Chapter 15 Valenna
Chapter fifteen
Valenna
The rain fell in sheets, and lightning reflected in the puddled cobblestone street.
Hera waited in the stable, munching hay with her two small heads, her larger center head tearing apart a dead sheep.
When Valenna and Evander entered, the left and right heads dropped their hay and affectionately jabbed their noses into Evander’s chest. The middle head maintained a dignified distance, offering a polite snort.
Valenna’s dragon was anxious and puffing, curled in a corner of the stall. Valenna managed to coax her into the stable doorway before the dragon dug in her claws.
“She doesn’t like storms,” Evander said.
Valenna frowned. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
Evander led Hera past her and climbed onto her back. “Hera can carry us both.”
“I can manage,” Valenna replied, soothing the frightened dragon. She deftly slipped the bridle over its head, avoiding its snapping teeth.
Evander flinched as the dragon’s teeth snagged on Valenna’s sleeve. “Val, just ride Hera with me.”
“I’ve ridden dragons to battle, Van. Even you haven’t done that. I can manage.”
“I’ll be anxious she’ll throw you the whole journey. Humor me.”
A crack of thunder startled the dragon and she reared, yanking Valenna forward. Valenna’s heels scraped across the straw, and she almost fell headlong, but awkwardly regained her balance. She glanced sheepishly at Evander, who was watching her with a faint smirk.
“Fine.” She sighed. “But only because I don’t want to waste any more time.”
Hera was so tall, Valenna had to climb onto a stall door to reach Evander’s hand. She grasped it, and he swung her up in front of him. As she settled onto Hera, she snatched the reins from his fingers.
“I can guide us, thank you very much,” she said. “You hold onto me.”
Evander’s mouth quirked. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and his hands closed around her waist. She drew a sharp breath, realizing this was more intimate than before. But his hands were warm and strong, and she felt safe between them.
This was what drew her to him again and again, no matter how hard she tried to dodge. He was the single person in the three kingdoms who made her feel safe.
The weather worsened as they rode, and the plodding hydra slipped on the muddy grass, grumbling.
After her third near fall, her left head turned and glared at Evander until he clicked at her and pushed her nose away.
Spidery fingers of lightning lit the sky.
Valenna shivered, her coat soaked through, and Evander wrapped his arms around her and pressed his chest against her back, their bodies sharing warmth.
Gradually, his head dropped onto her shoulder, and his breathing grew even and slow.
Somehow, despite the rain and the thunder, he had sagged asleep.
Valenna leaned her ear against the top of his head, and her heart swelled.
They were slipping into their old familiarity as his curated coldness thawed.
She realized now that the ache for him would never leave her, only fade like a broken wrist stops throbbing until you flex it again.
Valenna scolded herself. She was a warrior, a princess, a survivor—she could get over Evander Trevelyan.
Evander’s arms tightened around her, and she glanced down at him. His eyelashes were soft against his high cheekbones, and she could make out the shadow of freckles across his nose. He was beautiful and familiar, and he felt like hers, even though he wasn’t and he couldn’t be again.
Oh dear.
Who was she fooling? Get over him? He was Evander. Her Evander. All her cherished dreams of overthrowing kingdoms and finding lost loved ones dissipated the instant she looked into his solemn eyes.
Hera slipped in the mud, then found her feet with an indignant chuff. Evander stirred.
“I think we’re here,” Valenna said, pulling Hera to a stop.
A line of grim, scraggy forest stretched before them, so tangled in underbrush that she couldn’t see through the trees.
Evander stretched and slid off Hera, and Valenna followed him before he had time to help her down.
Still, he caught her hand as she landed.
They were chest to chest again, and her traitorous eyes found his.
He gazed at her, his brow furrowed and his jaw tense, the rain dripping out of his hair and off his chin.
For the second time that night, she was struck breathless with the intense desire to step up on her tiptoes and kiss him under the wild, raging sky.
Lightning cracked, white-bright and blinding, and they broke apart.
“In we go,” Evander murmured, taking a heavy cutlass from the pack on Hera’s back and cutting the first tangle of underbrush.
“Do you normally bring that with you?” Valenna asked. He carried bags of oats and strangely woven nets, and today, he had a jar tucked into his shearling-lined leather coat that strobed an algae green, but she’d never seen him with a cutlass.
“I thought I might, just this once,” Evander said as he chopped at a mess of gnarled briars, “with you along. I didn’t make an oath not to harm highwaymen … or Haldir, if pressed.”
Valenna watched him chop away the brush with growing suspicion.
Evander handled the cutlass with a little too much ease for a simple country boy from nowhere.
If he’d flourished it more, tried to show off, she would have assumed he’d made a hobby of swinging one around as boys often do, but he was trying to act clumsy.
Like a skilled singer can’t hum out of tune, he didn’t appear to know what an awkward swordsman looked like.
She wondered again if he had been some kind of mercenary in his past. Much as she goaded him, she was fairly certain he had been to war.
He knew too much about dreadnoughts for her to believe otherwise, and in the past, she’d glimpsed strange scars on his arms and chest. He passed them off as dragon training scars, but she recognized the difference between a tooth or claw mark and a laceration made by a sword or a scattershot pellet.
