Leading Aegis

Chapter 21

Ophelia followed Nix and Carolina down the ramp, with Berkeley and Rue right behind them. Nix led the way to where the rest of his group was standing with five drakens, and then stopped and turned to them.

“Pick a mount,” he told them.

“We’re riding?” Rue asked, holding back a wince as she reached out to touch the side of a dark green draken’s neck.

Nix hummed, giving his own purple mount a hearty pat. “If we want any chance of getting some laibralt before the dragons find us, then we’ll need to keep to the sky as long as possible.”

“I always wanted to ride a draken,” Berkeley announced, grabbing either side of a maroon draken’s face as it stood eye to eye with him. The creature hissed at him, but he laughed and wiggled its jaw with his hands, which somehow warmed the draken to him rather than earning him fangs in his neck.

“That’s Nimble,” Nix told him, and while he introduced Berkeley to Nimble, Ophelia leaned to Carolina.

“What if this takes too long?” she whispered.

Carolina asked Nix, “How long will this take?”

He stopped talking to Berkeley and inhaled a deep breath. “Here’s the thing,” he said.

“Oh, this’ll be good,” Berkeley said, rubbing his hands together.

“We can do this the fast way,” he announced, “or we can do this the kind-of-but-still-not-really-safe way.”

“What’s the safe way?” Carolina asked .

“Wandering around in dragon territory for hours to days hoping to find some laibralt,” he answered.

She hummed. “And the fast way?”

“I may actually know where we can find some.”

“You said you didn’t know of any,” Carolina said.

“No,” Nix told her, “I said I didn’t have any.”

Ophelia thought about it for a few moments before squinting at him suspiciously. “Why haven’t you collected it yourself?”

He snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Because it’s in a dragon nest.”

Rue let out a bark of laughter, stopped to look around at the rest of them, and then laughed again. “He’s joking, right? Tell me he’s joking.”

“He’s been serious about this for years ,” one of his crew told them. “It’s just that none of us are crazy enough to go back with him.”

“It would be the biggest score we’ve ever had,” Nix said, sighing his exasperation. “At least fifty ounces of it, just ripe for the picking.”

“How do you know it’s there?” Carolina asked.

“I’ve seen it,” he answered. “I think the female — we call her Orlys — had a growth spurt during nesting one year. Who knows how long ago that was, but the laibralt’s been there ever since. I was this close.” He pinched his fingers together so they were almost touching. “We wandered in once before we knew exactly where she nested. We barely made it out alive.”

“You didn’t even make it out whole,” another of his crew laughed, “and you want to go back!”

Nix chuckled, shrugging as he glanced down at his missing arm. “I guess you could say I’d have given my left arm for that laibralt.”

“But if we’re going into her nest in the off-season,” Ophelia said, “then she’ll be there.”

“At the very least, Orlys will be there,” Nix agreed. “Possibly a hatchling and her mate, too.”

“Isn’t it a bit strange that you named the dragon that took your arm?” Rue asked.

“Eh, I think she’s starting to like me,” he said, and several of his comrades rolled their eyes.

“How big are these things anyway?” Berkeley asked.

“Look at your ship,” he said, pointing. They all turned and looked at Omen. “That’s a year old’s size. Two to three times that for adults. ”

“You have a plan for the fast way, then?” Rue asked skeptically. “Because I’m starting to think you want to get us all killed.”

“There’s a colony of veltis not far from Orlys’s cave,” Nix said, and trailed off as they just stared at him. “Your Caster can summon, can’t she?”

“What is it you want her to do?” Carolina asked.

“He wants me to kick the hornet’s nest,” Ophelia realized.

“The veltis’ nest, to be exact,” he agreed. “They’re extremely territorial, right? So, if she summons a veltis and sends it running through their tunnels, they’ll get riled enough to follow it right to the dragon’s nest. We can slip in and collect the laibralt while the dragons are distracted.”

“Is there any risk to you?” Carolina asked her.

