Chapter 7 #2
The shapeshifter swept down from the sky and into the cenote, their wings spread wide.
They weren’t a very large hawk, but Sofia felt herself flinch, as if the bird might attack.
Instead, Lumi dove with a flourish and twist, landing gracefully in their human form.
Sofia was getting used to their frequent nudity.
Micael and Javi were stone-faced, their eyes both focused high on the shapeshifter’s body, trying their best to stay neutral.
Jacinta, on the other hand, didn’t hold back her apparent admiration as she took in Lumi’s naked figure.
Flor, for her part, scowled, eyes cast to the ground as if Lumi had personally offended her.
Sofia had never known her to be prudish.
“What’s the news?” Clarita said, preempting any chitchat.
Lumi shivered, as Sofia realized it was early enough that the night’s chill lingered, the cold season’s sun doing little to warm the air. She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, Flor haphazardly tossed her own cloak at Lumi.
“Put on some damned clothes before we talk,” she said, not quite looking at the shapeshifter.
Clarita nodded. “Flor’s right. We should make a fire and tea. This is a discussion to be slowed.”
Sofia bit her lip. This wasn’t a time to slow the conversation. She needed to know exactly what Lumi knew. But the rest of the group dispersed before Sofia could argue, acting on Clarita’s orders.
Twenty overlong minutes later, the fire was crackling merrily as the group sat around it, hot tea steaming from warm mugs. Sofia took hers in her hands, begrudgingly grateful for the heat of the clay as she sat between Flor and Javi.
“So, what are the updates?” Sofia said once everyone was seated. No one else was asking, and she didn’t want to wait around any longer. Clarita threw a light glower her way. Sofia knew she was being rude, but she didn’t care.
Lumi only gave a small smirk before they set their tea down.
“I found Vato,” Lumi said, their smirk turning to a soft frown, “but it’s worse than we expected.
They’ve tightened the leash on the Dragonborn, and the city is in full lockdown.
No one is allowed on the streets at night, and anyone moving between neighborhoods during the day needs a stamped pass from a Dereyan family.
The king’s men are sweeping through every house, looking for books, papers—anything written.
” Lumi turned their eyes to Sofia, staring her down.
“They’re looking for information on the dragons.
Your little fox works directly with the chief commander.
They’re looking for how to control them. ”
Sofia’s stomach plummeted. “With the chief commander?”
“He’s still passing information to Vato when he can,” Lumi added. “He’s on our side, supposedly.” They turned to Clarita, their eyebrows hitched up. “The little fox is a junior major in the king’s army. Something I don’t remember Sofia mentioning while he was rolling out tortillas for us.”
Sofia tried to keep her face neutral, but her lip twitched all the same. She wondered if Lumi had noticed their slip—they’d said our side.
“That’s not all,” Lumi continued. “Fox said the chief commander has a dragon and her child locked up somewhere in the city. They’re using her son to control her as they experiment on her.”
“Eha,” Chalia said, breaking through Sofia’s thoughts. “He has Eha and Zuni.”
Sofia’s stomach roiled, and her jaw clenched. She wondered what the chief commander had done to Eha’s son in order to convince the dragon to massacre the shapeshifter tribe.
The others continued to talk, strategizing on how they could use Lumi and the other shifters to move in and out of the city.
Slipping in and out was easy enough for an animal, but they couldn’t exactly walk out with a sack of grain in their jaws.
And there was still no way to help the others escape.
Sofia stopped listening after a while, her head too filled with thoughts she didn’t want to examine.
Fox was working directly with the chief commander. How many times had he had the chance to stab the man in the back, and would she want him to? After all, Harlow was hers to kill. She hated the idea of Fox helping that man, even if it was in their best interests.
Once the tea had been drunk and the fire had cooled, they dispersed. Their plans didn’t evolve much past Lumi checking in with Vato every week until they knew more. It wasn’t the most sophisticated of schemes.
“Sofia!” Lumi called before she could stray too far from the fire. “Can I talk to you?”
She exchanged a look with Javi and Flor, waving them off before she turned back. “Of course.”
Lumi escorted Sofia across the cenote, toward the exit where the sun painted the tiles and lake in an alluring palette Sofia had only seen in these woods. Once they were away from the others, Lumi turned to face her. Sofia’s shoulders tensed at the look in Lumi’s eyes.
“I didn’t want to say in front of the others—it didn’t seem like their business,” they said slowly. “I also spoke with Fox directly.”
Sofia’s posture straightened, even as she tried to quash any expectations that were building inside her.
“He wanted you to know he hasn’t found your parents yet,” Lumi said. “There’s no record of their deaths, but he said that might not mean much.”
Blood rushed through Sofia, and it felt as though the tiles under her sandals were quaking. Or perhaps that was just her. She nodded slowly, knowing Lumi needed acknowledgement.
