Chapter 6
The Town Hall auditorium was a heated kettle of body heat and anxious whispers, packed so tight that people were standing three deep along the back walls.
Avelunne sat in the front row of the witness chairs, her hands clasped tightly around her spiral-bound sketchbook.
She had spent the morning toting boxes for Tinsel, eating a sandwich in three bites at the Transition Center, and teaching the refugee children how to cut snowflakes out of small coffee filters.
The news that the Council was going to announce its decision scattered her thoughts like seeds on the wind.
The only thing grounding her was the solid presence of Sheriff Tanner in the chair beside her. His heat warmed her tripping reptile heart and made her feel strangely safe, even though she knew he was there to watch her as much as protect her.
Guivre Gul-Vert stood at the podium, looking less like a teenager and more like an ancient queen of the forest. The room went dead silent as the golden elf raised her hand above her head.
“The Council has deliberated.” Her calm voice carried without effort to the furthest corners of the audience seating. “We will not leave innocents to rot in a cage. The vote to mount a rescue mission is passed.”
The room exploded in a roar of approval that shook the floorboards.
When Guivre spoke again to ask for volunteers, the response was immediate.
Dozens of hands shot into the air — wolves, bears, felines, and species Avelunne couldn’t begin to name.
Phones were already glowing in the dim light as people texted friends and packmates.
The sheer, unhesitating willingness of this community to bleed for strangers stole the breath from Avelunne’s lungs.
She had hoped for a small band; she got an army.
“You’re all idiots! This is fucking suicide!” The bellowing shout cut through the cheering like a cleaver.
Sten Trolhorne shoved his way to the front aisle, his face flushed a mottled red against his braided beard.
Lin Wolcz followed in his wake, looking like a tempest in a tailored suit.
Trolhorne stabbed a finger toward Avelunne.
“She is a moonwing! They’re liars, cowards, and backstabbers by blood. It’s a trap, and she’s the shiny bait!”
Beside her, Tanner went still. The rise of his magic prickled the hair on the back of Avelunne’s neck. She glanced at him. He was furious. Strangely, his anger on her behalf tamped her own fear.
Wolcz placed a hand on Trolhorne’s arm, stepping forward with a sneer that was far worse than the ice dragon’s shouting.
“Sten is right about the risk. I was outvoted. However, he misses the practical point.” His voice was smooth and oily.
“Regardless of her ancestral clan’s treachery, she is a fertile female dragon of a rare bloodline.
To send her to battle — or to expend town resources on a suicide mission based on her story — is a tragic waste of breeding capacity. She should be protected.”
Gasps filled the room, followed by a hissing susurrus of whispering. Wolcz seemed completely oblivious to the expressions of outrage from all the females and some males in the audience.
Avelunne struggled to keep her face free of a sudden, white-hot rage that woke her usually slow-to-anger dragon.
Wolcz wanted her for breeding stock. Echoes of hateful hisses from her parents about her only value to the family twined with the inhumane logic Tippizoars spouted for the last twelve years.
“Thank you for your input, Councilman Wolcz.” Guivre’s tone was devoid of warmth. “However, as I said, the mission is voluntary. Your refusal is noted and accepted. We have no need for participants who are hesitant.” She made the last word sound like a dismissive insult.
Wolcz still seemed oblivious, but Trolhorne’s eyes narrowed.
Guivre turned her attention back to the crowd, ignoring the two fuming dragons.
“Success depends on reaching the stratosphere to breach the demesne’s upper portal.
We are short on high-altitude flyers. I have contacted Fort LeBlanc and the Tribunal to request aerial support, but it may take several days to coordinate their arrival. ”
Days. In the pens, days could mean death.
It could mean the difference between her friends being there or being shipped out for experimentation, or to become protein slurry to feed monsters.
She looked at the raised hands of volunteers, and then at Trolhorne and Wolcz, who were turning to leave with self-righteous smirks.
She wasn’t a warrior. She was an artist who liked colorful fabrics and drawing on coiled pads and eating tigerfish.
The thought of going back to that place nearly paralyzed her.
But she looked at Tanner, whose cousins were rotting in a cell because he couldn’t reach them.
She remembered the fear expressed in the pictures the hyena children had made that morning.
