20. In the Ashes
In the Ashes
Hard hands find me.
They reach through the fog and clamp down on my arms, long fingers and broad palms singeing me, their warmth and breadth penetrating through the fabric of my sleeves.
My body shudders at the contact, at the human touch, at the beat of a heart, fast and hard and sure, reaching me through those wide palms.
I was a mere girl the last time someone touched me.
Now I am not.
The relief is palpable. My legs weaken, threatening to give out under me.
“No one else has to die. It won’t come to that.” The rasping words sink into me, deep knells that reverberate long and strong through my body, reassuring . . . lulling me with a sense of security that isn’t real. Not here. Not amid so much pain and death.
I squint, narrowing my gaze on the person before me—the man holding me close, touching me. The first touch I’ve felt in so long. It’s difficult not to close my eyes and lean into him, not to revel and absorb this thing I’ve missed so much. Contact. Connection with another.
Trembling, I look up to find dark eyes glowing at me through the fog.
I jolt. Gasp.
I know those eyes.
They are dragon eyes.
No. It’s impossible.
I fling myself away, trying to wrench free of the hands that now feel like manacles.
I tense warily and blink several times, not trusting him . . . not trusting me.
How can eyes that belong to a dragon peer at me from the husk of a man? It is not possible. A coincidence. My mind playing tricks. The tragedy of the day addling my head.
He’s a man. Not a monster. A man.
Yes, yes. I’m clearly overwhelmed in my grief and fear and anger. I give my head a hard shake as though trying to clear it.
The vapor swims around us, undulating, needling my flesh.
I squint at the man in front of me, attempting to discern him.
The fog rolls away, opening enough to fully reveal his face: all hard lines and angles, carved from stone.
Just like the rest of him. His hair, prismatic black like his eyes, hangs to his jawline.
My gaze sweeps down, taking in the rest of him, and I feel my eyes widen. He’s young, virile, and naked.
His body, bigger than mine, bigger than most men, is a revelation. As honed as any weapon. Not an ounce of softness anywhere. Lean and muscled, and still . . . naked.
I struggle to keep my gaze from straying too far south. I quickly assess him, and it’s enough to acknowledge that he is big everywhere. This man is a warrior.
I moisten my lips nervously. I do not know him. I would have remembered him.
For the last ten years I saw everything and everyone in my village. He is someone I’ve never seen, and seeing is my specialty. The thing I do best, almost exclusively. The thing that could not be done to me.
Until now.
He stares back at me, and I’ve never felt so measured, so .
. . devoured in a look. Not even when I was visible.
He has a way of staring at me that feels decidedly bold and sensual, almost feral—one degree from the beasts that surround us.
Most definitely something fourteen-year-old me was never subjected to before.
“Where did you come from?” I breathe. And how can you see me?
He doesn’t answer my question, merely flexes those long fingers against my arms, and I feel the power there held in check. The fear coating my mouth spreads, chokes down my throat.
He gives no reply. Merely stares at me in silence with his hard, intense violet-dark eyes—a gaze that goes on and on and on.
His naked body radiates heat, and a warm flush creeps up my body, stinging my cheeks.
I’ve seen plenty of naked people over the years. Women and men alike. It’s not so uncommon that I should gawk or feel any level of embarrassment, except I do feel that because he’s the first person who knows, who is aware that I am looking—who feels my eyes on him.
“Wh-where are your clothes?” I demand with the faintest quiver in my voice.
In response, he continues to knead his fingers along my arms like some wild cat moments before it strikes and tears the flesh from my body.
He tugs me a little closer to the great, towering wall of him.
I look up, dazed, the pulse in his palms fusing into me, increasing in tempo, and my heart speeds to catch up, anxious, scared, matching his rhythm.
And suddenly it’s like I have two hearts inside me.
His and mine.
Beast and prey.
“Please,” I whisper, unable to identify what it is I’m pleading for from this stranger. I remind myself that he’s not the enemy. He’s not the beast. They are. The dragons out there, hunting us . . . me and him.
And yet my heart won’t stop hammering against my ribs.
The ground shudders with sudden force. The silvery-white dragon finds us—breaks through the sifting fog with a snarl and snapping jaws.
I scream and recoil, trying to tear free from the man holding me. He doesn’t budge. Why? Why is he just standing here . . . why is he not fleeing?
“Run!” I gasp, bewildered at his lack of reaction, at his clinging grip.
