7. Gavriel
Gavriel
The first day out from the lair, I walk rear-guard and watch her back, and I do the maths I always do, which is how many things in this stretch of Sanguisca can kill her and how fast I can put myself between her and each one.
The answer, as ever, is a lot, and never fast enough.
She’s tired. She hides it, cracks jokes at Azaan, gives Valerian grief about his hair, but I’ve guarded her long enough to read the set of her shoulders, and they’re carrying the cave, the reveal, the six years of a lie she’s still turning over.
I don’t have words for that kind of hurt.
I’ve never been any use with words. So I do the thing I can do, which is walk behind her and make sure nothing gets close.
It’s the drakes that come first.
I smell them before I see them, that dry reptile stink under the sulfur, and I have my ax up and a shout in my throat before the first one drops out of the crimson murk.
“Drakes! Three, high, on the left!”
Fire drakes, wingspan the length of a cart, scaled red-black, all teeth and talons and a gut full of flame.
Not the biggest thing this realm’s thrown at us.
Not the smallest. And they’ve come for the smallest, warmest, brightest thing in our little band, the way everything in Sanguisca comes for its Queen.
“Oh, come ON,” Tabby yells, ducking as the first one strafes us, a wash of flame roaring where her head just was. “I have had a WEEK. Can I not walk from A to B without something with wings taking a personal interest?”
“Apparently not, my Queen,” I say, and I put myself over her, shield up. The second drake’s fire breaks against the Auric gold and slides off harmless.
We fight the way we’ve learned to fight, which is together, which is the only thing that’s kept her alive this long.
Luka’s a black streak going up to meet the first drake in the air, four hundred pounds of panther and hellfire dragging it down out of the sky with a shriek.
Azaan takes the second, his wind slamming it sideways into a spire of rock hard enough to break its back.
And the third comes for Tabby, because they always come for Tabby, and I’m already there.
“Down,” I tell her, and she drops without arguing, which is how I know she trusts me now, because a year ago she’d have argued with a burning building.
I plant myself over her, shield high, and I catch the drake on the way in.
It hits the Auric Shield talons-first and I feel the impact go all the way down my arm.
The shield holds, gold and steady. While it’s stunned and scrabbling I bring the ax round in the arc I’ve swung ten thousand times, and I take its head off clean.
It drops in two pieces. The realm goes quiet.
“Show-off,” Tabby says from the dirt, breathless.
“You’re welcome.” I offer her my hand and haul her up.
“I had it handled.”
“You were on the ground with your eyes shut.”
“That was a tactical crouch.” She brushes red dust off the leather, and her grin flickers, and underneath it I catch the tired thing again, the frightened thing she won’t say. “Thanks, Gav. For the, you know. The whole standing-between-me-and-the-dragon thing. You do that a lot.”
“It’s what I’m for.”
“It’s not, though.” She looks up at me, blue eyes serious for once.
“You keep saying that, like you’re a tool.
A shield with legs. You’re not. You chose to catch that thing.
You choose it every time.” She pokes me in the chest, which no one else in three realms would dare.
“One of these days I’m going to make you admit you do it because you love me and not because some ancient bond made you. ”
Something in me goes still. She’s right, and she knows she’s right, and she’s grinning at me knowing it. I don’t have the words, I never have the words.
“Both,” I manage. Gruff. It’s the most I’ve ever said about it.
Her grin goes soft and real. “Both,” she agrees. “I’ll take both.”
Ahead of us, Luka’s already prowling the path for the next threat, and Azaan’s dusting drake off his sleeve with an expression of deep personal offence, and Valerian’s counting us to make sure all five are whole, the way he does after every fight, like he’s still surprised each time to find nobody missing.
“On we go,” I say, and I fall back into rear-guard. I watch her walk, I do the maths, and for once the number doesn’t frighten me so much, because she just made me say the word out loud.
Both.