Chapter 12
P oppy
The launch was a pull in her stomach as the world dropped away. Alsander’s dragon wings beat once, twice — and she marveled at the dragon’s strength, his power.
She was in the air. Flying. On a dragon.
She screamed and laughed and whooped in pure joy as the clearing dropped away.
The sound of the raging waterfall became a distant thunder or gentle rain.
The forest merged into an endless undulation of green. His wings caught a current of air she couldn’t see and they rose. They soared above it all.
She wasn’t cold.
That was the strangest part. The wind should have been cutting through her cloak and sweater into her bones.
It wasn’t. She could feel the wind on her face.
She could see her hair stream out behind her in his slipstream.
But the cold of it was somewhere else — somewhere beyond the warm tether he had wrapped around her body.
The warmth was him . The warmth was his magic.
She sat in the cradle of it on the back of a dragon at the break of dawn and she couldn’t breathe for the wonder of it.
She didn’t have to hold on.
She tried, once, to grip the ridge of his shoulder. The magic loosened the moment she did, as if the dragon had felt her uncertainty and answered it. She let go. The magic settled tighter around her.
She put her hands flat against the warm scales in front of her — not for grip, but for the joy of touching him — and she felt the great slow drum of the dragon's heart through the bone.
"Oh, you," she whispered. "Oh, you beautiful, gorgeous dragon."
He banked.
The world tilted. The forest tilted with it.
The sea came into view at the edge of the world.
She saw Cuanfirth like a string of small lit beads along the curve of the bay.
The harbor. The lighthouse. The cottages of women she had known her whole life, as small as toys below her, sleeping under their thatched roofs with no idea that the sky above them held a dragon .
She laughed again, unable to contain herself.
It came out of her without warning. A great, helpless sound that the wind took and shredded and threw out behind her. She laughed again. Then she was crying and laughing at the same time. Her face streaked with tears. Her hands flat against his warm scales. The wind in her hair.
This was what she had been waiting for. To be on the back of the last dragon. To be the woman the line had been making for three hundred years.
To be doing the thing she had been made to do.
"I love you," she said into the wind.
She had only said it once before — on the floor of his lair, with his shoulders shaking against her in a way that had nothing to do with pleasure. She hadn’t been sure he heard her.
She said it again now, far above the forest, far above the cares of the world below, with the wind taking the words almost before they left her mouth.
He couldn’t have heard her. He couldn’t have.
The dragon's great head turned. Just a fraction. Just enough that one slitted golden eye caught her at his shoulder and held her there for one long beat of his wings.
He had heard her.
Both times.
"Oh." Her hand pressed flat to his scales. "Oh, you cheating thing. You heard me."
The dragon made a sound she felt rather than heard — a deep contented rumble that rolled up through his bones and into hers.
He banked again, gently this time, and began the long slow descent toward the dark line of trees behind her cottage.
He landed in the wood behind her hill.
It wasn’t a graceful landing — there wasn’t enough room, the trees were too close — but the magic he had wrapped around her took the impact, and she felt only the small lurch of his great body settling. Then stillness. His wings folded. His head lowered.
The magic loosened around her by slow degrees and let her down.
She slid off his shoulder onto the moss. Her legs almost gave.
He was already shifting back. She felt the change at her side rather than saw it — the great black shape collapsing inward with a sound she would never grow used to. Then the man was on his knees beside her on the moss, the dark leathers back in place, breathing hard.
She reached for him before she could stop herself.
Their foreheads pressed together. His hands were on her face. Her hands were on his.
"You flew me," she said. "You flew me."
"I flew you."
"Thank you, Alsander. That was — incredible doesn’t begin to describe it. I’ll never, ever forget. Never. Thank you."
Alsander chuckled. “My dragon says you don’t need to remember. He will take you on his back whenever you wish.”
“Tell him I said thank you.”
“There is no need for me to tell him. He hears your words, Poppy. Always.”
They knelt like that for a long moment.
The first true light of dawn was beginning to touch the tops of the trees above them. Somewhere down the path, her cottage waited. Somewhere in her cottage, a chest beckoned.
He stood. Helped her to her feet.
They walked together up the path, his hand wrapped around hers.
The path turned.
The trees thinned.
The familiar shape of her own back gate came into view at the top of the rise.
She stopped abruptly. Her hand tightened on his. Hard.
"What’s wrong?" His voice sharpened. "Poppy. What. "
"My garden."
He looked over her shoulder.
The last time she walked out of this garden, the marigolds had been wilting. Not dead. Not without hope. She had thought, in her grief, that the garden was as bad as it could get.
It wasn’t.
Her bright, happy marigolds were now husks .
The climbing rose by the door was a tangle of black sticks.
The lavender her grandmother had planted.
All of it. Every plant. The path between the beds was littered with the tiny dead bodies of bees and butterflies, earthworms and ladybugs. More than she could count.
The whole green half-circle of her cottage garden — the work of generations — was a scorched dead thing.
A small, helpless sound came out of her.
She didn’t recognize it as her own.
She remembered her grandmother on her knees in the dirt, sleeves pushed up, telling Poppy that lavender lived as long as it was tended it and not a day longer.
Years and years of tending.
Gone.
She felt her knees start to give. Alsander caught her elbow.
" A chuisle. "
"I —" She couldn’t get her breath. "Alsander, the lavender, it was — my grandmother —"
"I know, my love. I know."
" She planted it the year I was born. "
His arms came around her. She let them. She pressed her face against his bare shoulder under the cloak and she let herself cry — sob, like hadn’t done since her grandmother died — and Alsander held her securely in his arms until she was done.
When she lifted her head, his eyes were full of sadness and guilt.
"I did this," he said softly. "Oh, my love, I did this."
"You didn't."
"I did. The curse. It is in me. I brought it here. I knew it was here, I saw the bee on your doorstep that first morning, I knew —" His jaw clenched with self-hate. "I knew and I came anyway. I am sorry, Poppy. I am so sorry. "
"Hush." She turned to him. Put her hand against his mouth. Said it gently. "Hush. We will read the books. We will find out what is happening. We will fix it. We will fix all of it."
He looked at her over the heel of her own hand.
"You are not afraid of me," he said into her palm.
"No."
"You should be."
"No."
She lowered her hand. She kissed him there, in the early dawn at the back of her dead garden, with her cottage waiting and the chest at the foot of her bed waiting and the sun coming up over the sea behind them. Slow. Steady. Certain.
She pulled back. Pressed her forehead against his. Looked past his shoulder at her own front door.
"Come inside." Her voice was steadier than she had any right to expect. "Let's find out if there are any answers in the chest."