Chapter 13 The Detour
I must fall asleep, crashing from the rush of frantic energy that drove me earlier, because I wake to a strange floral smell intensifying in the air around me.
It is one of the smells that has been in the meadow all this time, faint and light, but now it seems to swell until it is all my sensitive nose can discern.
I drag my bleary eyes open, confused by my height above the ground as I blink into the dewy green grass and gray sky of early morning.
I realize belatedly that I am still in my dragon form.
There is a dress spread in the grass before me, and a fire going to my right.
I spot Marton crouching beside the fire, poking at a pot of something steaming with heat.
As Marton pours liquid from the pot into a bone cup, the smells grows stronger in the air, and I realize this is where it's coming from.
He's brewed...tea?
Confused enough to be interested, I shift into my human form.
And groan in pain as a hundred aches and bruises that I did not realize I had suddenly spring to my attention.
"Tarah!"' There is a rattling and sloshing near the fire, and then Marton is by my side, helping me to sit up, patting me in concern.
Completely unperturbed, for once, by the fact that I am naked.
"Are you alright?" He grasps my shoulder, looking into my face.
"Fine," I croak, and wince in pain as my throat throbs and aches in protest. I touch a hand to my neck, and Marton's eyes darken as he follows the movement.
One of his hands comes up to brush the skin of my throat with the utmost gentleness.
I remember, suddenly, Inobar with his massive jaws locked around my neck, crushing down.
"Bruised?" I rasp.
Marton only nods.
He brushes my skin one last time, as if tracing the path of the bruise, and then he drops his hands.
Sits back. He picks up the dress on the ground and hands it to me.
I take it, and then he's moving away from me as I struggle it on over my head.
"I made tea," he says offhandedly.
I don't try to respond, and he continues, "It's lavender tea.
For calming the nerves. I thought that..
." Marton clears his throat. "There's lots of lavender growing in this area.
" He fiddles with the pot and cup again, and I realize he must have spilled the last cup in his haste to check on me.
When he has a fresh one ready, he brings it to me, kneeling by my side once more.
I take the cup in numb fingers, inhaling the lavender scent, feeling the cup warm my hands and the gentle steam waft against my face.
I look up at Marton, and my eyes are suddenly swimming with tears.
Marton's face is a haggard mirror of my own inner turmoil.
"I'm sorry," he whispers in a voice of agony.
I'm...bewildered. He does not say it in commiseration, like I'm sorry for your loss.
He says it as if he's apologizing for something he's done.
"What—" I choke, pressing a hand to my ravaged throat.
"What are you sorry for?" The only memory I have of him from the recent fight is of him stabbing a wyvern twenty times his size in the eye with a dagger—and very probably saving my life.
"It was my idea. My idea to come into the Werewood Forest. My plan to go looking for dragons in the first place.
"
I stare blankly at his miserable expression.
"No." No. "Your plan or your idea is not the same as your fault.
It was your job to find the legends, and you did your job.
It was my job to protect—to protect—" It takes me a moment to realize that the lump in my throat is more than swelling from my recent injury, and only when hot moisture begins streaking down my face do I realize I'm crying.
All of them. It was my job to protect them all, but especially Cherry.
And I just let them take her.
"I just let them take her." It comes out on a sob, and suddenly the tea cup is tumbling from my hands, they are shaking so badly, and Marton's arms are around me.
"I just let them take her. I just let them take her.
" I cry the words, shredding my already shredded voice, sobbing them into Marton's shirtfront as he holds me fast. His hands stroke soothing patterns down my back, just like they did in my dragon form. "I just let them— I just— I just—"
"Shh," whispers Marton, voice breaking. "You didn't. You wouldn't. I know."
"No, no, no. I did." I try to struggle away from him, but in my distress, he doesn't have any trouble holding onto me.
I collapse bonelessly against him once more.
"I did."
"You wouldn't," he says steadily, softly, into my hair.
His voice as sure as the ground beneath us.
"You'll get her back."
"I'll. .." Get her back.
I'll get her back.
Yes, that's right. I relax slightly, breath evening out. "I had to let them take her," I confide in a roughened whisper. "Otherwise they would have killed me, and there would be no way to— But Cherry. She didn't know. She couldn't tell what I meant. She looked at me like I'd abandoned her."
"You wouldn't do that," Marton soothes. "Cherry knows that. She will know, when she thinks about it."
"And Vakh. They took Vakh." My voice breaks anew, fresh tears filling my eyes at the mental image of his unconscious body, slung between the two wyverns. He fought so hard for us. For Cherry. He didn't owe us anything, and still he fought.
