15. Ava
AVA
Dragon thrashed against Ava’s hands, his sharp scales slicing through the tender skin of her palms.
Pain exploded as warm blood poured down her hands. Biting back a yelp, she tried to reach for the inconsolable beast again. He was going to hurt himself or get someone killed if she couldn’t calm him down.
Ava touched his face, smearing her own blood across the small scales that lined his jawline. “Dragon, please calm down. I need you to stay calm. I need you to listen so that I can help you.”
But Dragon merely wailed in response to her voice, his eyes squeezed tightly closed. He must be in unbearable pain. What the flames was causing it?
Shoving to her feet, Ava ran down the length of the dragon’s tightly coiled body, trying to get to the injury she had tried to heal earlier. Had she done something wrong? Caused more harm than good?
That seemed to be her lot in life.
The injury on his side looked unchanged, the stitches holding strong, the skin and scales still slightly blackened from her attempt to cauterize the wound. It didn’t look as if anything was wrong…
Wait.
A trickle of blood oozed between her carefully placed stitches, dripping over scales.
“Oh no!” She pressed her injured palm to the wound, her other hand on top to apply pressure.
Why was it still bleeding?
Dragon roared in agony.
“I’m trying to help you!” Ava wailed back, willing her flame back into her palms.
Just a little bit of fire, just a little more heat to finally stop the bleeding once and for all…
Heat flickered to life in her palms. Please stop bleeding. Please!
She forced her heat into Dragon’s side as he roared and twisted to snap at her. His teeth clanged together, mere inches from her elbow. She flinched, her fire flickering out.
Grinding her teeth together, she closed her eyes and focused again on her fire. She just needed a little flame, just a little more heat…
Dragon’s teeth clanged again, and this time her elbow reverberated.
“I’m trying to help you, Dragon!”
He snarled, eyes slitted as he tried to shove her elbow to force her to stop what she was doing.
“I swear on my flame, I am trying to help you! I am trying to heal you! You need to let me in! You need to let me do this!”
“By my oath, I’ll eat you if you don’t make it stop!” Dragon bellowed.
“That’s what I am trying to do! Let me do it!”
He stared at her, jaw clenched tightly, eyes so narrow she could barely see them. But then he gave her the barest of nods and eased away from her. He spread his neck across the ground, his teeth still too close to her legs for comfort, but at least he wasn’t snapping at her.
She closed her eyes and poured her fire into his wound. I swear I’m going to heal you. I swear it…
Heat flared up her arm. Yelping, Ava opened her eyes to a spiral of flame winding up her injured arm.
What the flames!
She tried to pull back, but her hands seemed frozen in place. The heat grew so strong against her skin, she expected blisters to break out at any minute. But the fire merely soaked into her skin, leaving behind a dark, spiraling mark around her arm.
At last, her fingers unstuck themselves, and she eased back, flexing each digit as she stared at the scar on her arm, at the…
At the matching black spiral pattern emblazoned on the scales around Dragon’s stitched wound.
What had she done?
Frantically, she replayed her own words in her mind… I swear I’m going to heal you…
And what was it he had said? By my oath, I’ll eat you if you don’t make it stop!
Her gaze shot to Dragon, who lay quivering on the ground, eyes squeezed shut. They had both taken a vow. They had both sworn to do something.
And she’d been using her magic while they did it.
Magic and blood.
The most dangerous and binding combination in the world.
“Flames, no,” she rasped.
Had they just…taken a blood oath?
A lump formed in the back of her throat as she turned her gaze from the scars on her own body to Dragon’s face and back again.
The potential consequences began to race through her mind: if she couldn’t hold up her own end of the bargain, would he be forced to literally eat her to satisfy the terms of his own promise?
And if she couldn’t heal him, would she end up dying anyway, even if he managed not to eat her…because she had broken her own oath?
“Oh no, oh no…” The words exploded from her mouth, over and over again.
She scrubbed at the scars on her arm. There had to be a way to take it back.
This wasn’t a proper blood oath. Flames bite her, she hadn’t realized what she was doing!
Neither of them had. In a moment of desperate panic, they had both said things.
And, yes, they had meant them, but not literally… had they?
“What’s wrong?”
She looked up from her arm, tears pricking at the backs of her eyes. What was she going to tell him? If she told him the truth of what she’d done…he might just eat her out of spite.
“I-I think I made a mistake,” she began, her voice shaking. “I think…I think I accidentally performed a blood oath.”