“Thank you for letting me know and for not telling me in front of the others.” Sofia’s voice sounded softer than she wanted it to be. “Can you tell Javi and Flor I’m going to talk to Chalia?”
Lumi gave her a pitying look but eventually nodded and withdrew.
Hearing the shapeshifter’s pattering footsteps grow distant, Sofia stretched out her mind, sensing Chalia’s presence not too far from her.
She found the dragon in a small clearing blanketed with flowers. The blooms sparkled in the morning dew, pinks and oranges and reds, the ground seeming afire.
Only when she was next to Chalia did Sofia collapse, folding in on herself on the ground as Chalia curled around her, a wall of protection. Her scales were soft against her skin, and Sofia pressed her face into the feathers along her spine, hot tears against icy scales.
They were dead.
She’d never again hear the soft timbre of her mother’s voice as she sang Sofia a lullaby or hummed over a steaming pot of beans.
She’d never again map the calluses across her father’s hands from his time woodworking.
How different had they been? Had they changed over time or stayed the same?
Did her mother still sing even after she thought her daughter had died?
They hadn’t been perfect parents, but she’d never been a perfect daughter.
A part of her knew they were dead. She’d actively not sought out information on them for five sun cycles, and here she was, suffering the consequences.
She hated herself. Blamed herself. As if she’d have been able to stop any of it from happening.
Who knows how they’d died? Perhaps in a raid, or even in their sleep.
A plague of scalepox had ravaged the city a few sun cycles back, and it was more than likely they’d been caught up in it.
The northeastern slums had been hit the worst. She’d never looked the records up though. She’d never checked.
Because she’d been a terrible daughter. She’d been too busy in her own world to care if her parents were dead or alive.
“You’re not a bad person,” Chalia said, voice a soft whisper in her mind.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, though. It’s not just your thoughts. I can sense your mind. I can sense you. And you are good at heart. I feel it in you even now.”
“I killed them through my own negligence.”
“You don’t know if they’re dead.”
But even Sofia felt the hesitation in those words—the doubt that Chalia felt saying them. Fox had access to the entire records of Dragonborn in the city. If her parents weren’t on it and there were no records of them being sent to the labor farms, they were dead.
So much blood on her hands, and they only seemed to grow redder by the day. She dreamed of the blood staining her, stuck beneath her nails, no matter how hard she scrubbed. Mina had been the first life she’d taken, but she hadn’t been the last.
No.
Sofia didn’t kill alone. It was Harlow in the end who wielded the blade. If she could only end him, perhaps she could end this. Would the trail of dead bodies finally stop following her when he was gone?
She thought of his face as Chalia had flown them over the wall, the way his black eyes had met hers, full of malice.
She would look him in the eyes when she killed him.
Something akin to hope swelled in her chest as she imagined the life draining from his face, his sallow skin going pale as he realized she was the one taking it all from him.
She felt the time pass as the sun inched across her skin, shadow into sun and back into shadow. She might have lain there longer, eyes closed as the forest sang around her, birds, wind, and insects. But the sounds changed, and her body tensed at the footsteps approaching.
“I told them where to find you,” Chalia said before Sofia could jump up in defense.
She didn’t need to speak or even think any words for Chalia to sense her grumpiness. The dragon only sent back a sharp poke that felt like something akin to get over it.
Javi and Flor broke through the trees a moment later, Javi’s face pinched in unspoken reprimand. Flor opened her mouth, and Sofia braced herself for anger, but Javi’s hand on her arm stopped her. A moment later, Sofia was wrapped in their embrace.
“Lumi told us,” Javi said, lips against her temple.
“They might still be alive,” Sofia said, as if saying the words might bring the hope she needed. But they felt hollow, and Flor only tightened her embrace.
“You’ve opened a potential new avenue for us to enter the city by bringing Lumi and the others to our side,” Flor said. “We’re going to get in there and we’re going to burn that city to the ground.”
“What does any of it matter if everyone dies anyway? I haven’t saved anyone.”
Flor’s voice was rough and low. “You are not responsible for the lives the general and chief commander took. It may not seem like much, but every life you’ve saved has mattered. If it were up to them, we’d all be dead now.”
“I just feel like the more I try, the more trouble I bring.”
“Then do it,” Flor pushed Sofia away, holding her at arm’s length, eyes wild as she stared her down. “Bring trouble. Bring that shit straight to the chief commander’s doorstep.”
Chalia rumbled from behind them. “I go where you go.”
Sofia took a deep breath, the rage and grief dancing within her like a storm. She closed her eyes, focusing on the rage, letting the grief sink under, somewhere dark and safe. She’d give it space later to breathe and break.
But not today. Today was for rage.
“Okay,” Sofia said. “We keep reading and researching. We find the rest of the dragons before they do. And then we bring the wrath of the true gods down on their heads.”