CHAPTER TWENTY
My return to the aviary was plagued by pain. My face was trying to peel itself off, my body was starting to feel the burn of the race and my mind was mired with what ifs.
All of it made worse when I heard the echo of a laugh from around the next corner.
It was familiar, but not as familiar as the murmur of voice that accompanied it.
Bach had said Thorne was skulking around.
A warning I appreciated, but didn’t stop my skin from crawling as Huwin Thorne appeared, grunting a goodbye over his shoulder.
My eyes snapped to the floor, returning to old instincts.
But there was nowhere to go. No avoiding him.
So I faced him instead. The only defiance I could manage. He stalked towards me, eyes shadowed by his brow under the lights. He looked far more solid now. The pale imitation of his glory days had been fleshed out by his time in the clinic. Forced or not, he looked healthier.
He didn’t stop, or even slow down, as he got close. My heart pounded as hard and fast as during the race.
‘Take it all in.’ Thorne was calm as he spoke. It unnerved me more than the times he’d exploded. ‘Your time is up.’
There was a snap to his last word, in time with his shoulder barging into my own. There wasn’t much force behind it, but it still took effort to steady myself. I wasn’t going to fall in front of him. Not again.
I resisted biting back. The temptation was tempered by something far more important to me. Thorne already knew he’d won – he was back in and was making sure I was on my way out.
Standing strong was within my capabilities, but moving wasn’t. It wasn’t the aftermath of the fight that stopped me. It was the echoes of his footsteps that pinned me in place until they had completely dispersed from the tunnel.
I had to prioritize my time and there was only one place I wanted to spend it. I shouldered the aviary door, unwilling and perhaps unable to use my hands. I could feel my knuckles seizing up under my gloves.
Thorne’s gloves. None of this was mine anymore.
‘Lena!’ Josie rushed over to meet me from Gottyk’s stall.
It was some bizarre reflection of my first race, Josie finding me in a mess of my own making. Except this time there were no plans to be made.
I braced myself for her debriefing.
Her body thudded into mine, her arms wrapped as far around my wide armoured shoulders as possible, pulling me into a hug.
I’d braced myself for the wrong kind of impact. All the emotion that had been boiling inside me since the red light surged up, making me shudder.
Josie pulled away, but kept her hands on my shoulders, holding me at arm’s length as she looked at me.
‘Did you at least get some good hits in?’
The cut on my cheekbone reopened as I smiled. ‘You know it.’
‘Good,’ she said. I could feel her grip tighten through the armour augments. ‘I know this sucks, Lena, but believe me when I say all of this was the right thing to do. It may have been messy, it might be in pieces right now, but what we did together … it means something.’
I nodded, choking on the words that might have been an eloquent reply.
‘I need to get back next door. I’ll come check on you later, okay?’
‘Yeah, I need to spend some time with Gottyk anyway.’
I let her pass me and open the door.
‘Josie,’ I called out to her.
She paused.
‘Thank you.’
Josie shrugged. ‘Hey, you did this all alone. No need to thank me.’ She gave me a conspiratorial grin and shut the door behind her.
Hot air blasted my wet hair. I smiled.
‘You know, buddy …’ – I turned to my dragon, out of his stall and too impatient to wait much longer. – ‘… I think we did a pretty good job.’
I stroked his nose, feeling the ridges of his scales as if they were brand-new.
I stared at the myriad of colours, from peach, to tangerine to an orange so burnt it could be brown.
The horns on his head branched upwards, so stark white compared to the rest of him.
He blinked at me, first his filmy inner lids then his outer scaled ones.
Another blast of hot air.
‘I’m committing you to memory, just in case.’
Gottyk’s head tilted, his big eyes shining in the cool Prevere blue lights. Then he started pacing. First to my left, then to my right. Then he circled me, nudging my shoulders and back as he did. My legs trembled from the effort of not buckling under the force.
The cuts on my face came alive, stinging from the fresh tears rolling across them. Gottyk became a big orange blur against the grey of the aviary. Luckily he was big enough I couldn’t miss when I flung my arms out to wrap them around his neck.
The scales scraped against me, but it didn’t matter. He was warm, he was familiar, he was home. A home I might not get to come back to. I heaved deep breaths, consumed by the smell of sulphur, hot metal and the mountain rain that dripped slowly from my dragon.
I closed my eyes to try and keep the emotion from gaining total control. Gottyk’s neck sparked, soft clicks of his ignition with no fire. The noise fledglings made to their mothers.
