Chapter 47
‘Reinhart, this—’
‘Thara, my dragon.’ Arla couldn’t find the breath to be amused at Hark’s disbelief, to chuckle at the stunned silence.
She could barely suck a mouthful of air into her lungs as Thara’s huge wings beat through the air, carrying them away from Larkire Palace.
Arla wished for her bow because if there was one image she wanted to leave behind for all Kastonia to see, it was the sight of her firing arrows from the back of a dragon.
‘There’s no room for theatrics, Dragonhart.’
She didn’t think she could describe the feeling she had for Thara. Wonder? Awe? Shock? Adoration? Too many to decipher.
She could still hear the chaos behind them, and she didn’t think she imagined the booming voice of King Elrod himself as the burning castle began to fade into the distance.
But rather than the relief she knew she should be feeling – at escaping with her life and with Hark – she couldn’t help the anxiety that came with leaving a job unfinished.
She didn’t think the king would be so stupid as to begin killing magic-wielders again – at least not so openly – but where was the vengeance? The justice?
Maybe it was just the exhaustion weighing in, but her limbs felt heavy and everything hurt.
‘Are you out of your gods-damned mind?’ Hark called above the roar of the wind, and she had never been more grateful for the warmth that burnt through Thara’s body.
‘Maybe,’ she said, grinning against the tide of cold that swept through her. ‘There’s a lot you’ve missed, Stappen.’
‘What, like you finding a gods-damned dragon?’ he called back, and Arla turned her head slightly, finding Hark’s eyes lit wildly and his hair flowing behind him. He looked alive. And brilliant. And powerful. And magic.
She laughed, wrapping her hands around the spikes on Thara’s back to try and force some heat into them.
‘What’s the plan?’ he asked into her ear, and something thick and oily settled in her stomach at the realisation she hadn’t thought beyond this moment.
‘I … I don’t know,’ she admitted, confusion blurring the edges of her thoughts.
The dragon rumbled beneath her, and Thara’s voice filled her head. She knew from Hark’s silence that Thara had chosen to speak only to Arla.
‘Where to, Dragonhart?’ the steadying, ancient voice asked.
‘Somewhere safe. Somewhere I can rest,’ Arla replied.
The dragon banked to the south, as if to head back to Hadalyn. Arla didn’t know if that was good or bad, considering the declaration of war she had essentially announced in Kastonia. Did an assassin of Hadalyn represent the king? Had her actions sparked war between the two kingdoms?
She didn’t care; she was too exhausted, both hot and cold at once. And as Thara straightened herself, Arla didn’t. Her body began to slip sideways, the world becoming a blur. She tried to open her mouth to speak, but her lips felt heavy and she was unable to form words.
Firm hands caught her from sliding off Thara’s back to an ending she probably deserved, but there was…
Gods that was painful…
She cried out, a whimpering, hurting sound.
Pain lanced through her side, snatching her breath away and turning her limp, melting her into something useless in Hark’s grip.
His hand came away from her side, and she closed her eyes against the sticky, scarlet smear coating his fingers.
The world turned dark and heavy, the exhaustion of the last weeks pounding her from every direction and dragging her beyond words or comprehension.
She sagged against him, no longer caring that she looked weak, that she was now struggling to draw a breath against the pain as she leant against Hark’s chest.
‘Fuck, Arla.’
Arla.
He hadn’t called her that before. Only ever Reinhart or assassin, or—
Gods, it hurt.
Hark adjusted his grip on her, sending another streak of blinding white pain through her side.
She cried out again, and she thought she felt a question appear in her head before merging with the throbbing agony.
‘Dragonhart?’
Her lip bled from where she had bit it, and she couldn’t help the whimper that escaped her tongue as she pressed her own hand to her side and watched it come away a bright ruby colour.
‘It’s okay. You’re okay,’ Hark said to her, and she knew he was panicking because his voice shook and damn, if that didn’t scare her.
She felt his hand at her waist again, and the sight of her own blood on his hands made her feel sick. This was bad. This was bad because she was bleeding, and she hadn’t known, and she didn’t know how long it had been like this, only that she was exhausted and she…
She’d felt it, on the battlements. She’d been so transfixed on making it to Hark that she’d ignored the splinter of hot pain that had registered so flickeringly briefly.
She’d been hurt before. She’d been kicked and hit around the head and suffered bruises and broken fingers on other jobs.
She’d gone through brutal training and she’d withstood the torture of that test. She’d driven a knife through her own hand to make a point and she’d kept running on a broken ankle but never, never, had Arla felt so close to the line between life and death.
‘Hark,’ she whimpered, no longer finding any reserve of strength to support her own weight. But he held her unfalteringly still so she didn’t hurt.
‘It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.’ Did he know his voice was shaking? Or that his hand trembled where he pressed it against her wound?
‘I’m cold,’ she whispered, suddenly understanding why even atop a dragon her body was succumbing to a chill. That was death, breathing down her neck. Waiting. Calling.
‘I know, but I’m going to fix it. I-I’m going to fix it all,’ he stuttered, a promise she knew couldn’t be kept. Not this far from home, not in the sky on top of a fucking dragon.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, gulping as another bout of pain shot through her.
The pain had come on so quickly after the adrenalin had settled, but now, now the shoots of blinding agony were becoming further apart, not as sharp as they had been…
‘Hey, hey, you don’t need to apologise for anything,’ he urged, his voice sounding stronger than it had since he had noticed she was bleeding. ‘You did great. You saved the slaves, and you found me, and you found the dragons, Arla.’
