Chapter Thirty
BEN
We launched into the dark sky together, the ground dropping away beneath our wings.
And just like every time flying with Dominic, it was glorious.
In the air, the events of the day no longer loomed so large.
We weaved through clouds, flew far lower than was wise above the trees, almost colliding with a very startled owl, and circled around one another.
I love you, I told him. Because it was true, and he hadn’t yet heard me say it.
Then I laughed because he actually missed a beat of his wings and lurched, ungainly and startled, until he won his battle with gravity and turned his long neck to look at me.
His eyes were soft, even in dragon form. I love you too.
And God, I wanted to blast flame into the sky in joy and triumph.
But the night wasn’t cloudy enough to risk it, so instead, I gave the most muted of bugles, and flew close enough to bump into him.
It turned into a whole new game of aerial body-checking, swooping and colliding and darting away again before the other could retaliate.
Until suddenly, he was gone. Black sky where he’d been, and then in the moonlight I saw a silver-grey streak fleeing across the sky, faster than I’d ever seen him move before.
Dominic?
There was no answer, and I flung myself after him.
I had no idea what had just happened, but then the wind shifted, and I heard the sound of wings.
Not the easy, rhythmic beats of flight, but staccato, interrupted bursts and flurries of wing beats, as if a dragon were trying to fly but was in trouble. As if multiple dragons were in trouble.
Ice froze my heart as I chased after Dominic. The ruined silhouette of the castle loomed in front of me, and at first I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing.
Too many dragons for the amount of sky. Four of them were tangled above the broken tower, wings and claws and whipping tails. They were far too close together, spiralling and colliding in a blur of bodies that looked horrifyingly uncontrolled.
Then Dominic’s mental roar reverberated in my head, so forceful it felt like it thundered around the sky. Break away.
The dragons broke away immediately, but one of them was knocked in the process and tumbled sideways. Right into the path of another, who was halfway through a steep, diving turn with no chance of pulling clear.
Dominic saw exactly where they were about to meet. He folded one wing sharply and dropped between them with terrifying precision. He struck the falling dragon sideways with his shoulder hard enough to throw her away from the other’s claws, but it took him too low. He was too close to the ground.
I dived after him, but I couldn’t get there in time to get underneath him.
Dominic hit the hillside with enough force to send loose stones skittering down the slope below the castle ruins.
He’d managed to half-catch himself before colliding with the ground, but the landing was rough and wrong and far too uncontrolled.
I landed between him and the other dragons and reared up, wings outstretched to shield Dominic’s body while I bared my teeth at them. Rage poured through me so violently my vision whitened around the edges.
“Back.” My command was filled with fury, crackling hot as dragon-fire. If they so much as twitched in Dominic’s direction, I’d flame them, and I wouldn’t stop.
All four of them had landed now, and all four of them were frozen, staring at me in fear. We were caught in that moment like a stone frieze of dragons from the Middle Ages.
“Well, fuck.” Dominic’s voice, sounding weirdly amused.
I spun around, to find he’d shifted and was making his way towards me, moving suspiciously like someone who was pretending a hard landing hadn’t actually hurt.
And as if it never occurred to him that a dragon guarding something precious could be dangerous.
“Ben,” he said. “It’s alright.”
It wasn’t. It really wasn’t. I’d threatened to flame another dragon.
Four other dragons. I’d have done it, too, if I’d thought they were threatening Dominic.
And now I could see them for who they were, youngish dragons, part of Dominic’s little coterie.
I’d have left them as burned flesh and charred scales.
God. I’d never threatened anyone like that before. Never known I could.
Maybe that part of me had always been there. Maybe I'd simply never cared enough about anyone to find it.
“Okay, historian?” Dominic’s voice, casual but not, and I realised I was still in dragon form, smoke rising from my nostrils.
“Oh, I’m fine,” I said, shifting and glaring at him. “I’m not the one who cannonballed into a tangle of dragons mid-air.”
“Not exactly mid-air,” he said. “Wouldn’t have been a problem if they’d been a little higher.” But he was looking past me now, gaze hardening on the dragons standing behind me. I heard them shift to human form.
“No thanks to you lot,” he said. “What the fuck was that?”
I turned around to see four very shamefaced dragons looking at him.
“Dafydd?” Dominic demanded, and for the first time, I saw something of Rhodri in him.
