Chapter 31
Thirty-One
For two more days, I worked through the long hours—cleaning, laundry, collecting more medicines and deliveries from the supply lines Doric had formed throughout the town.
Once, I delivered clean linens to Elinor’s room; the sight of the comfortable room—with expensive carpets untouched by blood, silk canopies, the sheer quantity of space she had been given when the injured people downstairs were crammed shoulder to shoulder—filled me with a formless fury.
I had to leave quickly, knowing one harsh word could destroy our alliance.
At night, I washed in a barrel outside and ate with Rhylan. Once he’d gotten up, he refused to lay back down, though Cryla had snarled at him that if he shifted and ruined her work, she wouldn’t be stitching him up again.
But while I worked the menial tasks that they desperately needed help with, he refused to be useless. More than once, he passed by the laundry or the kitchens to deliver medicines, and provide the healers with another pair of helping hands.
On those occasions when he did pass, he always ducked in to brush a kiss across the back of my neck, to leave a little caress on my cheek.
On the third night, as I finally washed up in icy water and splashed my face, wiping away the sweat, I felt a warmth at my back.
“We’re leaving in the morning.” He wrapped his arms around me, speaking against my ear. I sank back against him, grateful for the solid wall of muscle at my back when I was so weary.
My lids slipped low; there was every chance I might pass out in my soup tonight. At least the labor gave me a reason to take the headache powder Cryla kept on hand; I could pretend it was just exhaustion, and not a blood-craving.
Then I thought about what he’d said. My eyes shot open. “Will a wyvern-rider be taking me back?”
I hadn’t seen Mykah since the first night in the inn. Elinor had told me, in one of our rare conversations, that Doric had ordered her back to the eyrie, where she would be…if not safe, then at least safer.
But if her wyvern was willing and able to accept a ferryman’s sling, I’d be happy to ride with her. I was still curious about the little draga who didn’t know her House and wanted to bring it back.
“What? No, of course not.” Rhylan chuckled against my ear. “Doric has spare saddles in his eyrie. He’s bringing one here and you’ll fly on me, of course.”
“On you? With all of…this…going on?” I pulled out of his grasp and waved a hand at the patchwork on his body, which was admittedly healing quite rapidly. The stitches were already beginning to sink into healthy new flesh that had grown overnight. “We can’t possibly.”
“Oh, but we can,” he growled, bringing me back to his chest with a hard jerk of my shoulders. “The wounds are closed, Sera. Cryla is going to remove the rest of the stitching tonight. I’m not going to spill my guts all over the Krysiens.”
“So you say.” My mouth was pressed against his warm chest, muffling my words. “I’ll go by wyvern, or not at all. I’m not risking you again before you’re well.”
“Really?” he asked in mock outrage, giving his head a little shake. “What happened to ‘where you go, I go’?”
I braced my hands on him—gently, ever mindful of the stitches—and glared up into his face. “You know perfectly damn well that’s not what I mean. Kalros almost gutted you. The last thing you need is to bear the weight of a rider and a harness.”
“Cryla declared me perfectly capable of flight as of ten minutes ago. And you’re nothing compared to a harness. You’ll be of no more mind than a flea.”
“A flea?” I asked through gritted teeth. The absolute indignity of being compared to the same pests who had made my life hellish for four years.
“A very lovelyflea,” he amended.
A scowl creased my brows before I could stop it. “There is absolutely no way I’m riding back on you, or helping you into your harness, or…how dare you compare me to a flea?”
A grin flashed across his lips. “I dare, princess.”
“I’ll go speak to the wyvern-riders after dinner. One of them will accept the ferry payment for bringing me home.” With storm clouds still hovering over my head, I tried to push past him.
Rhylan was an immovable wall, not giving so much as an inch.
“We don’t need to bring the wyvern-riders into this. I’m your dragon. You’re riding back on me, or we’re not going back at all.”
“I’m not risking you again,” I growled at him.
“Just fucking ride me, Sera,” he hissed back, abruptly leaning down so we were eye to eye.
A moment passed, then another. My mouth twitched against my will. “Not with an audience. I like to keep it private.”
Rhylan’s intense glare became a smile, then a leer. “All the more reason to be home by morning then, isn’t it?”