A few steps in, Evander paused. A flash of lightning lit a round clearing where the underbrush had been trimmed away as though by hedge clippers.
In the center of the clearing stood a single gnarled tree, bent and folded over upon itself, like an animal that had died standing up and then sagged over.
“This looks perfectly natural,” Evander said wryly. “Nothing sinister at all about that tree.”
Their knuckles brushed, and Valenna twined her fingers in his. “Why don’t you have a closer look, then?”
He made to take a step into the clearing, but Valenna pulled him back. “I was being facetious! Are you crazy?”
He raised one eyebrow. “Absolutely. Are you just realizing this now?”
With that, Evander took the jar of green light from his jacket and held it aloft. It was crawling with bioluminescent caterpillars and lit the ground around his feet.
“Vander,” Valenna hissed, “be careful!”
He shrugged and crept past the strange tree. Exasperated, Valenna followed, her skin pricking. She kept darting looks behind her, half expecting some clawed monster to jump at them.
Evander stopped and crouched down. Valenna peered over his shoulder and drew a startled breath.
In a coagulated mess on the forest floor shone a puddle of blood and shredded entrails.
Evander let out a pained groan as he lifted a scrap of leathery wing from the gore.
Nothing else remained of the lost dragon.
“Poor baby,” he said.
“What could have done that?” Valenna whispered.
A rustling sound sent an electric shock through Valenna, and she looked over her shoulder toward the stump in the center of the clearing.
It was still, the forest silent except for the hum of rain, but the hair on the nape of her neck prickled, and she had the eerie sensation that someone was watching her.
Evander smoothed the wing in his hands, shaking his head. Knowing how deeply this saddened him, Valenna squeezed his shoulder.
“What kind of dragon would you say this was?” he asked at length.
Valenna took the piece of wing from him. It was cold and sticky, and as soon as she picked it up, she wanted to toss it away in disgust. “From the thickness, I think it might be a wyvern.”
Evander inhaled sharply.
“What?” Valenna demanded, spooked by the shadows, the storm, the eerie stump.
“A wyvern,” he said, gazing blankly past her.
“Yes, but I thought they were extinct.”
“Maybe they have a breeding pair at the Cobblepine. And if they do, that means …”
Something crackled in the forest, and Evander spun around, holding his cutlass aloft and attempting to push Valenna behind him, but Valenna was drawing her own dagger and trying to push him behind her, resulting in the two of them shoving each other to no effect.
Another bolt of lightning lit the forest and revealed Haldir stumbling through the trees to their left, dripping wet and unsteady on his feet.
“We need to decide who protects who,” Evander whispered to Valenna. “If he’d been a highwayman, he could have shot us both.”
Haldir reached them, his face flushed and his nose swollen.
“I see how it is, Trevelyan! You came out here meaning to impress her and secure your place as dragon master, and leave me behind! You’ve been in bed with her this whole time, haven’t you?
How long have you two been shagging behind our backs? ”
“No one has been doing anything behind your back, Haldir,” Evander said wearily. “You’re just a drunk.”
“Admit you’ve been sleeping together!” Haldir spat. “Admit it, or I’ll tell the master dracologist.”
“We haven’t …” Evander began.
“ADMIT IT!” Haldir pulled a single-shot shotfire from his belt.
“What are you doing?” Valenna cried. “Put that away!”
“You’re drunk,” Evander said, unfazed.
Haldir loomed like a mountain against the flashing sky. “I’ll have you both disgraced!”
Bracing, Valenna moved her hand to her dagger, preparing to lash out and cut the shotfire from Haldir’s grip.
Haldir lurched toward them, his eyes red-rimmed, his teeth bared.
In a flash, Evander shoved Valenna to the side, and she crashed into the underbrush, her clothing and hair snagging on thorns as Haldir lunged at Evander.
He was so huge, he carried Evander off his feet and slammed him into the ground.
Valenna scrambled up, disentangling her clothes from the bushes, and rushed into the clearing.
Haldir was straddling Evander, pinning him down.
Evander shifted, pushed both hands into Haldir’s hip, crooked his leg around Haldir’s, and forced his knee up.
The bigger man grunted, and his body lifted enough for Evander to brace his hands in his armpit and twist out from under him.
Then Evander jammed his elbow between his shoulder blades.
With a furious shriek, Haldir fell, and Evander stumbled to his feet but, with surprising agility, Haldir jumped after Evander, grabbing his shoulders in his bearish hands.
Valenna gasped as Haldir crooked his elbow around Evander’s throat.
His mouth tight, Evander bent forward, twisted sideways, and leveraged his bodyweight to pull Haldir off balance.
Then he slipped out of his grip and flipped the bigger man onto his back, but Haldir held onto Evander’s arm and wrenched him to his knees.
As Evander reached for his cutlass, Haldir cracked his elbow into his jaw, and Evander reeled and fell.
Haldir was upon him in an instant, his hands around Evander’s throat, squeezing.
Her knife drawn, Valenna danced around them, afraid that if she intervened in the darkness and chaos, she might accidentally hurt Evander.
Before she found an opening, lightning sliced the night sky and sparks burst from a tree not ten paces away.
The flash blinded her, and Valenna ducked, her vision a dance of sparking light.
The hunched stump in the center of the clearing reared up like a great bird lifting its head … and growled.