Chapter 5
The storm rages around us and inside me—fury at these smugglers, at this man groping me. It’s Felien, who once devoured me with his eyes, now daring to use his hands.
But I almost died, and now I’m bold instead of scared, as if a new power coursed through me. A new strength. I push away the knife against my throat and elbow the smuggler with the other arm.
Felien lets go, and I turn around and shove him.
His eyes widen as his body flies back toward the wall of the cabin.
Too fast. Too hard. He hits it with a loud thud, then falls face first, the back of his head already bloody. A shiver takes my body, a wave of dread and disgust. Did I just kill a man?
There’s no time to check. I turn and see Alayel pulling Listeno by his sword arm, and yet the third smuggler is approaching him.
I advance toward the other assailant and push him, except that the wet floor makes me slip, and all I manage is a weak shove.
Still, the smuggler slides to the edge of the boat.
Alayel now has a dagger in his hand—and moves it toward Listeno’s throat.
One quick slash, and the man falls. Dead.
The third smuggler runs toward me, sword in hand, but Alayel pulls him and slashes his throat. Also in one stroke.
My body’s shaking, horrified by the blood, the deaths. I realize Alayel has done this before, and a cold dread coils in my gut.
He runs to Felien’s body and checks his pulse. There isn’t much to check, as the man is surrounded by a pool of blood, now washed pink by the heavy rain. I killed him. And I don’t even understand how.
Alayel gives me a quizzical look. I swallow, unsure what to say, as revulsion blurs my thoughts and the metallic tang of blood turns my stomach.
He removes Felien’s belt, then lifts his body, and I look away, unwilling to see the smuggler’s wounds. All I hear is a slosh, like a large piece of gallonfish dropped into a pot of water. Alayel moves to the other two men, unbuckles their belts, and also throws them overboard.
Like that, they’re gone. Slosh. Slosh. Forever buried in the sea. One moment they were here, threatening our lives, now they’ll rot at the bottom of the ocean, never to be found again.
“Are you hurt?” Alayel asks as he approaches me, his voice soft.
The rain washed most of the blood from my clothes, but some of it’s still clinging to the fabric, not to mention that my shirt’s visibly ripped, but my wounds are far from my biggest worry now.
“I’m fine,” I point at the sky. “Did you see the rider? And a dragon. It was flying in the storm.”
He glances at the island and furrows his brows. “Are you sure?”
As if I could get confused. I nod. “They might be coming after us.” I can’t imagine that dragon hurting me, but there could be more dragons, or he could be controlled by that rider. “Can you steer the boat?”
“Thankfully, yes.” He gives me a cocky smile that I shouldn’t find charming, and yet I do. He then tightens one of the ropes holding the mainsail.
It feels as if we’re going faster, but I’m not sure. We’re moving parallel to Dragon Island, east toward Dracolius. As I glance at all the ropes holding the sails, I notice a net—with two eggs.
Alayel brought them. I don’t know how he recovered them, how he pulled them aboard without me noticing. But the eggs are here. We succeeded. A breath of relief leaves my lips, even if my chest is still tight.
I crouch by the red and green eggs and extend my hands to touch them, taking in their smooth texture.
After a moment, Alayel stands beside me again, and I ask, “You didn’t cross the rider?”
“No. Thankfully.” Alayel shakes his head and looks up at the sky. “At least it’s still raining.”
Except that patches of blue sky are replacing the dark clouds.
With no storm, dragons will be able to fly again. Our solace is about to end.
“How long?” I ask. “Until we get to Dracolius?”
“With a good wind? Some three, four hours.”
My entire body trembles. “If that rider follows us, we won’t be able to outrun him.”
Alayel swallows. “Indeed.”
I’m trying to think, find a solution. “What if we abandon the boat? Swim to the shore?”
He lets out a bitter chuckle. “We’ll be in the riders’ lands. They’ll find us.”
“We’re in the riders’ sea. They can find us now. And a boat is a much bigger target, easier to spot than two people.”
He raises a finger in the air. “But faster. And nobody’s coming after us yet.”
I take a deep breath, trying to loosen the knot in my chest. What if that dragon doesn’t want to hurt me? Perhaps he flew away and won’t alert anyone. Maybe he left the rider on the island, where he won’t be able to do anything.
A wave of terror seizes me.
None of these thoughts are true. I know that more dragons are coming after us. Every part of my body knows it, feels it, even if I don’t understand why.
“They’re coming, Alayel.”
He points to the net with the eggs. “We have something they want. Let’s wait. Perhaps Foros will bless us.”