I sighed wordlessly, and touched the line of stitches that ran from his collarbone, across the expanse of a pectoral muscle, and over his ribs. The skin was healing, scarring.
Even I could see that the stitches needed to be removed tonight; his dragonblood would accelerate the end of the process without impediments.
“You are too stubborn for your own good, you know that?”
Rhylan caught my hand, pressing it flat to his chest and covering it with his own. “You’re one to talk.”
The solid, steady thump of his heartbeat against my palm was soothing. I thought I felt my own heart changing its pace, slowing to match his rhythm. Which was sheer wishful imagination, but…a draga could always dream.
“Fine. I’ll ride you home.” I looked up at him from under my lashes. “And elsewhere.”
“We never did get to finish what we started on the map,” he mused.
I covered my mouth to hide my smile as one of the healers stepped into the private courtyard, helping one of the injured dragons. He had been given crutches, one of his legs splinted from the calf down.
“Let’s go eat,” Rhylan said, draping an arm over my shoulders. “You need a rest, Sera.”
I let him lead me back into the warm glow of the inn.
Doric wasas good as his word: in the morning, the promised harness had been deposited into the rear courtyard, well out of the way of the healers and supply runners.
I blinked against the pearly morning light, feeling every second of the last three days in my shoulders and back.
Rhylan’s warmth beside me on the bed had been the only comfort; my neck was painfully stiff and sore today.
How quickly we grow used to the material comforts of an eyrie, I thought ruefully. It had taken me less than a month from leaving Mistward Isle to adapt to soft feather pillows and fluffy blankets. Not so long ago, the lumpy bed would have seemed an unattainable luxury.
Cryla had removed Rhylan’s stitches before we slept; she’d snipped them out, one by one, then plucked them from his flesh with tiny, point-tipped tongs.
“When you get home, have Kirana look over these,” she’d instructed him firmly, and had given him a dark look when Rhylan informed her that Kirana was acting as our emissary into the Wildlands.
“You let her fly to the Wildlands during this instability?” Cryla demanded. “My finest student? Have you any idea—”
“We have an idea, Cryla,” Rhylan had said, his voice ominously quiet. “We can keep Kirana home…and then this war will be dragged out even longer. Someone had to go, and she wanted to do it.”
I’d kept my mouth shut, remembering Kirana’s final words to me.
She was crushed between a rock and a hard place, wanting to find peace and release the pain of their past, and yet unable to do nothing and see her sister’s murderer take the throne.
No, she didn’t want to do it. She simply had no choice.
“If anything happens to her, I’ll hold you personally accountable.” With that, Cryla had left us to snatch what sleep we could.
And as of this morning, in the bright, unforgiving light, I could clearly see that Rhylan had not been wrong: he was healed enough to make the flight to Jhazra Eyrie. Tiny crimson pinpricks marked where the stitches had been, but even they were fading to a dark pinkish tone after a night of rest, and the silvery sheen of scar tissue had developed over the sealed wounds.
As he squinted up at the sky, flat white with clouds, Doric emerged from the inn behind us. The dragon’s icy blue scales covered most of his exposed flesh; his angular eyes were narrowed with irritation, and his jaw was tight.
At first I thought his irritation was for us, but he relaxed easily enough when Rhylan saw him.
“Thought I’d see you off, at least.” Doric managed a smile, but his scales never stopped shifting over his skin, even as he and Rhylan clasped hands.
“We’ll send the harness back on the next wyvern-flight.” Rhylan released his hand, his gaze following the shifting patches of dragonhide. “We don’t have to go yet, if you still need us…”
Doric shook his head, ran a hand through his chestnut hair with a sigh. “No, it’s not that. We’re good for now. The Endless Depths are watching the perimeters of the town, and with the wyvern-riders scouting we’ve got eyes on all fronts. It’ll take us a while to get this place back in some kind of order, but we’ve got the manpower necessary. It’s just…you know…”
Rhylan nodded sagely, like this meant something to him.
“We’re pretty sure the Bloodied Talons were mostly decimated. At the very least, Kalros has gone to ground, if he’s not already dead. As long as he’s out of the action, I’m not worried about Yura striking against us again, not this soon.”
I was. It was foolish to underestimate what my sister might have stored up her sleeve, but I couldn’t give vague, dire warnings and expect them to be believed.
