Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
FOX
Once they were both on, Sofia tucked against his chest, Chalia launched into the trees. Fox expected her to fly up and above the tree line, but as soon as they reached the upper foliage, she shot forward, and he felt a branch snap at his hairline, scraping along his temple.
“King’s balls,” he said, ducking and pressing closer to Sofia.
“Watch your head,” Sofia said. He could hear the smile in her voice.
Fox spoke as they flew, explaining everything that had happened since his last update with Ian.
In turn, Sofia explained how she’d discovered where the dragons were and what had happened since she’d found out about the bomb.
He couldn’t help but tighten his arm around her waist as she explained getting caught and being brought to Harlow.
Dread pooled in his stomach as he remembered the last time Harlow had had her at his mercy.
The chief commander hadn’t used the whip against her, not the way his own father had, but there had been something worse in the way Harlow had looked at her, not as a human, but as something to be devoured.
“Are you purposefully trying to suffocate me?” Sofia asked.
Fox realized only then how tightly he was holding her. He missed having her in his arms.
It was a stupid thought—as if he’d ever truly had her to hold as his own for more than a day or two in the forest. Reluctantly, he loosened his arms from around her waist. She let out a soft breath. Probably in relief.
“We’re almost there,” Chalia said, her voice in his head.
“You ready?” Sofia asked, as if he had any other option.
“Promise you won’t let them spear me through before I have a chance to speak?”
“I can promise they won’t kill you. Is that enough?”
He squeezed her waist, allowing himself another small moment before pulling away and taking a deep breath.
A few minutes later, Chalia landed at the edge of a ragged camp.
He recognized a few of the faces that looked up at them, but there were a few strangers as well.
And then he saw Clarita, and the blood drained from his face.
The leader of the shapeshifters watched them land with sharp eyes, and Fox dropped his gaze.
“Clarita is here,” he said, the words coming out as a rasp.
“Shit,” Sofia said softly. “I forgot she’d be with them.”
She turned in her seat, looking Fox up and down, highlighting his already keen awareness of his king’s men’s leathers. The major badge pinned to his chest was a punctuation to the visual.
“Sofia!” an older man Fox recognized as their leader stepped forward—Micael, he remembered vaguely. A deep scar bisected his face, and he looked so much older than the last time Fox had seen him.
He’d done that. Perhaps not directly, but he was responsible for every new scar these people bore. The man’s eyes flashed to his, as if he knew what he was thinking.
“And you.”
You. Fox was getting used to being referred to as that.
Sofia jumped down first, placing an arm on the man’s shoulder. “Micael, we have updates. A lot of updates. Someone should add wood to the fire.”
“Should we tie him up?” he said, eyeing Fox as he slipped from Chalia’s back.
Fox pressed himself against the scaled dragon, not stepping forward. Would he just let them tie him up?
“I wouldn’t worry,” Sofia said with a shrug after a drawn-out pause. “He can’t go back. One of his men just saw him run off with a rebel and a dragon.”
Fox felt the truth of the statement, and his heart sank.
It wasn’t that he planned on going back.
He knew when he started this journey—the very moment he decided not to bring Sofia back to Suvi—that he was turning his back on the king’s men.
But there was something in the finality of those words that stung.
When would Harlow find out about his betrayal? What would he think?
“Nice uniform.” Clarita stepped forward, two mugs of steaming liquid in her hands. She passed one to Sofia before reaching out to hand Fox the other. He took it hesitantly.
“What are the chances this is poisoned?” he asked.
“I don’t have poison on me at the moment,” she said. He took it as the threat it was, nodding to her, as if she needed his regard.
“Thank you.”
He didn’t miss the small sneer as she turned away, back to the fire and her people. Fox recognized a few of them from his and Sofia’s time together. There were so few of them now.
The older man—Micael—motioned them forward, and Fox was all too aware of how the man stepped around him, keeping him in his line of sight. Fox could feel the sweep of his gaze, and he raised his hands in supplication.
“Sofia disarmed me already.”
