Chapter 10 Judgment
~ brEN ~
When Akhane and I flew back from patrol, the launch hollow was oddly bustling with activity. It was mid-afternoon. There were no shift changes at this time.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked, as we wheeled high above. From this distance the people looked like mice, and the dragons—of whom there were far more than usual—like cats.
Akhane took a moment to answer, then crooned, deep in her chest and raised her head to shriek to the sky.
“Akhane! What—”
‘A dragon has returned to the herd near death, and without his bonded rider,’ Akhane sent, her tone grieved and heavy.
“What?!” I leaned over her shoulder, worried and nervous because there was little room to land.
Eventually, Akhane was able to circle and ease us down at the western end.
But the agitated Furyknights and servants gathered barely looked at us.
Their attention was at the edge of the wood near the lip of the launch hollow—an area of the forest I’d avoided since I took my place here, because it was full of memories I preferred to forget.
But then, after I’d removed Akhane’s harness and rolled it neatly, I caught sight of Donavyn near the trees, speaking to a healer, and his dragon, Kgosi behind him, crooning and rubbing head and neck with the dragon that had collapsed in the deepening shadows between the trees.
‘Donavyn?’
‘Thank God, you’re safe.’ His tone was abrupt, but heavy with relief.
‘What’s going on? Akhane said a dragon is dying?’
‘His name is Ciar. We aren’t sure yet how bad it is—but he’s very unwell. Kgosi is trying to draw him out. But he’s in bad shape, and not talking. Kgosi isn’t sure why. I don’t know what’s going on, Bren. Step carefully. But, stay close if you can.’
I hurriedly returned Akhane’s harness to the stable and asked a wide-eyed stableboy to hang it in the tack room for me, then started down the hollow, bracing myself to walk up that rise on the other side and keep my mind on what happened here, and now.
Not the past, when I’d huddled in those same shadows myself.
Skin crawling, I trotted up the other side of the launch hollow and drew to a halt, taking it all in.
A bedraggled dragon lay like a sick dog between the trunks of two large pines—random scales sloughing off, skin slack, eyes dull, and missing several spines and talons.
He was so unwell, his skin and scales had lost their color so that he looked pale.
Almost white. I’d never seen a dragon near death before.
I couldn’t tell if he was a gray or goldscale who’d paled, or if this was what happened to any of them, regardless of their color.
Kgosi stood over the dragon like a guard, stance wide, his spines and wings high. But he continually rumbled and crooned, rubbing his face and neck gently along the dragon’s jaw and long neck, stretched out on the sparse grass.
Not far away, Donavyn stood in flying leathers, arms folded and his face grim, speaking to another Furyknight whose green dragon stood calmly behind him, though it kept lifting and resettling its wings.
As I approached the healer, Donavyn caught sight of me over his shoulder, and I felt the rush through the bond. This was the first time we’d reunited in front of others at the end of time apart. I fought the itch to throw myself into his arms and drag him away.
Someone shouted in the hollow below, and we both startled. But it was just another Furyknight calling for a stableboy’s help. I wrenched my eyes off of Donavyn, and watched the movement below to give myself a moment to take hold and even my breathing.
When I turned back, Donavyn’s attention was on Kgosi, who’d grown more agitated and was now nudging at the sick dragon insistently, and rumbling.
The other dragons in the launch hollow raised their heads and began to call and whistle, their human riders and servants growing restless.
Everyone in the hollow leaned in, those near the injured dragon inching closer, and those below clustering on the slope leading up to the wood.
“Stay back,” Donavyn barked, raising a hand towards the crowd inching up the side of the hollow, and waving those already at the top away. “Let Kgosi have space and… just stay back,” he growled.
‘Not you,’ he sent tensely through the bond. ‘I need you close. Just don’t approach the dragon.’
I hesitated next to the healer Furyknight, who stood with one hand clenched at his side, the other resting on his dragon’s leg.
“What’s happened?” I asked in a low whisper.
Face lined with worry, he shook his head. “I don’t know. Kgosi won’t let us get close. I’m worried.”
He trailed off, but the unspoken was clear. He was worried this dragon would die.
‘What can cause that kind of damage to a dragon?’ I asked Akhane, swallowing hard when the dragon made a thin, strangled cry, and its head dropped to the side when Kgosi nudged him.
I feared it was too late, but Kgosi began a low hungh-hungh-hungh, and didn’t stop nosing the dragon’s neck and head, as if urging him to his feet.
‘Ciar is close to death. He has given his heart up. Kgosi urges him not to despair.’
