22. The Sound of a Name
The Sound of a Name
I wake with a jolt, sucking in a violent, icy breath.
I’m not dead.
It’s my first thought before I wonder how I know that for certain. I’ve never been dead before.
Blinking wide eyes, I assess myself, verifying that even though I’m flat on my back on a solid surface, I am well and truly alive.
My chest lifts and falls with harsh breaths.
Somehow, I did not collide with the ground.
I’m not a broken heap in the snow with body parts strewn everywhere. My insides are still . . . inside me.
I’m whole and relatively pain-free. My skin, though raw, chafed, and abraded, will heal. I’m not shattered. Not wrecked. Not bleeding.
Not dead.
I didn’t crash-land to my death.
The sky is awash in purple tones above the jagged horizon like one giant bruise, hinting at the coming day, but the moon still looms, providing enough light to stave off total blackness.
I gradually become aware of the cold seeping into me. I prop up on an elbow to try to escape it, swiping the tangle of inky strands of hair free of my chilled cheeks.
The earth cracks and shudders beneath me as though struck by thunder.
I jerk and twist around. My gaze lands on a dozen great, clawed feet the size of Maretta’s kitchen table.
They circle and stomp and shift their substantial weight with enough force to shake the ground, sending a fine cloud of snow spraying all around me, catching in my lashes, melting on my lips.
Instantly I’m beset with the memory of these dragons destroying my village. Bile surges through me like rotten egg in my mouth. I press the heels of my hands into my eyes against the sight of them. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Make this all go away. Make them go away. Make none of this real.
Unfortunately, a deep voice intrudes on my internal entreaties and my attempt to hide from reality.
“Uncover your eyes, human.” I recognize the hated voice from earlier.
Tage.
“My name,” I snap because I cannot stand for him to call me human again like it is the lowest of things. I have an identity, a name . . . even if I had not heard it uttered in a long time. “Is Arden.”
“Look at me.”
Gradually, I lower my hands and lift my chin to find him looming over me, blocking out the moon above.
Gone is the dragon. He’s a man again, and this offers some relief. Only a little, though, because both versions of him—human and dragon—are frightening to behold. The man with his big, imposing body naked and on full display frightens me only slightly less than the terrible dragon.
Gone are all the dragons. They’re human once again, standing behind him, peering at me with expressions that range from pity to contempt.
I’m not certain which I prefer. The contempt emanating from Danhy feels decidedly dangerous, and I’m convinced if she were to get a moment alone with me, I would be truly dead.
He reaches for me and hauls me to my feet. I look from the hand wrapped around my arm to his face, careful not to let my gaze stray anywhere else. It’s a novel experience—to restrict where I look for fear of the other person noticing.
I arch away from him, struggling to break free, repelled by his bigger body, even if it radiates heat like a welcoming fire, and it’s cold enough for my teeth chatter.
“Come,” he commands, and then he pulls me after him.
I hear the crunch of footsteps and realize the others are accompanying us. I fight to stay on my feet while trying to break free of him. Still, he walks on, dragging me without mercy, my efforts as pitiful as a kitten’s against his overwhelming strength.
“Stop!” I ball up my hand and strike him in the back. Pain radiates up my arm, but I punch him again and again. “I said stop! Let me go, you beast!”
Turning, he glowers down at me, his eyes scouring me like a blade scraping across my flesh and I resist the urge to shrink away—as though I can conceal from him that I am completely terrified.
“There is nowhere for you to go.” He speaks in such grim, matter-of-fact tones, his face expressionless, as brutally ruthless as the mountains surrounding us.
He pulls me through a dense overgrowth of foliage.
I would become hopelessly lost within the bramble were I to try to navigate it alone, but he seems to know exactly where to step, the path to take when there seems to be none.
He ducks and sidesteps and maneuvers, hauling me after him until he finds the way.
We barely clear the clawing brush before plunging directly into a dark, yawning chasm.
I gasp at the sudden and instantaneous darkness—at the openness, at the sense of stepping into a windless void.
It’s a dark I’ve never known, not even walking the woods on a moonless night, not even behind my closed eyelids.
It swallows me whole like a tar pit, and my body trembles as we make our way through a narrow passageway that smells of damp and loam.
Water drips from some unknown source, and I wonder if these creatures possess superior vision that permits them to see into the blackness.