“I doubt you need a weapon to kill,” the man said.
“No, I don’t suppose I do.”
Fox had five minutes to drink his tea. It was like nothing he’d ever tasted before, bitter and strong, but it warmed his bones and settled his stomach.
He hadn’t realized how cold it had been riding on Chalia until he sat by the fire, his fingertips burning in the heat.
The moment he took the last sip and set his mug down, Micael pounced with the questions.
Why are you here? How many are in the march? How does Harlow know where the dragons are? What’s he planning?
Fox answered them as best he could. There was plenty he didn’t know—things he wanted to learn before he returned with information. But then he was sent away. So, once again, he had nothing but crumbs.
He tried not to let the sense of uselessness overwhelm him, even as he heard his father’s voice in the back of his head.
What are you even doing here? You’re in bed with the enemy, and you aren’t even useful to them. Useless to everyone.
“So they’re headed to the mountains,” Micael said, looking at the rest of their group to get their reactions, “but they don’t know exactly where they’re going? So, there is a chance they won’t make it.”
“They have Eha’s child to lead them. He’s not old enough to know better—he doesn’t speak.”
“Eha?” Micael asked.
“The dragon that Chief Commander Harlow has under his control. They brought her child on the march.”
“Then we get this child, so they can’t use him.”
Fox looked around at the scrappy group of people with a dearth of weapons. “It would be a suicide mission. The dragon is chained, caged, and guarded day and night by a dozen heavily armed soldiers in the middle of the camp. I don’t even think Chalia stands a chance.”
“We must beat them to the dragons.” Clarita spoke this time. “This changes nothing. Once we find them, we explain what’s happening. They’ll want to fight.”
“We need to focus on neutralizing the threat first,” Micael said.
As they continued to argue, Fox could only watch, his own mind racing at the impossibility of their situation. He didn’t want to fight a war. He didn’t want anyone else to die.
“You said Chief Commander Harlow was using the child to gain control of Eha? How is he controlling her now?” Micael asked, drawing his attention.
“I’m assuming he’s threatening the Dragonborn’s lives now to keep her under control. There are a few he’s had locked down in the cavern with her. Sofia’s own experience can speak to that.”
“What was he using the Dragonborn for before that?”
“He’s trying to get Eha to speak to him.
She refuses, but he knows she understands him.
But he’s also…” Fox looked between Sofia and Chalia, who was curled on the edge of the clearing, her eyes bright in the dark.
“He thinks the Dragonborn have a way of controlling the dragons. Not just speaking with them, but actively being able to force them to do things against their will.”
“Impossible,” Clarita said, her voice sharp.
“He has old journals that reference the joining of a dragon to a Dragonborn,” Fox said. “He thinks it’s what Sofia’s done—why Chalia listens to her.”
“He can’t fathom a dragon following someone out of loyalty?”
“He can’t fathom a creature with so much power following…” Fox started, but stopped as he understood where his sentence was going.
“Following someone so small and powerless,” Sofia finished, and he knew his face had confirmed that was exactly what he was thinking.
“Are they using the prisoners, then?” Micael asked, a growl of a question.
“He has separate cells down where he keeps Eha, and removes them whenever he deems them potentially useful. I don’t know how many—I only saw a few of the cells.”
“He took Dragonborn from the prison?” The younger man who Fox recognized as a friend of Sofia’s stood suddenly, stepping forward.
“I think,” Fox said.
“What did they look like? Who were they?”
“Javi,” Sofia interjected, placing a hand on the young man’s shoulder, but he was still looking at Fox.
“I don’t know their names.” Fox stopped himself because that was a lie. He knew the name of one of them. The one that had escaped. “I saw two middle-aged women, both dark brown hair, curls. Younger than Clarita.”
“One woman,” Sofia said, voice soft.
“What?”
“He has only one woman. I—he—he killed the other one while I was there.” Her face took on a shade of gray in the firelight, preventing Fox from following up with questions.
“One woman, then,” he said. “He had a girl, too. She was eighteen at the most.”
