Chapter 22
Chapter twenty-two
Just before the derby was due to start, Valeraine walked onto the field at Rosings, leading Lelantos by the reins. There were at least a dozen dragons crowding the field, packed close to each other.
She checked her mask. It was still secure. She was ready for this.
There was a jerk on the reins that she held.
Lelantos had planted his feet and his attention was on the marauding dragons before them.
The dragons were behaving as they always did when away from their nests: snapping at each other, barely restrained by their dragoneers.
The noise was riotous as they growled and hissed at each other, and occasionally a plume of smoke would foretell of greater danger.
Lelantos let out a growl of his own, menacing and loud. Two dragons on the edge of the mess snapped around to attend his call, their posture matching his: hostile.
Valeraine rushed to move a comforting hand down his neck. As she came in contact with him, his feelings surged into her: anger, annoyance, frustration, the urge to fight, dominate, destroy.
She flinched away, repulsed.
This wasn’t her dragon. Her Lelantos was mild, only sometimes grumpy. He didn’t attack things. He didn’t pick fights with other dragons.
But the Lelantos before her was nest-tetchy, far from home and far from his calm center.
The other dragons were calling growls back at him.
He would answer them again, and the dominance games would escalate.
What could she do? She didn’t have the strength to pull him away, and had no idea how to handle an agitated dragon.
How did the dragoneers do it? She had seen them all her life, commanding their dragons with shouted words, with whips, with prods, with muzzles. The dragons around her were all securely tethered down to rings cemented into the ground, keeping them far enough from each other to not directly attack.
Should she join them?
It seemed Lelantos needed tethering. He could launch into a fight at any moment.
The cold realization sunk into her bones.
She didn’t trust him. Didn’t trust her dragon anymore.
With a simple journey two days from home, he had been transformed into a monster whom she didn’t recognize.
She had never been more aware of his destructive potential than she was in that moment.
His emotions were still echoing within her, nasty and hateful.
He was spoiling for a fight, feeling challenged and threatened by the other dragons.
Lelantos was afraid, too.
Valeraine took off her glove. She put her hand back to his neck, and felt again the negative passion roiling inside of him. She focused on the fear that was in him, and connected with it. She found her own fear, mirroring his.
She breathed deeply, and found her courage. She tried to feel optimistic, centered, peaceful, assured, and give it all to her partner. They were a team. They would race in this derby, and win. It didn’t matter what fights the other dragons wanted to pick, they would soar above them all.
Lelantos was still irritated, still wanting to fight, but his aggression took a step back, replaced by determination.
Valeraine donned her glove again, then climbed up into his saddle, a task much easier without skirts to wrestle with. She tied herself in, the harness knots coming easily to her from practice.
Her mind kept returning to the moment when, in the air over Netherfield, she had been knocked from her saddle for a perilous moment. This time, she was prepared and secure. She would not be falling off her dragon today.
The butterflies in her stomach had not received the update about the sturdy rope.
She urged Lelantos to walk them nearer to the throng, hoping to get close enough to hear any announcements, like where the race course would be.
She counted: there were twelve other dragons.
Lelantos made an unlucky thirteen. One dragon was noticeably calmer than the rest, not tugging on his tethers or growling at his neighbors: Royce Rosings’s white, slim dragon.
He was at his home nest, assured and confident.
There were at least three hundred spectators, socializing with each other and watching the dragons. She saw money changing hands, last minute bets being placed.
The dragon closest to Lelantos was chittering in his direction. It was a horned burgundy dragon, distressingly familiar. The rider was standing nearby, though it seemed Pemberley had not yet noticed the growing tension between their mounts.
Lelantos rumbled a growl in return. Valeraine pulled out a stick of jerky from her pocket, a desperate distraction, and her dragon’s head immediately jerked her way, looking over his shoulder, sniffing for the treat.
“You, of Longbourn,” Pemberley called.
Valeraine straightened, making her posture solid and confident, like Kesley’s. She gave a brisk nod in acknowledgement.
“There will be blood out there today, and it’s likely to be yours,” Pemberley stated. “Good luck; you’re going to need it.”
