Chapter 20
TAMSYN
WE MADE CAMP EARLY. KERSTIN FORGOT ABOUT HER tired feet and took over guiding us.
She found a cave. Admittedly, she was better at locating them than I was.
It was some instinct I didn’t seem to possess, a knowledge of the Crags that was not yet inherent to me, and now …
the will seemed to have gone out of me entirely.
At least for the night. Tonight, I let her take the helm.
She arranged some moss beneath my bedroll, waved me to bed, then set about gathering kindling for a fire, bringing me a piece of wood to light. I obliged, blowing a ribbon of heat. A fire soon crackled before us, casting dancing shadows over the space.
“You’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep,” she said as she handed me an apple and dried venison from her knapsack. Last night we’d roasted rabbit over the fire, but I was not much up to hunting right now. Nor did Kerstin seem to be.
I accepted the food with numb fingers, staring into the dancing flames. “I’ll never be able to find him now.”
Kerstin nodded slowly in grim agreement. “So we go back, then?” My gaze whipped to her. Go back to Vetr and the weight of his eyes, the yoke of his expectation, his hope for us? No. I couldn’t do that. “I can never go back.”
I couldn’t return to the pride and pretend I was fine—that everything was fine.
“Very well.” Kerstin tossed her apple core into the fire. “Then we don’t go back.”
“That’s kind of you, but you have a life waiting for you with the pride, Kerstin. You belong there.”
“And where do you belong?”
I sat with the question for a few moments before replying. “I’m trying to figure that out.” I pulled my fur mantle tighter about my shoulders.
“Well, I don’t want to go back. So we can figure out what to do next. Together.”
I took a bite from my apple, forcing myself to eat, and telling myself that maybe I could still find Fell. If I roamed widely enough and covered enough ground, if I happened to be close to where he was buried … then maybe he would stir and reach out to me. I had nothing to lose by trying.
WE WALKED ANOTHER week, my hope clinging by a fraying thread.
Kerstin stayed by my side, supportive and encouraging, but I felt her sidelong glances.
She made no demands, keeping up and tromping beside me through snow and over rough terrain, never once inquiring how long we would keep at this before we quit.
And if we did declare it quits, what then?
Where would we go? I knew she was starting to wonder, but I didn’t know that answer myself.
I only knew I couldn’t stop.
Not yet.
“You’re quiet today,” she remarked as we made camp for the night.
“Just tired.”
Not an untruth. The journey was taxing, the reminder never far that not so long ago I had been broken and clinging to life as the last leaf of fall clings to the branch. And yet it was more than that.
It was the energy spent trying to reach Fell …
flinging myself out there, casting a wide net in the hope of finding him somewhere in that plane, in that ether where we had come together before, seeking and grasping for him wherever he might be and coming up empty every time, coming up with … nothing.
I DIDN’T KNOW what woke me. It wasn’t dawn yet. I blinked in the swollen air and held still for several moments, letting my gaze catch and hold on the waning flames of the fire, feeling every scalding lick like a breath unwinding from me.
“Tamsyn?” Kerstin softly queried, also awake.
I heard it then. Pressing my hand flat on the cave floor, muscles tight and ready to spring into action. I pushed myself into a sitting position and peered around.
Over the sound of my name … a howl flung long and low on the air. Air that felt thicker than when we went to sleep. Viscous as soup now. The pale mist undulated around us, ribboning over our bodies.
Wolves.
We held ourselves still, frozen in the miasma, gazes locked in silent communication, a world of understanding passing between us.
Another mournful howl stretched out, clawing toward us on the air.
We could not remain here. Not where we could be trapped. That was the way of wolves, how they hunted dragons. They were experts at what they did.
In the days of the Threshing, they tracked us through the tunnels, surrounding us, cornering us in our dens. They never went after us in the open. It was only in caves like this where we perished.
Kerstin and I lurched to our feet. Grabbing our packs, we doused the fire. Our vision acclimated, pupils flaring wide in the darkness. We clasped hands, needing the connection for reasons that had nothing to do with the darkness and everything to do with the sudden fear swallowing us whole.