“Not through my entity,” Ophelia said, shaking her head. “But that doesn’t mean any of us will be safe surrounded by frenzied veltis and three dragons.”

“How many veltis in this colony?” Carolina asked.

Nix shrugged. “Not sure. Could be twenty. Could be sixty.”

Carolina nodded, hummed, and then stood there, staring at the ground for a bit before finally saying, “Give us a minute,” and gesturing for the rest of them to follow. She led them a few steps away out of earshot, where she said, “I think we should do it.”

Berkeley was nodding his eager agreement, which didn’t surprise Ophelia at all, and Rue was giving that same intent stare to the ground that Carolina had done moments earlier.

“Well?” Carolina prompted.

“I think it’s the best plan we might get given the circumstances,” Ophelia said. “And it’ll keep you from having to be off the ship too long.”

“Rue?” Carolina asked. “No complaints?”

“Oh, several,” Rue chuckled. “But none worth more than if this actually works.”

“Berkeley? Do I even need to ask?”

“Nope,” Berkeley said.

Carolina looked across their small circle to meet Ophelia’s eyes again. And Ophelia couldn’t tell exactly what she was thinking, but they both knew that this had to work, and so she gave Carolina a resolute nod. Carolina nodded back, and they all met Nix at the drakens.

“Fast way it is,” Carolina told him.

“Told you they’d do it,” Nix said to his group, grinning ear to ear. “I love pirates. ”

“Let’s go,” Carolina suggested. “My time is limited for preternatural reasons.”

Nix gestured them at the drakens, and then swung easily up into the saddle of his own. “How long do you have?”

“A few hours,” Carolina told him.

His eyes widened. “Then we should hurry. It’s an hour ride to the edge of her territory, and another to her nest.” He stopped after that and passed Carolina a questioning look, as if to see if that would work.

Carolina rounded that look on Ophelia. It wasn’t ideal for her to extend Carolina’s time off the ship and be in pain if she was already using magic to summon a veltis — and hoped to have stamina left in case they ran into any big trouble — but if that’s what they had to do, then she’d do it. It was a good thing she’d been practicing.

She nodded at Carolina, who then told Nix, “Let’s go,” and climbed onto a draken.

Ophelia did the same, as did Berkeley and Rue, and only moments later, they were on their way, riding at a canter over the rocky terrain of the surface.

“So,” Berkeley drawled as they rode, “how come they’re called blackfire dragons, anyway? Do they breathe black fire?”

“No,” Nix said. “Their scales produce an oil to help them shed the cooling stone when they emerge from lava lakes. It ignites when they surface, and the flame burns black.”

“Wow,” Berkeley breathed in awe. “So, you lost your arm to the dragon?”

“Aye,” Nix answered.

“Did she eat it?”

Rue cast Berkeley a head tilt and said, “Seriously?”

“What?” Berkeley asked.

Nix laughed and shook his head. “She crushed it with a flick of her tail. I wouldn’t have made it to an island to visit better surgeons, so the Iron Sands doctor did the best he could.”

“He did the right thing,” Ophelia told him. “He saved your life.”

“Are you a healer?” he asked.

“Not Sovereign-trained,” she answered, “but yes.”

“Right,” he said. “What were they training you for?”

Ophelia hesitated for a moment and then answered, “Politics.”

“Ah,” he said. “Assassination. ”

She didn’t respond to that with confirmation, and asked instead, “Will you sell the laibralt to Sovereign, if we get it?”

“That’s the plan,” Nix said, and then asked, “Why? You got a more profitable idea?”

“I’m not sure if it’d be more profitable,” she said. “But it’d be better in every other way. You could sell it to Freedom in Shadows.”

Nix’s brow furrowed. “The rebellion?”

“Yes,” she said. “They have contacts in Trayward. Or we could let the leader know you’re willing to sell, if you’d consider it.”

“Sovereign would wipe the Iron Sands off the map if they found out,” Nix said.

