Chapter 49
Chapter forty-nine
Valeraine needed to help Mr. Pemberley. Her heart yearned to finish the derby, to show to everyone that Lelantos was capable. But it was Pemberley’s reaction she considered now, if she left him to die after knocking him out of the air. He would be so disgusted with her, for good reason.
He would never leave her crashed on the ground. Perhaps he would patronizingly blame her for the fall, or insult the capacity of her dragon. But he wouldn’t leave her helpless, not ever. His heart was too gallant for that.
Now, how to direct Lelantos down to the ground while she was held in his claws? She put her hand on his leg, and shouted, “We need to land. Over by the red dragon.” She pointed, but he wasn’t looking at her.
Lelantos continued onward. He was determined. He saw the other dragons, and wanted to beat them. He was focused on the race, now that he had retrieved his rider.
“Please! We need to help him.” She pointed again, emphatically.
She poured in her emotions to that gesture, conveying more than a direction.
It was their duty to help someone who had helped them; her worry over if Pemberley was hurt; her guilt that their dangerous maneuver had knocked him out of the sky. This was more important than the race.
They couldn’t leave him to die.
She found a surprising depth of feeling in her heart with that thought. What if she never got to tell Pemberley that she would keep his confidence? Would their final exchange really be him calling her Mr. Sidton? There was so much more she needed to tell him, to hear him say to her.
Lelantos begrudgingly accepted that she cared about it, and so he would help. He didn’t see how this was more important than the derby, though.
Lelantos turned around, and started his descent.
The landing was jarring, but Lelantos was careful enough that she would only have a few extra bruises from it.
She shimmied out from underneath him, walking on a field of disturbed snow, now mixed up with the dirt underneath.
“Pemberley? Are you all right?” she called, and jogged on wobbly legs to the red dragon.
The dragoness was lying on her side, breathing hard and making little pained gasps. Valeraine was facing the dragon’s belly, so she circled (on the tail side, giving the beast plenty of room) to the back. She hoped the dragon wouldn’t notice her, or at least wouldn’t attack.
Pemberley was still tethered to the saddle, but he was not sitting in it. He was dangling in the air.
“Pemberley, hold tight,” Valeraine said in a shaky voice, which was the calmest she could summon. “I’m going to get you down.”
Pemberley gave an answering complicated moan of sorts, which may have been an attempt at speech.
Standing under the dangling Pemberley, Valeraine realized she couldn’t get him down. “Lelantos, I need you,” she said, and heard him walking over. The red dragon let him pass.
Lelantos was at her back now, a familiar and steady presence. She could breathe a little easier. Her defender was here. The red dragon wasn’t a danger to her.
Valeraine grabbed Lelantos’ dangling reins, and paired a tug with, “Come and stand so you’ve got Pemberley on your back.” The dragon waddled where he was guided.
She climbed on Lelantos’ back, and now it was a simple thing to untie Pemberley’s tethers so he rested only on her dragon. There. She could bring him back to the manor, where there would be someone to help.
But what if Pemberley was dying? She didn’t know anything about medicine, but she could at least make sure he was breathing, or tie a rag around his wound.
“Pemberley?” she asked.
No response. Not even a groan.
She put her ear on his chest, listening for his breath, for a heartbeat. Was he already gone? Had she killed this horrid man? Her mask was getting in the way, digging into her face as she tried to listen, and she ripped it off.
“Valeraine?” he asked weakly.
“Oh. You’re alive.” Suddenly, all she could muster up was disgust for him.
He was alive, and hadn’t needed her help.
She had sacrificed her status in the derby for absolutely nothing, for a foolish notion that she could do anything to help the grand, mighty, noble Pemberley.
She pulled back from him, and he gave a gasp of pain.
“Are you injured?” Valeraine asked, letting her irritation show.
“I think,” he gasped, “something is wrong with my leg.” Here, he stopped to breathe very precisely. On his left leg — its muscular shape bound in athletic leggings — the lower half did seem swollen. “It might be broken,” he temporized.
“I’ll get you back home,” she said.
He was already wearing a harness, so it was no trouble to tie her tether line to him.
She sat straddling Lelantos' spine, Pemberley's head before her, her hands on his shoulders.
She was too far back to reach the reins, but she trusted enough in a verbal command.
Lelantos had just caught her out of the sky, after all.
“Back to the house, slowly and carefully.”
They rose smoothly into the air, and Pemberley panicked, trying to sit back up. “What about Amaranth? Is she all right?”
