Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
Day became night, and I didn’t notice. It all passed in a haze of blood and worry.
I sponged blood from Rhylan, the healer wielded a needle and thread like she was born to it, and hours later my dragon was sewn up.
My fingers hovered over a line of stitches across his stomach. I couldn’t bring myself to touch him, to cause him more pain—until the healer shoved a jar in my hands.
I looked up at her, surprised that she was still there. When she’d vanished from my view, she had ceased to exist.
“Put that over the stitching, and do it carefully,” she instructed me. “Gods only know what that red son of bitch had on his claws. This’ll keep the wounds from going septic.”
Dark circles had formed under her eyes, and a smear of dried blood had been streaked across her forehead, but she didn’t seem to notice or care.
“You hear me?” she barked, and I realized I was staring at her. Gods, I was tired.
“I heard you,” I muttered, and unscrewed the lid from the jar. The salve smelled familiar…exactly the one Kirana had used on my cheek, the same sharp herbal tinge. “Did you learn this from Kirana?”
The healer gave me a look of sheer disbelief. “No, she learned it from me.”
“You’re Cryla.” The name came to me suddenly, a vaguely-remembered conversation as Kirana told me about her contacts…Cryla was an herbalist. One of her teachers in the healing arts. “Kirana’s tutor.”
“So you’ve heard about me.” Cryla smirked, but the expression quickly faded. “Get to it, draga. I’ve got too many other patients who need me now.”
She looked exhausted again. I listened to the moans of pain from outside, a few agonized cries…and went to dip my finger in the salve.
I stopped, staring at it. My hands were covered with dried, brown blood, flaking off the backs of my hands in sheets.
“Fuck.” I couldn’t contaminate this, not when others would need it, too.
I left the jar by Rhylan and found a wyvern watering-trough to wash my hands in, scrubbing as quickly as I could without leaving a single speck behind.
A short, slim form leaned against the wall as I washed. It was the wyvern-rider girl, her dark, doe-like eyes brimming with curiosity. “Is he still alive?”
“Yes,” I answered, more shortly than I intended to. I was fighting back a jaw-cracking yawn, but I couldn’t sleep now. It was just the killing that had caught up to me. I could push past it.
“Can I come with you?” she asked eagerly, and I forced myself to really look at her.
No more than fourteen, wearing a wyvern-rider’s leathers…she was brown-skinned, her tight, dark curls reaching her shoulders, a look of sheer puppy-like eagerness all over her face.
But the signs were there. The glimmer of mulberry scales on her cheekbones, metallic strands of the same shade spiraling through her coiled curls. Her nails were thick, strong claws, kept tidy and clean, and the scales extended down the exposed backs of her hands.
The girl was a scion of a House—likely an ancient one, given how many physical markers she possessed—and she was out here riding a wyvern.
Utterly criminal. She should be in the Training Grounds now, practicing for a proper dragon, preparing for the future that was owed to her bloodline.
“Who are you?” I asked, flicking water off my hands.
“Mykah,” she said, taking my question as a tacit invitation to join me in the inn. She was on my heels as I returned to my stool and picked up the jar of salve. Mykah watched curiously as I began dabbing the salve over the stitched-up wounds criss-crossing Rhylan’s chest and sides. “It’s Mykariah, really, but that’s a mouthful.”
“Which House?” I tried not to sound impatient, but it was like she hadn’t been schooled in etiquette at all. Doric had said something about her being his ward…but the Lunar Tides wouldn’t be so stupid as to leave a scion out of the Training Grounds, and not bother to teach her proper draga manners.
Surely not.
But she shrugged, her little shoulders going stiff. “House of Ashes, if you must pry about it.”
I looked up from my ministrations to stare at her. “And you’re a ward of the Lunar Tides?”
That dark, pinkish-violet coloring in her scales and hair resembled no House canon I knew of. I mulled it over as I moved on to Rhylan’s arm, wincing in sympathy as he groaned under his breath.
“They’re my guardians for now,” Mykah said, squatting on the other side of the mattress and watching with intense interest. “My true ward-family wanted me out of the way while all this is going on, so they sent me here. Right into the thick of it!” She snorted. “Ooh, that one looks nasty.”
