Chapter 22 #2
The lead dragons in the race were dipping down to the midpoint lake, skimming the surface and popping back up, coming straight back toward her. It would be chaos, as it always was, when the packs going forward and backward clashed.
She tilted Lelantos to the side, taking a slightly longer route to loop around and come at the lake from the other direction. This took them out of the path of all the dragons that were beating them in the race. It was slow, but it was safer. Out of the clash.
Valeraine couldn’t brave the thought of being that close to dragon talons. It was better to stay out of it all.
Lelantos touched the lake without incident, skimming it and then climbing back up high, preparing for his favorite maneuver. His gargantuan wings made it easy to rise in the air, unlocking skies much higher than was practical for the other dragons.
A scuffle broke out between two dragons below and ahead of them. Lelantos passed both of them. Ninth place.
Then eighth place, as another dragon below them flagged.
Then, seventh, sixth as a fight broke out.
She was close enough to see the dragon in the lead: deep red with wicked horns all along its spine. Pemberley, of course. Behind him was Rosings’s white, flying smoothly and calmly.
Rosings manor loomed in the distance, coming nearer with every second.
Lelantos could still win this. They had the elevation, and that could be turned into speed. Their dive to the finish would have to be while they circled the manor, and hope they didn’t hit the building.
“Now! Around the house,” Valeraine shouted.
Lelantos understood, which was just as well because her grip on the reins was becoming looser, her signals to him more erratic and confused, her hands tingling, her head spinning.
He tucked his wings halfway in, and began his dive.
Fifth place.
Coming to the manor house now.
The spectators cheered wildly from below.
A dragon rammed into Rosings’s white — an accident, she thought — and sent them both hitting the house, dust exploding from the crushed stonework.
Third place for her.
Lelantos ducked under the next dragon, securing them second place as their dive took them roughly to the ground in the final field. Dirt sprayed up around them.
Pemberley had beaten her. He had gotten first place.
The derby was over.
They had failed. They hadn’t won.
The fact that they had placed spectacularly well didn’t have any weight, at the moment. There were only two thoughts in Valeraine’s mind: they hadn’t won, and she needed to get out of this disaster and back to Kesley, hiding in the trees.
Valeraine started climbing down off Lelantos, but then realized this was much easier when you had use of both your arms, even when you didn’t have skirts to tangle you.
She missed a step on the tack-ladder and fell the last few feet, scraping her shoulder against Lelantos’ side and painting a streak of blood down it.
It contrasted splendidly with his green scales.
She should tether him. She should make sure he was secure, and away from the other dragons.
She couldn’t tie those knots with only one hand. It wasn’t going to happen.
Lelantos would be fine, anyhow. He would be well-behaved, probably.
Valeraine walked as fast as she could off the field, the world swaying around her. Lelantos followed at her heel, a small mercy of obedience. He was tired and territorial, she could feel it. And yet he still meekly followed.
“Longbourn!” a sharp voice called, no doubt to reprimand her for not caring for her dragon.
She kept walking. She wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny, not now. She reached the edge of the trees and kept walking. Lelantos stayed behind at the treeline, too large to fit in the close-packed forest.
“Longbourn.” The voice was insistent, and frustrated.
It was the voice of someone who’s in the privileged position of never having to say something twice, and is angry for needing to do so.
The man trotted into her view, stopping her progress.
It was Bennington Pemberley, here to gloat.
“You can’t leave your shoulder like that. Sit down.”
She tried to take another step, to dodge past him, to escape, but he grabbed her arm — thankfully, the unwounded right one — and guided her to a log on the ground. It was dirty, and low, covered in moss, and beetles.
She didn’t have the strength to resist. She sat on the log.
He sat on her injured left side and pulled out a small leather case which had been attached to his flight harness. Pemberley fetched out a small knife.
He was going to kill her, threaten her, make sure that she was never a disgrace to a derby again.
Valeraine leaned away, but was too tired to jump up and run. He would catch her again, anyhow.
Pemberley brought the knife to her arm. He cut away her shirtsleeve, directly above the bloodstain, below her clavicle, with brisk, efficient motions.
He was going to discover her padded stays if he cut any farther, but he didn’t. Just the sleeve — just enough to expose her wound.
Valeraine glimpsed the slash for the first time.
She couldn’t see all of it; she would need a mirror to see it properly; but the edge of it was in her view; a gash, who knew how deep it went, who knew how long it stretched, but it seemed not too bad, from this angle. She could keep her arm, probably.
“What were you thinking, to race without armor?” Pemberley muttered.
He didn’t seem to expect any response. He took gauzy linens from his little case.
He pressed them to her shoulder with not a drop of gentleness, not reacting to her hiss of pain.
He mopped up her blood, clearing the area of the worst of it.
He took a vial out of his pouch, and poured some on the wound. Valeraine recognized the aroma: dragon spit. It stung.
“This will need stitches,” Pemberley declared, and brought out a curved needle and thread from his bag.
Valeraine considered protesting. Pemberley was no doctor, and she certainly didn’t trust him. But, he did seem confident. And any word was a risk to her identity. She must stay silent.
“Hold still,” he instructed.
With every tug of the needle through her skin, she gave a little grunt of pain. She tried to keep it all inside, but couldn’t bear it. Silence was impossible.
Pemberley’s touch was clinical, his fingers cold on her arm. He was gentle, though, not pressing harder than he had to.
Her mind caught on the feeling of his hands there.
(He had taken off his gloves at some point, when had that been?) Perhaps his fingers weren’t all that cold.
Perhaps it was her arm that was burning, and his fingers were a refreshing salve.
There were callouses on his palms — same as on her own hands, from ropes and reins — she could feel the rough spots as he held her arm steady, but his fingertips were soft as he worked the needle.
The pain was worse, somehow, than when she had first gotten the wound. At that moment of violence, she’d had Lelantos to scream with her. Now, she was here with her enemy, him touching her so intimately, and she must hold everything inside.
“You’re only a boy, aren’t you?” Pemberley murmured, eyeing her slim shoulder and thin arm hair.
He finished with his needle and brought out a long bandage, which he wrapped tightly around her upper arm.
“It is a brave thing, to race in a derby. You have courage.” He secured the bandage to itself with some efficient stitching, embroidering her together with not a drop of beauty.
Pemberley looked at her mask and his hands twitched, as if he was going to jerk it off. He didn’t. He formed a fist, instead, then seemed to think better of it and relaxed his hands, pressing them flat on his trousers.
For a moment, Valeraine wanted to rip off the mask herself.
She wanted him to really see her, to see the breadth of her mettle.
This infuriating man, who assumed she was some lowborn lad, playing at being part of Longbourn house.
Let him see and know she was the heart of Longbourn, the one who would save it.
Or, at least, the one who would be saving it if not for Pemberley’s recurring interference.
Let him realize he was touching a woman so closely, skin to skin. Let him, with his stuffy manners and strangled ideas, realize they were scandalously unchaperoned. What a fright he would take, shaken to his core.
Instead he grasped her lower arm, pinning her in place to hear the great wisdom which he would dispense. “You are not ready for racing. You are not a dragoneer. Stop.”
Then, Pemberley stood up and left the woods, returning to his dragon and the celebration of his victory. The ball would begin in an hour, after all. He had done the minimum of care to stop Valeraine from bleeding out, and he was finished with the masked rider.