Chapter 10 #2
His wings were already spreading from his back. Black like the night, but shimmering where the moonlight found them through the trees.
Hastily, I put my arm around his neck.
His lips quirked in a faint smile just before he launched himself up.
Below us, the three members of Clan Amber were tall, striking figures one moment—and dragons the next. They soared up to join us.
“Why don’t they all fly like you?” I asked.
“Because they can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Maybe they don’t want to.” That seemed unlikely, given the slightly smug set of his lips. “Maybe their dragon doesn’t allow it.”
That felt like it had to be the real reason.
“Tell me about your dragon?” The question I wanted to ask most was: do you know what I am?
But I didn’t dare ask that, knowing how sharp their senses were. What would it take to have privacy with Fieran?
I needed to find a way to sound him out without telling on myself.
Right now, with my stomach swooping like I might vomit across his chiseled bare chest, I probably was not at my sneakiest.
It was a good thing my parents hadn’t taken me to the Trials to be registered as a shifter. Apparently, I was prone to flying sickness.
Just my luck.
“Shadowbane’s old and wise, and it’s probably for my good to have his nagging in my head, annoying though it is.” Fieran sounded as if he were speaking to his dragon just as much as to me.
“Shadowbane?” I repeated skeptically. Where did these names come from? “And the dragons choose you, but you choose your clans. How?”
“I lead my clan,” he said, “Ander leads his. We fight for the right to choose new shifters for our clans, and then our clan’s dragons choose to share themselves with them. Or not.”
“Or not? What happens if not?”
“My clan’s never had all the dragons reject a shifter as long as I’ve been part of it.”
“That didn’t really—” I squeezed my eyes—and lips—shut as my stomach seemed to fly right while we flew left. “Oh my gods.”
“You don’t like flying?” He sounded offended, but I couldn’t see his face.
“I thought it would be so magical.”
“If you are going to vomit, aim it toward Ander,” he suggested. “He’ll be shifting back in a moment.”
My eyes flew open, and he said, “Never mind. That was childish.”
“You wouldn’t want me to vomit on Ander’s dragon. Just Ander.”
“Sandwing’s great. He must see something in Ander.”
“Do clans hate each other? Because their clans compete against each other in the Trials?”
“So many questions about the clans and the Trials.” His expression was impossible to read.
“I’m just curious.”
“Everyone always is.” He wasn’t looking at me, his gaze sweeping the ground. The three dragons flying seemed to almost dwarf the mountain. “You should come see the Trials if you want to understand.”
“I don’t want to see them.”
“That would make you very special indeed.”
“Why?” The fury in my voice surprised me and, from the way he glanced my way, it surprised him too. “You keep us alive! People should be grateful, not…”
I couldn’t finish the thought. It seemed too damning of all my kind, and me with them.
“Ghoulishly entertained?” Darkly, he added, “People have good reason to fear the dragon shifters.”
“Why?” I said softly.
“There they are.” He seemed as if he hadn’t heard me, but given their sharp senses, that seemed unlikely.
The dragons were swooping down, all grace and beauty and danger. They shifted as they landed, looking impossibly godlike, as they were dragons one moment, skimming the ground, and the next they were stepping out of the air as easily as taking one last step down.
Fieran landed lightly and lowered me slowly to the ground since he was so much taller than me, keeping his arm around my waist until I had my footing.
I swallowed a thick mouthful of my nausea and wished I had another mint but didn’t want to ask.
He took my wrist, surprising me, and then pressed a little foil-wrapped candy into my palm.
He moved away from me without acknowledging the gesture.
But as I unwrapped the candy, I caught Nixi staring at me. She seemed to dislike me, just like Maura, for reasons that made no sense to me—weren’t we mortals too far below the shifters for their distaste?—and so I held eye contact with her as I popped the candy into my mouth.
She just quirked an eyebrow, still staring me down. It was hard to feel as if I were above her contempt when my stomach was threatening to turn itself inside-out.
I promised myself that if I did vomit, I’d find her first. I followed Fieran’s broad back as he moved away.
We were at the edge of an enormous rock scrabble, grown over with moss.
Dairen and Az stood at the mouth of one of the caves.
“This is a big cave system,” I said, pretending as if I were here to be useful as a guide to them all.
“Do we know where it leads?” Fieran asked, frowning as his gaze swept along the ground.
“It goes deep,” I said. “Lots of different routes, but it runs under the village and through the mountain, too.”
“He means the rip on the other side,” Nixi said.
Fieran said gamely, “I need to know both.”
I nodded, feeling embarrassed.
Anayla emerged from the mouth of the cave, a length of rope tied to her belt and also looped up in her hand, where she had been gathering it. Az held the other end. Dairen gripped a rope, too, his still uncoiled and slack into the cave.
“I hate it,” she said, stripping off her gloves before mopping her forehead with her arm.
“It’s hard being petite,” Dairen said sympathetically.
Az reached out and pulled something out of her hair, his face expressionless as he shook it off his fingers.
“Are there spiders in my hair?” She touched her hair, wide-eyed. “I don’t care that you’re the size of the Yera lighthouse, Dairen, you can go in next time!”
“No spiders,” Dairen told her, then smiled at Az, who was already giving him a quick shake of the head. “Thanks to Az.”
Anayla shrieked and stroked her hand down her hair, bobbing around as if to make herself inhospitable to spiders. I wasn’t sure how that would help, unless arachnids were as prone to nausea as I seemed to be.
“Let’s not let the mortal know even shifters are scared of spiders,” Dairen chided her.
“And we have other friends here,” Az observed, which brought Anayla to a sudden halt.
She and Dairen turned to look at Haron, Nixi, and Ander.
Just then, there was a wild scrabbling sound within the cave, just before Maura heaved herself out.
“That rip is deep inside, and I fear it’s not the only one. We’re going to have to come back with proper gear. Preferably in the morning,” she was saying, before she saw the others, who they were all staring at.
Then she said, “What the hell are you doing here, Nixi?”
Nixi’s eyes blazed, and Ander stepped between the two of them. “You knew we were being sent to reinforce you. You must have known to expect Nix—of course I’d bring my best.”
“Of course,” Fieran said. “Well, as Maura said, we’ll need to come back properly supplied.”
“How deep is the rip?” Ander frowned. “Waiting until morning seems foolhardy when we know how to stop another attack.”
“If Maura says we wait until morning, we wait,” Fieran cut him off.
I had never, in all my life, seen two men have a pissing contest supporting women’s opinions. It felt as surreal as watching dragons soar across the face of the moon.
Fieran added, “We can take turns keeping watch tonight. Teams of two.”
“I’ve got first watch,” Haron said, the first time I’d heard their voice.
They seemed eager not to be part of whatever was happening between these members of the two clans.
“I’ll join you,” Az said.
Well, that should make for a quiet start to the night. I barely knew what either of their voices sounded like.
Still, knowing that they would be standing guard here made me feel a thousand times better. I couldn’t imagine going to sleep tonight, knowing there was an open rip allowing monsters through.
I was glad the dragon shifters were here.
Even though, from the way they were eying each other, no one else felt that sentiment.