More to the point, I didn’t necessarily want to sit in this town and scrub floors. Not when we desperately needed to get a message through to Kirana, and significantly reassess our plans.
This fight…it had been geographically small, in the grand scheme of things. Of course someone who had lived here their entire life would disagree: it had been the bombardment and destruction of their world.
But in the war for the throne, in the larger tapestry, it had created vast ripples.
Yura’s forces had been broken, but not defeated. It had provided Chantrelle with an opportunity to rid herself of a troublesome princess.
And now we could anticipate her next move: positioning Asura and Cyran to stake their own claim.
We needed Kirana at home. And we needed to speak to Tyria, who was surely keeping a close eye on the map, and watching as the territories around her began to form their own alliances.
Rhylan said something to Doric, already turning away, but I reached out and touched the dragon’s blue-scaled arm lightly. “Doric. Your draga ward, Mykah…if you need to send us a message, would you consider sending her? I’d very much like to speak with her again.”
His gaze flickered. “She told me she spoke to you.”
“Yes. Of all of us, I’m the one who could help her the most. And I owe her.” I held his gaze, unwilling to break contact for even a second. I wanted to help this girl find her House and bring it back to life. It was a pain I understood all too well.
His lips flattened slightly. “I will if I can, but she won’t be my ward for long. Now that Cyran’s gotten notions into his head, Pyrae will want to call her home, where she can keep an eye on her precious little spy.”
My next breath caught in my throat. “You can’t be serious.”
I hadn’t told Mykah anything of value to Pyrae—but I did not believe she was a spy, either.
Not willingly.
Doric gave me a thin smile. “Wait and see. I wouldn’t talk about any sensitive plans while she’s around, though.”
He gave me a perfunctory bow and strode away, leaving me staring after him.
“The draga who caught you?” Rhylan’s voice was quiet against my ear.
“Yes. She’s their ward, from a House of Ashes, but I suspect there’s quite a bit more to the story than what she told me.” I motioned for him to step beneath the harness, though he didn’t shift. “I’ll tell you the rest as we fly. I want to get out of here.”
“You finally see reason.” Rhylan touched my chin, bringing my face up. I rose on my toes, receiving the kiss I craved. “Little flea.”
He smiled against my lips, even as I growled. “Don’t start with me.”
I stepped back and allowed him to shift, taking extra care with the buckles over his fresh scars, and soon enough we were in the air, flying over the ruins of Zerhaln.
I slidto the eyrie floor, biting back a moan of pain as Viros rushed for us. “Thank the gods, you’re alive.”
The Eyrie-Master’s hair stood in a wild white nimbus, violet circles pasted under his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
He ran his hands through the corona of hair again, clearly a motion he’d performed a thousand times in the last few days, as Rhylan shifted to male form.
As for me…I wasn’t sure I’d be alive for much longer. The flight over the southern Krysiens, which had taken two hours before, had taken five in Rhylan’s weakened condition.
That was all well and good; I was perfectly content to settle against his back, telling him of what Mykah had told me in shouts between gusts of wind.
But the first pang had started an hour in. I’d ignored it at first, pressing a hand to my lower belly, and as the flight had dragged on, the sharp little pinches had come more frequently, and more viciously, with every passing hour.
By the end of the flight, the pinches had evolved into the sensation of white-hot hands reaching into my abdomen, squeezing everything in there with clawed fingers. Pain shot through my back, and down into my hips.
I’d broken out in a cold sweat that dried as soon as the wind touched it, and it had taken every shred of willpower I possessed not to let on to Rhylan that my body was threatening to tear itself apart from the inside out.
Was it sickness? Disease? Had the salve failed to clean out some contaminant from the tiny wounds that the wyvern’s claws had made? Food poisoning?
Realpoison?
Leaving Viros to fuss over Rhylan, I staggered to the eyrie doors.
“Where are you going?” The dreaded line had appeared with prominence between Rhylan’s thick brows.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” I said with a gasp, doing my best to tear the door off its hinges to get inside.
I stumbled down the hall, pausing sporadically to lean on walls and pant for breath, doubled over as agony tore through me. The stairs to the next level of the eyrie were an obstacle course designed by a torturer. At the bottom I knelt, panting, a fresh coating of sweat on my forehead.
