Chapter 24 #2
Oallian went still. The ember eyes returned to me and conducted a second, far more thorough inspection. “Oh,” he said. “Well, that makes sense, then.”
I had been reviewed by critics, by librarians, and by my late wife’s entire quilting circle, and no verdict had ever landed so squarely in my favor.
Sky stepped in and, to the visible alarm of all of the Mossren family, threw his arms around the naked dragon-man in a quick, fierce hug.
Oallian went rigid, then relaxed, his eyes sliding shut for half a second, like a man who hadn’t been held in a while and had forgotten what to do with his hands.
“Thank you,” Sky said, quieter, for him alone. “For the ride. For all of it. Go find your person, okay? I meant what I told you up there. We’re friends.”
Oallian frowned. “This portal is in the farmlands, you say?”
“Yeah, like, big open fields and stuff. Trees,” Sky said, nodding.
“I can fly. I shall investigate.”
“Do not land there,” Sky said, pointing at him. “You will scare the hay out of some poor farmer. Look from the air. Looking only.”
“Of course,” Oallian said, in the tone of a dragon who had already chosen his landing site.
Oallian looked at him. Then at me.
“Thank you,” I said. “For not eating him.”
“Oh, I didn’t want to snack on him. I wanted to fuck him,” Oallian said. “Then return him to the palace and collect the ransom. But he told me he was taken, and that you would be worried sick, so we set out to search for you. Only you were not where he expected you to be.”
“I was searching for—” I trailed off because Oallian was already stepping away.
At the edge of the meadow he paused and looked back, not at Sky but at me.
“The books are good,” he said, with the gravity of a king conferring a lordship.
“You may keep him.” The scales took him.
The dragon rose up over the rooftops in a wash of heat and was gone, a coal into the blue, off to his mountain to brood about whatever it was he’d just decided to want.
“See you tomorrow,” Sky yelled, waving both arms. “Oh, he’s so cool, isn’t he?”
“I think you mean hot,” Dagmarra said, chuckling.
“That too. Okay.” Sky brushed off his hands and turned back to me, sheepish. “Sorry. Where were we?”
I took him by the shoulders. I looked at him, whole, unharmed, ridiculous, here, and the relief was so total that it came out the only way relief ever comes out of me, which is sideways, and badly.
“You let it keep you,” I said. “Two days. You were carried off by an apex predator the size of a granary and you spent the time making a friend.”
“In my defense—”
“You hugged it. I watched you hug it.”
“He’s a boy. You can call him a him.”
“I was going to climb a mountain with rope I do not know how to use. You cannot simply be taken, I am not equipped for it, I have one heron’s worth of—”
“Hey.” He was smiling up at me, wet and soft and impossible, his thumb pressing slow circles into the trolgar point, and I felt him, steady and clear.
“I was looking for you, too, well the second day. The first day was super boring before we figured out I can unlock dragons. But someone had to go running off on a rescue mission instead of staying put in Frostholm where he could be easily found.”
“Oh,” I whispered.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the rescue attempt. You look quite dashing in your climbing gear. I’m sure Oallian thought so.”
“Good,” I said, and pulled him into me and held him, hard, the way you hold a thing the world tried to take.
I did not say the other thing, not here.
That one he would get somewhere quiet, somewhere it could be only his.
For now I let the grumbling carry it, the way it always had, and held the warm impossible fact of him against the place where the silence used to be.
Somewhere behind me, Dagmarra made a small sound like a teakettle reaching its moment, and I heard the click of needles as her knitting came out of her pocket. That is what she does when her heart is too full for her hands.
We might have stood there some time. At least five minutes, until Sky’s stomach growled.
“He ate three of my hand pies!” Sky exclaimed. “Let’s go get more!”
I rubbed my forehead. “You do not want a more lavish meal?”
“When did he last eat a proper meal?” Dagmarra appeared at his elbow, inspecting him like a parcel that had arrived dented. “Did the dragon feed you? You look thin. Moerrven, doesn’t he look thin? There is an entire casserole.”
“Casserole tonight,” Sky promised, patting her arm like they’d known each other for years. “Pies now.”
“What’s more lavish than hand pies? We could have pastries for dessert, I suppose.
” He took my hand and led me toward the market stalls, and I showed him the pie vendor I’d found upon arrival, knowing exactly what he was craving.
I had sampled them all in two days of pacing, to be certain they were worthy of him.
I didn’t let go of his hand as we ordered, or as we walked across the market to sit at the cluster of tables at the corner.
I made him eat his three hand pies one-handed.
That was why they were convenient, after all.
I had nearly stopped checking that he was still beside me, when I heard the riders come.
I looked up to see a column of riders coming up the Norloch road in formation, gray cloaks, the Queen’s colors, perhaps a dozen of the Grey Guard.
The only thing that broke their perfect formation was the fae commander at their head, who was leading a beautiful fae gelding with flowers in his mane, and held a small blond human against his chest.
Sky went rigid beside me. Then he was up and out of his chair, starting toward the riders, his face breaking open all over again.
“PIP.”
“You called the whole army.” He flung it back at me over his shoulder, delighted, already drifting away across the cobbles. “You absolute romantic. You called in the entire Queen’s Guard for me—”
“It is not the whole army,” I said.
He spun back toward me, bouncing a little. “It’s an army, Moerrven! Thank you! This was an amazing rescue!”
“You didn’t even need a rescue!”
“It’s the thought that counts!”
“It is twelve men.” I heard the affront in my own voice and was powerless against it.
The Queen had received my urgent missive, concerning the abduction of the single most important person in nine counties, and she had sent a detachment of twelve.
“Frankly I find it insulting. For you they should have emptied the barracks.”
Sky stopped. He turned back to me in the middle of the square, his friend waiting behind him, and something crossed his face that was not a joke.
“When I was nine, I ran away from home. Packed a bag, left a note, made it four blocks before I got bored. And when I came back, nobody had noticed I was gone. They thought I was in my room reading.”
“Sky—”
“You called an army.” He said it like a fact he was still checking against the light. Then the grin came back up. “We’re discussing the barracks thing later.” And he was gone, flying across the square, vaulting over a cabbage cart.
The blond human had thrown himself out of the fae commander’s lap.
The two of them collided in the middle of everything and went down in a shrieking heap of arms. The fae commander watched the little man get tackled by a stranger and did not so much as touch his sword, which told me everything I needed to know about him.
I stood by our table and watched Sky hold his friend, the two of them sobbing and laughing. I pressed a hand to my chest and reached for him, feeling all of his warmth, all of his joy. I had not been imagining it at all. I could feel him, even without touch.