“Or,” she suggested, “it would give the rebellion what they needed to end Sovereign’s reign, and you could free the Iron Sands from it once and for all.”

“Hm,” Nix hummed, and rode in silence for a minute while he thought about it. “Contact the leader, then. At the very least I’ll hold on to the laibralt until I’ve heard their proposal.”

She nodded, satisfied with that and suddenly eager to send a message to Izaak to let him know they may have found another ally. They occupied the rest of the hour-long ride with making small talk, or with Nix pointing out notable landmarks along the way. Lava pools where the Iron Sands did most of their eel fishing. Smoothed out trails in the rock that marked innedeer migration paths to various oases. Mountain ranges that were frequented by cothwhals because they were full of cothurium flowers and starbugs. A distant and massive platform of broken earth where a new island was in the process of rising.

After that hour of riding, they entered dragon territory and took to the sky, so the striking of the drakens’ paws wouldn’t be sensed. They didn’t fly too high, as Nix warned of the dangers of being too visible to other creatures that might occupy the territory, and instead kept low, coasting up and down with the rise and fall of the volcanic landscape they traversed.

“We’re getting close,” Nix announced a while later. “When we get there, we’ll land. But don’t wander, and try to keep your draken from moving too much while we carry out our plan.”

They sailed through the air for another ten minutes before Nix swooped upward, higher than they’d gone yet, and the rest of them followed. “That cave is her nest,” he explained as they flew high above the mouth of a cave set into the side of a mountain. “We’ll be at the veltis tunnels soon. Stay close.”

Once they’d passed a safe distance from the nest, he led them back down until they were coasting near the ground again. And, before long, he led them all to land at the crest of a hill, atop a basin where the rocky surface was peppered with holes that were the entrances to the veltis’ tunnels.

“This is it,” he said quietly.

It had been more than two hours at that point, and so Ophelia scooted her mount beside Carolina’s and asked, “How’s your pain?”

“Bearable,” Carolina answered, but she was gritting her teeth.

She gave a skeptical hum as Carolina clenched the reins in her fist. “Let me take it now,” she said. “I don’t know that we’ll get a better chance.”

“She’s right,” Rue agreed. “The last thing we need is you paralyzed while we’re trying to run from dragons.”

Carolina sighed her reluctance, but nodded and held out her hand anyway. Ophelia took it between her own, bracing herself for the jolt of agony as she worked her magic, biting back the additional pangs of guilt while the bitter pain seeped up her own arm. She shuddered as she finished and let go of Carolina’s hand, squeezing her eyes and clenching her jaw while she adjusted to the stabbing ache in her bones.

“You should summon your veltis before we’re spotted,” Nix said.

“Give her a moment,” Carolina snapped.

“It’s alright,” Ophelia said, inhaling a deep breath to steady herself and gather her energy. “I’m fine.”

She rounded her shoulders and stretched her neck to both sides to shake off any daze caused by the pain, and then breathed into her cupped hands and gestured them outward. Within a matter of seconds, a fully formed veltis stood before them, black as charcoal.

“That’ll never get old,” Berkeley breathed.

“Ready?” Ophelia asked.

Everyone nodded, and Nix said, “Wait for my signal, then we ride like hell.”

Ophelia turned her veltis loose, sending it galloping on all four of its long limbs down into the basin until it disappeared into the nearest tunnel. And then nothing. There wasn’t a sound or any indication that her veltis had been spotted for almost twenty seconds. But then slowly, increasingly, the colony reacted. Screeches echoed out of tunnel entrances. Snarls and stony crashes seemed to tremor through the rock. Every moment that passed by the commotion grew, until they could pinpoint exactly which tunnel would spew the colony by the sheer ruckus erupting out of it.

Her veltis soared out of the hole, followed by a surge of enraged snarls as more came bursting out after it. Like ants from an ant hill, the hideous creatures came spilling onto the surface, tearing up the slope after her charcoal shadow.

“Nix?” Carolina prompted.

