Chapter 33 Fell
FELL
LET HER GO.”
A ripple traveled through the soldiers at the sudden sight of me. They thought me returned from the dead. A ghost.
Tamsyn, trapped behind bars of dragon bone, watched me, her eyes widening, the enormous orbs of flame the only light in a face gone deathly pale.
Tamsyn in a cage enraged me. More rage than I thought I could ever feel, and I knew rage. At this point, we were quite well acquainted. I pointed to her. “Remove my wife from that cage.”
Magnus murmured something at my back that might have been a warning, a caution for me to have a care, but there was no treading lightly into this, not with my blood pumping, my wrath demanding the freedom of my mate.
Stig moved forward, not bothering to dismount his horse.
He looked down his nose at me. “Dryhten,” he announced.
“I suppose I should say it is good to see you. Good to see you are, in fact, alive and this she-demon did not kill you.” His lip curled in a sneer that indicated he did not think it good at all.
He looked out over his soldiers with a thin smile.
“Although it must be said, your absence has scarcely been felt. Things have flowed most smoothly without you. You were not so indispensable as we were led to believe. The Borderlands thrive. Clearly, your people just needed a firmer hand.”
I resisted the bait of the reference to my people. I knew they did not thrive. They suffered. Because of this man.
I lifted an eyebrow. “Well, make no mistake. My reappearance will be felt.”
Stig shifted in his saddle, his features tightening. A few murmurs among the ranks met my pronouncement. I was too focused on the man atop his horse in front of me, however, to note if those murmurs reflected approval or disdain.
These soldiers had always served the captain of the guard, son of the lord regent.
It was safe to assume that I had no allies among this rabble.
Even more reason to make quick work of this bastard before me—the man who had betrayed Tamsyn.
She had gone to him for help, and at the first sign that she was different, that she was a dragon, he had raised his sword to her.
I went cold at the thought of what could have happened to her that day.
“I won’t say it again.” I inclined my head toward Tamsyn.
“And I will say it only once,” Stig countered. “She is not getting out of that cage. You know what she is. You were there that day. Don’t dare to stand before me and pretend otherwise, you dragonloving piss-swine. You’re a traitor to the crown.”
My gaze flicked to Tamsyn. She gave a swift shake of her head, and it was all I needed to know.
She had not revealed herself today. She’d given nothing away.
No one here aside from Stig knew she could transform into a dragon.
I noticed the way the soldiers exchanged glances at his mention of dragons.
They were not convinced of their existence. They were merely following orders.
Tamsyn’s gaze drilled into me. I understood what she wished to convey. That I had to take care and do nothing to give us away. I sent a single nod in her direction. Except I knew this was not a promise without limits. I would do as she wanted insofar as I could. I swallowed thickly.
I would not stand by idly if her life was in jeopardy. I would bare my teeth, actually, if it came to that.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I tapped my head. “You’re cracked up here, friend.”
Stig’s face mottled with fury. “I’m not your friend!”
Ignoring him, I strode past with hard steps on a path directly for her, determined to get her out of that cage myself.
Stig lifted his hand, shouting an order.
Immediately I was swarmed. No less than four men tackled me to the ground.
I struggled, fought, landing more blows than I received.
Curses rent the air, and suddenly there were even more men on me, the weight of additional bodies bearing me down into the snow.
I heard Tamsyn cry out my name as I was dealt blow after blow and kick after kick. I could hear Magnus’s voice plead with me to stop fighting, stop resisting.
A booted foot caught me in the face, and the pain of my cracking jaw reverberated through my head, stunning me.
Ears ringing, I held still until I recovered enough to keep fighting, snarling, the beast inside me stirring and pushing, pounding at its walls, ready to break out.
Somehow, I wasn’t bleeding. A quick glance down at myself confirmed this.
My skin was too tough, dragon hide at its very essence.
There was that blessing. I had not revealed that anomaly of myself and exposed my dragon blood.
“Enough!” Stig shouted.
My attackers paused their onslaught.
“Hold him! Let him see!” Stig’s voice came to me through the roaring rush of blood in my ears. Hard hands grabbed my arms, forcing me to watch. My blurry gaze focused on Stig as he dismounted and charged toward the cage that held my life inside it.
“Tamsyn,” I breathed.
