Chapter 34
She’d hardly slept. Morning had come too bright and eager, and Thara had been tugging at the bond in the hours she had attempted sleep. It was that call and that call alone that made her rise when the sun did, and trudge slowly down the cliffside to find her dragon resting in the forest.
‘Do you intend to ignore me every time you feel like sulking?’ Thara’s voice echoed in her head.
Arla approached her dragon slowly, lifting a calloused hand against Thara’s scales, surprised when the dragon allowed the touch.
The bond had certainly grown between them.
Arla could no longer fathom what it would feel like not to have Thara’s presence in the back of her mind, not to feel connected to something powerful and ancient.
She didn’t blame Thara anymore for what the fates prohibited her from speaking of, but she felt more lost than ever.
If history were to repeat itself, if she truly were to go mad and lose control like Damon had, surely her dragon could do something.
‘You might not understand the fates and the restrictions they place on my kind, but know that it pains me every time I hear you question yourself, Dragonhart. There are things I wish to speak of that I would die for you to know…’
The sincerity in Thara’s voice, the way her heart hurt at the kindness there…
‘Don’t kill yourself on my account,’ Arla said quietly. ‘I don’t think I could bear it.’
A huff of laughter pulsed down the bond.
‘Know that I would accept the fate, had I not been so determined to see this through with you. I watched the damning of the last dragonhart and the actions that came before it. You may not bear my death, Dragonhart, but know I still mourn theirs. I will not allow it to happen again.’
There it was. The reassurance she had needed whilst she tossed and turned beneath sheets in the lonely hours of last night.
Yes, there were things Thara couldn’t tell her, but she had tugged on that bond all night to show Arla that she wasn’t alone, that she wouldn’t allow her to walk the same path as the one that had come before her.
Gods, Crea really had gotten to her.
‘Do not dwell on the possibilities, Dragonhart. It has never done anyone any good.’
She laughed then. A weak sound, but it was there all the same.
‘Can we fly?’
A wave of amusement washed through the bond.
‘There’s more than flying in store for us today.’
‘You’re not bloody serious?’ Arla snapped as she dismounted from Thara’s back.
The dragon hadn’t whispered a word of what she had planned for the day as they had practised rolling and diving and twists that had Arla’s stomach rising to her throat, but the moment she’d landed in the training ring, Mason had accosted her and told her exactly what it was they would be taking part in today.
‘I am indeed. You’ve improved well enough with that bow that I think it would be a damn shame not to see you combine your skills – the archers too. They’re looking forward to it.’
‘The gods know why,’ she protested, tossing the long sword strapped against her spine ungracefully onto the floor. ‘They’re going to end up dead – or I will!’
Mason broke into laughter then, and that godsforsaken sound was so contagious she couldn’t stop herself from giggling too.
‘Trust me,’ he said, rubbing a hand across his broad, stubbled jaw, ‘you just aim for those targets whilst you’re up in the air and you won’t kill a single man or woman in this army.’
‘You forget I have to concentrate on not falling off a dragon. How is it you expect me not to fall to my death whilst focusing on target practice too?’
‘Oh, Arla,’ Mason chuckled, ‘we’ve seen you up there twisting and writhing into all sorts of shapes. If anyone can hit a target from the back of a dragon, it’s you.’
She was glad of his confidence at least. And … he had called her by her name, something so foreign she often forgot what it sounded like coming from others’ lips.
The thought of it hauled a memory back from four months ago, of her bleeding to death whilst Hark said her name over and over. It was the first time he’d ever said it, and she hadn’t been strong enough to kiss the very lips from which her name had escaped.
Ugh, the thought of him sat like cold ice in the pit of her stomach. The strain of missing him, of missing his skin, his hands, his tongue, was beginning to show.
She swallowed the lump rising in her throat.
‘We will be back with the boy soon. Stop pining! It’s not a good look on you.’
She regarded Mason again. She would be a fool to say no to this opportunity. It was important. If she could fire a bow from atop Thara, then it would give them an advantage against whatever came for them. But the archers…
‘Do tell me how it benefits your men that they must fire arrows at targets I am weaving between? Your queen has sworn that your troops will not take part in future battles, so what’s in it for them?’
