6. Eradin #3
Or, perhaps, respect.
I shook my head and hoisted the buckets. I was seeing things I wanted to see, making patterns from nothing because it was easier than accepting the simple truth. He was elite. I was commons. Any moment between us was an accident.
Nothing more.
I hauled the buckets to the rinse station, my palms prickling against the handles. The runes’ cold-hot crawl had followed me out of the tack room. Every strap I’d oiled this morning hung on its peg, waiting to bite a dragon’s jaw. I’d worked that leather until it gleamed.
I’d made the torture pretty.
The whole morning clung like the rot-mud I’d smeared on in the blackthorn. Water wouldn’t shift this stain.
But the forest might.
When the midday bell released us, I grabbed my portion of bread and hard cheese, and with my mother’s gathering bag smacking my thigh, I ran for the forest. I ate as I ran, the bread turning to paste in my mouth, washing it down with flask water that tasted of metal pipe.
The aerie disappeared behind me, and the forest opened up, all pine and wet earth, the distant rush of the stream, and birdsong.
Nothing out here wore a harness.
I didn’t slow until my lungs burned.
The stream where I’d freed the dragon yesterday flowed quick and clear. I followed it upstream, searching for the herb clusters my mother had shown me years ago. The first patch had been stripped bare. The second had been trampled, perhaps by the hunt.
Farther upstream, where the water pooled into a still eddy, I located a third, untouched patch.
Relief hit so hard a sob shot up my throat.
I knelt in the mud and harvested the way my mother had taught me. Never take more than half. Leave the roots intact. Whisper thanks to the fates for the bounty.
Graymallow’s green-blue leaves filled my bag, followed by silverleaf’s delicate fronds, each one precious. Enough for two weeks, maybe three if I was careful with the doses.
After tucking the herbs into my bag, I pressed my forehead to the damp ground.
Tears trickled down my cheeks.
Two weeks. Maybe three. Time, something I’d been begging the fates for since Mother died.
Losing Tolross wouldn’t be today's or tomorrow’s crisis.
I’d take it.
I wiped my tears away with muddy hands, smearing dirt across my cheeks.
I was washing my hands and face in the stream when the light flickered. A shadow sliced across my reflection in the water.
I reeled back, pressing myself against a tree trunk, the rough bark biting through my shirt while my pulse thundered in my throat.
Overhead, wings beat in an uneven rhythm, and I spied patches of bruise-colored scales through the canopy. A pale stripe along a snout.
The wild dragon circled low, watching me. The same dragon. The one I’d freed from the trap, whose leg I’d packed with herbs meant for my brother.
It had come back.
Heat prickled across my skin, starting at my palms and radiating up my arms. My mind was pulled sideways, into a space that didn’t belong to me.
A damp stone cave, low-ceilinged, smelling of wet clay and minerals. Iron-bitter pain in a hind leg, fading but not gone. A wing that ached. Need for…something it couldn’t define.
And a pull, a come here, seeeeeeee.
The vision lasted only an instant before I snapped back into me. The forest swam in, too bright, too solid.
I gasped, stumbling against the tree. My heart throbbed in my chest, and my palms burned as if I’d thrust them into hot coals.
What was that? The thought had not been mine. The dragon’s? If so, I’d felt what it felt. Seen what it wanted me to see.
My mother had never talked about anything like this. She’d taught me how to calm others, read their bodies, and ease their pain. Not to step inside their minds and live there for a breath.
Overhead, the dragon made a low, rumbling sound. It circled and flew back toward where I stood, swooping lower, its claws extended.
I flinched, and darted behind the tree, but it didn’t land or strike.
It dropped a shed scale the size of a child’s palm, stone-gray with a purple sheen. The scale landed in the mud not far from where I hid behind the tree.
I stared at it, then up at the dragon as it soared past again.
Swamped by the need to touch the scale, I stepped around the tree and grabbed it. I shoved it into my pocket and darted back behind the tree.
The scale was too warm, and if Nuant had been able to smell wild dragon smoke on me before, what would he make of this? What would anyone make of it if they caught me with a wild dragon’s scale in my pocket? I was carrying evidence of a crime I’d already nearly been caught for.
I was a fool, but I couldn’t make myself throw it away.
The dragon flew overhead again, its gaze meeting mine, before it wheeled away, climbing toward the sky.
The thunder of hoofbeats rang out.
Too close.
Harness leather creaked. Men’s voices echoed in the woods.
I dropped flat to the ground, roots gouging into my ribs, the scale in my pocket pressing hot against my hip.
My breathing came too fast.
I bit down on my tongue.
The scale burned like it was trying to give me away.