Chapter 31
TAMSYN
WE FLEW ALL NIGHT, STOPPING FINALLY AT DAWN, FAINT streaks of pink and orange streaking across a deep purple sky, heralding the new day.
We landed on a heavily wooded plateau between a mountain and a hill … one of the first of several foothills leading down into the Borg.
We were almost home, with more mountains at our backs now than before us. Before us were the uplands, gently rising foothills covered with far more green than snow. A gentler land, with far less teeth. And beyond these foothills, of course, stretched the Borg.
We could not see it yet, but we knew it to be there—that sprawling fortress of timber and a moat of dark waters that circled the expansive stronghold of the north. A slumbering beast amid fog. Except, no. That fog was gone. I’d seen evidence of that myself when we went on rekon.
I wondered how long it would take for the fog to return to the north now that Fell was back.
I lifted my face with an exhale and released myself, let go of my dragon hide, unraveling, unwinding and coming apart and back together again as a human.
Fell was there, beside me, his pale silvery dragon scales vanishing in a brilliant flash as he returned to himself—his big warrior body a thing of beauty.
I admired him for a moment, the incredible height and breadth of him, his tan skin kissed by some invisible sun, the inked designs trailing down over flexing sinew and corded muscle.
I lit a fire, and we both dressed by the warm glow of it, sinking down before the writhing flames.
I held my hands out as though I needed the warmth … as though fire did not always crackle within me, magic residing within me. And yet this did comfort me, the simple act of it, the very normal thing of sitting before a fire with your lover close to your side.
We ate, watching as the sun broke over the horizon, filtering through the trees, gilding the snow-draped branches.
Excitement hummed in me now that we were this close. “What do you think they will say when we walk through the gates?”
What will we say?
A smile played about his lips. “Welcome home?”
Laughter bubbled in me. I loved this being together.
Had he always been so wonderful? So funny?
Or had I just been too tormented with my forced marriage and the subsequent discovery of my dragon self?
Had I been unable to take notice and appreciate him?
Unable to see anything beyond the infamous Lord Beast that held the kingdom together against penury and starvation, against invaders from the north and raiders and danger from …
well, everywhere. He had always been bigger, better than any other man.
More myth than reality, and now that was fitting, all things considered.
“You think so?”
He chewed, considering. “I imagine after all this time they assume me dead.” We both fell silent as we contemplated that. “Although they might wonder … after discovering you alive.”
The former royal whipping girl turned Lady of the Borderlands was only of significance to Stig.
The people of the Borderlands did not know enough about me to care whether I lived or died.
The loss of their beloved high lord, however?
That would have rocked their world to its foundation, shaken the kingdom in its entirety.
Perhaps that was why that warring party from Veturland had dared to encroach amid winter. No doubt they had spies all about. If they knew Fell was gone … perhaps they thought the risk low enough to attack without the Lord Beast in command.
Fell had been the one holding Penterra together, the one keeping the north safe. And keeping the north safe was keeping us all safe. His return would change everything.
That sank in, settling over me. Hopefully it would be an easy enough matter for Fell to challenge Stig, dispatch him, and slide back into his old role.
“My warriors are loyal,” he said, offering this up as though he could read my mind … Or perhaps he needed to hear his own reassurances that his transition back into power would not meet with too much resistance.
I nodded. “Of course.”
Insects trilled around us, and I realized it had been some time since I heard them. Insects did not live in the Crags … Only creatures of magic thrived in these mountains. And above all, I was that.
We both were.
I wondered if perhaps that was something I should consider.
As much as I had decided to return to the Borg, how would we, creatures of magic, fit into a world that did not want us? It would take some adjustment, for certain.
I slid my gaze to Fell. He thought the Borg was the place for us. I hoped it was. It certainly seemed a haven compared to any other place in Penterra. It was not the City or the palace where I grew up, where intolerance ran deep.
The Borg had taken Fell in as a child … an orphan of unknown origins. I was the same—an orphan, too—except the royal family had made me a whipping girl while the Borg had readily accepted him as the heir apparent and named him Lord of the Borderlands. Very different places indeed.
