2. Jerrid
JERRID
The stifling canopy of trees closing in blocked him from the sun, from the sky… Uneasiness churned in his gut, making Jerrid Chrysalis wince. He’d been inside this wretched forest too long already. He shouldn’t be here.
It was driving him mad.
He couldn’t breathe down here. Dragon riders weren’t meant to be on land beneath the trees. They were meant to soar above the rippling treetops, one with wind and cloud and sky.
One with their dragons.
Jerrid choked on a bitter laugh as he climbed over a fallen log covered in a slimy dark substance that stuck to his trousers as he slid over it. He rubbed at the legs of his trousers with rough, angry strokes.
There was something wrong with this place, anyway. It was in worse shape than he was, more graveyard than woods. The longer he spent breathing the foul air down here, the more he feared he would become poisoned by the same nameless toxin killing the trees.
Heat billowed in his chest, stirring restlessly, but he clamped it down with vicious intent. It fluttered against his rib cage, rebellious.
If that restlessness inside him got out of control again… His da should have known better than to send him on this hopeless mission to rescue one of the dragon-loving dark elves who’d thrown them into the dungeon.
Granted, the young healer he’d been tasked to find hadn’t been the one to chuck him into a cell, but she was an elf, just like the rest of them. He had no doubt where her loyalty lay.
She cared nothing for him, for his dragons, for his people.
He ran a hand over the top of his head, clamping down on his irritation. To be fair to his da, Carr had volunteered himself to go on this ridiculous mission, but Jerrid had been to too noble to allow his father to put himself in harm’s way like this.
Carr was in charge of their dragon flight, and it was only right and fitting that he delegate dangerous missions like this to his subordinates.
Behind him, the dragon chuffed irritably, stomping through the undergrowth with the finesse of a rock troll smashing through a field of boulders.
“Easy, girl,” he called back to the dragon behind him. “We’ll be out of this soon enough.”
She growled, shooting a puff of smoke around him. He batted it away with a muttered curse, spinning off the narrow trail and into the ferns alongside the path while her putrid breath dissipated. Echo tramped up to him, embers glowing inside her seething nostrils.
“None of that. This wasn’t my idea, and you know it.”
She met his gaze through narrow, glassy eyes. After hours of trudging through this putrid forest, she was in no mood to play nice.
“Fine. So, I did sort of volunteer us for this. I know you’re mad, but it’s not my fault, and we need to tough it out until we find the flame-loving lass who went and got herself lost.”
Echo huffed again, a threatening plume of smoke snaking toward him.
“Stop it!” He bit out the command with an angry swipe of his hand. “If you set me on fire again, I’ll leave you in your pen for a month and find myself another dragon.”
She hissed and bared her fangs, the angry glint in her eye speaking the words her serpentine lips could never form.
He’d already betrayed her to another dragon.
And while he would have liked to argue that it wasn’t true, that he’d always been loyal to her…he knew she had every right to be mad at him.
About the other dragon.
If he could even call that other beast a dragon.
Demon would be a more appropriate term.
He showed her his back and stormed down the trail, the nape of his neck cold and exposed. He followed a curve in the trail, returning his focus to the forest and what lay ahead of them.
The trees pressed closer to the trail, almost like two uneven walls flanking the winding path. He paused and studied the broken branches and scuffed footprints in the damp earth, where frantic footsteps had stirred the leaves and stomped some of them down into the soft earth.
Frowning, he ran his finger along the curve of a nearly perfect footprint. The dark elf lass had seemed a skinny wisp of a thing. The size of this footprint…
“She’s not alone,” he whispered to Echo, shifting to examine other disturbances on the path until he found a smaller footprint.
Echo huffed and bumped his shoulder with her snout.
“You knew? Well, you could have said something.”
She glared at him through her glassy eyes.
“If she isn’t alone, that can only mean one thing…”
Talos.
The dark elf traitor. His pulse quickened, a bitter taste rising in the back of his throat. This rescue mission had just grown a lot more complicated.
“Well, then, they are definitely headed in this direction. We’re going to need to be more careful because Talos won’t want to be found. If he hears us coming, he’ll go into hiding.”
If he possessed the ability to glamour, and if Echo couldn’t sniff them out over the pungent scents of rot in the forest, Jerrid would never find them.
His own senses were overwhelmed by the smells emanating from these woods, scents so strong he couldn’t even smell his own sweat or Echo’s spicy, smoky musk.
All he could smell was rot, and Echo’s nostrils were even more sensitive than his.
They exchanged a long, measuring look. Finally, Echo chuffed and looked back the way they had come, the muscles in her shoulders rippling beneath shiny dragon scales.
Jerrid pursed his lips but nodded. “Aye, I agree. You should go back. Find a clearing and scope from above. I’ll follow from below. Maybe we can work them into a pincer hold.”
He reached out and stroked the dragon’s angular cheek. “Be careful, my lady.”
She merely jostled him with her shoulder as she turned in a circle like a giant cat about to curl up for a nap.
Instead of lying down, however, she lumbered south once again, retracing her steps.
He watched her leave, her dark body blending into the forest long before the sound of her awkward footsteps faded into silence.
He was alone.
Well, almost alone. The presence inside him stirred like a petulant child refusing to go to sleep. A knot tightened in the center of his chest, but he turned and pressed onward. It was better this way.