I did not know what Stig was about, but everything inside me tensed. This did not bode well. I watched with eyes aching in my head as Stig lifted the latch and hauled her out.
He withdrew his sword of dragon bone. I recognized it at once—had seen plenty of those weapons in my day. Most stored away, but a few on display in the keep at home.
His wild eyes looked between the two of us. “I will prove what she is.” He lifted his sword higher. “It didn’t work last time. Perhaps this time it shall.”
“It didn’t work last time because I am not a dragon,” she insisted.
I frowned, trying to follow their exchange and make sense of it.
“We shall see.”
He lifted the sword.
I broke free from the hands holding me with no difficulty and launched forward as Stig brought his sword down with both hands in a slash toward her face.
Tamsyn’s wide eyes tracked me as I got in the way—blocking the blow.
“No! Fell, don’t!” she shouted. “Let him!”
I felt the blade tear through my clothing, slice my skin, splitting the top of my shoulder where it struck.
My blood spurted.
Purple blood.
I slapped a hand over the wound, covering it.
Tamsyn screamed, her hand flying to her mouth in horror.
Everything slowed, ground to a halt.
I felt the eyes on me. Watching the rich purple blood flowing like a river between my fingers, dripping and pooling into the snow. Gasps rolled through the crowd, all gazes fixed on that evidence, on the telltale purple blood, and I realized this was what Stig had been after all along.
The soldiers were back, grabbing hold of me again, tearing my hand off my wound.
I’d fallen into Stig’s trap without a thought to the consequences. Not that I would undo it. The bone sword to the face would have killed her.
My secret was out.
There was no going back now.
With a bellow that shook the very branches of the trees, I flung off my attackers, launching them several feet from me. I stood with legs braced apart, arms wide and vibrating at my sides.
Still roaring, I burst into light, all of me gone, shredded in an instant, in a blinding flash … replaced with my dragon.
Stig’s face froze in horror as I flew forward, my great talons sinking into his shoulders.
I lifted him as though he weighed nothing at all, carrying him up, up, and then, once airborne, I ripped his head from his body, flinging him down, throwing what was left of him onto the ground amid his soldiers with vicious force.
Then pandemonium. Chaos. Soldiers shrieking. Running. A few had the wherewithal to go for the weapons of dragon bone they carried, as well as weapons stashed in the wagon.
Several charged me with bone spears. I deflected and dodged.
Great gusts of mist rolled out from me, radiating from every pore, adding to the confusion as I evaded and attacked, evaded and attacked.
Another flash of light burst in the air, penetrating my fog, and Tamsyn was there in all her red-gold glory beside me.
We worked in unison, attacking those who attacked us until it was just the two of us, hovering over the ground, our great wings churning the mist-laden air.
Several soldiers, some injured, some just cowed in defeat, shrank on the ground beneath us.
Magnus was one of them, looking up at us in terrified wonder, a hand held over his face as though the sight of us was too bright, too fearsome.
Tamsyn and I looked to each other, slowly lowering to the ground.
We were done here. We would not take the lives of those who still lived.
They offered no immediate threat. There was the long-term threat, of course.
We gazed at each other in silent understanding.
We had neither the will nor the desire to kill anymore …
even if it would keep the secret of dragonkind, the secret of us, safe.
We were not killers simply for the sake of killing. Not the monsters of lore.
“Ah. Fuck.”
At the cursed exclamation, we both looked up. Several newcomers had arrived and stood at the edge of the bloody carnage.
Vetr and several others from the pride eyed the slaughter with disdain.
They were human to the eye, but I saw the wild flaring of my brother’s nostrils, his dragon eyes sharpening, thin pupils shuddering in aggression as he looked at me. It took everything inside me not to hurl myself at him. Only the warrior in me urged restraint. The odds were not in my favor.
He tsked and shook his head in censure as he surveyed our handiwork, as though he was observing a child’s mess.
“Have you ever heard of discretion?” he asked drolly.
One of the injured soldiers cried out to him, clearly not realizing these were not allies to be beseeched, “Help! Help us!”
Vetr lifted a dark eyebrow at me. It was still a strange thing to see my face reflected back at me. “What say you, brother? Shall I help them? Or shall I do what needs to be done and finish what you’ve started here?”