My body is stiff and taut, and, for a moment, I consider jumping overboard, leaving this boat, and letting Alayel stay here with the eggs, if he’s so confident that he can deal with the dragons.
But what am I going to do alone in the sea, near a rocky shore where I might not even find a way to get onto land? And it’s the enemy’s territory.
I have to hope nobody will chase us. Trying to distract myself, I turn to Alayel. “That third man, was he your friend?”
He’s staring at the sky, obviously much more worried than he’s pretending to be. “No. Must have been another smuggler.”
“You fight well.” I’m not sure why I make that comment, what I want to find out.
“Didn’t have the privilege not to need it.” His gaze meets mine. “What about you? How exactly did you learn to kill people while working in a restaurant?”
Kill. I’m a murderer. The word doesn’t fit, as if the memory of what I just did was some strange nightmare.
I chuckle, even if there’s nothing funny about it. “Well, the stew pot is heavy.”
The image of that man hitting the wall will remain forever engraved in my mind, while his gross touch will be etched in my skin.
But right now, we need to stay alert and survive. I survey the skies again, as if keeping a watchful eye could make a difference, as if there was anything we could do against dragons.
My heart is making a racket in my chest, and I’m not even sure I’m breathing, as the clouds dissipate overhead. The sun is lowering on the horizon behind us, turning the clouds pink against a firmament that looks more and more purple with each second.
No dragons yet.
Alayel finally turns and goes to the wheelhouse to take the helm, as the island gets smaller and smaller in the distance.
I wonder why that dragon saved me, what happened to him, but I mostly wonder where that rider went, why he isn’t following us, and why he didn’t try to kill Alayel or finish killing me.
I saw the rider only for a few seconds, and still recall his hard eyes on me, his strange staff, and that deadly magic.
He would have been eerily handsome, if it wasn’t for that disconcerting stare—and the fact he almost killed me.
That man wouldn’t have let us escape that island, so there must be more at work. A trap, perhaps? It doesn’t make any sense, and I doubt he let us go due to some strange goodwill.
Everything feels wrong, and with each breath I take, I wonder if it’s about to be one of my last. Meanwhile, my eyes remain focused on the sky, hoping to see no dragons. What kind of miracle would that be?
And yet I know. My body knows. The cold dread in my gut knows. The dragons are coming.
The boat is going fast, creating a trail behind it. The question is if it will be enough.
Alayel joins me surveilling the sky, but all I see is a flock of birds in the distance.
Oh, no.
My stomach sinks. My breath falters. My heart stutters.
They’re not birds.
“Do you see that?” I barely manage a sound through my constricted throat as I watch some twenty dragons flying in our direction.
“They’re still far.” He narrows his eyes, watching the creatures.
“If they keep coming at that speed, they’ll reach us in what? Five, ten minutes?”
Alayel’s jaw tightens. “We’ll try to negotiate.” The tension in his voice betrays his confident words.
I want to curse past Mayara, who didn’t get as far from this boat as possible when she had the chance. Perhaps I should curse the moment when I had the deranged idea to accept Alayel’s outrageous plan.
A shaky breath comes out of my mouth. “Dragons usually kill on sight, Alayel.”
“We’ll have to hope they won’t do it this time.”
I can’t help but glare at him. “Hope? How’s that going to save us?”
“You never know. I’ve seen death up close before, and you know what? There’s no point panicking before it gets you. Let’s stay close to the eggs and wait.”
“How can you be this calm?”
“I’m saving my panic for when they toast me. No point in suffering twice.”
Somehow, I manage to snort. “Let’s wait, then, and suffer only once.”
But then I glance at the sky, and all my amusement fades at once.
Three dragons are flying fast, ahead of the group—right in our direction.
Alayel crouches on the deck and pulls me down with him, so that the eggs stand between us and the incoming dragons—unless they decide to circle and surround us.
“I might have miscalculated,” he whispers. “And I’m sorry.”
I shut my eyes, waiting, my heart pounding in desperation, horrific moments as I brace for death to take me.
Finally, a loud thud startles me, and I feel the boat tilting to one side.
I dare to look and spot a light blue dragon perched on the deck, bigger than a horse, but smaller than the dragon who saved me.
His roar is so loud that it hurts my ears. The sound comes not only from him, but the two other dragons approaching—and a fourth one, from another direction. A fourth one… Can it be? The roar is distant, but I hear it clearly. The flapping of wings is also familiar.
The blue dragon on the deck takes flight, then launches a blast of fire in the air, far above the boat, while I stay glued to the ground.