“Is that your dragon?” Valeraine rolled her eyes. “I’ll check,” she muttered with little grace. She directed Lelantos to land again.
As she approached the red dragon, she reminded herself this one was not nest-tetchy, and was well trained.
Amaranth was unlikely to attack. Then, she helpfully remembered this dragon had just been through a rough landing and now Valeraine was stealing her rider, so the chance of irritability and hostility would be quite high.
Lelantos was at her back. It would be all right.
First, she looked for blood. This was futile as the dragon was blood-colored, and she wouldn’t spot it even if it was here.
So, she inspected the legs and wings, looking for any parts that looked misshapen or swollen.
Nothing seemed amiss, and yet the dragon had not moved from her spot on the ground.
This wouldn’t do.
She returned to her own saddlebags, and pulled out a stick of jerky. Lelantos swiveled his head around and licked the stick, so she gave it to him; it couldn’t be said he hadn’t earned it. She then pulled out another, and walked to Amaranth’s head.
“Amaranth,” she crooned softly. “I have a treat for you.” She brandished the stick ahead of her as if it were a fencer’s sword.
She inched closer to the dragon’s mouth.
There was no reaction. She placed the jerky right next to the nostrils and waited.
If the dragon still had any brain or consciousness, she would eat it.
That would be proof enough of her health for now.
It wasn’t like Valeraine could do anything to doctor a dragon, anyway.
Amaranth snapped open her eyes and her mouth at the same time, and snagged the jerky, ripping it out of Valeraine’s hand.
She munched on it, gnawing and turning it around in her mouth, entirely satisfied.
The dragon rolled slowly to her feet and her nose came sniffing around Valeraine, hunting for more treats.
“I’ll get you another,” she placated. She ran back to her saddlebags, and retrieved two jerky sticks. One, she fed to Lelantos and one she threw in Amaranth’s direction. Before the dragon could grow bored with that, she climbed onto Lelantos and said, “Fly, carefully. Back to the house.”
Pemberley didn’t object to her hands on his shoulders — though it must be straining his sense of propriety.
“Amaranth’s fine,” she said.
Pemberley’s face held judgement. He was right to hate her, for her risky flying that had knocked him out of the sky. There was a curiosity in his expression, too, probably worry for his dragon. Then, an urgent panic. “Your mask,” he said.
It had been left behind on the ground. So Lelantos landed again, and Valeraine retrieved it from the snow, tossed another jerky to Amaranth in passing, and finally they were bound for the manor.
She was never coming to Pemberley’s rescue again.
This was far too much trouble, and he would find a way to twist it and denounce her, she was sure.
Valeraine’s distaste for the whole adventure was simmering in her. She didn’t say anything to Pemberley. What could she say? “Sorry for blackmailing you.” “Sorry I slammed your dragon out of the sky.” “You deserve everything that comes to you, for the harm you’ve given to Alyce, and me.”
Pemberley didn’t say anything to her, either. It probably had something to do with an excruciating leg wound, jostled by the flight.
Valeraine consoled herself that some of the fault was with Pemberley, surely. Honestly, this was the second time Lelantos had rammed into him during a derby. He needed to be more defensive in his flying.
Pemberley’s eyes were closed, but his mouth was moving in soft mutterings.
Prayers? Curses? Reciting poetry, or laws?
She yearned to put her ear next to his face, to hear what Pemberley clung to when at his lowest, to hear what things he whispered with nobody to hear him.
She didn’t move closer to him. What she needed right now was distance from this man.
Her curiosity about him could only lead to disaster, him insulting her and perhaps even proposing to her again.
The horror.
She would need to avoid that possibility at all costs. For she was worried, in her most secret of feelings, that she wouldn’t have the strength to reject him a second time, if his proposal was more civil.
Pemberley gave a moan of pain, and she reached out to hold his hand. She didn’t think about it. Pemberley squeezed her hand, tightly gripping, seeming to take some comfort from it.
When she landed in the dragoneer’s field, a simple holler (pitched as deeply as she could) brought help to get Pemberley down and a doctor to tend to him.
All she had to do was make Lelantos kneel, and then she slipped away in the commotion.
Pemberley would be fine, with all of those people to care for him.
He didn’t need her to listen to him, or hold his hand.
She didn’t need him, either. Not the man who had cost her a respectable finish in the derby.
Not the man whose hand she wondered if she would ever hold again.
Perhaps at the ball, when they danced together. If he asked her to dance, and if she accepted him, that is. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. She would love to see his face when she rejected him. But it was time to prepare for the ball, anyway.