“So which House is your ward-family?” Talking to her was keeping me grounded in the present, distracting me from all the guilt I wanted to dive into. I moved on to the wound Mykah had commented on—Kalros had managed to snag the hollow of Rhylan’s throat with his claws. The stitches were neat, but brutal, ringing his neck.
Mykah’s lips twitched. “Undying Light.”
My hands didn’t pause in their work, though I was surprised. Pyrae and Tashan were not known for their generosity.
And her lack of etiquette suddenly made much more sense. If she was a foundling, a scion cropping up from a long-exiled bloodline, she could be from a House that had been burned to ashes so far in the past, none of us would have records of it today.
But it still didn’t quite click into place for me. Pyrae would have no reason to take in a foundling…
Oh. Unless one of the younger sons of Undying Light had fathered her…and they wouldn’t want to lose face by sending Mykah to the Training Grounds, bearing their name, but the marks of another Ascendant.
“Are your hands clean?” I asked, and when Mykah nodded, I passed her the jar. “Get his other side. I don’t want to flip him over yet, not while he’s still bleeding.”
Her eyes went wide, but she began tending the wounds on Rhylan’s left, able to reach his neck where he’d been torn up.
She’d likely only wanted to come in for one reason: to see a dragon up close in male form, one from outside her ward families. Even a young draga from a House of Ashes would be curious, particularly if she’d been kept out of the Training Grounds, away from any future mate.
I took the break to straighten, stretching my back muscles and hearing my spine pop. “Thank you for saving my life, by the way. Whatever favor you need, it’s yours. The House of Silvered Embers owes you.”
Mykah gave me a considering, narrow-eyed look, the calculation a little alarming on her soft, baby-cheeked features. Then she broke into a wide smile. “I’ll remember that, don’t worry.”
“Just don’t ask me to kill your ward family for you,” I muttered, and she plastered an innocent “Who, me?” look over the calculation that had been there seconds ago.
Then Mykah cleared her throat. “What I really wanted to know was…you’re Princess Serafina, obviously.”
“Yes.” I didn’t pry further. She had the look of someone who was working herself up to ask something she didn’t know if she should voice aloud.
“And Silvered Embers was named a House of Ashes because your mother killed his.”
A scowl descended on my face before I could stop it, and I had to carefully school it away, not wanting to drive her off. “That’s what some claim.”
Mykah finished spreading the salve on her side of Rhylan, and she focused on the jar as she screwed the lid back on, frowning at it.
I waited patiently.
“How did you bring your House back from ashes, then?” she finally burst out, speaking so fast all the words blurred together.
I should have expected such a question, particularly from a ward with scion-marks.
“It’s the laws of the Interregnum. If a Drakkon or Dragonesse dies without leaving an heir, and breaks the lines of succession, all their earthly works are considered null. If Drakkon Nasir had named an heir…” I shrugged. “I would probably still be on Mistward Isle, and my eyrie would have been forgotten eventually. But, since he chose to leave us with chaos, his declaration of my House’s exile was voided. When I returned to my eyrie and claimed it, I brought my House back from the ashes.”
“I’m sure you’re glad of the chaos, then,” she murmured, sitting with her back against the wall.
“In a manner of speaking.” I touched Rhylan’s chest in one of the few unmarked places, feeling the gentle rise and fall of his breath. “It allowed me to come home. But—I could live without the bloodshed.”
I thought of the feel of a sword tearing through flesh, the hot stink of blood and shit, and felt my guts knot.
Fortunately, my stomach had emptied itself in the square earlier, and there was nothing left in me.
“So…if his laws are void…does this mean every Drakkon’s laws are void?” she asked carefully. “Any draga who can reclaim their eyrie…can bring their House back?”
I licked my lips, thinking rapidly through what to say…and settled on honesty. She was a draga of ancient blood, and she deserved better than to be treated like a Bloodless wyvern-rider. “I…yes. If you can claim your eyrie, and your Ascendant lives, you can bring it back while there is no rightful ruler to declare otherwise. But…how long has your House been ashes?”
