Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
VANDER
Iglide into the cave as best I can, but my injured side is weak, too weak for me to aim worth a damn when I try to land. Turning, I clutch Larellin tightly to me as I slide across the stone floor, treasure cascading around us as the gold slows and finally stops my momentum.
My talons unfurl, and I sit her atop a pile of coins and look her over with one eye.
She reaches out, her fingers tickling along my snout. “You came for me.”
“Always.”
A green wound mars her throat. Fire builds in my chest when I realize it’s a bite. Her cheek is badly bruised with a small cut, too, but it doesn’t worry me like the mottled flesh where Sela inflicted her venom.
Fyan glides to a halt beside me, Faraday following.
“Take her to Lenka,” I tell Fyan. “Now. Sela has poisoned her.”
“You’re bleeding badly.” Fyan sniffs at my injured side.
“And I can’t change until these shards are removed,” I snap at him. “Take her now. I’ll follow.”
Fyan shifts, changing into his more human form.
Larellin sways a little, and I press my snout to her side, steadying her. “You’ll be all right, my treasure. I swear it.”
“It’s funny.” She looks into my eye. “I keep thinking I can hear you, but that’s not possible.
I think maybe … maybe Sela poisoned me. Or maybe, I don’t know.
Once, when I was a child, I took badly ill drinking some foolsberry wine made by the kids in the village.
I saw things. Heard things. Like this. Like you talking to me.
” She scratches between my eyes, and despite the pain in my side, my back leg starts to twitch with pleasure.
“I thought I heard you when I was a child. You said you’d come for me.
You said …” She leans against me. “It was your voice. I know it was. Just like I think I’m hearing you now. ”
Rivon lands with a blast of cold air, his orange scales faintly glowing in the dark.
“We must get you to Lenka.” Fyan scoops Larellin into his arms.
I growl low and deep, the fire threatening to bubble out of me. “Don’t touch my mate.”
He glares at me. “You just told me to touch her!”
“Take her.” Rivon lumbers over, still in dragon form as he eyes my bloody side. “This is going to get messy.”
“But Lenka betrayed me. Lenka is … she’s …” Larellin reaches up to her damaged neck and whimpers.
“Now!” I yell. Gods, I can’t bear to see her suffer.
Fyan’s wings flap a few times, and then he’s carrying her through the air and into the dark entry of the keep.
Rivon sniffs me a few more times and maneuvers to get a better angle on the shards. “I left Brin with his people. He’s in bad shape, but Arinda said she can patch him up.”
“Arinda might kill him out of spite, but what a way to go.” Faraday stands at the cave’s entrance, guarding us against any surprises from Sela’s warriors.
They wouldn’t be foolish enough to follow us here, but the DaySilver clan has changed since we last were in battle against each other.
I can’t pretend to know what they might be capable of.
“You have to hold still.” Rivon nudges me onto my side.
He pushes my wing out of the way. “Gods, this is a mess. Who was it? Alestes?”
“Yes.”
“I saw what was left of him.” Faraday paces at the cave entrance, his silver wings flashing. “Fyan did well in his first battle. A true warrior. Only because he learned from the best of course.” If a dragon can grin, Faraday is surely doing it now.
“On the count of three.” Rivon’s talons scrape against my scales and the tender wound between them.
“Fuck! Go easy, would you?”
“One.” He presses them through the shredded flesh. I bite down hard, my teeth aching at the pressure. “Two.”
I roar as white-hot agony scorches through me. A large, bloody crystal shard falls to the stone, and then another. The final one clatters away as I roar again, a few stalactites falling around us and shattering.
“That’s it. That’s all of them.” Rivon presses against the wound, sending another wave of pain through me.
“You said on three. Three!” I yell.
“Rivon’s never been too good at math.” Faraday shifts into his smaller form, his wings tucked at his back. “Not his strong suit.”
I get back to my feet and test my wing. A dull pain lives where the sharp one from earlier resided. The shards are well and truly gone.
Without another word, I shift and fly to the DragonKeep entrance, then hurry to our bedchambers. I can smell the poison, the sickly scent mixing with the honeysuckle of my mate.
Lenka presses something to Larellin’s throat, but Larellin doesn’t stir.
“What have you done?” I climb into bed with her, pulling her into my lap and cradling her there.
“Just enough belladonna for her to sleep through the pain. The venom has gone deep.” Lenka pulls the compress away, and I see green streaks snaking away from Sela’s bite and coloring Larellin’s veins along her throat and down to her chest. “We have to draw it out. Sprite is gathering what I need.”
