Chapter 11 #2
Tears sizzled down my cheeks, and I knew that my dragon was with me even if I couldn’t turn. Gathering myself up, I breathed. In. Out. In. Out. I would take a few moments. Rest and try again. Give myself a little more time.
Suddenly hard hands were on my arms, lifting me.
I snapped my head up with a cry of rage, certain they had caught up with me, certain it was Stig or one of his men. Opening my mouth, I set loose a screaming blast of flame.
Instantly the hands let go, accompanied by a quick curse.
I dropped and landed hard. Scrambling to my knees, I tensed, ready to breathe fire again.
I didn’t need to, though.
Vetr, unmaimed, stared down at me. Apparently, he’d gotten out of the way quickly enough.
My body went limp at the sight of him, tall and virile, his chest and shoulders filling out his leather over tunic, pushing at the seams. I sagged, relieved, the fight leaving me.
His hands stretched toward me, wide palms spread out as though approaching a feral animal, and I realized I must resemble that. An injured animal caught out in the wild, defensive and ready to bite the first hand that dared to touch it.
“It’s me.” He glanced behind him where Harald and Arran stood, their eyes wide, expressions anxious. “It’s us.”
I sucked in a breath, sucked in my fire, and managed a single nod.
He took my shoulders carefully in his hands, and a dam broke. I started shaking. I couldn’t stop. He made a shushing sound between words, his voice softer than I’d ever heard him speak before. “It’s all right. You’re safe. You can relax. I’ve got you. I have you.”
I’ve got you. I have you.
The words wrapped around me like the softest blanket.
“Vetr.” The sound was a broken gasp, unintelligible, but he seemed to understand me as he pulled me up.
He brushed his hand against my cheek. “You’re so pale.”
“She’s a fucking ghost,” Harald observed grimly.
Vetr scowled at him.
A ghost. Fitting.
I tried to speak again, my throat working as I got out the words, “You found me.”
“I never lost you.”
I blinked tired, gritty eyes. I never lost you. But that couldn’t be right. Fighting for my life in that camp, facing down Stig and his army, the piske tearing me open, leaving me this broken, hollowedout body … I had been lost. Lost and alone.
Confused, I moistened dry lips. “What do you mean?”
He gingerly gathered my hair, easing the sticky, tangled mass away from my shoulder to examine my back with a hiss of sympathy. “We followed you.”
My eyes opened wider, taking in first him and then looking beyond to the solemn faces of Arran and Harald, seeking confirmation. “What are you saying? You followed me … You’ve been out here this whole time?” While I was being tortured …
He nodded.
A winding, poison-spewing serpent rose inside me.
“And you never tried to do anything? You never felt compelled to help me?” I demanded.
He was a shader. Arran was a hypnos. Harald an onyx.
The three of them were beyond formidable.
They were powerful. Combined, they could do anything.
They could have used their talents to help me, to spare me this.
When I was taken in Porthavn, I told myself they’d let me go and tossed me to my fate. I told myself that the discovery of who I was had ruined everything, ruined me in their eyes. Trust was lost, and I had accepted that.
I’d given up hope that they would follow me. Certainly I had not considered they would care enough to follow me and not help me. What the fuck was that about? That was a whole level of cruelty I did not think them capable of committing.
“Did you hear the crack of the whip? The piske? Six times on me?” I demanded, my voice far stronger than I felt. “Did you hear my screams?”
Vetr didn’t say anything for a long moment, simply gazing at me with those silver eyes, his brother’s eyes.
His brother who, almost from the start, had made me feel safe.
Protected me when I was not owed that. Same eyes.
Different hearts. This one in front of me, his hands holding me like he cared, like I was something fragile to be defended, had no heart.
He’d left me to die. If I hadn’t gotten myself out of there, that would have been my fate.
Finally, he nodded grimly, acknowledging that yes, he had heard my screams.
I inhaled sharply and tilted my head toward my back. “See what they did to me?”
“We had to know,” he cut in.
I went rigid, stiffening even though it only made the pain worse.
“We had to know,” he repeated.
“Had to know what?” I shook my head wildly, the motion making me nauseated.
“We had to know what you would do in that camp. What you would do when the enemy had you.”
I stared at him, slow comprehension creeping through me. “You thought I would betray you.”
His expression was implacable as stone. “I did not know.”
“You didn’t know but you wanted to find out. You needed that final confirmation that I was not good enough to be one of you,” I finished bitterly. “After a year—”
“No,” he said flatly. “You are one of us. Birth decided that. You are a dragon.” He paused a beat. “I had to know if you could be trusted to do the right thing.”
