18. The quest.
The quest.
HARLOW
I must admit, for a moment there, I lost track of what I was doing here in the first place, of why I became a dragoner and a fire scrounger. I got distracted by Jayce’s addictive presence and attention—who wouldn’t? Look at him!—and life found a way to rub it in my face and remind me of my quest.
The aristocrat who is enraging dragons was here in Mandinka with his airship—possibly even the one I met a few days ago, if my instinct is right. My friend from university, Alfred, was too suspicious and cagey during the entire evening, as if he was ashamed of his work. I should have followed them.
Freddy leaves for the shipyard while we all gather our belongings, and he comes back with the news that Wilbur has dismantled the liquid-fire engine for a deep clean, and it’ll take both of them all night to put it back together.
But the shipwrights have repaired the hull damage, and the Blunder will fly at sunrise.
Discomfort slithers under my skin. What if we lose track of them again? What if they steal another egg, and more people and their homes are set ablaze by dragonfire?
Jayce notices my unease during dinner. He brought food to the shipyard for Wilbur and Freddy earlier, who are hard at work—only two people can fit in the small engine room, three if one of them isn’t a giant—and we waited for him.
“We’ll find them,” he says to me over the table.
“I just need proof. I need evidence of what they’re doing, and why, so I can denounce them to the guild.”
Attacking dragons, no matter the reason, is a serious offense since the Reign of Fire.
“What is their next destination?” he asks.
“There are two females north of the Frost Peak. They fly to Koryu’s territory hoping to mate with him, but sometimes have to cross the ocean to find another male. No one has reported a hatchling in years, suggesting they may have been laying eggs recently.”
It takes two years for an egg to hatch with constant care from its mother, who breathes fire to keep her nest of embers at the cosy temperature of an oven. If my hypothesis is right, they stole Alduin’s egg a few days before we visited her lair, explaining why her nest was already cold.
“Then choose one, and we’ll give the dragon’s territory a visit—cautiously,” Jayce says. “What kind of proof do you need?”
“Visual confirmation should do it at first. I’m a dragoner, so the guild will trust my judgement and open an investigation. But the stolen egg would be even better, so if we can board their airship to get our hands on it or even capture one of their crew members…”
“It sounds like acts of piracy, Your Royal Highness.”
“I can pay you more…” I’ll give them everything that I have if needed…
Jayce smiles roguishly. “Count us in.”
By evening, as the weary travelers vacate the common room, I still linger in front of the fireplace, hesitant to go to sleep. I don’t know if I should just go to my room, or to Jayce’s. Was it a onetime thing or are we..?
One of Gia’s rules of the game of seduction is to make yourself desirable by your absence. Give them a taste, then pull back long enough to let them miss you. In theory, you can worm your way into their brain one encounter at a time in less than a week.
But what if I really want to spend time with him? I’m fucked, aren’t I? Gia was right; it’s too easy to get caught up in the game, and I’m losing it…
I’m still arguing with myself in my head when Jayce spares me the dilemma by grabbing me by the hand. “Let’s get to bed, Your Royal Highness.”
Butterflies flutter in my stomach as I follow him upstairs.
Some part of me feels guilty at being this happy while Kuroki got his heart broken by Wilbur, but were our situation reversed, I would want him to enjoy it.
He was ecstatic earlier, whispering with Gia and Alara while throwing not-so-discreet looks at us.
I’m sure he’ll drill me with questions as soon as he can corner me.
He’s already gone to bed with Gia, exhausted by the day.
Jayce leads me upstairs with a firm hand, bypassing my hallway entirely and going up to his room.
Then he gently urges me in and closes the door behind us.
In a heartbeat, his hands are pulling me to him, and he’s kissing me passionately.
I moan, my entire body igniting like liquid-fire with a spark.
How could I ever choose to distance myself from this, even for a day?
“You’re anxious,” he says against my lips. “I could tell all evening by the tension in your shoulders.” He pays closer attention than I thought.
“I… I’m worried about the egg thieves.” It’s the truth, but it’s not all of my worries. I can’t admit he’s taking up so much space in my mind. It’s embarrassing.
“We’ll catch them, and they’ll have what’s coming to them. Aristocrats or not, the king won’t forgive such blatant disregard of the dragon law.”
