Chapter thirty-four
Revna
We had been flying for almost a full day, but even the strain of the added weight wasn’t enough to quell Kindra’s pleasure at flying with our mate for the first time.
Granted, he was sitting atop me as stiff as a stone statue in terror, rather than flying beside us.
He also had no idea he was our mate.
Minor inconveniences, Kindra preened, tilting her wings so the setting sun set them ablaze.
Stop showing off. He’s too terrified to notice you right now.
But I am magnificent. How could he not admire me?
“I fecking hate this!” Arne shouted, for what must be the tenth time. “Give me a horse any day.”
He had insisted on leaving the comfort of the inn at first light, despite my arguments that he should rest another day.
He did seem better, and Kindra had assured me he was fit enough to fly.
Plus, I knew he would attempt to commandeer a horse and set off on his own if I didn’t agree to fly him myself.
Sigurd and Bryndis flew before us, swooping around each other in gleeful acrobatics at Sigurd’s return. Kindra snorted at the display, swooping below the cloud cover for a moment and eliciting a scream from the man who was supposed to join us up here one day.
He does seem to be rather cowardly. Kindra huffed anxiously and returned to safety above the clouds. We couldn’t risk being seen by anyone below lest the king get word, and we couldn’t afford to wait to fly until the sun was completely below the horizon. Perhaps I was wrong about him.
It’s his first time flying, I replied, uncertain why I was defending this man I barely knew and didn’t like very much. He was stubborn and irascible, and unwilling to accept help when it was freely offered.
Who does that sound like?
I am perfectly even-tempered.
And definitely not stubborn or unwilling to accept help.
Shut up. The others had said as much. My old reirhold. But I didn’t need to take abuse from my own dragon.
Especially when she was right.
Try Idunn and Baldur again, I said, trying to ignore the knot of panic that had been rising in my gut. They had been unreachable all day, although Kindra said she could sense them in whatever network connected the dragons.
“Are we almost there?” Arne shouted over the wind. His grip on Kindra’s neck tightened as she swooped below the clouds again to check our position.
Maybe an hour or two, she replied to me, snorting to Arne as if he could understand her somehow. And it is the same. I can feel them, but they do not answer.
“The lack of communication is mightily inconvenient,” he shouted again, not even realizing how accurate he was.
How is he? I asked Kindra. Should we stop for the night?
I believe he will manage a bit farther. He may be cowardly and stubborn, but he is strong.
I tried my best not to think of his bare shoulders and chest, the scars covering every inch of visible skin, but Kindra caught the thought anyway, snorting happily.
Shut up, I repeated.
A rumbling roar sounded from the ground below.
Another earthquake? I suggested.
But the rumbling didn’t stop. It grew in intensity until I felt it through our bones. Ten seconds. Twenty.
Kindra dipped below the clouds, where the land was almost dark enough that we could fly unseen.
Houses that dotted the surrounding countryside were toppling like dominoes as thousands of birds screeched and took flight. Stone towers crumbled before our eyes as a deafening crack split the world in two.
Odemarksdyr! Kindra’s screech had the others following us like shining arrows as we wheeled toward the ground.
“What the fuck is that!” Arne bellowed, holding so tightly to Kindra’s neck, I was certain he would rip off a few scales.
Kindra looked behind her wing, and I saw it.
The Scar had indeed made it to land, and it had cracked into a fissure at least a foot wide, monsters pouring from its gaping maw.
The crack seemed to stretch northwest as far as I could see from our current altitude, and I had a sinking feeling I knew where it reached.
A pack of garmr climbed from its inky depths, their claws gouging deep lines of black ichor into the soil and withering the grass where they stood.
Call the reirholds, I commanded. We need as many of them as Ironholm can spare.
Kindra swooped low until she was only a few feet above the crevasse, her whole body vibrating as she gathered her fire. With a roar, she blew a torrent of golden flame over the emerging garmr. They howled in agony as Bryndis and Sigurd joined us, pushing the garmr back into the darkness.
“Holy fucking hells,” Arne swore. I heard the clank of metal and knew he must have pulled his sword from his back.
I felt him swing as one of the garmr leaped, trying to pull him from my back.
Its body fell away, sliced in two. Black ichor fell like rain over the ground where it destroyed everything it touched.
Arne swore, and I smelled the searing flesh before I heard his scream.
We must take him away, Kindra said in a panic, climbing to gain altitude and keep Arne as far away from the monsters as possible. He has no dragon to protect him.
Where can we land? I asked, looking around where more monsters were spilling from the newly formed section of the Rift. We can’t leave Bryndis and Sigurd.
Kindra was silent for a moment. They say to go ahead to Stormhold. Save the queen. They will wait for the reirholds and try to kill as many odemarksdyr as possible.
We can’t–
We will come back. Kindra was already flying, following the path of the black fissure through the countryside and chasing it with streams of golden fire. But we must protect him first.
She veered to the northwest, where the river that flowed through the capital was faintly visible in the distance. To my horror, the chasm opened by the Scar seemed to grow wider with every passing mile, and more monsters streamed from its depths.
We had failed.
We need to wash the wound. He is unconscious.
