Silence Falls (Sequel to Promise the Sky)

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Kia

It ends.

Drake sees it first, but it is my body that reacts. It is my arms that drop to my sides, allowing Geraint’s dagger to clatter onto the cobbles, and it is my heart that stops. It is my soul that tears.

And still it ends: this fight, the world. Everything.

A breath trickles out past my ear, a heavy, poisoned breath. It’s a breath of wonder and it’s a breath of defeat, it’s the first of the last, and I can hear Geraint’s shudder right to its very core.

“So that’s it, then,” he says.

“That’s it then,” I reply.

No one speaks. It happens around us, it happens to us, and I just allow myself to slip to the floor in silence. Nothing can stop it happening. Null's palm settles firmly down on Viper's skull, like the judge's gavel, and I cannot help but think how fitting it is that, even in his demise, he finishes with his own hand of fate.

I try and look away but Geraint does not allow it, pressing his palm softly into the small of my back as he crouches down to my side. “Watch it,” he whispers, “if you have the means to do so.”

“Why? So I can tell my children I was here? Or so I can tell them it’s my fault that it happened?”

“So you can tell yourself that you tried. We shan't be living long enough to have children, Kia.”

I say nothing, just trying to pretend I don’t believe him. Dimly I realise that the silence is only in my head. Elsewhere, people are screaming. It’s chaos: a damp, foggy chaos that cannot quite penetrate comprehension.

“Watch it,” Geraint repeats and, eventually, I do.

Viper wakes. The future ends.

Her bones shimmer with consciousness, a toxic pond of half memories and tiny movements that fool the eyes and chill the blood. It makes me sick. And what makes me sicker is the expression on Drake’s reptilian face. As he senses my attention upon him he turns his head with a flick but it’s already too late. I have seen the worship in his eyes.

My stomach knots.

But she demands too much attention in this moment, just for the now. I have to leave it alone, stop doubting him, and concentrate on her return to the world.

The air shimmers around her, sparkling like ocean spray. It's heaving, breathing, changing. She's coiling, broiling, living.

And that hot, potent mixture of magic and wind combines with her life, his death, and destiny. In the very moment that Null stops being Null, the Viper becomes the Viper, glorious and strong once again.

The heat ripples around her: once twice and then it's air no more but rather skin. It's strong, armoured, reptilian skin. And it continues to swell as the rest of her life fills out beneath it. She remains translucent until the very last moment until, suddenly, she exists.

She's beautiful, though I hate to admit it. She's a beautiful, deadly Viper, and I can see it in the scarlet fire of her eyes alone. Drake grows by the day, and though his shoulders would brush the eaves of any house, she still towers over him, resplendent in her red and gold.

But there is something about her that is not as the stories told. She is everything else that I expected. She is strong and noble and imperious and proud. She towers over an entire square of panicked people and yet, in her eyes, I can see that they do not even exist. Her heart has not changed, her size has not changed, but her scales are different. That gold still remains beneath, it is almost blinding in the sunlight, but it is no longer flawless colour. It is no longer perfect, it is no longer pristine.