Chapter 17 Tamsyn
TAMSYN
I WHIRLED AROUND, MY FINGERS CLOSING TIGHTLY ON THE necklace, clenching it in my trembling fist as I faced Vetr. I didn’t hear him enter. Not the whisper of the door hanging. Not the fall of his footsteps.
There was only the pounding of my heart in my ears as I lifted my hand, the thick, dark chain dangling between my fingers.
“What is this doing here?” My voice emerged calm and dulcet despite the vague warning pumping through me, cautioning me to tread carefully—despite the fire sputtering to life inside me, looking for release, as always, ready to defend, to attack.
Vetr’s expression emptied. I could read nothing of his thoughts, but his voice echoed in my ears. I see you found it.
There had been no denial. No explanation. No worry or regret at my discovery.
“Why do you have this?” I pressed, waiting for a logical reason to put me at ease and douse the rank taste of fear steeping my mouth. I glanced back to the chest. “Why was this buried at the bottom of your things?”
Instead of answering my question, he countered, “What are you doing in my den?”
I came here to seduce you. I shook my head, choking on that now shameful, stomach-churning truth that I would never dare admit.
Eyeing him warily, I said, “It doesn’t matter.”
A shadow passed over his features like a roiling storm cloud. He moved in closer, a mountain with legs, encroaching on my space. “You’ve never once stepped foot in here before … Now you’re here and looking through my things?”
I backed up a step, still shaking my head, holding the black opal up between us. What brought me here no longer mattered. What mattered was this. “Why do you have Fell’s necklace?”
“When we were attacked, and they took him … he lost it. I picked it up.”
His words made it seem so simple, but nothing about this was simple—especially not the evasive way his gaze flicked away and then back to me again.
They took him?
That didn’t sound like Vetr had witnessed Fell’s death at all, and yet he had been so certain. He had claimed he saw the skelm kill Fell.
A lie.
My face was burning, eyes stinging.
I swallowed this reality, this, the actual truth, like a foul-tasting brew.
What else had he lied about? Vetr said they’d let him go in exchange for the location of the pride’s most valuable jewel minn. Was that the truth? Or was there more to it than that?
I inhaled a great, pained breath, looking at him like I was finally seeing him … and realizing he was not who I’d thought.
I opened and closed my mouth several times before managing to get out: “Is he really dead?”
That searing pulse in my palm jumped like popping embers, alive, reacting to my question, answering for him, screaming out at me, telling me what I already knew—what I had known, deep down, all along.
“Vetr,” I prodded, biting off his name like something hard between my teeth.
Time hung, suspended on air that crackled between us.
“I suspect he is alive,” he confirmed with a single hard nod.
The air left me in a great exhale. “How?” I croaked.
He stared at me flatly. “As I said, the skelm took him, but I believe he still lives. I did not know for certain, not until the other night. Not until after I saw your hand glowing like a firebrand. That would only happen if he still lived. It’s the bond.”
My knees suddenly buckled, and I wobbled where I stood, ready to collapse, break like tinder under the slightest pressure.
Alive.
It was the only word I heard. Fell was still out there somewhere. A year gone by and … Alive.
Vetr was at my side, sliding a supportive arm around me. I yanked free from him as though stung by the contact. Staggering back, I bumped his desk, clutching the edge of it until my knuckles ached, but even then, I did not let go. “Don’t touch me.”
“Tamsyn,” he murmured in a voice as smooth as a windless lake.
“I believed you,” I said accusingly, my voice nothing like calm waters. It was all jagged bits of broken glass that left a bloody wake.
I thought about him lying to me, so easily, so smoothly, his voice and eyes gentle. Fell is dead, he had said, and I’d drunk up his treachery, gulping it down.
Bile rose up in my throat, mingling with smoldering char. I fought it, swallowing it back, determined not to be sick here at his feet. I shook my head side to side in a miserable roll.
Fell would not have given up on me the way I gave up on him. This came to me in a blinding flash of clarity. He would not have believed Vetr. He would have demanded proof. Misery curled around me, wrapping me in its fold.
Vetr inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I’m sorry for lying … but I couldn’t tell you the truth. You had to believe him dead. It was a … kindness.” His silvery eyes locked on me intently, snaring me like a bug in the silver threads of a cobweb.
“A kindness?” I choked. “Nothing about this feels kind.”
He gave me a grim look. “The truth is worse.”