“The girl,” Javi stepped closer, grabbing him by the collar before he could step back.
Fox raised his hands. He didn’t want to start a fight, but he felt his heart rate spiking, his body going rigid.
“What did she look like?” the man said. “What happened to her? You said had, past tense.”
Fox looked at him—truly looked at him—with his tight brown curls and the dusting of freckles barely visible across his nose. He had her same eyes. “You’re her brother. Dia?”
The first punch was unexpected, but then the man had him on the ground, and instead of fighting back as every instinct in his body told him to, he let the punches rain over him again and again. A small voice in the back of his mind told him he deserved this.
He didn’t immediately register when the blows stopped, but then Sofia was over him, touching his face and saying something he couldn’t quite hear. He smiled dumbly up at her, noticing the way the firelight flickered in her eyes, bringing out the green in their depths.
“I missed your face. And your eyes. And your li—”
A sharp pinch to his already-swelling cheek brought a yelp from his lips, and his eyes sharpened on Sofia, who was now smirking.
“He’ll be fine,” she said, pushing back from him.
“Dia’s alive?” A feminine voice broke through the din, and Fox saw another woman standing over him and Javi, her face shadowed and drawn.
“What did you do to her?” Javi asked, again, not quite pushing Sofia away. “Did you kill her? Did Harlow?”
“Javi, please,” the woman said, voice cracking. “Let him answer.”
Javi glared at Fox, and Fox knew he would have his head ripped off by now if it didn’t interfere with their questioning.
“She’s not in the cells anymore,” Fox said through swollen lips. “I—she escaped into the upper city. She said she knew where she was going, but I don’t know if she made it to safety.”
Something like pain crossed Sofia’s face. “The city’s under such tight lockdown.”
“She’s smart,” Javi said, his tone brooking no argument. “She wouldn’t get caught again.”
He stood and wrapped his arms around the woman—his mother, Fox could only assume. The woman nodded, but he saw the pain across her brow and the way her breaths came in shuddered gasps—another mother broken by this war.
Fox looked away.
“There’s a lot to discuss, and we can’t do it all tonight,” Sofia said. “But we need to get to the dragons no matter what. And make sure the army doesn’t catch up to us along the way.”
“Agreed,” Micael said, turning to look at Fox. His face took on a dangerous air, the firelight deepening the shadows across his pronounced brow. “I won’t chain you up, but you’re not leaving this camp. You can’t spy for your chief commander if you never get back to your people.”
“I can watch him,” Sofia said, and Fox felt like a child being spoken about rather than to.
“I can watch myself,” he said, knowing it wouldn’t mean anything.
“Fox, shut up,” she said.
“Sofia,” Micael said, motioning for her to follow him a few yards away.
They spoke in low words that Fox strained and failed to overhear.
Once they were finished, Micael gave him a single look that spoke of the violence he would face if he tried to escape.
Fox didn’t care. He didn’t plan on leaving.
He didn’t have anywhere to go back to. How long would it take for them to send a bird back to the chief commander telling him of his betrayal? Who would tell his mother? He pushed the thought away. Right now, it didn’t matter.
A sort of peace came over the group as Micael and Clarita returned to the fire, hunched together and speaking in hushed voices. Fox had no doubt they were talking about him.
He stayed where he was, sitting in the dirt on the edge of camp, watching as the others went back to their meals and conversations.
Even Sofia was talking to Javi, not looking at him.
At least he seemed to have calmed down enough that Fox wasn’t worried about being attacked again.
He wrapped his arms around his own legs and let himself sink into the shadows, shivering as the wind cut through his leathers.
He woke sometime later when he felt Sofia’s presence beside him, laying out a set of furs and blankets. The darkness was colder now, the fire having burned low.
He thanked her, rolling himself into the warmth and watching as she lay down a few feet away.
She faced him, but she was too deep in shadow for him to read her expression.
He wanted to say something. Apologize perhaps?
For which sin he didn’t know. But then his eyes grew heavy again, and he fell into a fitful sleep, the new bruises on his face throbbing with his heartbeat.