We inched out from the cave into the night, into the wild world, ready to lift up into the air if necessary, if a pack of wolves materialized in front of us.
More wolves howled.
Another and another and another answering the rallying call of the first.
They were close. It would not take them long to catch our scent and run us to ground.
That’s what they did. It was bred into them.
The earliest of wolves were nursed on dragon blood—the very first, sired by Fenrir himself, conditioned to crave it.
The taste and hunger extended beyond memory.
It was embedded into their very marrow, in the fiber of their beings.
My fire was a useful weapon, depending on how many adversaries I faced, but a pack of wolves could number as many as twenty, even thirty. They needed numbers on their side to overcome us. To bring down dragons, they had to be a formidable force. Not great odds for me and Kerstin.
More wolves gave voice to the night—their howls broken only by the occasional squabbling and wounded yips as they lashed out at each other like fractious children.
We hastened toward the first outcropping of trees.
There, among the fir and pine and spruce was a tree I’d only ever seen in the Crags.
The trunk wide, at least five times the width of me, it soared to the skies with an abundance of leaves unaffected by the cold.
The rough bark was scattered with offshoots that were perfect for climbing, and its boughs promised shelter.
We climbed. It was easy enough. No need to turn into our dragons. We would only ruin a good set of clothes if we did that—and we’d each brought only one spare change of clothes in our knapsacks. No, it was far better to climb and secure ourselves high in the limbs where wolves could not reach us.
We settled upon thick, sturdy limbs, our backs resting against the broad trunk as the howling cacophony of wolves continued. We held ourselves still, unable to do anything except listen to the mournful cries and wait.
I WOKE WITH a jolt in dappled sunlight.
I looked around wildly, orienting myself, my gaze locking on Kerstin, and I remembered. We were in a tree together. We’d fallen asleep in our perch, waiting out—
Wolves.
I sat upright and peered down through the creaking branches and rustle of leaves to make certain the beasts had not tracked us. There were no wolves in sight. There was that at least. No wolves, but …
We weren’t alone. I stilled, eyes flaring wide.
Dragons.
Not in dragon form, but dragons just the same.
The scent of them punched me in the face.
They smelled like wind and fog and earth and woods …
like the dragons I knew, like me, and not.
There was something different there. Something more than the earthy musk of them.
Another layer draped over all that was familiar.
The stink of sweat and blood. Of fury and death.
I had never seen them before, not these dragons, but I recognized them as I recognized myself. I knew who they were.
They were that other side of the coin I had not yet experienced. The other side of me. They were what I could be if I surrendered to the wild. If I let my feral nature take me.
Kerstin and I exchanged looks. Her eyes alert, scared, her whole body rigid.
Her hand reached across the space between us, closing around mine.
I squeezed her fingers tightly, reassuring her.
Together, we looked down, watching, peering through the gaps and hollows in the leaves and branches, catching glimpses of them below.
They were dressed much in the manner we were—heavy wool and fur.
Their fetid odor reached my nostrils and stung my eyes.
Sour as ripe onions. They either didn’t bathe or had been traveling hard for a while now.
They looked wild as any animal of the Crags with hair that trailed long down their backs in matted snarls.
Almost all of them possessed black hair, the purple glint signaling they were onyxes. The strongest, the brawniest—the most common, the foot soldiers of every pride with their incredible size and strength.
The way Kerstin’s hand trembled around mine, I knew she was afraid and that told me everything I needed to know about them. There was a reason to be afraid. Truce or no.
The skelm.
My insides clenched. Suddenly I wished for wolves. Wolves were simple. They hunted. They killed. They fed. They did not torture. They did not scheme or conceive of torments and inflict them upon each other. No, only dragons did that. And humans. Perhaps witches, too.
I scanned the unkempt group. They carried the pelts of multiple wolves, the large furs draped over wood pallets dragging behind them.
They weren’t here because they were hunting us, at least. It was merely an unfortunate coincidence they were here beneath us.
They’d been after wolves—the wolves we heard last night—for their fur and to take down the predators that would hunt dragonkind.
Such was the way of the world in the Crags: hunt or be hunted.