Avelunne stood up. Her legs felt like water, but she locked her knees.
“Respectfully, Councilors, we do not have days. Tippizoars have the super-soldiers ready. Surasa is greedy.” She ignored the trembling in her hands and looked straight at Guivre.
“I know the way. I know the wind currents. I am no fighter, but I can fly higher than anyone here.” She took a deep breath. “I will show you the door.”
The silence following her declaration was thick enough to choke on, until movement beside her broke the spell. Tanner rose from his chair, a slow, deliberate unfolding of height and authority that drew every eye in the room.
Avelunne braced herself, expecting him to tell her to sit down and stop speaking foolishness. Instead, his voice rang out, deep and steady. “She won’t go alone. I can match her altitude. I’ll fly her wing.”
Her heart skipped a beat. He didn’t trust her, yet he was willing to follow her into the thin air where most shifters couldn’t breathe.
“You’re a flaming fool!” Trolhorne’s face twisted with scorn. “You’ve just signed your own death warrant, and for what? A plausible story from a lying moonwing?”
Wolcz shook his head and looked Tanner up and down with exaggerated pity. “It will be a tragic waste of a good sheriff.”
Tanner turned his gaze on the two dragons.
“She risked everything to come back for the captives left behind. You’re worried about breeding her; she’s worried about lives.
If that’s a scam, sign me up.” The undercurrent of contained violence in his voice resonated in Avelunne’s bones like distant thunder.
Trolhorne looked ready to shift and brawl right there in the aisle, but Wolcz gripped his arm, whispering something urgent. With a final, loathing glare at Avelunne, Trolhorne spun on his heel and walked toward the exit with Wolcz.
At the last second, Wolcz turned to the room. “We will make sure every dragon knows this for the trap it is.” The double doors slammed shut behind them. To Avelunne’s immense relief, not a single other person in the packed auditorium moved to follow them.
Guivre cleared her throat. “Thank you, Avelunne. We accept your offer.” She turned her attention to Tanner. “A word in private, please?”
Tanner nodded, but his gaze lingered on the doors the dragons had exited through, his jaw set.
He turned to the young cougar shifter standing nearby.
“Deputy Osborne, please escort Avelunne back to the Transition Center.” He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Stick to her like a burr in your fur.”
His gold eyes caught hers, his expression unreadable, but his shoulders not quite so tense. “I’ll join you there as soon as I can.” With that, he strode purposefully to catch up with Guivre.
The warmth of the Transition Center’s open and airy common room helped her relax, or at least as much as she could.
At one of the trestle tables, Avelunne sat on a bench and hunched over her spiral-bound sketchbook, guiding her mechanical pencil in careful lines.
In her mind, she could see interlocking geometric shapes that could be folded from the stiff metallic cardstock she’d seen in the Center’s art bins to make three-dimensional ornaments.
Getting her vision on paper was the only thing keeping her anxiety at bay.
She had just volunteered to lead a rescue mission to the place that haunted her nightmares and made certain sounds and smells in the real world cause her heart to race like a hummingbird’s wings.
The old Avelunne, the flighty butterfly who flitted away when life became difficult, was screaming at her to run.
But the remembered faces of her captive friends and the unexpected support of a certain sheriff kept her anchored to the chair.
A shadow fell across her page. She looked up to find Tanner standing there, his presence solid but not looming.
He tilted his head toward the Center’s wide glass doors. “Care to take a stroll in the courtyard?”
Given that the wind was back with a vengeance and whipping by with anything it could catch, she assumed he wanted a private conversation, not a breath of fresh air.
Closing her pad and hooking the pencil on its cover, she hugged it to her chest, then grabbed her nearby pink coat and stood up. “As you wish.”
He led her to the dormant fountain in the center of the courtyard before turning to speak. She zippered her coat over her pad, then had to step close to hear him over the gusts of wind. The proximity did terrible, wonderful things to her pulse.
Tanner frowned. “You’re shivering. Is it too cold for you?”
“I’m good.” She liked the simple brevity of that modern phrase. “Moonwings once claimed the frozen fjords of the north. I was raised there.” She shoved her hands in her pockets, less for warmth than to keep her hands from reaching out to touch him. Magnetic males were dangerous temptations.