Chapter 1 #5
Damon might not be here, but his magical sphere remained, and the symbols he’d written on the floor continued to glow with an odd, bloody luminance.
As I walked toward it, light flared across its surface, its hue yellowish rather than the bloody red of the symbols—the latter unsurprising, I guessed, given they’d probably been soaked in his blood to activate them.
I reached out and lightly touched its surface; light gathered where my hand met the spell, buzzing around it like tiny moon flies, even if their color was yellow rather than silvery.
Was it a warning that would echo back to him? If I closed my eyes and pushed all the urgency, heartbreak, and the desperate need to have him back, would he feel it?
Did magic even work that way?
I had no idea, but he and I did have a connection that went deeper than mere magic, even if it was one he wasn’t willing to talk about.
Dhrukita —the belief that everyone had a perfect partner, a soul that was the other half of their own, if you will—was something I’d always thought to be nothing more than a tale told to amuse little girls growing up.
But now, with what was happening between us, I couldn’t help but wonder if there’d been more than a little truth in that old tale.
But if it was Dhrukita, wouldn’t he already be aware of my emotional and mental state? Or did it, perhaps, work along similar lines as my strega ability to mind speak to animals had, and had a set range beyond which there was simply no connection?
I didn’t know.
There were so many fucking things I just didn’t know.
Still... I pressed my hand flat against the bubble of magic and felt it give—and had the strangest feeling that the magic designed to prevent access no longer had any effect on me.
It was tempting to push harder and find out, but the moon flies were buzzing around my fingers angrily, and I had no desire to trigger any sort of magical backlash.
Instead, I closed my eyes and sent a desperate plea for him to return.
Then I snatched my hand away, cursed my foolishness, and spun, doing my best to ignore the gentle ache in my heart as I strode through the bathroom into my dressing room.
If there was one thing I’d learned over the last week or so of drakkon riding, it was that the more layers I had without bulking up or restricting movement, the better.
I might be able to raise my inner flame to keep warm, but it was always best to use that as a last resort, especially when we were flying into enemy territory.
After pulling on a silk chemise, I layered up with a woolen undershirt and a vest, then tugged on a heavy oilskin coat and slipped a woolen scarf around my neck.
I’d been tugging up the longer necks of my undergarments to protect the lower half of my face from the weather simply because I didn’t want to deal with scarf ends when flying at speed, but one of the saddlers we’d asked to come up with a better harnessing system for the drakkons had suggested we sew a long woolen scarf into multiple loops that could easily be slipped over our heads.
Aside from the fact that there were no ends to fly loose, the loops meant one or two could be tugged up to cover the face while the remainder protected what the coat collar left exposed.
It had been the perfect answer to a rather chilly problem.
Once I’d tugged on my more rugged boots, I strapped on my sword and pulled on the climbing harness we were still using to keep attached to our drakkons, then finally grabbed my pack.
My gaze fell on Mom’s bow and quiver, and, after a longish pause, I picked it up.
While there was a part of me that didn’t want to use it out of respect, the bow was made of blackwood—trees that only grew well in the five islands—and had a natural elasticity, a sweetness of draw, and a cast second to none.
And paired with Ithican-glass arrowheads—which could cut through the golden armor that protected the birds and their riders so very easily—it became a deadly combination in the right hands.
Mom had been bow master on Jakarra, and she’d taught me an accuracy that the military had not.
There were only six of the arrows left now, and I really wished we could get more.
But Ithica had as yet not responded to our queries and were unlikely to in the near future, thanks to our quill network being down.
I slung the quiver over my back, the pack over one shoulder, and then left, moving back down the stairs before weaving my way into the kitchen. Kaia was right; I needed to eat. The last thing I needed was to collapse with exhaustion when on her back or in the middle of a fight.
Though why I expected there to be a fight, I couldn’t say, beyond the fact that the goddess Túxn didn’t often throw good fortune our way when we were flying out on reconnaissance missions.
