Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
FOX
T he next morning, Fox stayed behind when Clarita picked Sofia up to show them the way back to the ruins. He didn’t know what to make of the small bubble of dread that settled in his stomach as she disappeared between the trees. They left in a group of seven, Sofia with a new bow and arrow set. He shouldn’t have worried—why worry about the Dragonborn that had captured him and gotten him into this disaster? But he was still uneasy with their separation, well aware they weren’t in friendly territory. They may have only been tolerating them to get back to the dragon altars.
But Sofia was right when she said he needed to rest. Every time he stood and moved around, he felt the stitching tugging at his skin. He continued to take the tincture the healer—Lia—gave him, but he was looking forward to the day he wouldn’t need it. More importantly, he was looking forward to leaving once Sofia was back.
It was nearly noon by the time he convinced himself to stand and stretch. As much as he preferred to stay lying on his bedroll all day, he still had hiking to do tomorrow, if not the next day, and it would do him no good to be stiff and sore.
If anything, the last week stuck out here in the rainforest had simply reassured him that his people were right. It was a dangerous and wild place where only a few could survive. He had to give credit to the Dragonborn who had made a living out here, and he would be all too happy to get home.
He wasn’t sure if Clarita had told the others to keep an eye on him, but no one appeared to care as he started walking around the cenote. It wasn’t nearly as large as the ruins he and Sofia had found, but there were elements of the same artistic flair of the Dragonborn. The main cavern was tiled, although the tiles were as old and cracked as the ruins had been. He imagined they had been here before the tribe had even found the cenote. The walls were freshly painted, however—one vibrant teal, another an orange the color of sunset. Flowers were painted at random intervals, brightening the space with even more color. It made the cave-like space feel alive even in the shadows.
He stumbled upon a dragons’ shrine, two doors down from the bathing room. It was nowhere near as big as the previous one, with three small altars and crude paintings of the dragons along the walls. He might have found the murals beautiful had he not seen the ones in the ruins a couple days ago. These were paintings built off stories, not memories. They were the type of reproductions that Fox could have done from the books he’d read growing up, rough illustrations that were missing something.
There was nothing of the true terror and power that the dragon he’d seen held. The very air around the dragon had seemed to breathe with danger.
He stood in front of the altar that sat under the cenote dragon, staring up at the blue-eyed beast, and wondered what it had been like for the great king when he decided to turn on these gods . He’d read the accounts of the sea dragons destroying an entire fleet of ships in a single hour, hundreds drowned on a whim.
The dragons held a power of the land that no human or faery could come close to replicating. How many had been saved from drownings and storms because the great king had exterminated the dragons. And how many would die if they returned?
He hated himself for thinking it. If he said the words out loud, Sofia would hate him more than she already did. But even if the dragon they had seen had been beautiful—and it had been—it had also almost killed them. She was blinded by her own stubborn faith.
“Do you want to make an offering?” A small voice spoke behind him and he saw a young girl standing in the doorway, arms cradling a bundle of purple flowers. She had thick black hair, nearly as curly as Sofia’s and somehow so much more tangled. Her freckled cheeks had deep dimples as she smiled.
“Oh, I was just?—”
“Here,” she said moving forward, carefully plucking one of the flowers from the bouquet to hand to him. The stem was soft against his fingers. Up close, he noticed that the purple petals weren’t a single color, but a blend of blue and purple with streaks that looked nearly silver through them.
“I don’t know…” he started, but before he could finish, she pressed a finger to her lips as she motioned for him to kneel beside her. She set the flowers along the cenote dragon’s altar and he followed suit when she looked at him, eyebrow raised expectantly. She said a prayer slowly, likely for Fox’s benefit. As each guttural word slipped from her lips, a sense of knowing and familiarity grew in his chest, expanding and cutting off his breath. He didn’t know what the words meant, the dragon-tongue not magically forming into understanding. But he knew the words. He’d read them only one time before, but they were burned into his brain, branded there with his grief. He pictured them now, written gracefully on the first page of a book long hidden in the darkest corner of his bedroom.
The girl pulled the small dagger from the altar and drew the sharp blade across the inside of her wrist. It wasn’t a large or even deep cut and it took a second before the blood beaded and she let a droplet fall into the golden basin on the altar.
Fox’s stomach turned as she passed the blade to him and stared, waiting. He wasn’t sure he remembered this part in the book. The small dagger was warm beneath his fingers from where her hand had been. He realized it was also the first weapon he had held since the Dragonborn tribe had found Sofia and him outside the canyon. He could take it. He could run. He could stab this small child and make his way back home to tell them everything he’d seen.
Instead, he lifted the blade and hesitantly ran it across his wrist, wincing at the sharp sting of it breaking skin. He didn’t acknowledge the chuckle that the little girl let out as his blood dropped into the bowl. He quickly pulled his arm back, wiping his wrist and pulling his sleeve down to hide the evidence. What would his father say if he could see Fox kneeling at the altar of the dragon gods?
He started to stand, sure they were done, but the little girl stopped him, a small hand on his sleeve. He noticed she was holding one last bloom, pinched between her fingers and as she pulled him down, tugging on his shirt, he leaned over and she slipped the small flower behind his ear.
Before he could thank her, she turned a bright red and ran from the room, her high giggles echoing in the passage beyond. Fox followed a moment later, holding back his smile. The scent of the flowers had been cloying in the small worship room, but as he left, he smelled the small whiffs from the bloom behind his ear, delicate and sweet.
He didn’t bother exploring farther down the hall, heading back toward the main cavern. He was hungry and hoped he’d find someone willing to part with food.