He blinked at her, his expression hazy and unfocused. “What does that mean?”
She inhaled a shuddering breath. “I think it means that if I fail to heal you, I’ll die. And if you don’t kill me for not keeping my word…you will die.”
His eyes snapped wide, steam erupting from between his clenched teeth in a sudden burst. She flinched backward, pressing into his side, waiting for the moment when he lost his temper and ripped her in half. But he merely stared at her.
“I’m sorry,” she rasped. “I didn’t mean to. My hand was bleeding…and I used my magic to stop your wound from reopening…”
His eyelids fluttered even more slowly, as if even that small motion took too much energy. “It doesn’t matter. We have a bigger problem.”
The words rumbled from between his teeth, each one pronounced with perfect clarity. Her heartbeat escalated, her fingers curling into fists as she pressed them hard against her thighs.
“It’s Jerrid,” Dragon said, wincing against the pain. “I can’t find him. He’s…he’s gone.”
Ava’s blood ran cold, and she pressed a fist to her lips. “You don’t think… He isn’t…”
“I don’t know.” Dragon stared at her, his emotions masked behind his reptilian features.
But was that fear she saw flickering in his eyes? If Jerrid was gone forever…what would that mean for Dragon? Could he survive without his other half?
“The shadow,” Dragon continued, grating out the words. “I think the shadow has him.”
Ava glanced toward the forest. That presence she had sensed in the Shadewood…in her own nightmares. That the others in the camp had sensed… Now even Dragon had fallen prey to it.
“What is it?” she whispered, more to herself than to him.
“It’s nasty.” Dragon spat onto the ground. “It’s drilling into my head. I think…I think it’s trying to take over. I can feel it.”
She inhaled sharply. “And you think it’s taken over Jerrid?”
“I don’t know. I told you I couldn’t find him.” He practically barked the words at her.
She took a wary step backward, raising her hands defensively, but he made no movement toward her, his tense body still draped across the ground.
“We need to get it out of your head,” she said, mulling over the words as she spoke them. “But you’re already awake. So how do we get it out?”
He gave the barest shake of his head.
She frowned and looked around the camp as if an idea might pop out of thin air. Brynja was still darting in and out of bedrooms, trying to wake up her people. The women and several of the half-elvish children had begun to gather in frightened clusters outside their tents.
How did she wake up someone who was already awake?
Understanding hit her like a fist to the jaw. “You’re not awake.”
Dragon glared at her, lifting his head and flaring his nostrils. “Do I look asleep to you, Meat Pasty?”
“That’s not what I mean,” she snapped back at him. “You are awake, but Jerrid is not. We need to wake up Jerrid.”
“I already told you, I can’t find him, you stupid she-elf.”
“You need to let go and allow him to come back.”
He lumbered to his feet and shook his head from side to side, growls of pain blasting out of him. “I can’t let him out when he isn’t anywhere to be let out of!”
Ava stepped forward and caught his face in her hands, her scarred palm pressed against his uncomfortably warm scales. “You need to let him come back. If you go back to the…to the place, then Jerrid can come out. Maybe that will chase away the shadow. Drive it out.”
Dragon exhaled slowly as he tilted his chin upward to get a better look at her.
“Or,” he said in a tone devoid of emotion, “you’ll just trap me with the shadow instead of Jerrid.”
Ava winced but forced herself to maintain eye contact.
“I don’t think that will happen, but if it does…
you’re stronger. I believe in you, Dragon.
I know you can do this. I know you can hold out until we figure out what is happening and how to stop it.
I don’t think Jerrid can. He’s already disappearing. ”
He said nothing and made no indication he intended to do as she asked.
Taking a breath, Ava leaned forward and placed a cautious kiss on the smooth plate between his eyes, the large scale fiery beneath her lips. “I know you can do this.”
When she pulled back, something flickered in his slitted eyes. A shadow? She caught her breath, wondering if it was the very thing probing around inside him. Could it hear her? Did it know what she was doing?
Dragon sighed and pressed his snout into her waist. “Get me a blanket, would you? I don’t care if people see Jerrid, but he seems to find it very unpleasant.”
She patted his head and darted into the nearest tent.
No one was inside, so she grabbed a blanket off the nearest cot and ran out to awkwardly toss it over Dragon’s back end.
It barely covered his back and offered no modesty at all, but once he transformed—if he transformed—the blanket should do the trick.