My stomach bottomed out. The truth was … worse?
“What’s worse than believing him dead?” I whispered, afraid of the answer but determined to hear it.
He looked away, his gaze sweeping the den as though he was uncomfortable with the question. At last, he settled his attention back on me, and there was a determined twist to his lips. “I was trying to protect you. I still am. I think Fell would have wanted that.”
“You didn’t even know me when you decided this. And you didn’t know Fell!” Another ragged breath. “I wasn’t one of the pride. And I’m still not.” He flinched at that, as though I’d wounded him. “So what horrible thing are you trying to protect me from? Just say it.”
He took his time replying.
I flexed my fingers around Fell’s necklace—the thick chain digging into my tender skin—not about to let it go. Not ready to ever let it go.
“We aren’t easy to kill,” he finally said.
“I know that,” I snapped.
“Dragons don’t always …” He paused, clearly struggling for words in a way I had never seen him do.
Not this warrior who always seemed to know himself and what to say and where he belonged in this world.
I’d envied him that, but now when I looked at him, I only felt disappointment.
Distrust. Betrayal. “Dragons don’t always dispense death to their enemies.
Sometimes they decide to mete out other punishments. ”
I considered that, turning his words over in my mind. Apparently, my education in all things dragon wasn’t as thorough as I thought. “So if they don’t kill their enemies … what do they do to them?”
“They subject them to … burials.”
I frowned and rubbed at the center of my forehead where a dull ache had started to form. “I don’t understand. You just said they don’t always kill—”
“They don’t. But they earth their enemies.”
I stared, uncomprehending. Earth their enemies? What was he talking about?
He looked bleakly remorseful as he elaborated. “They put to earth—” He stopped hard and then clarified: “They bury their enemies alive. Because it’s worse than death.”
Because it’s worse than death.
It was like he was speaking a foreign language—his words puzzle pieces that I had to shift and rearrange before me until they all connected neatly together.
I clung to his gaze, trying to make sense of it all.
“But dragons”—I spoke through lips that had gone numb—“we … live for centuries.” If not gravely injured with dragon weaponry, of course.
“Yes. Precisely.” He nodded grimly. “Sometimes, instead of killing a captive, they bury them alive.”
What ghastly brutality was this?
I stared. Unspeaking. Speech was impossible. There were not words to describe such barbarism.
Fell was potentially alive. No. Not potentially. He was alive. Buried alive.
Understanding struck me as hard and sharp as a whip. I felt him, especially now, since waking from my svefn. Stronger than ever since then.
The tether between us stretched and held fast, alive and pulsing and buzzing like a bee inside me.
Vetr had simply convinced me to ignore it.
Convinced me that it was something else.
An echo. A ghost. Not really Fell. But it had been Fell.
Fell reaching out to me from some tomb beneath the ground where he would be stuck for years. Decades. Centuries.
It was horrible. Too horrible to wrap my mind around. Unspeakable. As terrible as the torments that Stig inflicted upon people.
While Fell existed in whatever hole the skelm stuck him, I’d been here, becoming a dragon in all ways … and falling under his brother’s spell.
Suddenly I recalled Anders’s suggestion that they bury me in a deep, deep fucking hole, and the realization that earthing was a known practice among dragonkind crystallized in my mind with a new level of comprehension.
My legs gave out and Vetr swept me up, carrying me in his arms and sinking down onto his bed with me in his lap. I shook my head in protest. I felt sick. My stomach heaved. I covered my mouth, gagging, suddenly unable to hold it back.
Vetr rushed me over to the basin, where I retched, emptying the contents of my stomach. It would have been humiliating … if I cared anymore what he thought.
He smoothed circles over my back, and I wrenched away from his touch—the very same touch I had longed for and came to this den on a mission to find. Staggering, I wiped the back of my hand against my quivering lips.
He looked at me with pity. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you. It wouldn’t have helped him, and it would only make you more miserable.”
I dug inside myself, searching past the bile for my voice. “He’s buried … alive.”
“Likely. Yes. That is why you feel him still.”
I looked at him sharply, resentment flaring hot inside me. Not wishful thinking. Not an echo. Not a ghost. “You made a fool of me.”
He waved an arm, the gesture encompassing the world beyond. “He might as well be dead. He’s buried out there in the vastness of the Crags. There is no way to locate him. No way to unearth him. Any attempt to do so will fail.”