As the tunnel ended, Fox stumbled a few steps, blinking into the sunlight and letting his eyes adjust to the sudden brightness. No number of torches could push away all of the shadows of the caves. But the day outside was cloudless and the sun relentless.
It might have been better to have remained blind, because the moment he stepped into the sunlight and looked around the cenote, he saw the two small black canines running down the sides of the steep cliff. He opened his mouth to scream and warn the few people milling about, but a moment later, two small boys stood in their place. Fox recognized them from that morning at breakfast.
The people around the children didn’t flinch, noting the transformation with the casualness that one takes in the dying of a flower in the cold season. The little girl he’d just seen inside the worship hall ran up, laughing and chattering at the two boys before slipping into the form of a rabbit. His eyes flashed to the others that milled about the cenote, a new understanding in his gaze. He saw the way their muscles shuffled beneath their clothes, the gait of their walks. The gracefulness of their movement not quite human .
They hadn’t stumbled upon a hidden oasis of Dragonborn living peacefully in the rainforest. They’d wandered into a viper’s nest of shapeshifters.
Fox didn’t let his thoughts wander further. He needed to leave. Now.
* * *
Fox allowed himself a small moment of rationality, grabbing the cloak he’d been using that night and stealing a small cooking knife left out beside the fire. Even as he rushed up the stairs of the cenote, he kept his shoulders relaxed. He didn’t want to draw suspicion. He had seen the shapeshifters who had first kidnapped him run, and he’d have no chance if these ones tried to chase after him. So, with his heart fluttering in his throat and his thoughts screaming at him, he walked, one foot in front of the other until the sound of the cenote and its people had faded behind him.
Only then did he let himself run, allowing the adrenaline coursing through his body to take him farther. He only stopped once his lungs ached and his breaths came in short bursts. Even the reprieve granted by the tribe hadn’t been enough to make up for the days of near starvation and constant walking.
Before he had a chance to think through his actions, he’d collapsed on the ground, shoulder resting on the tree behind him and body cradled between two roots. He lifted his shirt briefly, just long enough to see one of his stitches had snapped. The cut was an angry red, but it wasn’t bleeding.
He let out a string of curses, his voice echoing in the trees surrounding him. He was in the forest once more, holding a single knife, and so very much alone. Not even Sofia was here now to act as a buffer between him and the wilds.
Breathing carefully through his nose, he stood and took stock of the situation. At least the sun was out, the dappled light dancing across the forest floor, pointing his way home. If he headed south from here, he’d hit the city eventually. He could make it home.
His feet didn’t move.
Sofia was north. She was in the exact opposite direction as home. And she was also alone and unknowingly surrounded by shapeshifters. Had Clarita planned this? Purposefully separating them as a means of making them vulnerable?
Home was south, but Fox turned north—toward Sofia.
He could find them—find her and warn her who these people truly were. And then he’d go home. His body ached with every step, but he used his pain to his advantage, focusing his mind when it wandered too far. He didn’t think about why he’d turned away from home. He didn’t think about why he felt compelled to warn Sofia. He simply walked, knowing that if the shapeshifters harmed Sofia before he got there, he would kill them all.
* * *
The sun sank as he moved, tracing the hours as it crossed the sky. The Dragonborn had once believed the great dragon’s spurned lover was the sun, constantly chasing her through the sky, trying to get her back. For thousands of cycles they had danced like that, the sun never quite able to lasso the moons, even when he overlapped with them.
When his brother had died and he was left chasing after a dream of destroying the resistance and avenging Leon’s death, Fox thought he had begun to understand why someone might run after the impossible in the smallest hope it was only improbable.
Here he was, chasing after the resistance spy who had kidnapped him and threatened to kill him. And he was beginning to acknowledge, in a dark corner of his mind, that he didn’t just want her back so he could arrest her or use her to bring down the resistance.
What do you expect to happen when you find her? When you save her?
His father’s voice was a sneer in his mind.
You’re as useless as you’ve always been. A dreamer too stuck in the clouds to see your own feet. As useless as a dead dragon god or the sun chasing the moons .
Dusk came before he saw any sign of the others. The only sounds around him were the soft rustles and far off screeches of animals that he’d gotten so familiar with over the past few days. He picked his way more carefully once night fell. Both moons had already risen and were shining bright, but beneath the trees, their light didn’t always reach the forest floor. The night blooms and the glowing mushrooms gave enough away of the outline of the ground for him to make his way over roots and brush. He didn’t stop for the night until the moons were sinking low into the sky, and he was starting to stumble out of pure exhaustion. He had to be near the ruins by now, but it would be dangerous to search, when even the moons weren’t lighting the sky. He’d just as soon fall into the cenote as find it.
For all he knew, he’d passed its entrance miles ago, off by the smallest angle, he could have veered away from the path without even noticing. He fell against a tree, letting the last few days sink in as the cold seeped through his clothes. He was alone in the rainforest, with only a cloak and a half-dull cooking knife. In the last week, he’d been captured by the resistance, nearly eaten by shapeshifters and a fanged faery, almost drowned by a dragon, and accidentally made allies with another group of shapeshifters. And instead of running back to Suvi when he was given the chance, he was chasing after the woman who created all of his problems in the first place. Who probably would hand him over to the shapeshifters to gain her own freedom.
He was smart enough to bite off the scream that threatened to spill from his lips. The night was quiet, but the last few days had taught him that plenty lurked silently in the shadows. He closed his eyes, trying to forget where he was for a fraction of a second. Tonight, he wouldn’t move. Tonight, he’d rest and dream of hot baths and roasted pigs.
Tomorrow, he would decide what to do—save Sofia or turn back to Suvi like the good soldier he had always been.