‘You baby.’ My voice was muffled, but it didn’t matter. He knew what I meant without hearing me anyway. If there was anyone in Volitant who truly knew me it was my dragon. Maybe more than I knew myself.
He shifted. I could feel him raising his head towards the door.
I tensed. Had Thorne decided he wanted to do more than gloat?
The door creaked open. ‘Sorry to interrupt.’
So, that’s why Gottyk hadn’t gone on the defensive. It was Theo. I wondered when Gottyk had moved him out of the enemy category. Last time he’d been in our aviary my dragon had curled around me, not letting him near.
I scrubbed at my face, remembering too late that it would make the wounds worse.
The aviary door thudded shut and the shape of Theo became clearer and closer the more I blinked my old tears away. He’d changed into his team uniform, purple fleece with blue wings on the chest and thick black trousers for the Kuramine cold.
It reminded me of the heaviness of my armour and flight suit, the layers weighing me down. To take them off would be lighter, but if that meant never feeling it again … I’d happily take the weight a thousand times over.
‘You never fail to meet my expectations, Paldon.’
I frowned, one hand on Gottyk for support as pain lanced through my eye.
He smirked and leaned forward so our faces were level and pointed to himself. ‘Notice anything different?’
I bit back a terse ‘no’. Instead I scanned his face.
The same smooth brown skin, unbroken by spots or dry patches, all down to the skincare he’d been lecturing me about since we were fifteen.
The same deep eyes that I skimmed over. Then I noticed the way his curls wafted in the breeze from Gottyk’s nose.
‘You had a shower, congratulations.’ My voice was the only part of me that was dry. My damp hair clung to the back of my neck, starting to peel away strand by strand in the warm air, making me itch.
He scoffed and took out the Volitant mandatory medkit stored under the workbench of every aviary. ‘I knew you wouldn’t have sorted yourself out. I swear you could be cut in half and you’d still try to walk it off.’ He took me by the elbow and led me to the stall. ‘Sit.’
I rankled at the command, but my body was so far gone that it obeyed anyway.
Gottyk wandered past us and rested his head on the low wall next to me.
‘Um, excuse me? Where’s my backup? I thought you were my guard-dragon.’
‘The only person you need protecting from is yourself.’
My head whipped back to him so fast that I had to hide the spasm it caused in my neck.
‘I’ve settled Taicasso back in the aviary, taken time to shower, do my hair and come all the way here.’ He sounded like his mother. ‘And you’ve not even cleaned the wounds on your face.’
I sighed. Sitting down had tempered my will to fight.
‘Fine.’ I expected him to open up the medkit so I could get started, but instead he crouched down and reached for my boots.
I recoiled. ‘What are you doing?’
He sighed. ‘Helping you take your armour off.’
‘I don’t need your help for that.’
‘Okay,’ he said, balancing on the balls of his feet. ‘You do it.’
I looked down at my feet. Even sitting they felt a long way away.
‘No rush.’
I threw a scowl his way. He was enjoying it far too much. So I leaned down, holding in the groan that was so desperate to come out. As my fingers brushed my toes, the augment haptic feedback letting me know how close I was, my vision dimmed.
Gottyk snorted as I tilted to the side.
‘Okay, I think we’ve seen enough.’
Two firm hands landed on my shoulders and pushed me back upright. The top of Theo’s head danced in my vision, slowing to a stop as the blood rushed away from my head again. I braced myself for a snarky comment, a wry look, something that said ‘I told you so.’
Instead, he just knelt down and disconnected the armour on my feet, setting it aside.
Then the legs. He worked quickly, with deft hands that knew where the connection points were from years of practice.
As his head bobbed in front of me, getting slowly closer as he worked his way up my torso and arms his citrus smell hit me.
Suddenly I was back on the roof of his family home. We’d just had our tattoos done and climbed the side of the house to avoid his parents. I had hauled him up behind me, the top of his head nearly hitting my nose. We’d laughed and taken turns shushing each other to be quiet.
‘Fuck!’ The word escaped without permission.
He looked up at me, his hands flinching like he’d touched dragonfire. ‘Does it hurt?’
My voice cracked. ‘Yeah.’
He nodded. ‘This is the last piece, then we’ll sort out your face.’
I got a brief reprieve from the closeness as he moved to prepare the medkit. I blew out a breath and unbuttoned my flight suit. Without all the material bunched up around my neck the air felt fresher, my lungs more full. My brain less mushy.
I watched him unpack the patches and prepare the cleaning swabs. Gratitude rushed through me.