I nod, my throat too tight to say a word. I don’t want to go after them and risk crossing paths with an enraged female. My fear of dragons hasn’t lessened over the years; I just learned to live with it and turn into an unhealthy obsession.
“Let me help you relax,” Jayce says, undressing me slowly.
He gets rid of my tunic, and I shiver as the rough fabric caresses my skin. He trails kisses along shoulders, then rubs the tension with his thumbs, avoiding the forever-tender burn scars along my back.
“I… I have to tell you something,” I say.
Jayce deserves to know the entire picture if he’s going to take part in my quest with his crew and airship.
“Yes, love?”
“I…” I take a deep breath. “When I was eleven, I was the only survivor of a dragon attack.”
He stops massaging my shoulders for a second, then continues without a word, giving me space to tell my story. We didn’t take time to light a candle in the room, and I’m grateful for the darkness. I take a moment to gather my courage and soldier on.
“I was born of the Cheerfolk, as I told you before, and I was traveling with my clan. We were somewhere along the north coast, following the Gullet.” I remember the cold that day; the wind had a bite so close to winter.
“It was late afternoon, and we were looking for a spot to park the caravans and spend the night. I saw her first…” I take a shaky breath.
I haven’t talked about it in years. “She flew from the mountains…”
It wasn’t my first time seeing a dragon. We often caught sight of them during our travels, but never more than a speck on the horizon, like a bird. I didn’t give a shout; I just watched as she came closer. We had no reason to fear dragons, as they didn’t feed on humans.
I still think about that day. Would my family have survived if I had given them a warning?
Could we all have run to the trees and hidden?
After my encounter with Alduin, I somehow doubt it.
The dragon would have set the entire forest ablaze to get us.
But maybe… maybe one of them could have made it, just as Jayce and I did, hiding in the tall grass or…
“She had orange scales, but her underbelly was red,” I say.
Funny how memories work. I remember the colors vividly, and how low the sun was in the sky, but I don’t remember the sound of my mother’s voice or my father’s laugh.
The female was called Invar. She died a few years ago during a fight against a bigger dragon somewhere along the north coast. Are her sun-bleached bones close to my people’s ashes?
“She breathed fire on the caravans, and the screams…” I sob.
Jayce’s arms wrap around me, and he places his chin on the top of my head, offering me comfort but not interrupting me with empty reassurances. I’m grateful for the way he gives me time and room to tell my story.
“The second wave of fire caught me, and my clothes burned off my back. Pain blinded me, but I fell into a stream along the road, and the cold water saved me. The fire consumed the wooden caravans for hours. Villagers saw the smoke from a few miles away, and they came to investigate. They found me delirious.” I pause.
“I was lucky. A surgeon from Dragonest had stopped at the village on his way down to Nethermere. He took me on his boat and kept me alive and drugged. I told them a dragon attacked us, and they thought we must have deserved it. We must have broken the dragon law and got what was coming to us.”
I bite my lip, trying to resist the surging anger, even after all these years.
I know we didn’t provoke the dragon. She flew from the mountains, looking to sow destruction, and we just happened to be at the wrong place, wrong time.
Something—or someone—had triggered her rage that day, and it wasn’t my people, I was sure of it.
“For months, I was terrified to walk outside,” I continue.
“The entire sky frightened me, and the shadow of a bird sent me into a panic. I had nowhere to go, and I needed constant medical care for the first two years, so the surgeon adopted me. I read about dragons during my time alone at his home. I wanted to understand, and I became obsessed. First, I hated dragons as much as I feared them… But the more I studied them, the more I understood how simple creatures they were. They weren’t unpredictable or conniving.
They just… wanted the same things as any other animals: to survive and protect their home and brood.
My adoptive father indulged my obsession, and when I came of age, I joined university to become a dragoner. ”
I don’t need to explain why I got a dragon tattoo over my scars. The act is pretty self-explanatory.
“I think you deserve to know what you’re getting yourself into with me,” I say.
“This isn’t about a thesis or writing a book.
This is my life’s purpose. I need to understand…
And if it comes down to it, I’ll follow it no matter what the outcome, and you might have to let me go.
You won’t risk the crew and the ship and I—”