“Because I have been lacking from the moment you found me.” I laughed harshly, the action shuddering my wrecked body. The sound abruptly twisted into something hoarse and rough. Suddenly my knees buckled.
He caught me as though I weighed nothing at all, his hands splayed wide on my arms, each finger singeing me as he kept me from falling to the ground.
“You stupid fool,” he muttered, his lips moving against my hair, his scolding voice as excruciating as my flayed-open back.
“Why did you let them take you into that camp? Why did you not smite them when you were en route?”
He’d been out there watching me for three days. Three days. It was the sticking point I could not overcome. He could have snatched me at any time—shaded the three soldiers with ease so that they did not remember the encounter. Rescued me before I even had to come face-to-face with Stig.
Leave no witnesses.
He could have done that. Helped me.
He had not. He hadn’t lifted a finger.
My gaze clashed with his, our noses almost touching. “Why didn’t you?” I flung at him, simmering in my pain, in my rage. “You’re the alpha of the pride. The strongest among us, no? No love lost for these humans. What is a mere human, after all? What are three?”
“You were at their mercy. You should have done it,” he snapped. “They’re servants of the Terror. You saw what they did. You should have helped yourself.”
“So … you were testing me?” The words felt thick in my mouth, the pain still like a knife grinding and twisting to the hilt in me, but this … this was something else, another kind of pain, another kind of assault.
“That’s right,” he growled.
I flinched and then grimaced at the bite in my back.
He was right. I should never have reached the camp.
I should have killed two soldiers and a boy barely out of the schoolroom who still longed for his mother.
I should have never seen my sister. I would not have been whipped. She would not have been struck.
I forced my chin up. “Well, I got myself out of there. I saved myself like you wanted me to do. And you don’t need to worry. As far as the world knows, dragons are still extinct. I gave nothing away.”
“At what cost to you?” Cursing, he adjusted me in his arms, cradling me against his chest, and I resisted leaning my cheek against that solid wall, denying myself the comfort.
I watched him peer over my shoulder where my back hung in strips.
Air hissed from between his teeth. “Ahh. What did you do, Little Flame?”
Little Flame. He’d never called me that before. A flicker of something crossed over the hard lines of his face. A rare emotion from him. I was not sure how to identify it—what it even was. Anger. Pity. Aggravation. All that and more.
A heavy weariness came over me, pulling, drawing me down toward a deep nothingness. “You watched them take me into the camp,” I whispered accusingly, no longer able to hold my head upright. My cheek met the solidness of his chest, and I exhaled long and slow.
I heard his breath, the deep, sharp inhale. “You think that was easy for me? You think when they tied you to that tree I—”
“You watched that, too?” I cut in hoarsely, tears thick in my throat. Closing my eyes, I turned my face into him, burying it in his over tunic that smelled of leather and horseflesh and wind and fog and the crisp snow of the Crags.
Shame swept through me that he had observed me that way—as the whipping girl, reliving the role I had been forced to endure for the bulk of my life. He’d glimpsed the past I’d left and vowed never to revisit. He’d seen me at my most vulnerable, and I hated it.
Except … what did it matter anymore?
My heat faded, and I felt death inching close, breathing its ice first through my wounds, then chugging through the rest of me.
What did I matter?
As though he could read my mind, Vetr vowed, “I’ll get you home, Little Flame. You’re not dying. I won’t let you.”
“Arran,” he called.
I heard the crunch of footsteps, and then I was transferred into another’s arms, into Arran’s arms.
I weakly lifted my head to watch as Vetr stepped back several yards from us. He held my gaze, and there was something there in the frosted depths. It felt like a promise, an avowal ruthlessly penetrating to the center of me.
Then he broke eye contact, lifting his face and spreading his arms wide.
I inhaled, watching, knowing what was coming.
Air swirled around us and then exploded into thousands of particles of stardust where he once stood. When the light cleared, a familiar silvery dragon stood before us, his frosted gaze fixed on me.
Arran carried me forward and placed me in the cradle of Vetr’s two great taloned claws. He brought me in closer, hugging me to his chest, and I felt safe against his warm dragon hide, his heart beating a loud rhythm in my ear. A lethargy crept over me as he lifted off and launched us into the sky.
Cold wind roared around us like a storm, a squall that he cut through like a hot blade through butter.
Cradled in his grasp, I felt myself slipping, sliding, sinking into oblivion as the storm raged all around me.