He turns to stare casually at the creature with his violet-dark eyes. As though the sight of a dragon is an everyday occurrence. “I told you to shade her, Arvos.”
I freeze, confused.
He isn’t speaking to me. He’s speaking to the dragon . . . talking to one of the monsters who murdered everyone in my village like he knows him, like they are . . . equals . . . the same.
No. No. No.
I’d known. Instinctively. This man is my enemy. I’d let his appearance, his humanness, lull me.
The silver dragon—Arvos—huffs and tosses its massive head, and then, in a burst of blinding light, the dragon is gone. In its place stands another man, also naked, meeting the stare of the stranger holding me prisoner in his grip.
Suddenly the other two dragons appear with heavy, thudding steps: the green one and the one the color of a bronze coin.
They join the two men, all four together as though it’s the most ordinary thing.
As though they should exist together in the same orbit.
Men. Dragons. As though they are not mortal enemies.
As though dragons are not the harbingers of cruelty and death and misery.
In dual explosions of light, the dragons vanish, transforming into a man and a woman.
It can’t be.
I panic and renew my struggles.
Violet Eyes turns to me then and gives me a mildly exasperated look, his voice maddeningly calm but no less biting, no less terrifying. “Be still.”
No retort arrives on my tongue. My thoughts are too chaotic, too horrified. I just watched dragons transform into humans. They change shape. Like . . . magic.
Is this the reality for all dragons? Has it always been so? The truth . . . kept hidden from humans for so long?
My head spins. My knees sag, overcome with this day’s many blows.
My witch isn’t dead as I’d thought, as I’d hoped. These dragons see me either because of their magic or because they aren’t human.
My captor pulls me tightly to his side, pressing his naked body against me. I gulp and push wildly at him, but the contact of my palms with his burning flesh, with all the smooth, hard skin, makes me cringe, and I yank my hands away as though burned.
“I did shade her,” Arvos, now a man and fully capable of speech, replies in clear exasperation.
“What do you mean?” Violet Eyes growls. “Are you . . . depleted? Ill? Do it again.” His voice, full of menace, rumbles against me, his hand tightening at the small of my back in a way that makes me feel like I might be sick.
Arvos shakes his head. He wears his hair long and the lustrous strands ripple like a silver waterfall. “I’ve spent myself. It should have worked, Tage.” He waves at me. “She is but one woman. I expelled enough shade on her to bring down an entire village.”
My gaze shoots wildly back and forth between them.
What are they talking about?
The bronze dragon—now a young woman with a riotous mane of chestnut curls—tosses her bounty of hair. Glaring at me as though I am a bug beneath her feet, she snarls, “She is resistant. That leaves us only one option.”
The hand at my back increases its pressure, each finger splaying wide, leaving an imprint of heat.
“How can she be resistant?” Arvos growls. “No human ever resisted my shading before.”
“It doesn’t matter how. She simply is resistant,” the one with vibrant green eyes says pragmatically.
The woman nods in agreement. “Viggo is right.” She lifts her chin and gives Arvos a disdainful look. “Perhaps your magic is failing you.”
The nostrils of the once silver dragon flare. He puffs out his bare chest. “My magic is not failing me, Danhy.”
She looks him up and down, clearly unimpressed. “Oh, I don’t know. Performance anxiety happens to the best of us. Even you.”
Splotches of red mark his face. “Not me.”
The three dragons—people?—break out into bickering. Apparently, my inability to be shaded is a point of contention among them.
I slide an uneasy glance to the man still holding me in his iron grip.
The queasiness in my stomach intensifies as the knowledge locks into place.
I know then. He is one of them. Tage. A dragon.
The huge, terrifying dragon from earlier with the deep violet-black eyes.
With the enormous teeth bred to shred a human to ribbons. Me. Shred me. Destroy me.
I lurch back, but his hold keeps me from going anywhere. His eyes fix on me so coldly, so . . . deadly. I inhale sharply but only smell the copper of blood mixed with what must be him—wind and sweat and magic. That toxic thing that smells of loam and ancient, unearthed bones.
“What are you?” I seethe, the fear sour in my mouth, warring with my anger and the impossible evidence of him before me.
He looks at me stonily.
“They’re all dead. How is she still alive, Tage?” the bronze-maned woman demands. “Where did she come from?”
“Apparently they are not all dead,” Tage answers simply, his unreadable gaze holding mine as though he expects me to explain why I am not dead.