When I made it to my room, I managed to lock the door behind me before vanishing into the bathroom and collapsing on the cool stone floor, curling into a fetal ball.
Gaelin’s warning seemed to loom over me, a warning that I hadn’t heeded well enough. Doric seemed to believe the other Houses were planting spies…and it wouldn’t have been hard to slip poison in my food. I had been so exhausted, I hadn’t given so much as a glance to whatever was on my plate before I inhaled it.
The pinching agony returned, and I rested my cheek on the floor, letting it cool my face as another prickling round of sweat broke out on my skin.
I needed to get up. I needed Kirana, though she wasn’t here. I was going to die on a bathroom floor, poisoned by an unknown assassin, never to be avenged.
The horrible sensation of wetness accompanied the next cramping wave, and when it had passed long enough for me to uncurl from the ball I was in, I opened my eyes.
A rusty chuckle escaped me.
You are an absolute fool, I told myself.
I wasn’t godsdamned poisoned. With the return of a healthy weight, the damage caused by starvation on Mistward was healing itself.
My moon cycles had stopped within six months on the Isle. We had quickly run out of food, and as my weight had dropped, so too had the monthly cycles ended.
In time, that had become the least of my concerns; I hadn’t given my cycles so much as a second’s thought since returning to the mainland.
And now I had the absolute pleasure of being leveled by wracking pain every month once more.
“What a complete joy,” I whispered aloud, still silently laughing.
In the Training Grounds, I’d gone to one of the Koressis healers for the moon powder that would make the cycles less painful. It was a slightly embarrassing addendum to need to add to Kirana’s letter, but unless they wanted a useless fetal ball of a Dragonesse every four weeks, I needed to know where to find it in her still-room.
And…well, there was the comfort of knowing that I wasn’t pregnant. The last thing either of us needed right now was an infant dragonblood, born to unmated parents in the midst of a war.
Myst would be thrilled to receive the good news.
I was just preparing myself to try to lift myself off the ground without vomiting when someone knocked on the bathroom door.
“Sera?” It was Rhylan, his voice concerned.
“Get out,” I tried to snap, but pain reduced my shout to a shaky whimper. I growled under my breath when he slammed the door open, taking in me, the sweat glimmering on my face and arms, and the spreading stain on my dress.
He visibly relaxed, a bemused tilt to his mouth. “Gods, I thought I was going to find you dead in here.”
“I am dead. Go away.”
“Come on. Let’s get you in the bath and I’ll bring you something for the pain.” He shut the door behind him, pulled the hot water tap, and shoved my arms out of the way as I tried to fend him off.
“I can get myself in the bath. I’m not an invalid, gods damn it.” If it was my last earthly act, I would claw myself over the side and into the bath by myself.
“Remember that talk we had about being stubborn?” He sounded all too cheerful as his fingers became talons, and he sliced right through the laced ribbons on the back of the dress. “Because you’re not convincing me that you’re not the stubborn one right now.”
“I’ve handled this myself my whole life.” Despite myself, I allowed him to pull the dress over my head.
He wadded it into a ball and threw it in one of the laundry chutes in the wall; I silently apologized to the laundress who would have to deal with the soaked-in stains, now that I understood what they went through.
“And now you have me to help you.” Rhylan gently lifted me and deposited me into the steaming water. “It’s one of the benefits of having a dragon at your beck and call.”
“Is it?” I whispered, but I had no fight left in me. The cramping was still there, a coil of agony in my lower belly, but the heat of the water dissipated some of the immediate distress. “Gods know I don’t do enough for you.”
Rhylan gripped my chin. Forced me to look at him. There was no playfulness in his eyes now, only a searing intensity that struck me like lightning. “You just spent three nights spreading herbal snot all over my shredded body. Don’t ever talk to me about not doing enough. Understand?”
“I also lied to get us out of Kirion faster. And didn’t tell you when I dislocated my shoulder.” If I was going to make a list of my crimes, I wanted to be thorough, so he couldn’t claim I was some saint-like being who should never once undergo a thorough self-examination of my own selfishness. “I broke down because I wanted to go home, and I was a rude, snobbish bitch to you.”