That was the kind of place I could call home. Yes. The best place for us. At least until we learned otherwise.
Not that anyone who resided in the Borg could ever know the truth about us. No, the secret of dragons must remain just that. A secret.
Our secret forever.
I chewed on a piece of dried meat taken from one of the packs Fell had retrieved from the Veturland warriors, trying not to think about what kind of meat I was eating. “How long should it take to reach there?”
“It should take us most of the day on foot to reach the gates from here. If we start out now.”
I nodded. What would only take minutes in the sky would take several hours on foot.
And yet it was necessary. There were lookouts positioned all along the northernmost edge of the Borg—that would not have changed. We could not risk being sighted in the sky. This was as far as our dragons could go.
His shoulder nudged mine. “Are you nervous?”
“After everything we’ve been through?” I shook my head. “No.” And I meant it. But not so much because of what we had been through. But because he was with me. We were together, and everything, anything, seemed possible now.
“Good. By the end of this day, we shall both be settled comfortably in our bed again.”
Our bed.
I startled, thinking of that, remembering sharing a bed with him and all the nights we wasted, keeping a yawning space between us.
It couldn’t have been helped. I knew that now.
I didn’t blame myself—precisely. I had been working with the knowledge that I possessed at the time.
Knowledge that I was a dragon, and he was not.
I wanted to believe that I could return to the Borg and that bed we had shared—this time with no yawning chasm between us—and that everything would be all right. We could have a good life together.
Finished with our food, we set out again, talking as we moved through the thick woods. It was so thick in parts that Fell used his confiscated sword to whack violently through the brush.
We had not traveled very far when Fell stopped suddenly, his head cocking, angling in a way that registered as more animal than man. It was in his eyes, too. The sharpening, narrowing, unblinking way he cast his gaze about, a net ready to ensnare.
I glanced at him curiously. “What is it?”
He held up a hand, motioning for me to quiet.
I waited.
I waited and listened, hearing nothing beyond the settling snow on creaking branches and the whistling of air.
“The wind?” I suggested, a hopeful lilt to my voice.
He moved his head in one slow sideways motion as he readjusted his grip on his sword and held it before him. “That is no wind.”
I knew he was right. I had not wanted to believe it, though—not wanted to think we had come all this way, that we could be so close and still not make it.
Just because it was daylight, and we were this close to the Borg, did not mean we were safe from predators. It did not mean we, as predators, were safe.
Even predators had predators.
And magic did not always like other magic.
We held still, listening intently. His arm shifted, his hand sliding down my forearm to clasp my fingers in his. He gave me an encouraging squeeze.
“Do you hear that?” Even as he asked the question, he turned his face to look up to the sky, searching furiously.
Listening, I followed his gaze and looked up with dread, expecting to see dragons launching themselves through the trees at us like deadly arrows. “I don’t see anything.”
Because there was nothing there. Simply blue sky with billowing tufts for clouds that I knew felt like a barely there kiss on my skin.
A twig snapped.
“That I heard,” I whispered in a voice that had gone suddenly hoarse, dry as kindling.
My gaze swept around us.
Suddenly there were more snapping twigs and rustling bushes and crackling leaves. The heat in me woke, popping and boiling, frothing inside my chest, climbing up my windpipe, ready to be expelled, ready to defend.
Fell let go of my hand. His arm shot out, wrapping around me, folding me in behind his bigger body, his sword aloft before us.
He moved us together in a small circle, surveying, the vertical pupils of his eyes vibrating like trees shuddering in a storm.
“Hold steady,” he rasped, and I knew instantly what he was saying. He was cautioning me not to turn, not to manifest into a dragon. Not yet. Not until we knew what was out there.
We did not have long to wait to find out.
They charged into our midst with swords drawn.
Just as we had heard them, they had heard us, cutting and tromping through the trees.
We had not been operating with the most stealth in mind.
This close to the Borg, to what we perceived as sanctuary, we had lowered our guard.
A mistake. We were still in the Crags, even if a much more sedate, tamer version of it.
We braced and tensed.