Chapter 23 Tamsyn
TAMSYN
FORTUNATELY, KERSTIN WAS NOT COMPLETELY SPENT.
SHE had a little bit of energy left to help erase our tracks.
The suggestion for this came from the witch.
Not that her helpfulness endeared her to Kerstin.
She still shot her wary glances, forever convinced she was our enemy.
Kerstin would not be won over no matter how useful she might prove to be.
For the first hour, we eliminated our tracks, Kerstin brushing the snow over the earth with flicks of her fingers on the air, not actually physically touching the ground.
Then we decided it was enough. Hopefully, we’d put a good amount of distance between us and the skelm.
We still had a few hours before they woke and realized their witch was gone … alongside the two onyxes.
The one buried could still be recovered.
They would notice the disturbed ground and find him.
The earth dragon we had been warned about would make quick work of recovering him.
When they did, he would tell them all about the fire-breather and earth dragon that had dared to attack them and take their thrall.
And they would come for us.
We had to make haste. Get as far away as we could. Put as much distance between us and them.
As dawn streaked across the sky, I started to relax, thinking maybe we had succeeded and gotten away. Still, I would have preferred to push on and keep going, but Kerstin insisted we stop. She was still quite depleted, and I didn’t like her ashen color.
As she wandered off to find some privacy to relieve herself, I took advantage of the moment, digging around inside my knapsack for some food and drink. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate, but I was starving. I passed the flask and some bread to the witch.
The witch. Realizing I didn’t know what to call her, I said, “I’m Tamsyn. What’s your name?”
“Sylvi,” she returned, passing me back the flask after taking a long pull. “You are the first to ask me my name … in a very long time.”
I was about to ask her how long was long when Kerstin returned.
She paused, eyeing Sylvi as she plopped down beside me—on the side away from the witch.
I handed her some food. She bit into the loaf with a ferocity that could only partly be blamed on the stale, week-old bread.
“We’re treating her like a pet, are we?” she asked stiffly.
“Kerstin,” I chided in warning.
“I’m not a pet,” Sylvi snapped, coming alive.
“No? You seemed like a pet to me. The skelm kept you on a leash.”
Angry color flooded Sylvi’s face and she held up both her wrists, which still bore the marks of her ropes. “They bound me for so long, I forgot what it feels like to move without a rope around my wrists. Can you imagine what that is like? To no longer remember what freedom feels like?”
Kerstin didn’t back down, only glared, her bronze eyes hard and flinty. “No less than what your kind deserves.”
“Kerstin,” I said, rebuking her. “Enough of that. You didn’t have to come back, you know.”
“Oh, really?” She scowled at me with wide, wounded eyes. “That’s the thanks I get?”
Snow fell lightly, adding weight to the creaking branches. The wind continued to whine around us.
I inclined my head once in acknowledgment. “I’m glad you came back, and I appreciate your help, but if you’re going to continue to be this hateful to Sylvi, then you can leave us and go back to the pride.”
Kerstin’s nostrils flared and an expression of hurt crossed her face before her features evened. “I don’t want to go home. Not yet.”
I nodded. “Good.”
Sylvi spoke up. “You don’t need to worry. I don’t plan to stick around here very long.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”
“Kerstin,” I snapped, quite done with her rudeness. Turning back to Sylvi, my voice softened as I asked her, “Where will you go?”
“South. I don’t think there’s anything of my village left.
The dragons burned it to the ground. I doubt they rebuilt.
No one left alive to do it.” She said this so plainly.
Like the truth of it didn’t hurt. “But there are other villages. I will find a place to settle. Find a new husband. Start a new family.” Her features were tight as she uttered this.
As though it didn’t grieve her that she’d lost her previous one, but I knew this couldn’t possibly be true.
One look at the hot emotion gleaming in her eyes told me that she felt the loss strongly.
“A new husband?”
She nodded. “I was married. He was a decent man. A simple man. He did not know what I was. He would not have understood. Few humans do. But he was good to me, and I miss him.”
“Of course you do. I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it … familiar with what loss felt like. “I lost my husband, too,” I confessed, surprising even myself at the admission.
She gave me a funny look. “You’re a dragon.”
And dragons didn’t marry. We bonded. There were no wives and husbands among us. That was a human convention.
I gave a slight shake of my head, not about to explain my past to her.
“What kind of witch are you, anyway?” Kerstin asked.
Apparently one that blended in among humans. Until the skelm showed up and ruined everything for her and her entire village.
Sylvi considered Kerstin for a long moment, her manner cool, measuring, as though weighing her worth. “You needn’t concern yourself with me. I’ll be leaving you soon enough.”
It would be for the best, and not just because of the contention between Sylvi and Kerstin.
The witch wasn’t safe in the Crags. Not among dragonkind.
At least in Penterra, she could go back to blending in among humans.
She would not be identifiable as a witch there—as long as she didn’t run into the skelm again.
I felt it. Whatever the skelm recognized in Sylvi when they found her in the village. Whatever it was that Kerstin had immediately sensed about her, alerting her that she was a witch … I felt it now. I felt it and I recognized it for what it was.
The longer I was around Sylvi, the more I looked at her … I saw it. A faint vibrating aura, a pale glow that radiated around her. This was the mark of a witch, and I could see it.
It was subtle, and I wondered if this kind of thing had always been there, visible to me, and I just never realized it before.
Just as I had not realized I was a dragon.