He held my gaze, but the burning coals had given way to a glint of amusement. “You were a bit snobbish at times, yes. I’ll accept that. But for the rest of it…I already told you, Sera, you don’t have to hide any of that from me. If someone had tried to keep me away from Jhazra after four years on that island, I would’ve torn right through them to get home. I’m not going to judge you for feeling the same.”
“Maybe not, but I don’t…sometimes you look at me in a way I don’t deserve.”
His grip on my chin tightened and he gave my head a little shake, forcing me to meet his eyes again. “Or you could let me decide if you deserve it, since I’m the other half of this equation. I’m…the cause of it all. Let me do what small things I can to make it up to you.”
I nodded silently, keeping my hands cupped over my belly. A fresh wave of pain had broken out as he spoke.
“Now tell me that you understand, that you’re not going to speak to me about not doing godsdamned enough, and I’ll go get you a cup of tea and moon powder.”
“I understand.” My voice came out hoarse, tears prickling the back of my eyes. I didn’t deserve him, not in the slightest, which the bond seemed to know…and yet he seemed determined to show me exactly what it was like to have such a thing.
The things I couldn’t have…it was more clear to me than ever that I would never be able to forge a bond for politics.
Mate bonding to Tidas would have eventually killed me, whether it was by fading away or finding a way to destroy myself. I had seen it before, draga who couldn’t live with the constant pressure of a hated mate bond, who had taken to drink or drugs simply because they couldn’t handle a sober existence in a reality they despised.
No matter how selfish it was for an aspiring Dragonesse, I wanted the bond for love. I wanted to wake up to a dragon like this, every day of my life.
It hurt to know that someone else had ruined that. The things I could have had, right here in front of me…and yet our family history would always be a mountain between us.
I wished I had Anjali’s true killer right in front of me, so I could push them out the window and watch them splatter a few thousand feet below.
“Good. Stay right here and don’t move.” He braced himself on the edge of the bath, leaned in to kiss the top of my head, and vanished, leaving me to float alone in the steam.
When he returned, I eagerly took the cup of tea. A fine sediment had settled in the bottom, a familiar sight from my years in the Training Grounds. “How did you know which one it was? Did Kirana have them labeled?”
I should’ve just dragged my pathetic carcass into her still-room. I could’ve handled all of this without Rhylan seeing me as a whimpering, curled-up mess.
Rhylan managed to convey smoking sarcasm with a single raised brow. “I grew up surrounded by females. Gods forbid my father and I didn’t know what moon powder was.”
“Oh.” It had been a stupid question. I sipped my tea until it was cool enough to gulp, and drained the rest.
The next hour found me curled up under a bundle of blankets in the library, with a heated pad full of rice grains pressed to my lower belly.
The pain was already receding, and Rhylan had ordered a plate of sandwiches to be delivered while we took turns detailing a letter to Kirana.
I nibbled a triangle of soft white bread, cucumber, and watercress, no longer feeling that Aurae was lurking over my shoulder, waiting to spirit my soul away. The moon powder had begun its work immediately; Rhylan’s attentiveness to my pain had done a lot more.
“Ask her about Mykah,” I added, when Rhylan finished a paragraph and looked up at me. “I want to know more about her. She didn’t give me the impression of a spy, but…Doric seemed quite sure.”
He started to scribble another line on the parchment, and looked up at the sound of footsteps.
It was Nilsa, who had delivered the sandwiches in tense silence, and now she held another letter. Unlike the quickly-scrawled missives from before, this one was written on thin, perfumed vellum, with an engraved bronze border, and sealed with midnight blue wax.
My heart dropped to my toes, every muscle tensing, as Rhylan took it and tore it open.
“Relax,” he murmured. “We haven’t been called out. Chantrelle is sending out the official notice of Princess Asura and Cyran’s mate bond.”
“The Second Claim is in…” I glanced at the almanac calendar, open on the table beside me, and was jolted with shock. “A week. Sunya curse it, we lost half a week in Zerhaln.”
I had been so weary I hadn’t given much attention to marking the passage of days. We’d lost precious time in recovery.
“They’ll make their claim then, of course.” Rhylan tossed the letter onto the desk, his jaw set. “We need to get a letter to Tyria. Tonight.”