Chapter 21
TAMSYN
WE WAITED SEVERAL MINUTES, ASSURING OURSELVES that the skelm was well and truly gone before we descended from our tree.
“That was close.” Kirsten brushed her hands down the front of her trousers. “I think I would have preferred to face wolves more than the skelm.”
I nodded mutely as I stared after them, in the direction they’d departed, still seeing those haunting eyes framed in that wan face looking at me.
“She saw us.” The words came out as a whisper even though there was no need for that anymore.
“Hmm. Yes.” Kerstin didn’t sound like she cared either way. “Lucky for us she held her tongue.”
“She has no reason to wish us ill.”
“Doesn’t she?”
I stared at her uncomprehendingly.
Kerstin angled her head thoughtfully, studying me. “Sometimes I forget …”
“Forget what?”
“How little you know,” she finished, the words rolling so easily off her tongue, so matter-of-fact—as though there was nothing in them that should give offense or discomfort. “She’s a witch.”
I tried to ignore the sharp prick upon my nerves at her words, and yet she was not wrong.
I’d been brought up in a world where magic was suppressed, even touted as dead.
No one talked about it except for in the tales that came from the bards, and then that was treated as fiction …
entertainment and not to be taken seriously.
“Witches deserve every bad thing that happens to them.” Kerstin’s lips peeled back in a faint sneer as she uttered this.
Her hateful words resounded like the clang of a hammer on stone.
Only … I didn’t hate witches. I knew I was supposed to. As a dragon, I should. The curse of Vala had changed everything for us. And not for the better. We could place the annihilation of thousands of dragons directly at their feet.
I whipped my gaze back in the direction the skelm had departed as if they might suddenly reappear. “How do you know she’s a witch?”
“We’ve known for some time that the skelm keep a witch.
I don’t know what kind.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter really.
She is their thrall. They captured her on one of their raids into the Borderlands or Veturland.
” She shrugged again as though it was of no consequence either way.
“She was living in some village, pretending to be a human alongside the other villagers. They do that, you know. Try to blend in.”
Yes. Yes, I knew that.
I could empathize. I supposed that was what I had been doing, too. At least for the first twenty-one years of my life. I’d lived in the palace, playing at being human, trying to fit in.
“She’s their thrall.” I muttered the words, the taste of them sour on my tongue. That would explain the hollowness of her cheeks, the thin jutting shoulders beneath her cloak, eyes that felt as empty as pits in the ground.
“Can you imagine it?”
Imagine being in bondage to another? It wasn’t such a difficult concept. Not as a former whipping girl. Not after just escaping Stig and his regiment of a thousand.
The brute backhanding her across the face flashed in my mind, and I flinched again, as though I felt it myself. I knew too well what it was to feel pain at the hands of another. Such hurt was very fresh in my mind. Stranger or no, if I could spare her that, I would.
Kerstin motioned ahead and started walking, her boots crunching over the snow-packed ground in the opposite direction they’d taken. “We continue this way, I assume?”
“No.” The sound of my own voice surprised me.
Kerstin looked back at me with a questioning lift of her eyebrows. “No?”
I nodded at the trampled path left by the skelm.
“After them?” Her features wobbled uncertainly, as though she was ready to break into laughter. Something in my face must have stopped her. Her expression flattened. “You’re serious?”
“Let’s follow them.”
“You want to avoid them … not follow. You should know that already, considering what they did to Fell.”
I did know that—which was why I felt this burning compulsion to go after them.
“It’s not as though I’m going to walk up to them with a big hello. We’ll keep our distance.” I placed my right boot in one of the deep ruts they left behind. “They are the ones who buried Fell, you know.”
Understanding eased the slope of her shoulders. “And you plan to what? Get the information of his location from—”
“I have no plan,” I said, interrupting her, not letting her give voice to the improbability that they would ever reveal to me where Fell was buried. “I just know I have to do this.”
WE FOLLOWED THEM through the day, keeping our distance and staying well out of sight. Snow drifted down. Not squall-level snowfall, but enough that our scent would be lost, the sound of us trailing them eaten up by wind.
Dusk fell and we took advantage of the cover, creeping closer, moving cautiously over a bluff that looked down on their camp.
Curling my fingers inward, I stroked my silent palm involuntarily, the action as automatic as taking a breath.
A hopeless task. I hadn’t felt him in days.
He couldn’t talk to me. But they could. They’d put him in the ground somewhere, a location only they knew.
They were my only link to him now that the link in me had gone silent.
We crawled on our bellies over the snow to get closer … to see better.
Looking down, we watched them settling in for the night. After a while, I felt as much as heard Kerstin sigh beside me.
“What are we doing here, Tamsyn? Let’s go before they catch our scent.”
I lifted my face to the biting air. “We’re fine. The wind is too strong.”
“Yes, but for how long? What if it dies away in the night while we sleep and we’re not even aware of it? They could come upon us when we are not even awake to defend ourselves. Let’s get out of here while we still can.”
She was right. We should go. And yet I hesitated, studying the slight figure huddled in their midst for some sign of life, something that would make me pity her a little less so that I could then lie to myself, pretend she was not really that bad off, and walk away with a clear conscience.
One of her captors approached her—a dark, mountainous mass of muscle etched against the purpling air.
He moved unsteadily on his feet, gnawing the bit of meat off a bone the size of a femur, and I realized he was deep in his cups.
