Chapter 2
TAMSYN
I WAS GRATEFUL FOR MY OWN DEN. IT WAS THE ONE PLACE IN the pride, the only place, that was mine alone.
A place I could escape to, where I could have privacy, where I didn’t have to pretend, where I didn’t have to be strong, where I could breathe and collapse and I didn’t have to be anything for anyone. Not a dragon. Not a human. Just me.
There was a bed, low to the ground, covered in luxurious furs and pelts.
A wood chest for my meager belongings, all given to me since I arrived here.
Nothing was mine. The only thing I possessed was the necklace at my throat, the gift from Fell, the weight of it a heavy, welcome thing.
All I had left. That and the memory of him, of his beating heart in my palm …
there still even now. Perhaps forever. A balm and a torment.
My den had all the comforts of a bedchamber.
The only thing missing was a window with a view to the outside world.
But there was another view. A spectacular view.
Vibrant gemstones of all shapes and hues were embedded in the stone walls in various patterns, casting a kaleidoscope of colors throughout the chamber.
Night after night, a subtle dance of rainbow lights peppered the darkness like living particles.
Mesmerized, I would lift a hand, fingers fluttering in the dark as though trying to catch the light, absorbing the energy those jewels cast, reveling in it, the magic pouring into me, soothing me to sleep, as gentle as waves rocking a ship, restoring all the little raw and wounded bits of me.
Well. Almost all.
The absence of Fell was an abiding ache, a hurt that would never fully heal, a detached limb that would not regrow, but I wouldn’t will the pain away even if I could.
He was still here, in me, his heart drumming swift and sure in the cup of my hand where we were blooded. A bond that even death had not severed, not snipped neatly away.
At the onset, a year ago, I’d thought it meant he could be alive, and hope had bloomed in my chest like sunlight breaking through the dark, through the pall his death cast over me—finding me where I had fallen, knocked off my feet at the news, forgotten, frozen at the first sight of Vetr returning alone from his and Fell’s regrettable flight to the cave of their birth, to the site of their mother’s death.
Frozen as I had stared at Vetr … so bloody and broken that I didn’t immediately recognize him.
Frozen except for my wildly scanning eyes, aching in my face, searching for a glimpse of Fell beyond Vetr, around Vetr—anywhere.
But there had been no Fell.
Just a blur of strangers, their faces all anxious over Vetr’s wellbeing, over Vetr’s survival. Vetr.
Vetr’s gasping words—They … got … him—twisted through me.
I felt out of my body in that moment. They. Got. Him.
Vetr had returned without Fell because Fell was no more.
Gone.
Dead.
All these thoughts sluggishly toiled through me like marbles rolling in endless circles, around and around and around, searching for an end, a home, a place to stop and rest.
I’d slumped on the cold stone floor that day.
The large gathering space was a buzz of activity, reminiscent of the Great Hall back home in Penterra.
Except it was a cave. A web of caves. A labyrinth.
And at the center of that space, with its tables and chairs and benches with tasseled pillows, was me—limp and silent and unmoving as a corpse.
I bit the inside of my cheek. The taste of copper flooded my mouth as the blood gushed.
I tasted it even as I did not feel the painful sinking pressure of my teeth.
The warmth from the crackling firepit—with its stone chute that led up to a faraway rock ceiling, smoke escaping out through one of the openings carved for ventilation—reached me, licking at my face, but I felt cold.
So cold. A cold that started at the very marrow of me, the heat in me uncharacteristically absent.
Roused from my stupor of grief and shock, I blinked as though stirred from a dream, a nightmare …
a spell—a living curse, except there was no witch to blame for casting this affliction upon me.
My limbs unfroze. I straightened and lifted myself from my spot, standing, stumbling blindly through the caves that was home to the pride.
Then, I hadn’t known very much about dragons or the pride.
I hadn’t known how many they numbered—not the names that went with the faces and bodies I pushed through.
The only face or name I knew was Vetr’s.
Because his face was the same as Fell’s.
Because he was Fell’s brother and he’d found us, brought us here.
Because he would have the answers I needed.
So I had to reach him, find him wherever they had taken him upon his return, bearing wounds and tragedy.
No one helped me. No one pointed me in his direction.