‘Given his heart up?’
‘Lost the will to live,’ Akhane whispered.
I froze. ‘Why?’
‘I do not know, but Kgosi believes it isn’t too late. That he can be saved, only—'
Donavyn had spoken sharply to the people drawing closer and turned back to Kgosi, when the Primarch suddenly reared back and away from the prone dragon, hissing, wings flapping, shaking his head.
Donavyn hurried forward to soothe his dragon, but then the healer’s dragon cried out, flapping his wings as well.
‘Akhane, what—’
But it was Donavyn that reached for my mind.
‘Oh, dear God.’ He beckoned the healer forward, who ran to the dragon’s side while Kgosi shuffled back to give him room, the Primarch’s head weaving back and forth like he denied what he saw.
‘Kgosi says… he says the dragon is dying because he killed his own rider. It’s a curse among dragons and…
‘What?!’ I startled, blinking rapidly. ‘Why?! Why would a dragon—’
‘Bren,’ Akhane breathed in my mind. ‘You should stay back with me.’
I hadn’t realized I’d stepped forward, instinctively moving towards Donavyn. I stopped mid-step and turned to my dragon. There was a strange, hesitant tone in her sending.
‘What is it? What’s going on?’
But my dragon’s eyes were fixed on her mate, who’d turned his long neck and stared at her, open-mouthed and panting. Something passed between them, I felt the flicker of it in the bond, and Akhane groaned.
“What the hell is going on?” I muttered, then jumped when a warm hand closed on my arm, just above my elbow. I whirled and looked up to find Donavyn standing over me, his eyes clouded and forehead lined.
“Bren.”
I didn’t know what he would say, but I knew that tone.
Cold, prickling fear trickled down my spine.
“Bren, you need to go. Go, uh, wash and… report in later,” he muttered below the level of the noises the dragons made so no one would hear him.
He’d already removed his hand. Anyone else would see that he nodded towards the stables.
But with his chin down, he flicked his eyes to the side, towards the Officer’s building. Sending me home.
“What is going on?” I said through teeth that suddenly wanted to chatter, because I was confused and afraid and—
‘He killed his rider, Bren,’ Akhane said gently in my head, her voice heavy with grief.
‘I know, that’s not—’
‘He willingly invoked the curse,’ Akhane offered softly. If she’d been human I would have said she was on the verge of tears. ‘It means his human must have done something horrific.’
“A traitor?” I blurted, then swallowed as Donavyn’s eyes widened. He turned on his heel suddenly and called across the launch hollow.
“The Primarch orders everyone away, except his mate and her rider, and the healer Tato, and his Nila. Wing leaders, tell your peers: All of you report to me this evening, and I will fill you in on what we learn so you can inform your squads. Now, go. The dragons need space. Now!”
The Furyknights were disciplined and followed their Commander’s orders immediately, gathering the stableboys and servants who’d heard the disturbance and come out too. Soon, the tide of humanity and dragons poured back out of the launch hollow and towards the stable and Academy buildings.
Donavyn, certain of their obedience, turned to face me again. But now, with his back to the crowd, his face wasn’t just lined. It was pale. And his eyes…
His eyes were dark. Pained. And locked on me.
Formless fear coiled into a tangled knot in my belly and crawled up my throat. I couldn’t move because I was afraid if I did, I’d scream. This had to be about Ruin. Nothing else would make Donavyn look like that. Feel like that.
Oh, God.
“Tell me,” I whispered when everyone was far enough away, and Tato was consumed with the dragon. “Tell me why you look afraid, Donavyn.”
Donavyn’s brow pinched, and he came one step closer. But with witnesses across the clearing and who knew what else, he couldn’t touch me. He wanted to. I could feel it. For the first time since we’d discovered the bond, I found myself relieved that he couldn’t.
His throat bobbed and his brows pinched, but he spoke through the bond to keep his words utterly private.
‘This dragon belongs to a man we sent on a mission the day you were Chosen.’
I stopped breathing.
That mission. The one in which Ruin had flown away from me.
“Ruin?” My voice cracked on that single syllable, and Donavyn’s expression grew miserable.
“No!” he blurted. Then sent to me through the bond. ‘Not Ruin. You have my word, I would tell you if this was his dragon. But, it’s one of his closest friends’. The dragon’s rider was Davros. One of those men who—’
I hadn’t realized we could push each other away in the link, but somehow I managed it, shoving the rest of that sentence far, far away so I didn’t have to hear it.