Her dark eyes flicked up to me, and I read a terrible weariness in them. “I don’t know. I don”t know which House is mine.”
It took all of my willpower to keep the pity from my face.
If she didn’t know which House was hers, or how long it had been in exile, she might never find it.
Even if she traveled to every empty eyrie in the world, there were hundreds more that had crumbled with the passage of time, the bones of the Ascendants buried well below the ruins.
Of course the draga wanted to find it, if she was being held back like this. She needed to be in the Training Grounds, needed to be preparing to find her own dragon one day, to rule her own territory.
It was breathtaking, the casual cruelty of Undying Light taking her in as a ward, and not even bothering to search for her history—not even giving her the training a draga needed.
Did they truly expect a scion to remain a wyvern-rider her entire life?
But a coldness prickled over my skin. I absolutely believed Pyrae would keep a scion as a wyvern-rider, if it meant she had a servant dependent on her for food and shelter.
A useful servant, who would carry her messages, and be beholden to her in all things…one she could use as a bargaining chip later, banking on that bloodline.
“Well…I’ll look for what I can. It’s the least I can do since you kept me from splattering all over the town.” I tried to smile, but gods, I felt terrible for her. “I’ll still owe you a proper favor, though.”
Mykah got up, stretching with studied casualness. “If you become Dragonesse, would you stop me from bringing my House back? If I found my eyrie?”
I considered it for less than a second. If any other dragon had asked me—if Kalros had been here, in the flesh, to crawl and beg at my feet—I would have said no.
I would have said to let the Bloodied Talons rot, cowards and rapists that they were. They would always be ashes, would always be worth less than ashes.
But for this draga… “No, of course not. If I had the right to claim a second chance, so do you.”
She nodded, her gaze flitting around the room, resting lightly on the badly-mauled dragonbloods and Bloodless who had been brought in. “All right. I was just curious, is all. Aren’t you hungry?”
For a moment I remembered the sword slicing upwards, and thought I’d say no…but my stomach growled, everything inside me contracting like it wanted to eat itself. A headache was beginning to pulse behind my eyes. “Gods, I’d kill for something to eat.”
I started to get to my feet, wobbling a little, but Mykah put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down. “Nah, you sit. I’ll find something and we can eat together. Doric says when you get the battle-madness, you forget things like hunger and pain.”
“He’s right,” I mumbled, sinking back onto the stool helplessly and rubbing my temples. My legs were so much jelly, anyway. The idea of walking sounded terrible.
Mykah popped back around the corner. “Things like pain?” she hinted, and I looked down at myself.
My leathers had been shredded by Kalros and her wyvern’s claws. Blood—some mine, some Rhylan’s—had dried to a fine crackle glaze on what was left.
Only my hands were clean; the scent of smoke and iron coated me, sunk into my hair.
“Oh,” I breathed, and closed my eyes. I was too tired to even consider trying to wash this off. Moving would take energy that had been sapped from me.
I had never killed a man before with my own sword. I had practiced on wood, on leather and straw dummies, but never, not even on Mistward, had I taken a life.
I felt disgusting to the bone, and yet…looking back, I couldn’t think of a single other way to handle it. I couldn’t have let Yura’s band of exiles tear apart the people of Zerhaln and done nothing to stop it.
But the sensation of carving into flesh instead of an inert post…
My stomach flipped again, temporarily displacing the hunger. I swallowed hard, my mouth feeling dry and thick.
I wondered if Mykah felt the same when her wyvern killed men…or if the wyvern’s actions created a barrier between her and the sensation of life leaving the body. Had she ever wielded a sword against someone?
But I didn’t want to ask. Not right now, with the feeling so fresh in my mind.
She returned with a jug of well-water and a bowl of vegetable stew. I ate fast, shoveling it into my mouth like I was fresh from Mistward, and drank several cups of water. The headache didn’t leave; I found myself craving the energy of the tonic, the energy this simple meal couldn’t provide.
Craving the dragon’s blood.
I didn’t remember closing my eyes.
When I opened them,Mykah was gone. Sunlight filtered in through shattered windows, and I didn’t know what had woken me until I felt a hand touching my shoulder.