“We, you know,” Dafydd said, and jerked his head towards me.
Dominic closed his eyes and shook his head very slowly. “I think it’s a little late now to worry about giving away the fact you were fighting.”
I spun around to stare at Dominic. “They were fighting?”
Our earlier games in the sky had been pushing the limits of what adult dragons should do. Fighting in dragon form was never allowed.
“Ah,” Dominic said, and looked just the tiniest bit sheepish. “You didn’t realise? Anyway”—he fixed the dragons with that glare again, the one that made me slightly weak at the knees—“what the fuck were you doing?”
“We thought we’d try fighting in teams. You know, with the Gruffydds not here, it’d make things a bit more interesting,” Megan said.
The Gruffydds? Why should they be here? I had no idea what was going on.
“Teams?” Dominic stared at them as if they’d announced plans to juggle live explosives. “You thought adding more dragons into close-quarters aerial combat was interesting? Oh my God.” He rubbed his hand over his face, a move I’d never seen him make before. “Fuck.”
He drew a deep breath. “You’re all fucking muppets,” he told them. “Heath and I have rules for a reason.”
“Well, you weren’t here, were you?” It was Josh, looking somewhat sulky.
“No,” Dominic snapped. “Which means you shouldn’t have been either.”
Silence followed, broken only by the wavering call of an owl somewhere in the woods. Then Dominic sighed, sounding tired. “Look, we’ll sort this mess out properly tomorrow.”
None of them looked reassured by that. In fact, they looked distinctly nervous.
Dominic breathed out sharply. “For fuck’s sake. Nobody’s being fed to the mountain gods. We’ll talk tomorrow and then go to the pub.”
A visible ripple of relief followed.
“You’re buying, though,” Dominic added.
A few snorts of laughter and rolled eyes, and the last of the tension finally disappeared.
Then Megan spoke hesitantly, gesturing at me. “Why is he white?”
All four of them looked to Dominic for an answer. Not to me, the actual white dragon. And I wondered if Rhodri had any idea how many of his family already followed Dominic.
Dominic glanced sideways at me. “Well,” he said. “That’s because he’s special.”
“Oh my God,” I said, mortified. Shaking my head, I looked back at the four dragons. “Right, will one of you go and get our clothes? We shifted over there”—I pointed in the direction we’d come from—“about a quarter of a mile from the house.”
Then I remembered Dominic’s ring. “Or perhaps we should get them ourselves?” I said to Dominic.
He gave the tiniest nod, letting me know it was okay. “Be careful when you pick them up—my ring’s loose in the pocket of my jeans,” he warned them. “And bring them straight back here.”
All four of them promptly shifted and launched back into the air. For him to entrust them with a piece of his treasure was more reassurance than any words could be. And they knew it.
“I love it when you get all masterful,” Dominic said, shoulder-bumping me.
But it was reflexive—his heart wasn’t in it. Mine wasn’t either. I was still thinking about the way I'd reacted earlier. I'd spent most of my life assuming I knew myself pretty well. Tonight had suggested there were parts of me I’d never met. And that was both disconcerting and somehow exciting.
DOMINIC
The sound of wings approaching overhead broke the silence and made us both look up. Four dragons descended, Josh awkwardly holding a bundle of clothes in his claws. It looked as if my hoodie, which had only just recovered from Teddy, had been sacrificed to wrap around everything else.
The gang of four landed cautiously several yards away, all looking deeply unsure of themselves.
Annoyingly, I suddenly understood how Rhodri must feel—a crushing awareness that younger dragons would absolutely find new and inventive methods of killing themselves if left unsupervised for more than fifteen minutes. Not that I agreed with his methods of trying to keep them in line.
Dafydd approached and handed me the bundle very carefully.
“Thanks,” I said, my fingers finding the ring in my pocket before I was even aware of moving.
In letting them so close to my treasure, I’d gone against one instinct to follow another.
How could I expect them to trust me if I didn’t trust them?
What surprised me most wasn’t that they’d treated it with reverence but that I’d never doubted they would.
He looked as though he wanted to say something else, apology and defensiveness fighting visibly across his face, but in the end he only nodded.
“Tomorrow,” I reminded them all.
They scattered instantly, relief radiating off them so strongly I could practically taste it.
“We should get back,” I said to Ben as we dressed. If I was going to sort this out tomorrow, I’d need to figure out what the fuck I was going to say.