7. Ava #2
Brynja launched toward her, the dagger pointed straight at her face. “We’re survivors. We escaped, and we won’t go back. No one can make us go back. We’d rather die out here in the woods than go back.”
“All of you?” Ava whispered, looking at Ponytail Girl without meaning to.
The girl couldn’t be more than fifteen years old. The same age Ava had been three years ago when she began her apprenticeship with Glamren at the palace. She remembered how small and young she had felt when she stepped into the halls of the palace for the first time.
She couldn’t imagine the horror she would have felt if she had been walking into the home of a husband she hadn’t wanted.
“All of us,” Brynja repeated between gritted teeth.
Ava’s attention wavered back to Ponytail Girl.
“Yes, even Halla,” Brynja ground out. “Her family only had one daughter, and their village was struggling to meet their quota this year…so they demanded a daughter from every family.”
Halla shifted and took a step backward, her mouth pinching.
“She’s too young,” Ava protested. “The terms insist the peaceweavers be of marriageable age.”
Her gaze skittered to Brynja, who couldn’t be much older than Halla.
“That age limit gets blurry in action,” Brynja said bitterly.
“We have four girls below the age limit and half a dozen others that are questionably close. But no one complained. Not one elf in Gelaira complained when they showed up. They just divvied them up among their suitors and called it a good day.”
Ava swallowed the lump in her throat. It wasn’t her fault. She had nothing to do with the treaty or the peaceweavers who came to Gelaira to satisfy the terms. And yet…
“I’m sorry.”
Brynja’s face darkened, mottling an unpleasant shade.
“You’re sorry. Good news, girls,” she called over her shoulder to the others. “She’s sorry. If you are so sorry, where were you when Halla was handed off to an elf ten years her senior? And Saldis? And Runi?”
“I’m s-sorry. I’m not— I didn’t— I’m just a healer.”
Jerrid angled himself forward, pressing closer to her side. “She said she was sorry. And she has nothing to do with this anyway, which means you’re guilting her out of an apology she doesn’t even owe you.”
Something inside her twinged as he came to her defense. Against his own people. Was his mission to return her to Eroth so important to him that he would pit himself against his own?
“She’s one of them,” Halla cried out. “She didn’t do anything to stop this, so she’s just as guilty as the ones who signed the treaty.”
Jerrid jerked toward the sound of the girl’s voice, the skin whitening around his compressed lips. “No. No, she isn’t. Nobody asked her what the terms of the treaty should be any more than they asked you. The people at the top decided that. Ava—this girl right here—had nothing to do with that.”
His hand shifted to press against the small of her back, and a shiver went down her spine. Why was he standing up for her? He had to despise her people and the terms of the treaty as much as the rest of them did.
The silence stretched uncomfortably long.
“Well, this has been fun,” Finnr said, clapping his hands and startling everyone, including Ava. “But I think someone said something about an injured dragon. Shouldn’t we be seeing to that?”
“If there even is an injured dragon,” Brynja muttered. “I don’t want anyone going out there and risking their lives at the word of this elf.”
“You’re not doing it at her word,” Jerrid said quietly. “You’re doing it at mine. Look at me.”
Brynja rolled her eyes in his direction. “What? Am I a toddler or something?”
“No. I mean, look at me. Really look at me, lass.” Jerrid stepped away from Ava and slowly spread his arms to the sides.
Brynja narrowed her eyes as he turned in a slow circle. Ava wondered what he was trying to accomplish by showing off his muscular form. One glance showed that he fit his uniform perfectly.
Every woman here could see that.
The brown and crimson leathers hugged his muscles in all the right places…
Oh.
Heat infused her cheeks. The uniform. This was about the uniform. His dragon rider uniform.
“He’s a dragon rider,” she said out loud, verbalizing her understanding of the situation for anyone who may not have yet caught on. “He’s a dragon rider. Of course he has a dragon.”
“Aye. I’m with the Hyrrím. And I have a dragon, and she’s out there, alone in the woods, and she’s hurt. We need those medical supplies.”
“And we need to protect our village,” Brynja fired back. “Fine. You and I can take some supplies and go find out if this dragon really does exist, but the elf stays here—”
“Absolutely not. My wife stays with me.”
Brynja stepped closer to him, angling her head so she could stare into his eyes despite the difference in their heights. “Then you can stay here with her, and your dragon dies alone.”
Another silence fell across the ravine. Other than the wind whispering around them, nothing moved. Ava looked between Jerrid and Brynja, wondering what she could say to convince him that she would be all right. That he needed to go to Echo and leave her behind.
“Very well,” Jerrid said. “One of us stays here. But I need to be the one who stays. Ava is the healer. She goes.”
Brynja took another step closer. Now barely a foot of space separated the two of them, and for some reason this made something unpleasant stir in Ava’s gut.
“She stays.”
Jerrid’s fingers twitched at his sides, and Ava took a quick step forward.
“It’s all right, Jerrid,” she said quietly, urgently. “I can tell you what you need to do. I’ll stay here.”
He didn’t look at her, his scowl still fastened on Brynja, who had an annoyingly knowing twist to her mouth.
Like she had won, and she knew it.
They had no choice but to do what she demanded, unless they wanted a lot of innocent girls to get hurt.
Twenty minutes later, Ava began to regret her willingness to stay behind.
The runaway peaceweavers blindfolded her and shoved her up the steps to their camp. Then they stuffed her into some place that felt unusually cold and closed a creaking door behind them.
Ava stood stock-still, breathing heavily. She eased the blindfold off, but darkness still met her eyes. She turned in a slow circle and finally glimpsed a shaft of light gleaming from under the door.
She shuffled toward the door so that the light washed over her muddy boots.
She knew better than to test the door handle—she had heard the distinctive clunk of the lock when the girls left.
Instead, she turned around and slowly sank to the floor, her back against the door, the light angling around her.
Her limbs began to shake, her hands so tremulous she couldn’t keep them still. She clutched them together and pressed them against her mouth.
Everything she’d been holding in—the fear, the pain, the anger—came boiling out now that she was finally alone.
Everything hurt.
Every bone, every muscle, every cell…
She winced and dug the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. Even her eyes hurt from lack of sleep and a desperate need to cry. But in her condition, crying would hurt even more than holding it in.
Ava leaned her head back against the door and gently hugged her knees to her chest. Even that motion hurt, but at least it took the pressure off the throbbing ache in the small of her back. She gingerly curled onto her side in a fetal position.
She faced the door so the light could fall on her face. The ground was cold and hard against her cheek. Stone. She must be in a cellar or a storage room. Perhaps somewhere in the ruins.
She inhaled a shuddering breath as memories flashed before her eyes, as if they were being painted on the backs of her eyelids. Talos slapping her, binding her hands with his magic. The dragon, chasing her up a tree.
Jerrid walking away with Brynja and leaving her alone with strangers who hated her.
She wasn’t going to cry. She couldn’t cry. It would hurt too much, and she’d been hurt enough for one day.
She couldn’t take any more.
So, she lay for hours and hours, watching the light outside her cell until it faded away and dragged her into pure darkness. And when she finally fell asleep, she dreamed about Brynja laughing as she plunged a dagger into Jerrid’s heart while Ava watched on in horror.
And as the girl turned her glowing red eyes on Ava, someone else laughed.
Something else.
Something deep and dark and dangerous.
The laughter rolled out of the Shadewood forest with the force of a tidal wave, hurtling Ava into the void.