I sat bolt upright, reaching for a sword that wasn’t at my side.
“Easy.” Gaelin stood there, still streaked with soot. He took his hand from my shoulder, and held out my sword. “I’m just here to return this.”
I took it silently, sliding it into its scabbard as I blinked sleep from my eyes.
“Maristela and I need to return home,” he informed me, but his eyes were on Rhylan. “We’re flying back to Kirion today. Doric has called in the Endless Depths to watch your backs. Look, Sera…we can’t afford to lose Rhylan.”
He reached out and gripped my upper arm, staring deep into my eyes.
Sending a message he couldn’t say out loud.
“Don’t trust anyone but yourself and Cryla,” he said, speaking so quietly his lips hardly moved. “As soon as he can fly, get out of here.”
“Who?” I breathed, following his lead, keeping my voice only for his ears.
Gaelin shook his head minutely. “Just be careful.”
I thought of Chantrelle’s threat hanging over our heads…and Gaelin himself was in a position to find out first if she chose to tell the world we were lying about our mate bond.
I could only hope that we had neatly side-stepped her by removing all signs of our deception, but I didn’t want Rhylan to be looked down upon by the dragons he trusted if the truth came out.
It’s much too late for that, my snide inner voice whispered. What’s a little contempt compared to losing your head?
“I will be.” I stepped back from Gaelin, disliking the feeling of another dragon so near me. “Larivor guide your path home.”
He bowed, as a dragon to a Dragonesse, and my heart skipped a beat. It was the first time someone had acknowledged what we were working for…and I wasn’t entirely sure I liked it. Did I deserve it?
But that was the power I was striving for. I needed to get used to it.
I watched until he disappeared into the courtyard, and began checking Rhylan immediately.
His stitches had held through the night, and no red streaks to indicate blood poisoning had spread from the wounds. I pressed down on his arm experimentally, to see if any pus would rise, and instead he drew in a sharp breath.
His eyes cracked open, the blue standing out feverishly against his paler-than-usual skin. “Gods, are you trying to finish what he started?”
“I was checking for infection.” I sank onto the stool, and his hand groped for me, uncoordinated and drooping. I took it, mostly to keep him still, and pressed the back of my hand to his forehead. “You don’t feel feverish.”
“Let’s go home, then.” He tried to smile, and his lower lip split again. Blood welled and a bead dripped onto his chin, pooling in the shallow cleft.
“No. Stay right here—and if you move, I will end you myself.”
I got up and went in search of bandages and food. The first was in short supply; I managed to beg a single bandage from one of the harried, exhausted-looking healers, and when I told the bedraggled cooks in the kitchen who I was fetching food for, they gave me only a bowl of broth.
“He doesn’t get solid food until tonight,” Cryla said, appearing in the doorway. She was even more bloodied now, her dress streaked with brown stains; the bags under her eyes had deepened, but she hummed with tense energy. “Any signs of fever?”
“No.”
“Pus?”
“No.”
“Good. Don’t let him get up yet. I haven’t had time to brew the blood restoration panacea number five, and he’ll be hurting until then.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I escaped the kitchens and wound my way back through the inn, where makeshift pallets had been laid down for too many patients to count.
Rhylan had listened for once, and remained precisely where I’d left him. I sank onto the stool and pressed the bandage to his lip, soaking up the blood, and delicately tapped ointment over the split.
“Now you can eat.” I dipped a spoon in the bowl, bringing it to his mouth.
“It’s quite the reversal of roles, isn’t it?” he said hoarsely. “You feeding me.”
But he didn’t take it, just stared at me with those glittering blue eyes.
I held the spoon expectantly over his mouth. “You can eat this nicely, or you can suffer me shoving it in your mouth. Your choice.”
He opened his mouth, turning his head just enough that I couldn’t easily shove the spoon in. “I let you fall.”
I sighed, returning the spoon to the bowl. “Your soup is going to get cold. You didn’t let me fall, Rhylan, Kalros ripped the whole damn saddle off your back.”
“I didn’t realize you were gone until…” He blinked, gaze going fuzzy. “I don’t remember. I thought…you were dead.”