Arla. She liked her name on his lips. So much nicer than on anybody else’s.
‘Open your eyes.’
What?
‘Arla open your eyes.’
Had she closed them?
‘There you are,’ he said, as she found the energy to open eyes that were too heavy.
The sky was growing dark. And when had she lain far enough back to look up and see Hark’s eyes?
She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to see that worry and pity there. That was a look reserved for the family members of the people she killed. Wretched, evil people. Perhaps she wasn’t any better? Perhaps she deserved this?
Never.
Was that Thara or her?
‘It doesn’t hurt so much now,’ she managed to say. It wasn’t a lie. The pain was ebbing into something soft and dark. Something comforting and all too easy to want to slip into. Something held her back, tethered her here to prevent her from wandering into that darkness.
She would go willingly, she thought. She had struggled for so long, fought so hard. She was tired.
‘That’s good,’ Hark said, gifting her a smile she so rarely saw. Never a smile for her, not like this one.
But it broke her failing heart because Hark was trembling where her body rested against his. Hark who was solid, and steady, and not prone to emotion, and he was shaking.
‘I’m dying, aren’t I?’ she asked, her lip wobbling because as much as she deserved it, as much as she would go willingly, she didn’t want to die.
There had been a time when she did. Gods, she had once been so close to stepping off her balcony at Castle Grey.
She hadn’t had the strength to carry on after she’d survived the torture that promoted a soldier to the King’s Guard.
She had felt wrong – like she’d broken something in her soul to go through that and feel … nothing.
But now, now she wanted to see things. She wanted to see the stars in the mountains of the northern border.
She wanted to swim with Halos and the twins in the Canus, when the sun finally returned.
She wanted to explore Hark without the nastiness and hostility they had thrown at each other.
She wanted to love him. She didn’t want to die.
‘Don’t say stupid things. You’re not dying.’ But even Hark’s reassurance didn’t reach his eyes. She could see, even with her blurring vision, that he didn’t believe what he was telling her.
‘I’m so tired, Hark.’
He swallowed, raising his free hand to brush her curls from her face.
‘Just a little longer. I’ve got you, all right? But I need you to stay with me. I need you to keep your eyes open.’
I need you.
How many people had needed her in their lives? Cyrus had needed her to kill people. But that wasn’t the same, was it?
Nobody needed her. Gods, Hark had told her once that no one would ever even like her, let alone love her.
‘Hey, hey, open your eyes.’ He shook her gently, sending another wave of pain – this one duller than the previous ones – through her side until she was staring into those icy-blue eyes again.
‘Talk to me,’ she whispered, and she could have sworn that silver lined his eyes. Oh, gods, this was bad.
‘You know, I’ve watched you every day for two years,’ he began, his voice rougher than usual as he kept one hand pressed to her side and the other gently brushing over the hair across her forehead. ‘But I met you before, you know. I didn’t know if you ever remembered.’
‘When?’ she whispered, glad to listen if his voice was to be the last thing she would ever hear. She couldn’t have coped with silence.
‘When you were thirteen,’ he continued. ‘It was my birthday and my father had sent me to Hadalyn with the ambassador at the time to deliver a message to King Cyrus. We stayed there for three nights, and I remember watching you from the window of the bedchamber I was in, watching you sprint laps of the castle grounds every evening before it got dark.’
He was truly shaking now, the movement jarring her, but she didn’t have the strength to complain.
‘And when you weren’t running, I watched you follow the exercises of the soldiers with their blades, and you had hold of this stick’—he laughed, a harsh, croaky sound that shouldn’t have come from his soft mouth—‘and you trained at the back of their drills every day. And that’s not even the best part— Arla, open your eyes! ’
It was an effort to do so this time, and she knew that if they closed again, she wouldn’t find the strength to open them.
‘Hey, you’re all right. Stay with me.’ She thought she nodded.
‘But one morning I hadn’t pulled the drapes over the window, and I remember opening my eyes to see you climbing past the window.
Up the tower. No ropes, no guard helping you, nothing.
I knew then that you were utterly insane.
But I also knew that I’d never seen anybody so serious about their training, and that if Cyrus didn’t have you as head of his King’s Guard one day that I’d beg my father to bring you to Kastonia.
That was before I knew you despised us, mind—’
‘I wish I’d never hated you,’ she managed to say, her heart splintering as she witnessed the pain that crossed his face.
‘Arla, open your eyes.’ There was an urgency in his voice that cracked her splintering heart, and she hadn’t realised that they’d closed again.
Thara had gone silent and she couldn’t feel the bond between them anymore either.
Everything was dark now, too, but behind her eyelids there was Hark, and the memory of his icy-blue eyes tunnelling into her, and it was enough to stop her panicking as her body turned numb and her chest rattled as she tried to breathe in.
She thought something roared then, but all she could hear was the beat of her slowing heart and the quick breaths Hark was taking as he cradled her to him.
‘Arla,’ he choked. ‘Come on, sweetheart. You’re stronger than this.’
Was she? Had she ever truly been strong at all?
Some might say she was, that she had fought against the odds to win her king’s favour and that it wasn’t a task someone weak could have managed. She hoped they remembered her that way – strong, a warrior who’d gone down fighting for a better kingdom. A better world.
In the end, she wasn’t strong enough, and she waltzed into the darkness.