“This is your fault.” I glare at Lenka, at the Firefolk who has been like a mother to me, to us all. Her betrayal cuts far more deeply than the crystal shards.
“I know.” She looks at me with tired eyes, fiery tears already welling there.
“Why?”
She gently presses a clean bandage to Larellin’s cheek. “It was the only way.”
“The only way to what? Almost get my mate killed?” It takes every bit of control I have left not to rage at her.
“No.” She sighs heavily. “To break the curse.”
I stare at her.
“I would never betray you, Sire. You have to know I did what I did for you, not against you. For her, too.” She dabs at Larellin’s cheek.
“You gave her to my enemies for her own good?” I seethe. Never in my life have I considered myself a vicious master or a DragonKin who would ever strike a servant, especially not one as close to my heart as Lenka. But she is sorely testing me.
“It was the only way, Sire. I know—” She swipes at her cheek with the back of her hand.
“—I know it’s hard to understand, even harder to believe, but I swear to you and all the DragonKin I served before you that I have always been faithful and loyal.
” She tilts her chin up the slightest bit.
“I knew my life would be forfeit for it, and I chose this path anyway, because it’s the only one that sees you and the rest of the DragonKin back in your homeland.
I would die many times over to grant you that. ”
My mouth hangs open for a moment, anger at war with surprise. “There was nothing for you to do. It’s my responsibility. Mine alone. I would’ve broken the curse. Larellin would’ve come to me. She would’ve—”
“Larellin wasn’t the problem.” Her shoulders sag.
My heart goes cold at her implication. For centuries I’ve wanted to end the curse, to lead my people back to their homeland. “I’m the problem, then?” I say evenly, though acid drips from my words.
“You would’ve mated her, but the bond wouldn’t have been enough.
Not strong enough. I saw it, Sire.” Her gaze meets mine again as she pulls the bloodied bandage back from Larellin’s cheek and grabs a fresh one.
“I saw the DragonLands closed to you forever, the DragonKin dying out. Ilna’s cauldron has never steered me wrong, and I saw it as if it had already come to pass. ”
I watch her, the grief etched in her wrinkled cheeks. Larellin stirs in my arms, turning toward me and pressing her uninjured cheek to my chest.
“I cared for your mother, your grandfather. I haven’t held a dragon babe in so long.
” Lenka wipes her eyes again. “Not since Fyan was born, just a tiny little thing with a bad temperament.” She smiles sadly.
“If I hadn’t done this, there would be no more.
Not another babe. Not a single dragon. But her cauldron showed me more.
So much more.” She strokes Larellin’s cheek with a fresh bit of gauze.
“This beautiful female happy, children playing at her feet. You flying over the spires of the Palace of the Sky, your golden banners blowing in a bright breeze.”
My heart stutters, thumping unevenly. “You saw this?” I know of Ilna, her sorcery has long been legend in Oblivion. The oldest cyclops witch, born with one eye in this world, one in the next.
“I did. But the only way to that beautiful future was the way I chose.” She quiets, fiery tears still flowing.
“And I decided that if I had to die to achieve that future, then so be it.” She nods, more to herself than me.
“It’s worth it.” Glancing at me, she asks, “Have you felt anything different since you found her at the Aerie?”
My eyes narrow at the question. At the bond I felt awaken, the one that was just strong enough to allow Larellin and I to communicate while I was in dragon form. Something like that shouldn’t exist until we’ve mated.
“Hmm.” She nods, my silence all the confirmation she needed. “But the work isn’t done. As I said, you have some truths you must face and share with her before you can fully bond.”
Sprite hurries in, a potion in one hand bearing Ilna’s familiar mark, and some fresh bandages in the other.
“Finally!” Lenka takes the bottle, the contents a deep gold.
“What is it?”
She pours a liberal amount on a cloth and presses it to Larellin’s throat.
My mate whimpers and buries her face in my chest.
“You’re hurting her,” I grate.
“No, just watch.” Lenka snatches a small basin from beside the bed and holds it beneath the wound.
Nothing happens.
“Wait.” Lenka stares at the injury.
Larellin whimpers again and turns more towards me. I hold her tightly and kiss her hair. “It’s all right, my treasure. You’ll be all right.”
Something drips into the basin.
“There.” Lenka adjusts her hold on the gold-doused cloth, and a sickly green venom leaks from the bite mark on Larellin’s flesh.
“There it is.” The relief in Lenka’s voice has me leaning closer, inspecting the wound as the golden liquid replaces the green, as if chasing the poison from Larellin’s veins. “Only a few more moments.”