Apparently, those flasks of theirs weren’t holding water. He was likely drunk on verdaberry wine.
He called to the witch. His words were unintelligible, but the tone was recognizable. I knew the jeering sound. The inherent contempt.
She didn’t look up, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t need her acknowledgment.
He tossed the bone in her direction, striking her hard enough for her to recoil. His laughter cracked on the air, and I fought against a flash of anger, the heat of it rolling through me.
“Well, he’s lovely,” Kerstin muttered.
The mountain turned away, and I watched as the slight shape of her lunged forward and seized the bone where it had landed, her small face a pale smudge in the shadows as she fell upon it, tearing at what little meat was left with a frantic flash of teeth.
I exhaled. Well. So much for that. Nothing about this served to make me pity her less.
Kerstin tugged on my arm. “Come on, Tamsyn. She is their thrall, and a witch.” This last she added as though it was the most grievous offense of all. Perhaps even worse than being a human. “There is nothing to do for her. It’s just the way it is.”
A thrall. Vetr never availed the pride of one, and he certainly could have. In my mind it was another thing that set the pride apart from the skelm.
Thrall. I thought about what it really meant.
Servant. Slave. Someone who was used and manipulated.
Someone who must take, who must endure and absorb pain.
Thrall. Whipping girl. Not so very different, I realized, and flinched slightly at the thought.
She was used and abused and kept for the whims of others. Even her magic was not her own.
My life had been similar to that when I lived in the palace. I was just better dressed and allowed to sit at the table and eat dinner with my captors.
It’s just the way it is. But it should not be that way. Just because it was done, just because it was accepted did not make it right.
“Let’s help her,” I heard myself whispering in a rush, a fire lighting in my belly.
“Help her?” Kerstin’s bronze gaze glowed in the gloom. “That’s senseless. She’s a witch. Witches aren’t friends to dragons.”
I shook my head slightly, a flash of Thora’s face filling my mind. I remembered her kindness to me. She had been a friend to me when I had been alone and frightened. She could have left me, cast me out, but she had helped me instead.
Humans. Dragons. Witches. Why did we have to be at such odds? Hadn’t there been enough killing? Enough destruction? Why couldn’t we all just … be?
I leveled my gaze on Kerstin. “I’m going to help her.”
And once I said the words, I knew them to be true. I meant it. I didn’t know how I would manage it, but I would somehow do it.
She looked back and forth from me to the hapless figure several times.
“And what do you expect to happen? Even if you creep down there and they don’t catch you—which they will—do you think that she will thank you and embrace you afterward?
No. You are a dragon. That is all she will see.
An enemy. The minute you turn your back, the minute she can, she will end you. ”
“Witches can’t cast death spells,” I countered. There was a great deal I didn’t know about witchkind, but I knew that much.
She angled her head. “True, but they can figure out other ways to cause havoc and destruction. She could turn you into a goat or something.” She made a sound that might have been a laugh before it fizzled out into something faintly sob-like. “Please, Tamsyn. Let’s get out of here.”
My chest lifted on a great exhale, the hot gust fogging in the night air. “I’m doing this. You can help me or not. I’ll understand if you can’t … but I’m doing this.”
Kerstin looked down at where the girl huddled among the group of dragons.
Not a girl, I reminded myself. A witch. I would do well to remember that.
Kerstin was not wrong on that account. Once she was freed, I would have to give her a wide berth and send her on her way.
There was trying to help her and then there was stupidity. I wouldn’t be stupid.
“What are we even doing, Tamsyn?” Frustration lifted her voice, and I waved her to be quiet. She continued in a hoarse pitch. “I thought we were trying to find Fell.”
“And how can I do that if I can’t even feel him anymore?” I gave my head a fierce shake, locking my jaw tight with determination.
I couldn’t save Fell, but maybe I could save this girl.
I’d lost so much. Fell, the husband I was just coming to need and crave with every breath.
The home and family I thought I would always have.
Stig—his betrayal and the loss of him was a puckered-up scar, the warped tissue still giving off twinges now and then.
To make matters even worse, Alise was now his wife—a wound that cut deep, that I would feel for all my days.
I abruptly killed such painful thoughts. They served no purpose. None of it could be undone now.
But this witch and what was happening to her? It could be undone.
I could undo it.
Whatever I was, whatever I had become … it was not someone who could stand by and do nothing while someone else suffered—be it human, dragon, or witch.
As though she had a front-row seat to all my inner thoughts, Kerstin looked across the distance at the captive witch once again. “You know saving her is not the same as saving Fell.” Meaning it’s not right or honorable or worth doing?
I inhaled a shuddering breath. “She is still someone. Someone who doesn’t deserve what’s happening to her.”
Kerstin shook her head. “You shouldn’t do this.”
“I have to try.”
“Then you do it alone,” she rejoined. “I’m sorry.” Her grim tone did not strike me as apologetic. Her bias was rooted too deeply for that.
With a final long look that felt like a blade scraping across my skin, she turned away into the settling dusk, keeping low to the ground in case anyone from below might look up at the ridge.
I looked back below to the witch, hunkered down, her thin shoulders rising up like the twin edges of a shovel as she worked desperately on her bone.
As Kerstin moved back from the edge, I didn’t watch her go. I just listened to the soft sounds of her departure until I couldn’t hear her anymore. Until she was gone, swallowed up by wind and snow.