When I’d lived in the City, going about my life in the palace, had there been witches around me and I just didn’t know to look closer?
Didn’t know what I was looking at when confronted with one?
As for what kind of witch she was—and why she was not able to utilize her power to help herself escape the skelm—I didn’t feel I had the right to ask. I didn’t know why, but it felt … rude and prying.
“They will come for you both,” Sylvi said. “It won’t even be because of me, although they will be mad about that.” She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Kaldr, in particular, relished tormenting me.”
I asked, “Then … why?”
“Two female dragons.” She stared at me as though that was information enough. Then she added, “They’re desperate to grow their numbers. They don’t have many females.”
I swallowed thickly, thinking of Vetr’s conversation about the importance of growing the pride.
This was becoming a familiar story. She went on.
“And one of you a fire-breather.” She shook her head once, her gaze fixing on me intently.
“They don’t have a dragon like you. They’ll hunt you to every corner of the Crags. ”
“Great,” Kerstin muttered, angrily kicking up a bit of snow with the toe of her boot.
Not great. Not great at all. They knew about us. Knew we were loose in the Crags. They would never give up looking for us.
“We might as well return to the pride and take their protection,” Kerstin grumbled.
“No,” I said instantly, automatically.
Kerstin shot me a frustrated look. “I’d rather be forced to bond with one of our own than end up stuck with one of those brutes in the skelm. Did you smell them? I don’t think they’ve bathed in their lifetime.”
“I don’t want to be forced to do anything.”
Live in the pride, not live in the pride. Bond with a dragon, not bond with a dragon. Be a breeder, not be a breeder. Live among humans, not live among humans. These were my choices. I understood that. The choice would be mine. I got to decide.
Sylvi smiled thinly. “Don’t we all?”
I felt foolish then. Like someone complaining about the weather when there was no way to change it.
“Well,” Kerstin said with another disgusted kick of her boot, “if we don’t go back to the pride, we should just go south with her.” She snorted. “Perhaps our chances would be better among humans.” She tossed the words out, clearly not intending them to be taken seriously.
I angled my head thoughtfully, considering that. “Perhaps we should,” I heard myself saying.
She looked at me incredulously. “Go south? No.” She shook her head fiercely. “No, no, no, no. Dragons don’t live outside the Crags.”
I looked at her intently. “Why not?”
She floundered for a moment, opening and closing her mouth several times before saying, “It’s not the way things have ever been done.”
“Well, things are changing, are they not? And we’re not safe wandering out here.” I motioned around us.
She arched an eyebrow. “What about Fell?” Her cleverly aimed arrow hit its mark.
My face flushed hot. I glanced to Sylvi and then away from her too-discerning gaze.
“Who is Fell?” Sylvi asked.
I shook my head.
“Your husband?” she queried.
My gaze snapped back to her, annoyed at her perceptiveness. Was this part of her witchy gift?
“But a dragon, too,” she finished. “Like you.”
Kerstin answered on my behalf. “Yes. The skelm took him and put him to earth. They let his brother go free, though, in exchange—”
“For a minn,” Sylvi finished.
“Ah, so you know what happened.” Kerstin looked at her with renewed suspicion, as though she was somehow responsible for the skelm’s actions. With a dismissive sniff, she turned her attention back to me. “So you want to go south and just forget about Fell?”
I fully glared at her and said tightly, “I could never forget about Fell.”
My fingers folded, curling inward, brushing against my gloved palm where the skin beneath had fallen dormant. Still nothing. The lack of sensation in my palm matched the numbness inside me at the topic of Fell. It was a numbness I worked hard to cultivate.
Numbness was far preferable, I’d decided. Far better than longing or sorrow or fury—all emotions I’d suffered since I’d lost him, and none of them had served me well.
“I thought you wanted to find where the skelm buried him,” Kerstin said.
At this, the usual feelings of helplessness overwhelmed me.
“And how am I supposed to do that?” My tone was more biting than I intended.
Kerstin knew it was hopeless, and it felt cruel of her to act as though we had any chance of finding him.
As though I was giving up when she herself had explained to me just how very, very impossible it all was.
“I can show you.”
The words dropped heavily on the air like stones, one after the other.
For a moment, they did not penetrate. I stared. Blinked. Turned each word over as though examining them individually for meaning. I replayed them in my mind, resisting the urge to lean into them … to let hope claim me.
Kerstin and I looked at each other, and I wondered if I appeared as bewildered as she did. She found her voice first. “What did you say?”
“I was there when the skelm buried him.” Sylvi was looking at me with those sharp, otherworldly eyes of hers. Her words felt like a hand reaching inside me and pulling everything out, spilling me open and laying me bare. “I can take you to him.”
I worked my lips for a moment before getting out, “And why would you do that? Why would you want to help us?”
“You saved me.” She shrugged. “My mother always said to never be beholden to anyone. I’ll repay the debt and then be on my way.”
Kerstin and I exchanged looks.
“Very well,” I said with a lift of my chin, naturally accepting her offer. “Take us to him.”
“Tamsyn,” Kerstin hissed, shooting a distrustful glance Sylvi’s way. “You can’t trust her. We know nothing of her. Who knows where she will lead us?”
I examined the witch’s pale face. Her skin was almost translucent, the fine veins visible beneath the skin. It didn’t matter. I would not walk away when there was even a chance Fell could be freed.
I held up a hand, cutting Kerstin off. Keeping my eyes fixed on Sylvi, I said, “Lead the way.”