Jerrid trotted down the narrow trail, branches tugging at the dark-red and brown leather encasing his arms. If he lost control again, at least no one would be around to get hurt. It was safer for everyone if they just stayed away from him and his demon.
He’d realized long ago he would never live a normal life. There would be no wife or children in his future, no warm hearth or bed waiting for him when he came home from his long flights. He’d already put distance between himself and his family.
They didn’t understand, naturally, but it wasn’t worth the risk.
He didn’t want more lives on his conscience.
As soon as this thought flickered through his mind, he snatched it and shoved it away some place dark and deep where he could ignore it. He needed to keep himself focused on finding Ava and Talos. He was in control of his thoughts…and of his demon.
At least that’s what he told himself, anyway.
How far behind was he? He was making better time now without Echo stomping around behind him, smashing through saplings and rotting logs like a stampede of mountain goats through his old granny’s meticulous garden.
A sense of something other yanked him to a halt. The presence in the back of his mind that he struggled so hard to ignore rolled over and whispered a warning. He stiffened, knowing better than to ignore the wordless caution.
Ahead of him, the trail disappeared into impenetrable shadows. Around him, the forest waited, eerily silent. No crickets or mosquitoes or moths, just the sinister rattle of the wind through branches and over-crisp leaves.
He held his breath, craning his neck first to the left and then to the right, as far as it would twist in both directions. Moonlight broke through the thick treetops in a narrow shaft that illuminated a small wedge of the trail, but the rest of the woods remained dark and forbidding and…
Nothing. Just…silence.
Still, a tingle pricked the back of his neck, and he could swear he wasn’t alone.
Exhaling soundlessly, he turned in a slow circle, avoiding looking at the shaft of moonlight so that his eyes would remain accustomed to the deeper shadows around him. His nostrils flared as he used his other senses to test his surroundings.
He took a single step forward.
Again, that wordless warning rippled through him. The instinct pulled him to the left, off the trail, but he remained stubbornly frozen where he stood. But he couldn’t ignore the strange command to leave the trail and dive into the forest, turning west instead of remaining on the northern path.
Why?
There was no answer. There never was, and yet Jerrid knew better than to ignore his instincts. They were usually right.
He was usually right, that presence in the back of Jerrid’s mind who refused to go away.
With an annoyed hiss, he left the trail and shoved his way through the undergrowth, forcing his way through a thick tangle of shrubs that smelled an awful lot like old socks. Wrinkling his nose, he broke free of the bushes and continued on through ferns and brittle, long grass.
A sound broke through the silence of the forest—a sudden rattle and the crackling of branches. Then a shout. A curse.
They were ahead of him, judging by the foul cursing that echoed through the forest. And yet his instincts still urged him to head west, so he plunged farther from the trail and deeper into the Shadewood.
He came to a change in elevation, the ground sloping downward, bathed in multiple shafts of moonlight. He trotted down the incline, still angling to the west. At the base of the hill, his boots crunched through dead leaves, and he paused to catch his breath.
North. He needed to go north now.
He jogged along the foot of the hill, and it rounded into another level stretch of impenetrable forest. Above him, someone shrieked, and then a terrible ruckus followed. He couldn’t make sense of it—the violent thumps, cracks, and rattles.
He pressed onward, pulse racing, the heat in his chest billowing from an ember into an angry ball of fire. He clamped down on it and tried to smother the burning sensation.
Not now…
Ahead of him, a glowing blue light flashed into view. It disappeared, only to reappear a couple of yards away. Again it vanished and then reemerged at a new location farther to his left.
He dove toward the blue light as the foul curses from the northeast grew louder. That would be Talos up on the ridge, based on the guttural language hurling down at them.
Which meant the blue dark elf fire below must be Ava.
He wasn’t far behind the runaway now, only a few dozen yards, and if he cut an angle through the forest, he should be able to intersect her path in the next few moments, as long as she didn’t change direction…
He dodged between two trees and slid down a slight incline, turning sharply to the right as he raced toward the erratic blue light only a few yards ahead.
With a final burst of speed, he bolted through a small patch of willow-thin saplings and threw his arms wide to encircle the dark figure just behind that glowing light.
The lass shrieked as he threw her off course, hurling them both into the trees. They tumbled and rolled and came up short in a thick blanket of ferns. The cursing grew closer behind them.
Talos was nearly upon them.
He focused on the lass trapped beneath him. Her lips parted in what might be the beginnings of a scream, so he smothered her mouth with his palm as he cast a glance over his shoulder.
If they lay low, if they were quiet…the shadow and the brambles behind them and the thick piles of leaves and struggling ferns might conceal them from view.
And perhaps he could offer just a bit more camouflage.
As the girl bucked against him, uttering nearly soundless shrieks against his palm, he focused the heat in his chest into his shoulder blades. Only two single points of heat.
Gritting his teeth, he focused on controlling it, on sending it where he wished, fluttering out from his shoulder blades. One wing snaked down his back to cover their legs, and the other over their heads, cocooning them beneath leather and dragon scales.
Lips parted beneath his palm, and then teeth scraped against the underside of his middle finger as the fool lass bit him.
Behind them, the cursing and thundering footsteps grew dangerously louder. Jerrid held perfectly still, his lungs seizing, and waited.