Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
SOFIA
Sofia didn’t know how long she cried. She had no concept of time until she opened her eyes and realized it was dark.
The only light came from the moons above, setting the snow aglow.
Jobin was gone, and the mountain was quiet once the echo of her sobs had faded.
Despite the snow seeping into her pants, she was warm, Fox wrapped around her, and Chalia’s wing draped over them both.
Fox sensed whatever had shifted in her, and his hand came to rest on her shoulder, turning her gently so she faced him. His own eyes were bloodshot, his hair hanging down around his shoulders, windswept and tangled.
“I’m sorry,” she croaked out. The words cracked something in her, and she choked on another sob, trying to shake herself. “Your mom. We left your mom.”
“She’ll be okay,” he said, his words murmured against her forehead. He paused, and she felt the breath he was holding in before he finally continued. “Your father was still alive when we left. We won’t leave them. We’ll go back for both of them.”
She couldn’t answer. She hadn’t seen her father before they’d run.
Her focus had been entirely on her mother’s blood, seeping from her throat where the blade had sliced.
Fox hadn’t mentioned her mother. She wanted to scream.
Her mother was gone. Dead. There was no coming back from a wound like that, and they both knew it.
“We should head back to camp,” she said, swallowing a few times. Her throat felt as though she’d been screaming for hours. For all she knew, she had.
Fox didn’t move immediately, his lips still pressed to her forehead. “Are you sure?”
She nodded, and he wound his arms tighter around her, holding her as if he were afraid she might come apart at the seams. He let her go, at last.
“We should break your cuffs off before we leave.”
Sofia looked at where the iron chafed against her skin. Her wrists were red and raw, but she didn’t feel the pain. She didn’t feel much of anything.
“With what?”
Fox hesitated, looking between her and Chalia.
“She thinks she can freeze them—cold enough that I can crack them with my sword hilt.”
Sofia looked at the metal, her brain slowly processing what that would mean. Her wrists would burn from the ice. But it was better than trying to break the iron without freezing it.
“Okay.”
Fox helped shift her wrists until they were resting on a stone, and Chalia pressed forward with care.
“Are you sure?” she asked in Sofia’s mind.
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “I trust you.”
The dragon gave a soft snort, and then she pressed her nose against the metal and blew.
Sofia tried her best to keep her wrists perfectly centered in the metal, not letting her skin touch against the iron as it began to freeze, frost crackling across its surface, cold radiating outward.
But she was trembling, and the cuffs were just barely bigger than her wrists.
With each touch, she bit back the hiss of pain that threatened to spill from her lips.
The muscle in Fox’s jaw twitched with each intake of air.
At last, Chalia gave the signal, and he slammed the hilt of his sword down onto the cuffs, one blow after the other.
At last, metal shattered, the icy shards burning her wrists even as they fell away, and she finally allowed herself one shuddering groan of pain.
Before she could pull her arms into her body, Fox was there, grabbing her hands with care, looking over the angry red skin along her wrists.
“Let’s hope Clarita has more healing paste left.” His voice was low and rough. “But they’ll likely scar.”
Sofia pulled back her hands, and he let her go reluctantly. She placed her hand against his cheek, and his eyes met hers.
“I’m okay.”
Something like anger flashed in his eyes. “Despite yourself, it seems.”
Sofia could only nod. She deserved that.
After another moment of silence, Fox stood, reaching out to help her up.
“Chalia says we’re only a few minutes away. She didn’t want to take us straight back in case Harlow followed, but there’s been no sight of them, and I haven’t sensed Eha since…”
He trailed off. Neither of them finished the statement, Sofia pushing back the thoughts of their flight. Thoughts of what had happened in the clearing before they’d fled.
Red blood on white snow.
Fox’s hand on her shoulder broke her from her thoughts, and she took a deep breath, swallowing down everything. Fox jumped onto Chalia’s back first, helping pull Sofia up after him. Once she was seated and he’d wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her into him, they took off.
She didn’t think, letting herself lean back into Fox’s hard chest, her head turned so she could rest her ear against his heart, letting the beat of it soothe her.
His fingers traced along her temple, combing back her curls.
She didn’t know if he was still angry, but at least he gave her this.
They didn’t speak, the only sound the wind and the beat of Chalia’s wings.
After several minutes of flight, the familiar outcrop of rocks came into view. In the blackness of the night, Sofia could just make out the faint glow of a fire tucked behind the rocks in the cavern beyond. It wouldn’t be visible if she hadn’t been looking for it.
“I’m going to kill him,” she said, voice raw. The words reverberated in the hollowness of her chest. She ached with them.
“I’m going to help you,” Fox said, his hand tightening almost painfully on her hip where he held her.
When Chalia landed, Javi and Micael were already standing outside the cave, wrapped in furs. Fox slipped off first, turning to help Sofia down. She stumbled, and he wrapped an arm around her even as Javi moved forward.
“Micael told me what you’d planned. You were supposed to talk to us…” Javi broke off and Sofia saw Micael’s face painted with guilt behind him.
“I didn’t—it didn’t...” she stuttered.
