22. The Sound of a Name #2
As much as I despise them, I feel the irrational urge to call them back rather than be left alone with their leader.
Absurd, I know. One is better than many, but those leaving are merciless—willing to kill me back in Isstad, and still, even now.
I should perceive them to be the greater threat, but everything about Tage vibrates with menace and danger.
I back away from him, clearing my throat, our sudden aloneness combined with his nudity an unsettling combination.
Will he never dress in clothes? Will I ever not be unnerved by the sight of him?
But then why should I feel comfortable or safe around him? Monstrous killers shouldn’t instill me with warmth and a sense of safety.
His voice plays over in my head like a refrain. I did not do this. We are not about destroying life.
I shake off the memory of his insistence that he did not slaughter my village. Why should I believe him?
Batting my doubts away, I inch toward the fire, holding my hands out to the warmth of the flames. Freezing to death wouldn’t help me.
A large spit stretches across the firepit. Clearly, they roast meat over the fire. At least they cook their food. Sometimes, at any rate.
The rainbow of gemstones circling the firepit mesmerizes me. My gaze catches on the glint of a blade, a knife discarded off to the side of the ring of stones, likely forgotten there from the last time it was used.
I take a bracing breath and fix my gaze resolutely on his face even as I inch closer to that blade, still holding my palms out to the welcoming heat. “You need to understand something.”
His lips twitch as though amused, and rather than disarming me, this heightens my unease. In this moment, perhaps more than ever, he resembles a predator toying with his food.
“What is that?” He circles me, silent on the pads of his feet, his movements casual, boasting an ease and idleness that only puts me more on edge.
I am not food. I am not prey.
I moisten my lips, and he tracks the movement. Never have I felt so intensely the subject of anyone’s focus . . . even when I was visible. “You can let me go—”
“Can I?” He angles his head in a sharp, abrupt motion. His eyes glow, the pupils vibrating unnaturally, and I hold very still, suddenly struck with the idea that I should make no sudden movements around him. “Killing me is no longer your sole purpose?”
I blink.
He continues. “You said finding a weapon of dragon bone feels like your entire purpose.”
I wince as he flings my words back at me. Probably not the most prudent thing to say. Though rather than attempt to deny my avowal of moments ago, I say instead, “I’m not going to tell anyone about you or—”
“Yes, you said that before.” He shrugs a big shoulder, impatient with me.
“Your promise is not enough. There is too much at stake here. Discovering that we exist would change everything. Humans would cease their petty little wars with each other and march into the Crags to ferret us out. It would be the past all over again. For our protection, they cannot know we still live.”
I shake my head. “I won’t shatter their belief. You must trust me. I won’t tell anyone because I can’t.”
He stops, his sudden look of interest absorbing and deep. “You . . . can’t?”
I nod swiftly.
“Explain.”
“I’m cursed.” I shrug feebly as though to say, It happens. “A witch cast a spell over me when I was fourteen. She made me invisible.”
His gaze narrows on me. “Why?”
“Did she need a reason? I don’t know.” At his dubious expression, I shrug again.
“I was a child . . . in a temper. I said something stupid. I didn’t mean to, but I summoned her, and she cast me .
. .” I spread my arms out at my side, hating that I still feel shame all these years later for my reckless and foolish behavior.
“I am invisible to humans. I don’t know how it is that you can see me, but—”
“Magic cannot best magic,” he replies distractedly, clearly processing the information I imparted.
I pause, struggling to understand. “You’re magic,” I murmur.
He nods slowly. “And any creature of magic can see you.” I allow that information to settle over me as he continues. “Whatever spell holds you in its web won’t work on me.”
So as I suspected, I’m still invisible to human eyes.
Deflated, I realize a part of me had hoped the curse was broken.
Maybe more than hoped. Briefly, I’d allowed myself to believe that it was broken—that I could move among my own kind and finally reunite with Henrik and Meya.
That once I escaped these monsters, I could travel to the Borg and have a life again.
His gaze drifts over me, to the space all around me. “It makes sense now,” he says.
“What does?”
“Why you’re different.” He gestures. “You have an . . . aura. A pale glow surrounding you.”
“I do?” Was that what he had been talking about in the village? Not my mismatched eyes.