“Not yet…” he murmured.

But the colony was getting closer. One hundred yards. Sixty. Thirty.

“Nix!” Carolina shouted.

“GO!” he screamed.

Mixed shouts sounded from their group as they all sent their drakens into a full-blown gallop. Ophelia dispelled her shadow and put all her focus into riding, tucking herself down close to the draken as its paws struck ground so swiftly that she wasn’t sure they touched at all.

It still almost wasn’t fast enough. Drakens were bred for stamina, not speed, and on all fours a veltis’s stride was longer. The colony was catching up. The closest veltis was only a few more strides from being able to swipe at Berkeley in the rear.

“If you’re going to do something,” Nix shouted to her, “now’s the time!”

She tucked her left hand under the lip of the saddle and held on tight as she slid out of it, dangling off the right side of the draken to strike her right hand against the ground. It split beneath her strike, sending a crack backwards toward the colony until several jagged boulders shot up in their path. It wasn’t enough to stop them, but several of them crashed headfirst into the rocks, and it slowed others down as they had to throw themselves over or sprint around. And with that minor distraction buying them a few precious seconds, she pulled herself back up into the saddle and gathered the wind at their backs, pushing them forward ahead of the leading veltis.

It couldn’t have been much farther, and the large opening of the cave where Orlys made her nest wasn’t far ahead. They were going to make it.

“On our right!” Nix screamed.

Ophelia expected to see that a stray veltis had caught up when her head turned, but what she actually saw was the most terrifying thing she could have imagined. Because every drawing she’d ever seen of a blackfire dragon didn’t do their size justice, nor could it have described the horrifying feeling of the earth trembling beneath them with every crashing step the hulking dragon took.

The tip of its short snout came up into a fin-like point above its nose, and several more short, blunt osteoderms lined the bridge of its nose and its cheekbones on the way to its blazing orange eyes. Its head was so large that it could’ve swallowed them whole all at once, and the sharp teeth in its open mouth were at least the size of her torso each. Its brassy, laibralt covered horns grew forward from the forehead of its flat skull, curving outward and back in toward its nose, and were as thick as her arm span was wide.

Its neck was short and thick, and though it was at least three times larger than Omen, its body was built almost like a draken’s in that stout canine way. The dragon, however, didn’t have wings. Instead, its front and back legs, shoulders, and chest were cut with powerful muscle. The black scales along its back and the backs of its legs were flared out like spikes, still dripping glowing, molten lava as a black flame billowed behind in its wake. The webbed toes on each of its four paws ended in short, sharp talons that cut into the stone to propel each stride, and its long, thick tail whipped back and forth with each gait, smashing any rocks it struck along the way into dust.

“We’re dead!” Rue yelled. “We’re so dead!”

“Almost there!” Nix called.

“Where’s Orlys?” Berkeley shouted.

But no sooner than he finished the question did Orlys come bursting out of her cave. She slid into their path, cutting them off as they reached the basin near the entrance. And she was every bit as terrifying as her mate. She was almost as large and just as fierce, and the raised scales along her back were twice as long and that much sharper. As she cut them off, she let out a deep roar so loud that it echoed in Ophelia’s chest.

“Watch her feet and tail!” Nix told them.

They didn’t stop while they rode their drakens underneath her, and Nix’s plan with the veltis worked just the way he wanted it to. Orlys leapt over them into the pursuing colony of veltis as her mate finally reached them, sliding into the heart of the swarm. Once they were clear of Orlys’s tail, they all skidded to a halt, turning to watch as veltis tried to dodge swipes of claws and tails, and began to scurry up the dragons’ limbs to fight back. Some of the veltis, however, weren’t as easily distracted by the dragons, and Nix pulled his pistol to fire into the chest of one that had launched itself into the air at them.

“You three go!” Rue said, drawing her sword as another veltis neared. “Me and Berkeley have this.”

“Be careful!” Carolina told her.