“What did you do to her?” Javi said, rounding on Fox. “How could either of you let her run off—”
“I didn’t—we didn’t,” Fox said, more tired than defensive. “Calm down. We need to talk.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Javi snapped.
“Stop!” Sofia said, practically yelling to get herself heard.
“Javi, stop. Let’s go inside. We have to talk.
” The words were stilted and slow, but Javi listened.
He let go of Fox with a look that said he would still kill Fox at the drop of a hat.
Sofia almost smiled. Despite the rage and grief that had been simmering through him since his blood-mother’s death and the discovery that Dia was still alive, she didn’t think Javi had murder in him.
Javi’s hands came to cup her face, gently tilting her to look at him.
“Are you okay?” he searched her face.
“I’m—my—” she started, her voice breaking. “I need some water,” she finished after a minute, not quite ready to say the words out loud.
Javi seemed to understand, kissing her lightly across the forehead before moving to her side.
Braced between Fox and Javi, they entered the warmth of the cavern, Clarita already running to fetch more snow to melt beside the fire.
Javi wrapped her in a set of furs, and Fox helped take off her wet boots and socks, setting them next to the fire to dry.
Jacinta handed her a mug of steaming tea, and she sipped it with her eyes closed, savoring the herbal taste and the moment of reprieve.
Fox spoke first, a hand on Sofia’s leg, thumb rubbing up and down absently as he talked.
He explained their decision to confront the chief commander, emphasizing that it had been his plan to leave the way they had.
When he got to the explanation of Harlow showing up on Eha and the other dragon, Sofia watched as anger turned to horror and helplessness.
Fox did her the favor of not explaining how she’d tried to surrender herself over to Harlow.
But even so, the cavern went silent as he told them what had happened to Sofia’s parents—to her mother.
Clarita looked gray in the firelight, and Javi’s face went red, his knuckles white as he clenched his fists.
And for just a moment, Sofia closed her eyes and let the anger and hatred simmering in the room wrap around her, protecting her from the grief that was too overwhelming on its own.
Sofia barely listened to the fallout of Fox’s story, her eyes focused on the flames dancing in the fire.
She pictured Harlow in that fire, burning as he screamed.
But then she pictured her mother, the blood streaming down her neck, soaking the ground beneath her body, eyes wide and unseeing.
She wasn’t sure Harlow burning would be enough.
She wanted to take him apart piece by piece until he had nothing left.
She would kill him. And she would make it hurt.
“Dark heart,” Chalia said, voice soft in her mind. “I’m sorry I failed. I should have acted sooner. I should have saved her.”
“You couldn’t have,” Sofia said, closing her eyes against the burning. “You did everything you could have. You’ve done so much.”
If the other dragons had listened. If they’d been there. If they’d agreed to fight.
“My father has to know what happened. He’ll have to believe us.”
“What makes it different now?”
“Jobin saw. He flew back to them to tell them.”
“We already told him what we knew. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.”
“It will be different.”
“No!” The words screamed through her mind, and she felt her body crumpling. “They didn’t listen. They won’t listen. I won’t beg for them to believe us just to have them turn us away again.”
She stood up suddenly, knocking Fox’s hand off her leg and bumping Javi’s shoulder. She hadn’t even realized how closely she’d been pressed between them.
“I need some air.”
She slipped on her boots, pushing past the others and out into the night air beyond. She didn’t stop until she was down the slope, the light of the cave gone dark behind her.
The snow was cold, and her boots were damp, but she didn’t care.
She wrapped her arms around her body as tight as they’d go and rocked.
She didn’t know if it was helping, but she couldn’t stop the movement.
Her eyes burned with tears, but she didn’t let them fall.
There wasn’t time to cry. She needed to think.
She needed a plan. It was clear she couldn’t just fly back and slice Harlow open.
He had her father—if he’d kept him alive. He had Fox’s mother.
She clenched her fists, nails biting into flesh. She focused on her pain, breathing out sharply into the night air.
The crunch of snow in the silence made her back straighten. Even without looking, she knew it was him. Fox sat beside her, wrapping his arms around her.
“I know you said you needed air, but…”
But I didn’t trust you not to fly off on Chalia. The words remained unspoken.
“I already grieved them,” she said. “I grieved for them when you sent the message that you hadn’t found them. So why does it still hurt?”
“Of course it hurts. There is no love without grief or pain.” He let out a long breath, and she saw his eyes shining with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry I didn’t find them. I failed. You asked one thing of me, and I couldn’t even do that.”
She let a single tear fall, hot against her icy skin. “Everyone’s sorry,” she said, and she knew her words were acidic, but she couldn’t soften them. Everyone was so sorry. “It doesn’t change the fact that she’s dead. Everyone keeps dying no matter what I do.”
“Sofia—”
“Stop, just stop,” she yelled the words. Chanted. Stop stop stop. She gripped her head in her hands, squeezing as if she might be able to stop her brain from spiraling. As if she might be able to pluck out the thoughts that screamed at her.
Fox didn’t move from her side, but he didn’t speak. And she let herself rock, the tears burned away by her anger until she was only a singular vessel for her rage.
Fox sat beside her, his hand wrapped around hers.