Chapter 4 #2
Kerstin’s pale skin flushed pink. She sat up straighter beside me, adopting a wide-eyed, wholly innocent expression. “Everything is fine, Brenna.” She angled her now almost empty plate in demonstration. “Dinner was delicious tonight.”
As a verga, Brenna masterminded all things to do with plants and herbs. From food preparation in the kitchens, to managing the gardens and crops, to creating herbal remedies and tinctures for the ill and injured. Her talents were vast. Several of my duties fell within her purview.
Multiple times a week, I helped in the garden, and more than once I had been called in to help in the infirmary when there was a need for extra hands—like last spring when both Brynhild and Vestar were gored by a sounder of battle boars and quite nearly beyond saving.
Once tamed by the spells of witchkind, battle boars had been used in the Threshing.
Soldiers from all kingdoms had ridden into the Hormung upon the massive, tusked beasts.
Since the end of the Threshing and witches fell out of favor, battle boars had been released from their spells.
Feral once again, they took refuge in the boglands and the Crags, much like their dragon counterparts.
They were particularly vicious, especially during rutting season.
Brenna gave a brisk nod. Seemingly appeased that Kerstin was finished with her outburst, she returned her attention to her mate, Nils, seated beside her.
Kerstin relaxed beside me and reached for more of the fragrant bread, dropping a roll on each of our plates.
Gudru and Estrid no longer looked in our direction.
I stuffed the savory bread into my mouth, ready to leave but knowing I could not. Vetr and his skeppars were always the first to leave. No one left before them, and they did not yet appear ready to depart, their plates still brimming with food.
Thankfully I did not have kitchen duty tonight.
As soon as dinner ended, I could retire to my den.
I sighed and looked around. My gaze collided with Nayden’s scowl.
I glared back at him, determined not to cower.
He ate with his face close to his plate, pushing roasted mutton and vegetables into his mouth using a hunk of bread as a shovel—but all the while his fiery gaze remained fixed on me.
“That boy.” Kerstin tsked—as though he was so much younger. “He’s not been right since you showed up.”
“Is that so?” I asked while still holding his stare. “Maybe I should leave, then?”
I did not plan to say such a thing, but the words tumbled loose.
The encounter with Vetr had left me feeling fractured and unsteady …
and a bit desperate. I shouldn’t have said the words to Kerstin, but too late.
They were out, hanging on the air, waiting for someone to snatch them up, and Kerstin did.
I felt her eyes on the side of my face. “Why would you want to do that? There’s nowhere for us to go.
” She sounded bewildered, but also something else.
Curious maybe? As though if any other possibilities existed, she wanted me to share them with her at once.
“You belong here. This is our home. It’s what the Old Ones wanted …
why they brought us here, to Vetr … to build a life. ”
The Old Ones, in this instance, truly meant old.
Following Vala’s curse, when dragons began giving birth to humans rather than hatchlings, some of them didn’t kill or abandon their human babies. Gradually, a new generation of dragonkind took shape.
In those early years, Vetr lived independently, a wild child fending for himself in the Crags with occasional help from Old Ones sympathetic to his struggles. Not only did he survive, he thrived.
As he matured, more and more of the Old Ones began leaving their human offspring with him—at least those who could not bring themselves to murder their infants outright. Vetr grew a pride. This pride.
I often thought of my dragon mother. If she had known of Vetr, would she have left me with him instead of dropping me in the bailey of the palace? How different my life would be.
I’d thought of her more and more since I’d come here, since I’d learned the truth of the past and what my mother must have been up against when I was born.
She was no longer a wispy shadow. Yes, nameless still, but shadow no more.
I felt like I knew her now. She’d spared me.
She could have killed me. Instead, she’d gone against the others, so ready to kill humans, and flown south, leaving me in the City.
She must have thought it was my best chance at a life.
I wondered if she was out there still. A few of the Old Ones remained, I’d been told.
Farther north. Deeper into the Crags, where the air was thin, almost nonexistent.
In tunnels that broke off and dropped away, plummeting to the very bowels of the earth, far below, where no human could ever venture.
Clearly the Old Ones wanted that. They wanted nothing to do with humankind …
or even us, this new generation of dragon.
They would finish out their lives untouched by this world.
Kerstin’s words echoed through me. There’s nowhere to go.
She wasn’t wrong. It was that very thing that kept me here, trapped in my strange, changeable skin with my dragon swimming beneath it.
Where else could I go? I’d hoped this place would become more than simply a sanctuary of necessity.
I’d thought one day, once I’d learned everything there was to know about my dragon, after I’d learned how to fit in within the pride, it would feel like home.
Kerstin went on. “We belong in the Crags.” Her words dropped softly, as though even she was not so certain of that. She paused and then collected herself enough to say with more conviction, “This is our home.”
I swallowed. I wished that were true, but could I ever belong here when I was not like them? Not a dragon. Not a human. Not anything.
At last, the meal ended, and I was permitted to return to my den and undress for bed.
I brushed out my hair vigorously, almost viciously, with a jewel-handled brush any royal princess would envy, but I possessed it.
It was just an ordinary thing. A hairbrush laden with jewels, just like any other hairbrush here.
I braided my fiery locks loosely so they wouldn’t tangle too much in my sleep, and then I studied my reflection, my face, which looked leaner somehow, cheeks hollowed … my youth spent, my innocence lost.
I wasn’t a girl anymore. I appeared every bit a widow with my tired eyes that belonged to someone much older than my twentytwo years.
That gave me pause. I was twenty-two now.
My birthday had come and gone months ago without remark.
No one knew and I saw no point in alerting them. The day passed as any other.
All my earlier birthdays were observed with cake and presents.
My sisters loved any reason to celebrate.
They would have celebrated their birthdays by now, too.
I wondered if Feena or Sybilia were betrothed and to whom.
Perhaps one of them had even married, formed a great alliance for Penterra.
Alise was still too young, but I knew better than to assume the king and queen would not break custom and wait until she turned eighteen if it benefitted them.
A lot could change in a short time. I glanced down at the back of my hand draped over the jewel-studded handle of my hairbrush. I knew that firsthand.
With a sigh, I ended my self-examination and pushed myself up onto my feet.
My nights were restless. As comfortable as my bed was with its luxurious furs, I could never get comfortable enough. It was almost as though I no longer knew how to sleep alone.
The lack of Fell beside me was an aching emptiness. We’d only slept side by side for a couple months, but I still felt his absence, especially alone in the dark.
I slid beneath the furs and curled up on my side, a hand tucked beneath my cheek. The slashing lines on my palm buzzed hotly. The sensation went beyond the skin, deep beyond flesh and veins and tissue, into the bone.
Closing my eyes, I pretended it was his hand cupping my face.
Then, without thought, without meaning to, I exhaled and whispered … putting his name out there, casting it into the ether: “Fell.”
Out of nowhere, a wind rushed through my den, sweeping over me, stirring tendrils of my hair. Goose bumps broke out over my skin.
It almost felt like an answer.