Rue nodded, spinning her draken to put some momentum behind the swing of her sword as she slashed through the chest of another. They didn’t wait another moment, and with Orlys and her mate distracted by removing the veltis clawing between their scales, they slipped into the mouth of the cave unnoticed. The entrance was massive, but the inside opened up even more, and extended deeper than they could see. The cave seemed to swallow up any light coming from the outside, so that by the time they’d gone even fifty yards, it was getting hard to see. Still, they continued, until it got so dark that the bright entrance was just a white wall in the distance behind them.

“How far?” Carolina asked.

“Can you give us some light?” Nix said, and Ophelia sparked a ball of fire in her hand, sending it a few feet ahead of them. Nix squinted past the glow it provided, scanning the dark boulders as they went. “There!” he said, kicking his heels into his draken’s side.

His mount hurried forward, and she and Carolina followed until they were standing in a large area at the very center of the widest part of the cave.

“This is it,” he told them, hopping off his draken and kneeling down to touch the stone.

She and Carolina did the same. The stone they were standing on was different from the rest of the cave in that it had been worn down to create a smooth indent, with such a large, slow slope that she didn’t even notice until she widened her flame to provide more light.

“This is the nest,” she breathed, turning in a circle to get a full look at the hollow they were standing in.

As she turned, she caught sight of something her fire was illuminating. Something bright that was caught between boulders against the back wall of the cave. Something shiny. Metallic.

Carolina and Nix spotted it at the same time, and one of them gasped as they both sprinted to it. Ophelia rushed after them, sliding to her knees beside them as they dropped down, and Nix scooped up one of the larger pieces, a fragment of yellow metal the size of his palm as he laughed .

“We did it,” he said, passing it to Carolina so he could pull off the cross-body satchel he’d brought.

“I can’t believe it,” Carolina breathed, turning the laibralt over in her hand. She held it next to the manacle to compare, and then looked over to grin as she passed the piece to Ophelia.

While Nix began to collect broken pieces from the ground between the rocks, Ophelia held the laibralt up toward the flame. It was strange, seeing such a large piece of it at once. It almost didn’t feel real, holding so much of it in her hand when she’d almost sent the sanctuary into a tailspin stealing a piece a sixth the size.

A warm breeze on her neck pulled her from that trance, and she froze as she began to hold the piece out to Nix. Froze as her mind put two and two together without her consent.

“Nix?” she prompted in a whisper as he took the laibralt from her and shoved it into his bag. He hummed. “There’s no egg in the nest…”

“Right,” he said, snickering to himself happily as he slung the satchel back over his shoulders. “It’s late enough in the season there’d be a-” He stopped midsentence, eyes widening as he turned toward her.

And as all three of them slowly rose to their feet, another warm breeze wafted across their bodies. The last thing Ophelia wanted was confirmation, but she adjusted her flame anyway, inching it through the air in the direction the breeze had come from. For several moments, all they could see was rocks and boulders against the cave walls. But then one of the boulders moved. It sprouted one bright, glowing eye near the ground, and then another, and at first Ophelia was relieved by how low they were. Because how large could the hatchling be if its eyes were so close to the floor?

But it was an illusion in the dark. The hatchling turned, rolling off its back and onto its belly as it let out a low, rumbling chirp. It gathered one front leg beneath itself, and then the other, pushing itself up and growing in height until it was standing fully at least fifteen feet high. It inhaled so deeply to smell them that Ophelia’s clothing shifted with the draft even though the rest of her was too terrified to move.

“Nix?” Carolina whispered.

“Back up slowly,” he murmured, taking a slow, gentle sidestep toward their drakens. “Hatchlings aren’t aggressive, just curious.”

Carolina followed with a sidestep of her own, but Ophelia was closest to the hatchling, and before she could do the same, it stretched its snout down toward her. She braced herself as its large nostrils came within inches of her face, flaring while it drew in several more whiffs of her scent.

“Easy,” she cooed, taking one step backward away from it. It stretched toward her, and she tossed a panicked sideways glance at Nix for instruction.