He nods, his expression thoughtful. “It’s almost like you’re surrounded by a halo.” He considers me for several moments before giving his head a swift shake. “It must be your curse. The spell. It manifests itself in a subtle light all around you.”
“I had no idea,” I murmur. “I’ve seen myself in mirrors over the years, but I never noticed this aura before.”
“Maybe because you’re a human? And you cannot see the evidence of what’s been done to you.” He shrugs. “Whatever the case, I can see it.”
He can. Because he’s a dragon and . . . magical. And I’m just the thing imprisoned by magic.
I exhale a shuddery breath. He isn’t one of the countless humans oblivious to me that I’ve encountered over the years. I am . . . visible.
It’s a heady, exhilarating thing even with all the chaos and grief of this day.
His voice drops, growing more somber. “So then . . . how long have you been like this?”
I lift my chin nonchalantly as though it’s not such a very big number to confess. “Ten years.”
His head pulls back slightly as though that was a bit of a jolt. “You really must have offended that witch.”
I snort. “Because she needed a reason to make my life a living hell?”
He considers this. “No. I suppose not. Witches are perfidious, evil creatures.”
“And you’re so much better?”
The half smile playing about his lips vanishes. “You still believe it was me who slaughtered your village?”
I hold his unflinching stare, letting my silence speak for me. No, I no longer believed that.
“The skelm did it,” he growls. “And they’re not my kind.”
“The skelm?” I say the word like it’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard. “Am I to believe there are other dragons out there that kill, but that’s not you? You are nothing like this other . . . group?”
His nostrils flare. “Believe me or don’t. I don’t give a fuck . . . but that’s correct. The skelm quite happily murder humans. They consider it their duty.”
“And you don’t?”
“If I wanted you dead, you would be.” He steps closer and reaches for me, his long fingers resting against my throat. My pulse reacts, jumping wildly against my skin, beneath his touch. His voice lowers. “It would be the easiest thing to do.”
I gulp, not doubting that.
He continues. “But that’s not what I do. I’m nothing like them and you should count yourself lucky that I found you and not them.” His hand drops from my neck.
“So I should thank you for not murdering me?”
“If we’re speaking of groups that murder, humankind has been murdering dragons for centuries, driving us to the brink of extinction.”
I thrust my chin forward, too angry, too goaded, suddenly forgetting that I should be afraid of him.
Someone smart, someone wise enough to know how to preserve their own survival, would be afraid .
. . but not me. “And I’m sure dragonkind did nothing to provoke that . . . or reciprocate in similar fashion.”
“We merely fight for our right to exist.”
I glare at him, my eyes suddenly burning as I think of Da.
I see him so clearly sitting alone in my room, on my bed, where I caught him several times over the years . . . head bent, shoulders hunched as he remembered his dead daughter.
I blink quickly, chasing away the sting of tears alongside this image of my father mourning me, regret for the past gnawing away at him as he grew steadily older, frailer.
Now he’s not even that old man anymore. He is nothing.
He is gone, buried in the ruins of Isstad, his final resting place, and I would never get the chance to tell him all the things I wanted to, to send him to his death with something besides regret.
I blink burning eyes.
I will not cry. I will not cry.
A hot tear slips down my cheek. I dash it away with the back of my hand, but not before he sees it. Not before he follows the trail of it with his bright, feral gaze.
Knotting my hand into a fist, I beat it against my thigh.
“Tell me then. What did the people in my village do to dragonkind to deserve their fate? My friends? My father? He was a blacksmith, you know.” No, he doesn’t know.
He doesn’t know anything about Da or me or any humans.
“He never hurt a soul. He worked hard, raised his children, grieved the loss of my mother, grieved me. Did he not have a right to exist, too?”
“Of course he did,” he snaps, his eyes flashing more purple than black in that moment, and I wonder what that means—what does it mean when one color eclipses the other. Have I pushed him too far? What color will his eyes appear when he snaps—the moment before he devours me?
“And that’s all I want,” I shoot back, “my right to exist.”
He looks away as though the sight of me is too much . . . like I disgust him. “I’m not taking your life, keeping you here.”
Keeping you here.
My anger flares at his words. He intends to keep me here against my will indefinitely. I react before I can consider my actions . . . or the consequences of them.