“I will let you touch me every time we meet,” she said, her voice receding. “One day, I will let you unleash that monstrous temper and take what you want from my body. Take from me. I will be yours completely.”
“Fix the Chasm. How?”
“You kill for me. Whenever I ask. No matter who it is. You’ll behead one Dragon King after another. We will rid our people of those who sow discord and hatred. Only when we achieve unity will we be able to heal what has been bleeding for thousands of years. Our people. I command you just as the Dragon commands me.”
She’d won. Even without the miracle of witnessing their Creator, the tingle up his spine whispered that she would’ve won anyway. She always would.
“I’ll be hated. I’ll have to flee. Leave my family. I’ll never have a home after tonight.”
The Sun blew him a kiss before fading into darkness. “Yes, dear one, but you will always have me.”
CHAPTER
ONE
Kavya’s thoughts were weighted by responsibility, and the ever-pressing knowledge that the Dragon Kings were a people on the edge of extinction. That meant the collection of faithful gathered in a craggy notch in the Pir Panjal foothills of the Himalayas was exceptional. From her secluded place behind an altar made of burnished orange granite, Kavya extended her awareness into the vast crowd.
She was especially heartened to feel so many assembled from the Indranan, one of the Dragon’s sacred Five Clans. Her clan. The telepathic Indranan had been divided for three thousand years of civil war. Northern versus Southern factions. And for reasons every Dragon King knew too well, they were collectively known as the Heartless.
Although physically sluggish from bearing the mantle of her duties, Kavya cleared her consciousness of outside thoughts. She would need the full extent of her limited telepathy for the task awaiting her. Today was special. Intimidatingly so. She would make her first appearance before these hundreds who’d traveled the globe to see her in person.
To see the woman they’d dubbed the Sun.
Kavya waited until exactly noon to ascend the altar’s few makeshift granite steps. This moment was her burden and her joy.
Standing tall, she sucked in a shallow breath. “So many.”
Before her extended a valley, like a deep bowl being held by rocky, jutting fingers. Evergreens were scattered throughout, but few dared set their roots in the valley’s steep walls. Worn canvas tents of varying sizes were packed side by side—countless grains of rice in that mountain bowl, seasoned by smoke from small cooking fires. Despite having grown up in some of India’s most populous cities, Kavya had never witnessed an assembly to rival this, with so many minds and senses working in concert, focused as one.
On her.
A gust of cold air rushed down from the slopes. Whispers—those given voice and those passed from mind to mind—faded to nothing. That late autumn wind blowing through crevices became the only sound.
“So many of you,” she said, with volume enough to be heard. “Welcome. Oh, thank the Dragon. Welcome.”
She worked to steady the pitch and cadence of her voice. She hadn’t dubbed herself the Sun, but that’s what most had come to expect—radiance and incandescent light. Kavya had fostered that image for years, for her own anonymous safety and to promote the growing influence of her cause. People responded to symbols even more readily than to earnest people. People could have agendas; symbols had the power to transcend suspicions born of rational thought.
She needed to become everything to everyone. No sudden movements. No reason for anyone to turn around and walk up the valley pass.
Especially the Indranan.
Her head already throbbed from the effort. After all, she had been born as one of three triplets. She possessed only a third of the Dragon’s gift.
“I’m humbled by the distances you’ve traveled and the seas, mountains, and plains you’ve crossed to join me here. You are the first of a new age. Northern and Southern Indranan together, sharing the same air and the same hopes for a future forged of trust, not continued spite. Some of you come to us from the other four clans. I welcome you and ask for your aid as we of the Indranan work to heal old hurts.”
Even members of Clan Garnis were present. They were known as the Lost, but they weren’t extinct. She could pick out those rare minds as if finding diamonds among dust. They were skittish among the press of so many bodies.