Lelantos sniffed at Pemberley eagerly, as if detecting snacks in his pockets. Valeraine gave the reins a twitch of disapproval. It wasn’t time to go making friends. “You’ll need luck more than I will,” she said.
Mr. Rosings shouted over the frenzy, announcing the route: they would go to the lake to the east (a two mile journey), then loop around Rosings house itself, and land back in the field. The other riders began untying their dragons’ tethers and mounting up.
Valeraine laid her hand on Lelantos’ neck, trying to project confidence and focus. “We go with the horn, and we will go quickly.” She nudged him to turn toward the east, and was gratified that he moved without protest or resistance.
There was a stolidness to Lelantos’ stance, full of wisdom.
He had flown in more derbies than anyone else here.
He was strong, and knew what he was about.
He had maybe even raced at Rosings in centuries past. She felt his determination to fly fast, a burning desire to overcome the dragons around him, to prove himself the strongest. He was ready. She was ready to fly with him.
When the horn blared, a black dragon to their left snapped out at Lelantos, biting his wing. Her dragon turned in outrage to face the challenger, teeth bared to return the bite, a glowing spark sizzling between his sharp teeth.
They didn’t have time for this.
If Lelantos started a fire, all there would be was chaos and failure.
Valeraine frantically flicked the reins. “Come on! We fly, go!”
It was the sight of other dragons taking to the air, more than Valeraine’s urging, that moved him. They were already in the back half of the pack of riders. Lelantos was volatile, skittish.
“Go, go, Lelantos.” She placed a comforting hand on the scales in front of her. “You are stronger than all of them, and faster than most. Let’s show them.”
Over the trumpeting dragons, the jeering spectators, and the rush of the wind as they gathered speed, he likely hadn’t heard her at all.
He instead felt her meaning through the soft touch, and through the fragile bonding they were starting to share.
He heard her intention in the way that it mirrored all those hours of training where she had encouraged him.
He flapped his wings, slowly and steadily, and took on speed enough to move forward in the pack. A quick count of dragons ahead put them in seventh place. They were lower in the air than most, with a few dragons hanging above her, their talons wickedly sharp.
“Let’s climb, then we’ll dive to the lake.” She added a flick up on the reins to get the message across. As Lelantos began to climb, they dropped back in the rankings. Eighth, ninth.
She felt the turbulence before she heard the dragon, heard the dragon before she felt it.
It was right behind and above them, close enough she could have reached up and stroked its belly.
Its claws were outstretched, and Valeraine had just enough time to juke to the side, leaning in her saddle, so that one claw hit her shoulder instead of all of them gouging through her back.
It cut through her shirt sleeve like a snipped thread, and the skin underneath with hardly any more resistance.
Her upper left arm felt hot and wet, agonizing in its burning pain. She screamed, and Lelantos roared with her, suddenly diving to escape, then swinging back up in a dizzying arc that took them above the pack, to the rear.
She checked her dragon, first. Another cluster of claws had gotten to Lelantos’ back.
One of the scratches was oozing blood, but slowly.
Dragon hide was much stronger than a human’s.
He would be fine, healed within a few days.
The strong pumping of his wings attested that those vital membranes, much more vulnerable, were undamaged.
Valeraine was scared to look at her own injury. The only thing she was sure of was that she still had both arms. She held the reins with her uninjured right arm, urging Lelantos on.
A quick count of the dragons ahead of them put Lelantos in eleventh place. But she could be missing a dragon. Or double counting one. It was so difficult when everyone was moving so much.
What if she didn’t have two arms anymore. She wasn’t sure what that would feel like.
Valeraine finally looked at her left shoulder. It was red.
The white shirt had been soaked with blood, spreading and running down her arm.
She had an arm. It would be fine.
Valeraine wanted to prod the wound, to see how deep, how bad it was.
Her right hand was busy, however. She dared not let go of the reins, both for directing Lelantos and for holding on.
She was dizzy.
Maybe that was from the turbulent flying.
Maybe that was from the blood loss. Could she already be dizzy from blood loss? She hadn’t lost all that much blood yet.
Maybe it was both.