Carolina had been in the process of drawing a dagger from her belt, but Nix reached over to stop her, pushing her hand back down as he told Ophelia, “Keep coming. Slowly.”

“Nice dragon,” she whispered to the hatchling, daring to take another step back.

It didn’t follow her that time, though its eyes stayed locked on as it watched her retreat another small step. She was almost there, too. Almost safely at her draken’s side so they could mount and make their escape, but there was a flash in the distant light at the entrance of the cave. They all looked just as Orlys moved into the opening and let out a roar that filled the cave and shook the mountain, and then she charged at them.

“Ophelia!” Carolina screamed.

She looked up just in time to catch the hatchling’s open mouth coming down at her, but Carolina had already reacted, and collided into her and knocked her out of the way before she had time to dodge herself. They hit the ground to the side as the hatchling’s jaws snapped around air.

“Run!” Nix hollered at them, swinging himself into his saddle.

“Go!” Carolina told him, shoving Ophelia aside as she rolled the opposite way and the hatchling’s claw came down between them.

Nix didn’t argue with her, and sent his mount into a gallop wide along the walls of the cave as Orlys reached the nest. Orlys wasn’t worried about him anyway, and their drakens narrowly avoided being crushed beneath her feet as they retreated to the outskirts of the nest. Her glowing orange eyes locked onto Carolina and Ophelia, and she let out another roar that threatened to collapse the cave around them.

Ophelia didn’t know what else to do. The space was small with Orlys in it, their drakens weren’t close enough to mount and escape on before Orlys or the hatchling would be able to catch them, and they were cut off from the exit by one very angry mother. There wasn’t time to do anything else, and before either of the dragons had a chance to come at them again, Ophelia gathered all the breath she had and put every last bit of it into her hands .

As she gestured them outward, a shadow grew in the space between them and Orlys, and Orlys paused her assault to watch in confusion. It was the largest shadow she’d ever summoned, and for every bit that her entity grew, it sapped her of everything she had left. It depleted the energy from her limbs, and her lungs, and her focus, until she’d summoned a dragon to match Orlys’s size and could barely see through the tunnel vision.

“Ophelia!” Carolina shouted.

A blurry tail whipped into the stone above her head as her dragon started its fight with Orlys, but she was already so weak that her legs failed to find purchase as she tried to skitter out of the way. Carolina reached her as rocks broke from the wall, shielding her with her own body as debris fell on them.

“I got you,” Carolina grunted, pulling her arm over her shoulders and hauling her to her feet.

Ophelia did her best to help as Carolina carried her to the closest draken, but every moment that passed she poured more energy into keeping the shadow alive. Energy she didn’t have because she’d used everything she had to summon it in the first place. But it didn’t matter, because she didn’t need to control the dragon. Summoning it was enough, and as they reached the draken, her knees gave out.

Carolina’s balance caught them before she hit the ground, and she said, “Dispel it!”

“Not yet,” Ophelia mumbled weakly.

Carolina let them drop to the ground to avoid another shroud of dust and debris as Orlys and the shadow dragon collided with a nearby wall.

“Ophelia, I can’t lift you onto the draken myself,” Carolina pleaded. But it wasn’t time. “Dispel it,” she urged. “It’s killing you.”

“She’ll kill us both,” she uttered.

And she tried to help as Carolina stood them back up and tried to lift her onto the draken’s back. Tried to grab the saddle and help pull herself up, but her eyes were barely open, and she couldn’t even bring herself to grip with her hands as she grew weaker with every passing moment.

Then Nix’s voice shouted, “Charger, down!”

And as their draken lowered itself to the ground, Berkeley and Rue reached their side. They helped Carolina lift her into the saddle, and then Carolina got on behind her and grabbed the reins. Ophelia was glad for the arm Carolina wrapped around her waist, because she couldn’t hold herself upright, and slumped back against Carolina’s chest as they took off for the entrance, struggling to keep herself conscious.