That's what value is, I think with a vicious turn of my thoughts toward Inobar.
But what did they want, I have to wonder, with the manticore? Is there any assurance that they'll keep him alive? The thought chills me to the core. Because he's no princess. He's not valuable in the sense that she is.
And when he wakes up, I have to think he'll try to fight again. And then they'll kill him.
Why take him at all, and risk him waking up to fight them? They must not have been going far. They must have a place to secure him before he wakes.
The thought gives me a sudden shock of energy, and I sit up, swaying slightly and gripping Marton's arms to steady me.
"We have to go after them," I say. "We have to follow them—find out where they went. We have to figure out how to get our friends back."
Marton doesn't stop me from trying to rise, but he catches me when my knees threaten to give out.
"You're exhausted," he cautions. "You're hurt. You haven't eaten in over twenty-four hours."
"There's no time—"
"Tarah—" He looks stern, on the brink of bringing up all my current ailments again.
"I heal fast. I slept throughout the afternoon and night.
And I can hunt along the way." Already my aches feel less, my throat the only thing that still troubles me.
I do feel a little weak from hunger, but that's easily fixable once I'm in my dragon form again.
"We have to go after them, Marton. We have to. "
In the face of all my reasonable arguments, I think it's the catch in my voice on the last phrase that changes Marton's mind. His eyes grow painfully tender, and he nods. "Let's go."
We fly for hours in a northern direction, zig-zagging across the terrain of the forest below.
Marton holds onto my neck, and I scan the landscape for any sign of movement, any hint of blue scale or bluish skin, pink hair or red.
We fly until the sun is peaking high in the sky, and then we fly until we reach the forest's northernmost border, where it fizzles into scrubby trees and grasslands, plains stretching for miles beyond where we can see.
There's nowhere to hide out there.
I stop there and turn around, streaking along the forest's edge towards Philostia and the west. As afternoon wears into evening, I bank and head deeper into the forest, going south again.
I fly for hours more, until Marton begins to shift uncomfortably upon my back.
And still there is no sign of our friends.
I do not even know if they are still in this forest, or if the wyverns have taken them to another place.
They could be anywhere in three kingdoms by now.
As night falls over the Werewood, we reach the valley where we began our travels earlier in the day.
The scars of the bygone battle are still stark upon the ground, with torn up clods of dirt and trampled grass stretching from the northern edge, all the way back to our previous camp in the middle of the meadow.
The sight hurts my heart, and I intentionally land in a new spot, in a southwestern corner of the valley.
Marton climbs off my back with stiff movements, and immediately staggers into the forest to relieve himself.
Oh. I had forgotten humans need frequent breaks.
When he returns, I am sitting dejectedly in my human form and grubby dress, trying to decide if it's worth the energy to start a fire for the night. But Marton will be hungry, and he'll need to cook the game I hunted for him.
And there are the Lycans to worry about, if there are truly any in the area. That could have been a lie to scare us.
All the same, when Marton brings back an armload of firewood and sets up the pit, I dutifully breath a flame into it for him.
He works preparing and cooking the meat, and I stare blankly into the forest's depths. I almost wish a Lycan would appear. Someone who could give us some new information. Or someone I could roast alive with a snort of flame.
It's all the same to me, in my current mood.
When a mosquito buzzes near my ear, I almost catch the meadow grass on fire in my fury to destroy the offending creature.
Marton casts me a worried look as he rotates the spit. "Are you—"
"No," I answer immediately, vehemently. "No, I am not okay. No, I am not alright. I do not plan to be either until I have found and rescued our friends!"
As my shout echoes hollowly across the valley, Marton stabs a stick into the fire, his face twisting. "We."
"What?"
"Until we have found and rescued our friends." Marton give me a challenging stare. "Or do you plan to take that all on yourself as well?"
"I should," I realize suddenly. "I should do it alone. I should take you to Philostia, where you'll be safe, and return to search alone—"
"You wouldn't make it half a mile without me!"
I scoff, and Marton's face flashes with anger. An expression I have never seen on his face before. It gives me pause.
Marton opens his mouth to make some retort, and then something flickers and changes in his eyes, expression going abstracted, and his mouth falls shut.
"What?" I sit forward quickly. I've seen that look in his eyes before. That's his just had an idea look. "What did you think of?"
He frowns at me, almost like he's wondering if I deserve to hear it.
"I promise if you tell me, I'll take you with me. I won't leave you behind." I'd promise anything right now for a shot at finding Cherry.
Marton shakes his head, a rueful smile twitching up one corner of his mouth. "It was... It isn't something you could do without me."
"Tell me," I urge.
"I was thinking," Marton says, "about the Trove."