Chapter 19
Dain
“No, Dain!”
I shifted on this strange mattress, seeing Fern’s look of pain as she shrank back, but whatever I’d done to hurt her, I didn’t get a chance to investigate.
My dream quickly transmuted, treating me to the sight, the feeling, of my girl clasped tight to my chest. Her eyes were heavily lidded, her lips parted.
“No, Dain. We mustn’t…”
Gentle as a sigh, her voice caressed my skin, but right as I bent my head, wanting to taste her words on her mouth, she disappeared, only to materialise again, her hand on the doorframe.
“No, Dain…”
A sharp shake of her head and she turned on her heel, marching off, but chasing after her only made things worse.
Something I should know by now.
Fae touched, that was the kindest way to describe me.
Simply touched was what most of Coalbottom said as they looked at me askance.
Some people looked me over with a gleam in their eye, asking me in hushed tones if I knew which horse would be first past the finish line at the races, or what cards someone had, but my ‘gift’ was not one that could be deployed at will.
The more I tried to push it, force myself to see specific visions, the worse it got.
Just like it did right now.
Fern’s voice doubled, quadrupled, filling my head with the reverberating echo of her words and I could’ve lost myself in the rising swell.
Her saying my name over and over, in pain, in ecstasy and everything in between.
She was like a sea that threatened to drown me, while I was just grains of sand, fragmenting and being washed away by the tide of her.
Brother.
Argent’s voice was like a god’s, booming in my skull until it felt like my brain started to rattle around in it.
He swept through the sky inside my head, tearing apart visions, dreams, everything, then my eyes flicked open to the sound of my gasp.
My heart raced, just like it did anytime I saw Fern.
I thought it would get better the minute I saw her in the flesh, instead…
I looked down at my hands, turning them into fists when they shook and that had me rolling out of bed.
Cots spanned the dorm and the sounds of men snoring had me jerking on my armour, strapping my sword to my hip, my knives shoved into my boots and the small of my back. It felt like I was putting on more than protective gear. It wasn’t my kidneys or my gizzards I needed to protect, but my heart.
Brother?
My mind quested out, touching Argent’s in seconds.
In the courtyard, he instructed and sure enough, there he waited as I ran down the keep stairs.
This early in the morning, the place was still half-dark and quiet with it, but my dragon gleamed like the moon in the shadows, his wings shifting restlessly.
My boots clicked across the cobblestones, each one bringing me closer and closer until…
The big lunk shoved his head into my chest, which was sweet when a bloody horse did it.
A great big dragon had me stumbling back, forced to grip his skull lest I fall on my arse.
You daft bastard… As my hand ran over the almost velvety soft scales of his face, those hard silver eyes fell closed.
My fingers found the spot above one eye ridge, his claws raking the stones as some instinct had them making the same movements, much like a dog might if you scratched it’s belly.
You woke me up just to give you a scratch?
Those eyes flicked open and I was treated to the sight of an alien intelligence as he stared at me.
Your dreams haunt you, he said. Haunt us. Tied up in the threads of fate, you are. I shook my head, drawing back as the smile faded from my face. Good thing too, the muscles ached with the effort of it, the scars pulling. They bind you rather than show you the way forward.
So you decided to cut through them all? I asked. And where does that leave us, brother?
In the air, like always.
His jaws closed down on the leather at the back of my neck with no warning, tossing me through the air, and he started forward the moment my butt hit his spine.
Forced to turn myself around and then grasp one of his spikes, I knew exactly what he was doing.
Making me do rather than think, my heart beat faster for a whole other reason, a shout building in my throat.
Only when Argent was running, his claws raking across the cobblestones, did my head go silent.
A guard let out a shout of surprise as my dragon’s wings flapped out, taking us up and over the battlements that surrounded the keep.
I sketched a quick salute to whichever poor bastard was on the end of his shift as Argent’s wings raked through the air.
Up, up, up into the sky we went, just in time to see the sun start to rise in earnest.
Thank you. Sometime later, my hand smoothed over my dragon’s neck, fingers tracing the staggered shapes of his scales as he hovered there, riding the rising updraft. You always know how to get me out of my head.
Had enough practise. I had to laugh at his taciturn reply.
My body loosened and I sat back, wavering with the wind, right before he started to spiral back down.
If thinking was what would win your mate, she’d be warming your bed and you wouldn’t be breathing in other males’ farts all night.
Part of me wanted to claw at Argent’s spine, force him somehow to take me somewhere, anywhere other than here. And I’d be nestled down with our queen.
As if in reply to that, the dark silhouette of a dragon passed by in the distance, but was it a golden queen or was that just the harsh rays of the rising sun?
But we’re not. The keep roof grew larger and clearer with every spiralling swoop. So you need to go back into the keep and make clear to this Fern who she belongs to.
My dragon landed heavily on the rooftop, not moving until I slid from his back.
His head turned to me and a habitual fear rose as I stared into his eyes.
A far larger, more terrifying female silver dragon stared back at me in my mind’s eye, the purple glow of the mushrooms that grew in Drathnor’s cave giving her scales a lavender cast. With a blink, she was replaced by a woman, by multiple women, their shapes, their expressions, their faces flickering until they finally resolved into Fern’s form.
And if I can’t? I asked, only daring to give voice to my doubts in my own head.
Fate has tied us together. Argent didn’t clarify who and the nature of those bonds. Sort through their tangled threads and choose the right one and she will end up in your arms for eternity.