“Dispel it, Ophelia,” Carolina pleaded again. “ Please. ”

She forced her eyes open just long enough to watch as they burst out of the cave into the bright light of day, and she released herself from the shadow and the drain it presented. But it didn’t return all that she’d lost, and she dropped forward so suddenly that she almost fell off the draken.

“Whoa,” Carolina said, tightening the arm around her waist and pulling her back. “Are you awake? Are you alright?”

Ophelia’s head drooped back over her shoulder, and all she managed in her exhaustion was an incomprehensible murmur. It wasn’t enough for Carolina, who let go of the reins with her other hand and reached up to brush her damp forehead.

“Please say something,” Carolina begged.

Ophelia let her head droop to the other side, so her forehead was nestled against Carolina’s neck and she wouldn’t have to use energy raising her voice to be heard. “That was fun.”

Carolina laughed, calling to the others, “She’s alright!”

The last thing she heard before she let herself drift off was Berkeley letting out an excited whoop and Carolina thanking Nix for coming back for them, and she slept nestled in Carolina’s neck until the jostle of landing woke her up. When she cracked her eyes, they were touching down in the Iron Sands’ camp beside Omen. She was groggy, but she forced herself upright and stayed where she was, knowing that she wouldn’t have the energy to stand.

Nix threw himself off his own draken to meet his crew, screaming to and with them about the laibralt as he took the satchel off to show them.

“If I dismount,” Carolina asked, “will you fall?”

“No,” she answered, turning around just enough to pass Carolina a small smile. “Thank you.”

Carolina hesitated for a moment, but then finally uncurled her arm from Ophelia’s waist and slid off the draken. Ophelia stayed where she was as Carolina, Berkeley, and Rue went over to talk with Nix and his crew. They all conversed and laughed excitedly for a minute before Nix and Carolina finally walked back over to her.

“We wouldn’t have made it without you,” Nix told her, and chuckled. “You’re incredible. ”

“Thanks,” she said. And she wanted to be able to speak with him eye to eye, so she reached out for Carolina, who helped steady her as she slid off the draken’s back.

“I mean it,” he insisted. “The dominions from this score will improve the Iron Sands’ lives more than you can imagine.” She smiled at that, and he held out a small piece of laibralt. “Good luck breaking the curse.” She took the laibralt with a grateful nod, and as Nix turned to walk away, he stopped and said, “Oh, and contact the rebellion for me, eh? If you support them, then I will too. This laibralt is theirs if they want it.”

Ophelia grinned, nodded, and then turned toward Carolina as he returned to his crew. “We did it. We can break the curse.”

“You need rest first,” Carolina told her, even though she couldn’t hold back a grin either.

“Right, um,” she grimaced and admitted, “I don’t think I can make it up the ramp.” She was far too exhausted to even move, and was barely managing to keep herself upright.

Carolina huffed with laughter and lifted one of Ophelia’s arms over her shoulders, then wrapped one of her arms around Ophelia’s back and scooped her other behind her legs to pick her up. Ophelia wished she knew if she was blushing because of the way Carolina was carrying her, or because she was embarrassed at having to be carried at all, but either way, she avoided eye contact as Carolina brought her up the ramp and to the infirmary.

“Thanks,” she said as Carolina set her down at the door. She staggered into her cabin and to her cot, barely managing to pull back the covers before collapsing onto it.

“Can I get you anything?” Carolina asked, coming over and squatting down at her bedside.

Ophelia hummed, already struggling to stay awake as her eyes drifted shut. “Could you turn off the sun?” she mumbled.

“I’ll find something to block the window in your door,” Carolina laughed. She pulled the blankets up, tucking them in around her neck. Her hand lingered there for a few moments as she gently rubbed Ophelia’s shoulder, but then she withdrew it and stood. “Sleep well, Ophelia.”

She wasn’t sure if the ‘goodnight’ she murmured actually made it past her lips, and she was asleep before Carolina even made it out the door.