Fuck. My heart raced as we abandoned our reirhold once again to save our future mate. If we survived this, he had better be fucking grateful.
It felt like an eternity until we reached the river. The destruction seemed to be focused about two miles beyond the edges of the Rift on this side, and I prayed that the loss of life would be minimal as Kindra hit the mud and shifted.
I stumbled over my pack, which had been hooked around Kindra’s foreclaw, and fell face-first into the mud. Arne landed on top of me, his body a deadweight. Again.
“No.” I rolled him off me, turning to check his pulse.
He lives. Kindra sounded so relieved, it was hard to be angry at her for our rough landing. Wash the wound. Quickly.
It wasn’t hard to find the damage. The garmr blood had burned clean through his jacket, leaving his left forearm a mess of raw, bleeding skin and embedded leather. One section had burned down to the bone, and I had to swallow my bile before I was sick all over him.
Wash, then I can heal it.
I know, I know. Fuck, I’m trying.
I decided the best course was to submerge his whole arm, and it took more effort than it should to drag his limp body to the water’s edge. Once his arm was fully submerged, I fished my dagger out of my pack and cut away the sleeve of the jacket.
He wakes.
“Yer fucking naked, you she-devil.” It shouldn’t have been such a relief to hear his voice. I didn’t even care that I was practically straddling the man, naked but for the mud covering large swathes of my skin. “Why is my arm wet?”
“Garmr blood,” I panted, finally feeling like I could take a moment to breathe while I waited for the river to do its work. It was flowing rapidly, which I hoped would make the wound cleaner and prevent infection. “It burns human skin.”
“Why are ye–fuck.” Arne’s cheeks went a shade of pink, and I realized exactly how naked I was.
I scrambled off him, trying not to think about it as I pulled bandages from the bottom of the pack.
“I need to see it,” I said, holding out my hands. “Your arm,” I clarified when he looked at me with wide eyes. “My dragon can try to heal some of the damage, but the longer we wait, the more permanent the injury.”
Arne grunted, hissing as he rose to sit and pulled his arm from the freezing water. “Fuck. That’s–”
His face drained of color, and I had to catch him as he nearly passed out. I wrapped my hand around his injured bicep so Kindra could push her magic into him. “This will help. Don’t look at it. Focus on me.”
Arne made a burbling noise.
“My face, you ass.”
“Usually take a lady to dinner before she sees my ass,” Arne muttered, color creeping back into his cheeks as Kindra’s magic began working.
“Hearthmother above, I don’t know how Arik put up with you for so many years.”
“Winning personality.” Arne glanced at the injury, and I followed his gaze. The deepest burns were knitting over, the flesh gouged and raw, but more whole than it had been a moment ago. “Didnae know dragons could heal.”
“Only sometimes.” I didn’t feel like now was the time to explain, and I could feel Kindra flagging. She’d flown all day, and we still had to make it to Stormhold and back. “That’s all I can manage for now. Here.”
I wrapped the bandages around his arm. I wished I carried a salve or poultice to ease the pain and stave off infection, but drage rarely needed them. I supposed I’d be carrying them from now on, as long as I had a human mate to keep alive.
“It’s going to scar,” I said as I wrapped the section of his forearm that had burned down to the bone. “Badly, if we don’t get you to a healer soon.”
“I can survive another scar.” Arne’s face was almost back to normal, his coloring better.
I tied off the bandage, but before I could turn away, he caught my hand.
“Thank you, Revna.” My eyes met his, and there was something almost like recognition behind the green of his irises.
“I reckon that’s twice now yeh’ve saved my life. I owe you a debt.”
“Live until we rescue the queen,” I said, rising and preparing to shift. “Are you ready?”
“That was the Rift, wasn’t it?” Arne stood, cradling his bad arm. “What Arik feared would happen. We’re too late.”
I pressed my lips together in a thin line. “Yes.”
“Fuck.” He said it matter-of-factly. We were fucked.
Kindra screeched, relief mingling with fear. It is Baldur. He and Idunn fly to Stormhold.
Fuck. They were flying straight to the center of the destruction.
“We need to get to Ingrid. I can’t be sure, but I think the direction the Rift was taking leads straight to Stormhold.”
“Double fucking fuck.” Arne swiped his good hand over his face, looking haggard. “Ye should go back to yer friends. I’ll carry on from here.”
“Absolutely not.”
Arne lifted a brow in surprise, and I searched for a reason I could give him that wouldn’t reveal the truth. “Arik and Eisa are on their way to Stormhold. They might need my help. Plus, I made you a blood bargain, remember?”
Arne grumbled something about technicalities. “Better make it damnably fast then.”
I nodded, letting Kindra take over in the familiar stretch and snap of shifting bone and skin. Arne stumbled back, and my line of sight shifted from slightly below his eyes to ten feet above his head.
“Fucking gorgeous, aren’t you,” he said, reverently patting Kindra’s neck. She preened happily, and I was certain that Arne didn’t realize I could feel every graze of his fingers against her scales.
Kindra sank to the ground so Arne could climb upon her back, and he was careful not to snag her scales as he shimmied up awkwardly with one arm. “Ah cannae hold on that well, so ye’d better go–”
Whatever he said was cut off as Kindra launched into the sky.