The darkness breaks.
We emerge into a vast cavern. He finally lets me go.
I stagger back, catching myself before falling.
A quick survey around reveals the sky is no longer above us.
We’ve moved somewhere inside, but it’s not a building of wood or stone or wattle and daub.
Natural rock walls and a high domed ceiling riddled with stalactites enclose us.
For a moment I admire the icicle-shaped formations that resemble giant dripping candles overhead. I’ve never seen the like.
Then I look away, back to my captors. As far as natural wonders, they are far more remarkable.
“Where are we?” I choke out.
“This is our home.” The words roll around in my head like pebbles looking for a place to settle and land. “And yours, too, for the time being.”
Home . . . for the time being.
The impermanence of that, with its latent threat, chills me.
The one called Danhy lets out a petulant huff.
I ignore her and sputter, “Home? But it’s a . . . cave.”
And then I realize: Of course it’s a cave. They live in a cave because they’re animals. Because they’re monsters and monsters live in caves.
It’s an accurate and necessary reminder. They might look human in this moment, but they are not.
It’s easy to forget that a dragon exists inside each of them, always there, always ready to inflict pain.
I see flashes of it in their eyes, in the way their pupils shudder and elongate, in the way they move and angle their heads and flare their nostrils like they are forever on the scent of prey—because they are forever predators.
“Is our home not good enough for you?” Danhy bites out. “Perhaps you prefer the comfort of a grave? I can arrange that.”
She stares at me with such hate that I reach for the sword at my belt . . . before recalling that I lost it. My iron dagger and sword are gone.
She does not miss my action. The she-devil laughs and it’s hard not to notice the way the action vibrates her substantial breasts.
“Isn’t that precious? The human thinks she is still armed.
As though her flimsy sword could have hurt us.
” Her laughter fades as she shakes her head, her riotous curls dancing over her shoulders.
Would they never put clothes on? “Idiot.”
“It was made of iron,” I counter defensively. If iron could incapacitate witches, I could only hope it worked the same way on dragons.
“So?” Her scorn is palpable.
“Iron weakens witches,” Tage explains flatly. “Not dragons.”
Oh.
“That’s right,” Danhy chimes in, looking supremely satisfied. “It would take a sword of dragon bone, and I don’t imagine you have one of those, hm?”
No. No, I don’t. I don’t have any weapons, but that doesn’t mean I won’t ever, and it’s useful to know what it takes to defeat one of them. Even if I have no idea how to get my hands on such a weapon, that doesn’t mean I never will.
“I don’t,” I admit, then boldly, cheekily add, “but suddenly finding one feels like my entire purpose.” To find one and make them pay . . . to make them suffer as they deserve.
Tage’s eyes gleam with an unholy light at me, and I imagine he’s reconsidering his decision to keep me alive.
I don’t blink. Don’t flinch. I hold his stare like my existence depends on it.
Shifting my stance, I notice something give beneath me.
Glancing down I see that I’m standing on a large animal pelt.
A rug. Several rugs dot the floor of the large space.
They’ve made the giant cavern homey with rugs and a trestle table, and a large firepit surrounded by a circle of brilliant gemstones and a few chairs and benches.
It’s more of a cavern than a cave, I realize.
“Not the faintest humility to her at all. The little fool doesn’t even appreciate that we’ve let her live,” Arvos leans close to mutter to his alpha. “She still wants to kill us. After we spared her life. We saved her. It is unwise to keep her—”
Tage swiftly holds up a hand.
Let me live?
His words clang with a horrible echo through me. “My life is not yours to take or give,” I hiss.
“Would you listen to her?” Danhy’s top lip curls into a sneer. “So like a human. All ego and no respect for us.”
Tage keeps his dark eyes on me as he angles his head and growls to the others, “Leave us.”
They don’t move right away, exchanging looks with each other. Danhy doesn’t appear inclined to go anywhere, squaring her stance.
“I said leave us. All of you.”
Finally, they turn and depart, the backs of their well-formed bodies on full view as they file out through one of the several tunnels branching off from the large main space.
I’ve seen plenty of naked people in Isstad.
Very few possessed bodies so perfectly honed, and I’m reminded again that these beings are not true humans.
They’re beasts . . . their bodies weapons of destruction.