“Luckily for me, there’s a wyvern-rider under the ward of Lunar Tides. She caught me midair.” I gazed back at him, my stomach knotting again. The prickling feeling of an approaching thunderstorm was climbing all over my skin, raising the tiny hairs on the back of my neck. “I’m not dead, but Kalros will die from those injuries. You did what you had to do. Yura made a grave mistake in coming here; she’s lost her band of exiles. We’re closer to the right of might now.”
It was a victory without any gains; Zerhaln was more rubble than not, the future Drakkon severely injured…but knowing that Yura wouldn’t have the Mistward exiles at her beck and call had made our presence here worth it.
“I thought you were dead,” he repeated insistently, grabbing my arm. I almost spilled the soup all over as he struggled to sit up, staring into my eyes. “Sera, we can’t—”
“Be quiet,” I snarled under my breath, pushing him back onto the bed. “Don’t talk about it here.”
He didn’t have the strength to resist me, falling back.
I leaned in close, putting the soup aside and speaking in a whisper. “It’s bad enough what happened, but…Gaelin gave me a warning, too. We can’t afford to let any cracks show in our fa?ade, do you understand? Someone might already know. I didn’t do it right, when…when you were bleeding outside. I think someone suspects.” My throat tightened, already feeling the sword, the noose… “Just wait until we’re home.”
“I don’t give a damn,” Rhylan said, as quietly as I’d whispered. “I almost killed you. That’s all I care about, don’t you understand?”
I gazed at him, wishing the bond was there. That I could share a fraction of the terror I’d felt for him, because I knew now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that somewhere along the way I had come to truly care for him beyond friendship.
But if the bond hadn’t formed yet, with all that buried desire pushing against it, it never would.
It was a lost cause.
I curled my fingers through his, wary of his cut palm, and tried to smile. “And I thought I was going to watch you get torn out of the sky, and I could’ve done nothing to stop it. But we’re both still here. We’re still together.”
“Yes, but…” His gaze drifted down over my shredded clothes, the blood still crusted in the leather. “Look at you. That’s all because of me. I should’ve…”
“Should’ve what? Left me at home?” I asked acerbically. “Not a chance in all the Nine Hells, Rhylan. Where you go, I go.”
His lips twitched, but he didn’t try to smile again. Just as well, because I would’ve held that damn split lip together myself before I let him start bleeding again.
“Promise?” he asked, gripping me as tightly as he could—which was worryingly weak. I could’ve pulled my hand out of his grasp easily.
“Of course I promise, you ridiculous dragon.” I kept my voice low, all too aware of that prickling sensation, the feeling that a storm lurked over the horizon, ready to rip the skies open with lightning when I least expected it. Gods forbid that someone should hear this… “Now you promise me—to never leave without me.”
“I’ll always go where you go. I promise with everything in me—and I will never let you fall again. Never.” His head rose up from the bed, voice ferocious despite the low whisper. Flames flashed in his eyes, consuming the blue for a split-second.
The prickling feeling was an almost physical itch now.
I forced myself to look away from Rhylan and scan the inn’s lower floor: no one seemed out of place. The patients were in too much pain to give a damn about us, the healers were too exhausted to care, and the Bloodless moving between them all, hauling loads of bloody bandages, dirty linens, and food back and forth, were too overworked to give us more than second’s notice.
Elinor was across the room, helping tend a wounded dragon, and I thought I saw a glimpse of Mykah’s violet wyvern through the window, but that was all.
But the feeling that we were playing with fire on dangerous ground wouldn’t leave me.
This was an unwise conversation. An unwise time to make promises, no matter how much I meant them, and wanted to hear them returned in kind.
The itch wouldn’t leave my skin, and we both needed to shut the hell up and act like normal mates. The sooner Rhylan healed, the sooner we could return to the safety of Jhazra Eyrie…and we could ponder Gaelin’s ominous warning in relative safety.
I brought Rhylan’s hand to my mouth, gently kissing his torn knuckles.
“I accept your promise,” I told him. “Now, are you going to eat your soup, or are you going to make me force-feed you?”