Chapter 30 #2
The final excursion to collect the rest of Ehrun’s army had Madan and Brutis flying to the southernmost reaches of the Keonis Valley in the middle of a snowstorm.
Had the winds decided to pick up their pace anymore, they would have been forced to land in the middle of nowhere and wait it out.
As it were, the dragons could see just fine.
Whelan rode with Madan on Brutis while Ehrun and Sehrox led the way and Sasja flew atop Oria after some minor instruction on how to keep her seat while soaring through the sky.
Snow billowed past Brutis’s head as they wove through the dark ravines at a slower pace than was typical.
Madan leaned against Whelan’s chest, soaking in the warmth provided by his dhemon blood and not at all looking forward to the moment they would be forced to dismount and address the last of the army.
More than his reservation around meeting the dhemons, Madan wanted out of the sky before the storm turned into a blizzard.
“This is miserable,” he said, tucking the shared cloak around his chest a little more.
Brutis sent back nothing but pure annoyance. After all, it was he who was diving head-first into the snow.
“Not much longer,” Ehrun promised. “I left them close to the southern river.”
At that, Sehrox swung a little farther west in search of the river.
There were few things that Madan found quite as fascinating as dragons’ memories.
They always remembered where to go, even when their riders failed to do so, and had the uncanny ability to recall specific moments with the most keen detail—Razer most of all.
How often he was able to taunt Azriel with horrific or embarrassing moments from his past was truly noteworthy.
“How many dragons should we expect there?” Whelan asked. While they’d been keeping track of whom they’d collected and killed in their battle weeks ago, there was always room for uncertainty when it came with Ehrun.
“Just one.” Ehrun sent an image of a large silver dragon with emerald eyes. “Unless Fasj or Rekses…”
The outcome of the teal and violet dragons had never been reported back to Madan.
He’d been too focused on ensuring his brother wasn’t brutally killed in one of his own foolhardy attempts to soothe his bond that he never inquired after those whose riders they’d killed.
If there was one thing for certain, Thorill and Arthin were both dead.
“Do you know anything about that?” Oria asked Sehrox, prodding the bronze dragon with curiosity.
To Madan’s ever-growing surprise, Sehrox did not snap back.
In fact, he remained uncharacteristically calm.
If it had anything to do with his bondheart’s clarity after the ritual, Madan didn’t ask.
He knew Sehrox well enough to not push him.
There would only be so much that Brutis and Oria could do if the bronze dragon decided to make him a midnight snack.
Sehrox responded with the mental equivalent to a shrug. “I was a bit busy after you all left me.”
Indeed, he had been preoccupied when the Valenul soldiers had found him. A strange guilt curled in Madan’s gut at the thought—something he never thought he’d feel when it came to Sehrox.
“So there could potentially be two rogue dragons out there without bondhearts?” Brutis asked with a splash of discomfort lacing his words.
Sending back a sting of annoyance, Sehrox said, “That is not my responsibility.”
“We can discuss how to find them later,” Ehrun suggested. “We’ve arrived.”
The three dragons circled together like vultures over the encampment hidden below the swirls of snow as they descended.
They landed along a ridge overlooking the tents propped up by the dhemons and the singular silver dragon curled at the center, now picking up her head to look at them with distrust.
“Nhosja,” Sehrox crooned, his voice gentler than Madan had ever heard it before. What that meant in terms of the bronze and silver dragons’ relationship was none of his business, yet he wanted to know more. He always wanted to know more.
“Why are you with them?” Nhosja asked as her bondheart, Vhox, ducked out from her tent to stand beside the great mass of silver. “Traitors.”
Not to Madan’s surprise, Sehrox cast them a woeful glare. “It is…complicated.”
“Come down here, Ehrun,” said Vhox, “and explain why you haven’t killed them yet.”
This did not bode well for their meeting.
If anything, it was as though Ehrun had purposefully planned to make each one of their stops to gather the army more and more difficult.
It should’ve been a sign when it was all too simple to convince the first encampment of dhemons to fall under Azriel’s banner.
The second had only come around thanks to Sasja.
Now they faced off with the one dhemon Madan was certain would rather put a dagger through her own gut than even look at Azriel again.