Candra—our chief baker—turned as I entered the long, overpoweringly hot room, and smiled. “How are you doing, Princess? Or should I be calling you ‘my queen’ from now on?”
I smiled. “I’ll answer to anything if there’s Hutzelbrot in the offering.”
Hutzelbrot was a heavy loaf of bread that was jam-packed with dried fruits and had a delicate, gingery-cinnamon flavor. As I kid, I practically lived in the kitchen stuffing my stomach with it whenever ginger harvesting season rolled around.
She laughed and clapped her hands together, sending flour puffing into the air. “Didn’t make any this morning, but I did save a couple of yesterday’s loaves, just in case you came in.”
“My stomach appreciates the thoughtfulness.”
She laughed again, then moved over to the racks, plucking two loaves free and wrapping them separately in oilskin cloth before dropping both into a sack. “Sorry to hear about your parents, Princess. They were good people.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “They were.”
I thanked her for the bread, then headed out, taking a deep breath to once again calm the inner emotional turbulence before reaching out for Kaia.
Okay, ready to go.
Am waiting.
I frowned. Where?
On wall. Fun watching men scatter.
Seriously? You have to stop that. Making people afraid is not helping the situation.
Don’t care. Burn if they attack.
That won’t help things either.
Swat with claws?
No.
Tail?
No.
You no fun.
And she was deliberately trying to cheer me up.
I made my way out of the palace and back up to the wall she now dominated.
She was at least eighty feet long, with a wingspan more than double that.
Unlike Esan’s drakkons, who were red, she was a burnished gold, and her scales gleamed like jewels in the gray of the morning.
Her wings were outstretched and gently fanning so she could maintain balance on the wall, and the four main phalanges on each wing shimmered like flame, the leather membrane in-between glowing like embers.
Even those who hated drakkons surely could not deny she was magnificent.
Am queen , she replied. Biggest and best.
Modest too.
What modest?
Someone who is neither bold nor self-assertive.
Definitely not modest, she agreed.
I ducked under her wing and scrambled up the leg she extended, carefully edging around her wickedly barbed wing thumb before settling onto her neck.
After clipping my pack, sword, and bow onto the various D-rings fastened to the rope looped around her last neck spine—which, in turn, was latched onto the anchoring girths I’d looped around her neck—I attached my harness. “Right, let’s go.”
She hunkered down and then launched into the air, her wings pumping hard, sending thick swirls of dust and stone fragments into the air. Once we were high enough, she did a lazy turn and flew over Esan’s multiple levels, then out past the lower curtain and into Mareritten.
With the wind at our tail, it took under an hour to reach the fog I’d seen through the long viewer.
It was as thick and gelatinous as it had appeared, and sat like a heavy blob on the landscape despite the strong wind—and that meant it was very definitely magic enhanced.
The question was, did the magic do more than just anchor? Did we dare find out?
Should breach? Kaia asked. Fly here waste otherwise.
With that I agreed, but the need for caution still held the upper hand. Circle around its perimeter. Let’s see if we can spot any watchers.
I tugged my long viewer out of my pack and adjusted the eyepiece until the ground far below jumped into focus—although at the speed we were going, there wasn’t a whole lot of time to see much of anything.
See through me , she said.
I tucked the viewer back into my pack, then deepened the connection between us. There was a fleeting moment of... not disorientation, more a gentle shift, which was very different to every other time we’d done this, and that surely had to be a result of us now being bound.
Through the deeper connection, I could see the ground with pinpoint sharpness.
The marshlands stretched out in all directions, wild and empty except for the blot of magically anchored fog.
There was no evidence of watchers, though they would be down there somewhere.
The Mareritt would know we had scouts out watching their movements, so maybe they were also using magic to protect their sentry posts.
It might explain why my old team had almost run into one.
It wasn’t any sort of inattention—though I knew them all too well to think that would ever be the case—they simply hadn’t known it was there until it was almost too late.
As we returned to our original position, I said, Drop down and run your claws briefly through that fog. Let’s see what happens.
Might warn them.