Apparently the lecture was over. My dragon launched himself off the keep roof, flying off to the mountain Wyrmpeak was named for and leaving me standing there, the wind tugging at my hair.
Easy for you to say, brother.
My reply went unheeded, Argent able to severe the connection at will. With a nod, I started forward, running down the keep stairs, only to find my human brothers on the landing outside the dining hall.
“There you are.” Kael slapped a bread roll stuffed with meat against my chest. I grabbed it and took a bite. “Apparently all first year cadets need to report to the ground floor for orientation.” That easy grin, sometimes it set my teeth on edge. “You know what that means?”
“Our Fern is a first year cadet,” Lorien explained unnecessarily. “We’ll be her escort.”
“Make clear that no one else should look sideways at what belongs to us.” Kael growled that out and sure enough, the lieutenant strolled past, a look of studied nonchalance on his face.
I sucked in a breath, ready to ask what we’d do if Fern decided she didn’t want three lunks like us following her around, but the bells for the first class rang. “C’mon.”
With a shove, my brothers were off, leaving me to bring up the rear.
I didn’t want to walk into this massive hall.
Scanning the room, seeing all the chairs lined up, a pathway clearly delineated through the middle, had my hand straying to the hilt of my sword.
If I let my eyes go unfocussed, I’d see it.
All the times people had come here before, the prosaic and the profound moments all jumbled up together as well as the ones still to come.
Fern, walking down the centre, looking around nervously.
Fern shrinking back as that vicious little bitch, Seraphina, turned and looked down her nose at her.
Fern not knowing where to sit, feeling exposed, feeling—
“This way,” I said, clapping my hand down on Kael’s shoulder. He and Lorien stepped aside, looking back at me, their expressions quickly changing. I didn’t need to turn around to see who walked into the room, but my feet moved of their own accord.
The way Fern pinned up her hair drove me mad. I’d seen it flying free, flapping in the wind like a flag as she grinned, and it took every single thing I had in me not to pull it out of it’s tight bun. Her uniform was buttoned up modestly, but it did little to disguise those curves.
Ones I’d committed to memory.
In dreams, nightmares, I’d mapped the shape of Fern, creating a facsimile of her inside my head and still it paled in comparison to the actual woman.
The three of us stepped back, watching her walk past like dogs might a juicy bone.
The little slip of a girl at her side smirked and nudged Fern, ensuring our girl noticed she had our attention.
It should’ve come as no surprise that we followed hot on her heels.
Lorien pulled out a chair, bowing with a flourish.
I watched the pink flush spread across Fern’s cheeks as she stopped, looked around and that was the moment when our eyes locked.
Gods.
I’d stared into her eyes many, many times in my visions. That ring of pale amber around the iris of her blue eyes, I could draw the shape of it from memory.
Because I had so many times before now.
My journal was a heavy weight inside my jacket, containing a million secrets. Hand away from my sword hilt, it pressed the book into my ribs as if to reassure myself it was still there.
“All right, if everyone can take their seats.” That officious tone, the way the junior officers walked in like the silver insignias entitled them to order us around, was something I knew all too well. “Women to the left, men to the right.”
That had Fern jerking her focus away from me, taking the seat Lorien offered her quickly as she set her hands on her lap, so this was the point that we men stepped aside and went to our side of the hall.
Of course, my brothers would never do anything like that.
Kael sat down next to Fern, only after he dragged his chair closer, and she made a tiny sound of protest as Lorien sat down to her left. Fern’s companion grinned, a wild thing, right before she sat down in front of our girl.
Leaving me to sigh and sit down at her back.
The officers came to stand at the lectern at the front of the room, settling their papers before looking up and frowning. The leader with slightly more insignias than the others saw me and my brothers and frowned.
“Men on the right—”
His thumb gestured to the other side of the hall, the good little boys that were already seated starting to mutter excitedly, obviously interested in the conflict they could foresee was coming.
“We’re exactly where we need to be.”
With a sigh, I raked my hand over my face at Kael’s words. Gods, did blood run true, because my brother seemed to have all the autocratic arrogance of a father he’d never spoken a word to.
“Do we have a problem, cadet?” I knew that tone. The blustering of someone who thought they had power, not realising how weak it made them sound. The officer strode over, then came to a stop, arms crossed. “Women are protected by the Royal Riders while they reside in the keep.”
“And this woman.” When Kael’s arm came to rest along the back of Fern’s chair, my focus sharpened.
The way her body stiffened, her spine jerking away from his touch, I caught it all.
“You can leave her care to us…sir.” The officer’s jaw muscle flexed as Kael tacked on his title belatedly.
“Because no one will lay a single finger on Fern, not while we draw breath.”
With a blink, I saw a frantic flicker of visions obscuring the three of them and in each one, I saw Fern walk away with a huff. We were fucking doomed, and I hadn’t even said a word to the woman.
“This is insubordination,” the officer spluttered. “I can have you cleaning latrines for a week.”
“We’ll do that with our tongues if that’s what it takes to stay right here,” Lorien replied, all the good humour leaving him. “So go back to your lectern and tell everyone what they need to do.”
He wanted to argue, this unnamed officer.
I watched his lips purse, then his chest heave as he sucked in a breath, but the sound of a dragon’s roar stopped him cold.
The sight of our three beasts sweeping past, their scales flashing silver in the hall windows was what sealed the deal.
The man turned on his heel, marching back to the front of the room.
He snatched his papers off the wooden table and collated them into a neat pile with a snap of his wrist.
“Well, let’s get started then…”