Silently, however, Sehrox pushed off from the ridge and glided carefully down into the ravine where Ehrun dropped the extra distance to prevent the dragon from needing to land. He landed on bent knees in the snow before standing straight to face Vhox.
Not wanting to miss out on the exchanges—particularly as the dhemon woman hooked a finger around the collar on Ehrun’s neck and yanked—Brutis took the same path down so Madan and Whelan could follow Ehrun into the middle of the hostile camp.
Sasja did not ask Oria to follow, choosing to stay on the ledge and watch from a distance.
Wise, perhaps, since she would likely have a difficult time mounting the dragon again once it was time to leave.
And that’s assuming they weren’t butchered where they stood.
“—expect us to join that half-breed?” Vhox was saying in the dhemon tongue as Madan approached, wrapping his cloak tighter around himself now that he was not pressed up against Whelan’s warm body.
She turned her glowing red eyes on him and scowled.
“And you brought this filth with you? He should have been drowned as a child the moment he arrived at the Castle.”
It wasn’t the first time Madan heard someone say something of the sort.
The insults rolled off him after centuries of hearing it, though he was secretly glad his elder brother wasn’t in earshot.
While Azriel would’ve shrugged off the half-breed comment, the same couldn’t be said about anyone mistreating Madan.
It was enough of a hassle to whip out his arm fast enough to catch Whelan before he could charge forward in defense.
“What have you become?” Vhox sneered as she looked back at Ehrun. “A slave to these imposters?”
By this point, other dhemons had begun creeping out from their tents. They blinked through the snow, red eyes glowing as they watched the interaction using their thermal vision rather than attempting to decipher everything amongst a wash of white.
“I have been reunited with Rhana,” he said with an eerie calm. “And it’s all thanks to them.”
A moment of hesitation, then Vhox shook her head. “Impossible.”
For the first time since they found Sehrox, Ehrun shared the memory of those moments on the shore of Lake Cypher.
Madan watched as, from the other dhemon’s perspective, Phulan prepared the ink with the help of the high fae.
He felt the surge of hot fury as he was dragged forward, and the mage struck him with the ink all at once.
No words accompanied the memory. Perhaps it was too muddled from Ehrun’s lack of retention at the time, but despite Luce’s mouth moving as she spoke, the words of the ritual remained forgotten by him.
Then, all at once, everything went black. Ehrun stopped struggling as he felt the familiar, soothing touch of the one who had been a balm to his soul for so long. Despite not seeing her at all, Rhana’s presence was undeniable. Calm. A salve to the many wounds he’d afflicted upon himself.
Ehrun cut off the memory abruptly. What he hid from them, Madan didn’t know, and, for once, he didn’t care.
There was too much pain in Ehrun’s past to be shared.
Too much that the dhemon’s bond had hidden from him since Rhana’s death.
No one needed to hear or see or, worse still, feel the destruction he caused inside himself and to the world around him.
Madan had watched the dhemon overcome it in real time after the ritual had finished.
“And what?” Vhox snapped. “You think that just because you’re connected to Rhana again that you no longer hate what those leeches did to her? To Thavii?”
“Watch your mouth,” Whelan snarled, leaning into Madan’s still-outstretched arm to bring his bared teeth closer to the woman.
But Vhox didn’t flinch. She turned to him and scoffed. “Don’t speak to me as though you aren’t one of the worst traitors of your kind, fang fucker.”
“Perhaps this was a mistake,” Ehrun said with a shake of his head. “You’ll never see reason.”
“Reason.” Vhox lifted her lip in a sneer. “You are the one who taught me reason.”
A murmur of agreement from the dhemons as they crept closer, muffled by the snow.
Madan knew just what level of reason she referred to, and it was the same that he’d fed to all of his followers.
To them, it was reasonable to take an eye for an eye and spill the blood of vampires to satiate their own need for revenge.
It was the same reason that he’d once felt as he was raised by the Crowe to hate his own people.
With his earliest memories including Markus murdering his mother, Madan never questioned it until he and Azriel went to live amongst the vampires.
“You were taught the reasoning of a madman.” Ehrun signaled to the dragons above with his mind. “If you choose to continue to follow what I said before without listening now, then you are lost to us and to Keon.”
Vhox laughed heartlessly. “Keon wants them dead.”