Mason, to his credit, didn’t flinch beneath the ice in her voice.
‘Aye, she did. But there will come a day when we are plunged into war, and the Queen is blind if she cannot see it. This army has watched you train with that dragon, and they’ve learned skills with a blade they couldn’t have mastered without your teaching.
There is a respect for you here, Arla. I think that’s worth more than the Queen’s refusal, no? ’
She looked beyond Mason to the dozens of soldiers that had turned up to practice this morning, each of them excited, all of them here because she had something worth sharing. It would be a damned shame to waste it…
She was climbing back onto Thara’s back before she could talk herself out of it.
‘If you kill me, I’m going to cut all of your throats,’ she called out, and enjoyed their varying looks of horror.
Mason only smirked as he handed her the bow and a sheaf of arrows. She bit back her own smile as she strapped the leather arm guards to her wrists.
Before long, the world was awash with arrows.
They rained down around her, each feathered end a different colour as they met the targets she flew by with a thud.
Her own bow was heavy in her grip as she struggled to keep her body close to Thara’s back as they weaved between targets.
Her thighs clenched tightly against the locked plates of scales on the dragon’s back were her only grip, her only physical tether, as she nocked another arrow.
She had failed to hit a single target, but she also hadn’t killed anyone either, so despite the trembling in her weary arms, she found the determination to keep aiming.
A stray arrow from an archer on the ground whizzed by her, scratching the skin of her cheek and igniting a line of hot stickiness across the flesh. She blinked the pain away. This … this utter … madness was what she had been born for.
Her blood sang with the chaos of it. And yet …
she had never felt so calm. This was a job, this was training, she would keep ducking and weaving and sticking close to Thara’s body as she fired her own arrows, each one getting closer and closer to the centre of the target with every snap of the bow string.
Her fingers ached and her legs were numb, and then an enormous crack, loud enough to signal that the world was cleaving apart, delivered hailstones and icy cold rain, and still she couldn’t shake the smile on her face.
This was the sort of skill she had never even dreamed of mastering.
Thara was an extension of her body, a living, wild thing beneath her that kept her out of the path of oncoming arrows.
Tears of joy streamed down her cheeks, mixing with the blood and reminding her with a painful sting of what would happen if she didn’t concentrate.
After almost three hours of arrows and rain and numb fingers, her arrows finally began hitting their marks.
The cheer that came from the ground was so intoxicating she couldn’t help the sob that burst free of her throat. She’d done it.
She’d done it, she’d done it, she’d done it!
Thara swooped lower then, bringing her closer to the ground of the training rings where the sodden archers stood cheering, their beaming faces enough to chase away the cold and her various aches and pains.
The dragon landed lightly, sighing hot air across the clearing.
Only weeks ago, the archers would have been terrified of her, but now they groaned as Thara’s delicious heat washed over their soaking bodies.
Without it, Arla would not have lasted so long in this weather.
She almost collapsed when she dismounted and her frozen feet hit the floor.
But Hyacinth was there to catch Arla in her surprisingly strong arms as Diath came from nowhere, supporting her too as she tried to stamp some warmth back into her toes.
‘That was the most incredible thing I have ever seen!’ Hyacinth exclaimed, dragging a woollen blanket around Arla’s shoulders.
‘Truly, Dragonhart, it was spectacular,’ Diath said as their hands hovered over Arla’s skin – assessing for injuries, she imagined.
But yes, it had been spectacular. Only a fool would deny it. She had witnessed the falling of coloured arrows around her as she weaved with her dragon through the air, had tasted the elation of it when her arrows finally hit their marks.
She could only imagine what it had looked like from the ground.
The soldiers gathered around her, a cacophony of voices and excitement and—
‘The Queen wishes to see you.’
Crea’s voice rang out across the training ring like death bells.
Everyone turned to look at her, the priestess’s face so incredibly pale it was hard to distinguish from her white hooded cloak.
It was the first time Arla had seen her since their …
conversation in the library. She looked as though she had given up and invited death right inside that cloak to live with her.
A solemness fell over the soldiers, and she was sure she didn’t imagine the tightening of Hyacinth’s fingers on the blanket draped around Arla’s shoulders.