifested over the sand next to him. It looked like the Remnant of a ship for a moment, until it solidified into the real thing.
It was a sleek and opulent ship, made of dark polished wood and outlined in gold, and it looked sized to carry ten or fifteen people. The cloud beneath it was a bright white-gold, and the prow was carved into a snarling lion of white and gold.
“The decorations leave something to be desired,” Eithan observed.
Fury gave him a sidelong glance that Lindon would have called disgusted. “At least you’re good for something.” Then he leaped aboard.
Lindon had never heard Fury speak in a less than friendly tone to anyone but an enemy Herald. Mercy noticed his surprise and sighed.
“He doesn’t like anyone who gives up. For any reason.”
“I got his mother’s permission, but that doesn’t mean getting everyone’s approval.” Eithan shrugged. “Ah, well. I have nothing if not confidence in my likeable demeanor.”
Lindon suddenly worried if Eithan would survive all the way to Sky’s Edge.
The trip would take almost nine hours, which surprised Lindon. That wasn’t much faster than when Charity had taken him to Sky’s Edge before.
But, as Dross reminded him, there was a significant difference between transporting two people and four. If Charity had been the one to send them instead of Malice, it might have taken them an entire day to arrive.
For the first few hours, Fury napped as Eithan lurked nearby and made continual comments about how nice the weather was and how it would be a shame to sleep the day away. At one point, Fury tossed him off the side of the ship.
Lindon cycled the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel until he could stand it no longer. Then he worked on his armor as Little Blue ran around the deck, which ended when she almost pitched over the railing. After that, he kept her in eyesight and chatted with Mercy.
Eventually, the topic turned to their purpose in Sky’s Edge.
“I was surprised to see that Fury made it to see your match,” Lindon said. “I thought he had to stay and keep the Abyssal Palace Herald in check.”
Mercy idly extended a String of Shadow and watched it flutter in the wind. “Everyone is playing by the rules for now because of Penance. If a Herald kills all our Lords, he’s made himself a prime target if we end up with the weapon.” She gave a heavy sigh. “But you can’t lean on your enemy’s restraint for long, so we still need to be back before the dragons get there.”
She was more subdued than usual, and Lindon knew she was thinking about her loss.
But he’d been wondering about the dragons’ strategy. It was too expensive to transport a whole flight of dragons through space, so they would be making a trip across an entire continent.
And…why? They had nothing to gain from the Dreadgod. They couldn’t even kill Fury, in case Yerin won the tournament and decided to get revenge by using it on their Monarch.
So what were they thinking?
When he asked Mercy, she gave a deeper, heavier sigh. “It’s like Northstrider told us: dragons would rather burn a field to the ground than give their enemies a bite to eat. Or however he put it. They have nothing to gain, but as long as we’ll lose out just as much, they’re happy to do it.”