No one even seemed to see me until I was there, at the opening of his den, pushing past those crowding anxiously at his door, barging into his chamber while Brenna tended to the injuries he’d sustained fighting off the dragons who’d killed Fell and tried to kill him, too. Killed Fell.
The thought ricocheted through me, battering and striking everything in its path, leaving me so raw and hurting I could not summon an ounce of self-preservation among these who were more animal than human, more magic than not, in whose company I should have exercised more caution.
My gaze crawled over him, his body wrecked and ravaged.
I felt a surge of bile in my throat. I would later learn that injuries inflicted by a dragon were harder to heal from than harm done by other means.
Dragon talons—like weapons made from dragon bones—were far more dangerous.
Deadly even, if the blow was serious enough.
One look at Brenna, and I knew Vetr’s injuries were potentially fatal.
Perhaps I should have respected that and left him alone, but I had to know what happened.
So as Vetr writhed and twisted beneath the healer’s hands, I demanded, “What about Fell? What happened to him?”
Brenna held a bottle to Vetr’s lips, and he chugged verdaberry wine—another thing I would learn about later—something that possessed both healing and inebriating properties.
“Get her out of here!” a voice exclaimed loudly from the crowd. Others seconded this, and rough hands grabbed me, pulling me from the room. There were more hateful words tossed, barbs to the flesh.
We should never have allowed the two of them in. They’re not like us.
He had to go … had to see for himself! It’s his own fault!
Good riddance. He deserves what he got.
I ignored the ugly words, struggling and yanking my arms free, brandishing my hand with its X forever carved on my skin. “I can still feel him! I feel him here! He can’t be dead!”
No one cared. An arm wrapped around my waist and lifted me, ready to carry me bodily from the den.
“Leave her!”
The voice landed like a cracking whip on the air, and I was released at once.
I staggered forward, feeling as wild and desperate as the man on the bed appeared to be. My gaze collided with his—all vibrating pupils surrounded by frost and ice.
Vetr struggled into a sitting position, his attention fastening on my hand.
I was struck by the sheer size of him even in his weakened state.
The slab of his muscled chest was smeared with purple blood.
What little blood-free skin there was flashed in and out, contracting to a pearlescent silver in one breath and returning to human skin in the next.
“It’s the bond,” he gritted out with a rough shake of his head, as though he hated to confirm the truth of this. “I’m … sorry.”
He fell back on the bed with a wet cough and a shuddering exhale.
I heard the regret in his voice—in the effort it took him to speak to me—as well as the hard authority in his voice when he commanded everyone to leave me be. This stranger who looked just like Fell was sorry for my pain even as he battled his own.
He was sorry for losing the brother he had only just found.
It was all so horribly, horribly wrong.
Still desperate and unwilling to believe, I moved in closer, holding out my hand, showing him the marked X as though he needed to see it up close. Words tripped from my lips, assertions that if I could still feel Fell, he must be alive.
He gazed up at me with four fresh slashes on his face, courtesy of a dragon’s talons.
Purple blood dotted the edges of torn flesh, already sewn tautly together by a hand skilled with needle and thread.
A little higher on his face and he would have lost an eye, and I doubted even a dragon could recover from that.
One very nasty abrasion on his shoulder was impossible to close with stitching. The wound was so wide and deep that I glimpsed bone through the pulpy mess of raw tissue.
My stomach turned at the sight, but I stubbornly remained in place, bringing my hand closer, thrusting my palm out as though he only needed to better see the mark of where Fell and I were blooded to fully understand.
He hardly spared a glance for my hand, warily eyeing the herbal concoction Brenna prepared before looking back at me. “The bond,” he muttered as though that were explanation enough, “is strong.”
“It can live on when the body is gone,” Brenna added distractedly as she lifted a handful of the green mixture toward Vetr’s face.
I looked wildly between them. It was like they were speaking another language.
Brenna applied the green goo to his face, and he hissed, his big body arching up off the bed as she applied a liberal amount of the remedy to his skin. His eyes went feral, the silvery gray shuddering as the pupils thinned to slits.
She tsked. “We’ve got to get these gashes to heal properly. Don’t want any scars on that handsome face of yours, do you?”