We continued to watch and wait and wish ourselves invisible.
There was nothing else to do except hold as still as possible until they moved on.
I knew exactly what these dragons were capable of doing if they discovered us—what they had done to Fell served as a grave warning.
I eased my breathing, careful not to make a sound. Air ceased to pull from my lungs. The wind fell flat—thankfully. We did not need our scent carrying to those on the ground below.
They settled down upon patches of rock jutting from the snow and pulled out their flasks, taking long pulls of drink as they talked among themselves. They looked comfortable—like they were going to stay awhile. A few even pulled out food and ate.
Kerstin and I exchanged worried looks. How long would they linger here?
After a while, my muscles began to quiver from the strain of holding so still, but there was no hope for it. I would hang on as long as necessary.
Perspiration dotted Kerstin’s upper lip despite the frigid air.
Her grip tightened around mine when one of the skelm—a great, burly figure with equal amounts of black hair on his face as on his head, dragged a slight, cloaked body to the shade of the tree we occupied.
I hadn’t even noticed this diminutive shape among them while they ate and drank.
The shrouded individual was small. Possibly a child.
The hood hung low, shadowing the face. Not an inch of skin was exposed anywhere.
I peered through the gaps between leaves and branches and that was when I noticed the glove-encased wrists and fingers, delicate as the stems on wineglasses.
Around those dainty wrists a rope was bound tightly, cutting deeply into the blue fabric of gloves.
My breath snagged in my chest. A captive, then—and not someone inclined to struggle.
She was limp as a ragdoll as he plopped her down at the base of the tree and turned away.
His rough action tossed the hood back to reveal a shock of sun-gold hair.
A portion of her face was visible then. Wan skin.
Sunken cheeks. Shadows like bruises beneath her eyes.
She lifted her chin as though hungry for the feeble sunlight filtering down through the tree. It wasn’t to be, however.
The brute glanced back at her and made a harsh sound at what he saw.
Whirling around, he backhanded her with such ferocity that I flinched.
Any small sound I made was covered up by her cry.
He grabbed her hood with both hands and yanked it back down over her head, admonishing her in a voice that carried up to us.
“You know better! Hide yer face from the light!”
I glanced at Kerstin. She flattened her lips into a line and gave her head a single hard shake—as though she feared I might call out or do something. As though I was foolish enough to make a sound.
The brute rejoined his brethren, ignoring the girl, offering her no food, no drink. I supposed captives weren’t given such basic courtesies.
I stared down at the little hooded head, wondering who she was and how she came to be with them.
They all stood. They were leaving. Finally.
I released a silent exhale, relief rushing from me.
The same hairy brute from earlier returned, growled something unintelligible at the bound girl, and grabbed hold of her rope. Turning his back on her, he yanked the tether for her to follow. I couldn’t help wondering if this was the notorious Kaldr. Or was he one of the others?
The wretched girl did follow, taking one halting step and then another—but as she did so, she lifted her face and looked up. Her gaze landed on us, hazel-gold eyes locking directly on me, and the hollowness there felt endless.
Kerstin saw her, too—and sucked in a breath beside me. The sound was a little too sharp, a little too audible, but I couldn’t make myself care in that moment. Not with the captive’s knowing gaze fastened on me.
Kerstin’s hand around mine tightened, the bones of my hand cracking from the crushing pressure, her warning clear, but I didn’t know what she wanted from me.
I couldn’t be any more immobile: frozen as a rock, as still as the tree where we took refuge.
Unblinking. Without breath. Cold enveloped me, the perpetual heat at my core dying like a breeze gone flat as I was pinned by those knowing eyes.
I’d thought of her as a girl because of her diminutive size, but staring down at her, I was not so certain. Her eyes held a world of knowledge, a wealth of experience that could span several lifetimes, and I recalled that witches, like dragons, lived exceedingly long lives.
The look she sent up to us could only have lasted a moment, but it felt like forever as I crouched, tense as a coiled spring, balanced on my bough.
Then she dropped her gaze and faced forward, offering me nothing more than the view of her hooded head once again. Without a hint that she was aware of us hiding in our perch, she followed after her captors.