Chapter 54 #2
She gasps and jolts out of my hold, knocking papers off the table as she slides away from me. The edge of her sleeve smolders where I gripped it, and beneath it, her skin blossoms red. Not burned, but nearly.
“So the rumors are true,” she whispers, the wary angle of her head betraying her apprehension.
I don’t take her reaction as a sign of weakness. A strong leader acknowledges their fears and faces them head-on.
The smile I give her is savage, self-loathing, and full of hatred. “Yes.”
She stares at me for another moment before she resolutely shakes her head. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t give you the dragon’s hide. You would have to kill me first.” Again, she slips her fingers beneath the pile of papers where I’m certain a weapon lurks. “My people—”
“Don’t need to know.”
Her eyes fly wide. “What?”
“Nobody knows I’m here. Assuming you keep the dragon’s hide well hidden, your people won’t realize it’s missing.”
Ortansia brings both of her hands forward, tapping her thigh with her black-lacquered fingernails. “Will you return it?”
I’m slower to answer this time. “Uncertain.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” She arches her eyebrows at me. “If your power is as volatile as I’ve heard, even a fire dragon’s hide might not protect against it.”
I grit my teeth. “It has to work.”
If a fucking dragon’s hide can’t repel my flames, nothing can.
“Why do you want it?” she asks. “I mean, why now?”
“My reasons are my own.”
My opaque response causes her to glare at me, but she falls silent, no doubt weighing her choices.
I could burn her to ash on a whim. Burn this whole fucking city to the ground.
She well knows it.
“What if I don’t give it to you?”
I harden my voice, letting go of my restraint and allowing my fury to fill my words. “Then I’ll consider you my enemy, and our truce will be over.” I step toward her. “Make no mistake, Ortansia, I’ll raze your city to the ground.”
Her arm moves, a flash of movement, as she sweeps two short blades from beneath the parchments and leaps toward me.
I was moving forward, and now I’m forced to dart backward, but she’s fast, slashing the blades at my chest and arms, her arms moving in a blur as she flips the daggers between her hands, spinning and striking at lightning speed.
Ducking and dodging, I fight hard to quell my fire, my eyes widening when she seems to anticipate my evasive moves, striking directly where I lurch.
One of the blades slices across my forearm, and the heat within my chest threatens to burst outward.
I step into her next slash, snatching hold of each of her arms mid-strike, wrenching her limbs upward, and driving her backward.
Her face pales as I bare my teeth at her. “The only reason you’re still alive is because I want something from you. Give it to me, or I’ll let my fire burn.”
Her chest heaves as she seethes at me. “Surely, you must realize, if my people find out what I’ve done, I have to be able to tell them you forced me!”
I give her a cruel smile, wrenching her arms outward, which pulls her chest dangerously close to mine. “Consider yourself forced.”
She tries to pull away from me, but I hold on for another moment, making my domination clear before I let her go.
At least she’ll be able to speak the truth if she has to justify her choice.
Her face is pale. “I’ll take you to where it’s hidden.”
Without another word, she strides to the wall where her cloak hangs, she scoops it around her shoulders, tugging the cowl up over her mouth and the hood down over her forehead, leaving only her eyes visible before she gestures me to the door.
Quickly pulling up my own facial covering, I follow her through her quarters and step out into the warm night with her, hunching my shoulders and making myself as small as possible as I follow close behind her.
She’s tall, but towering over her will only draw attention to me.
She heads toward the city’s eastern side, slipping along busy streets and keeping to the shadows.
It’s even easier to disappear into the crowd now that the sun has gone down, because the city’s bustling with nightlife.
Laughter spills from nearby inns, along with cheerful music.
The Tol-Dakri may be ferocious, but they know how to enjoy themselves.
When we reach the city’s edge, where the open plain extends that the Tol-Dakri use for combat training, I’m surprised to see half of the area taken up by an encampment.
A small cluster of tents sits near the far wall. It’s difficult to tell for certain at night, but the tents appear to be made of an ochre-colored canvas that would camouflage them from the sky.
“What are those?” I ask Ortansia, keeping my voice low.
“A traveling party. They arrived this afternoon.” Her voice is clipped as she inclines her head toward the men walking freely between the tents and the city. “I gave them permission to camp here for the night.”
Keeping my head low, I study the men, my instincts prickling.
Their clothing is simple. Nothing alarming there. They all wear short beards and, from what I can see when they turn into the light, the color of their skin indicates limited time in the sun. They have the appearance of lowborns. But the absence of a tan is unusual.
“They’re passing through?”
“That’s what their leader said,” Ortansia replies. “A man named Stanimir. That’s him there.”
I follow Ortansia’s gesture to the man with a patch of darker skin on the left side of his neck, who is disappearing down the nearest street.
I don’t miss the daggers he and his comrades carry at their belts, one each, but then, that doesn’t mean they’re a threat. Most adults in this city openly carry blades of some sort.
Even though I can’t shake the prickling at the back of my neck, I move on, focusing on the task at hand.
Ortansia’s movements become furtive, her backward glances more alert before she heads toward the edge of the cliff located furthest from the city, close to the inside of the eastern wall.
The closer we get to the cliff, the more my ears fill with the roar of waves crashing against rocks, making it difficult to hear Ortansia’s low murmur.
“Don’t react,” she says. “Follow me.” Then, “Be sure to bend your knees.”
At that, she steps backward, right off the cliff’s edge, and plunges out of sight.
I clamp down on my surprise before I mimic her movements.
A long drop and then my feet thud onto a narrow ledge, the next wave roaring toward me before it diminishes enough that only its tip crashes into the ledge, tugging at my feet before it pulls backward.
A narrow cave mouth looms in front of me, surrounded entirely by jutting rock. Even from the sky, I wouldn’t see it, not unless I flew low enough to hover directly opposite it.
Ortansia disappears into the gloom ahead of me, the opening only wide enough to walk single-file.
Her voice floats back to me in the dark, and I make out a firebrand on the wall at the cave’s mouth. “Help me out?”
Reaching the firebrand’s location, I tap my forefinger to it, setting it alight, once more praying my fire doesn’t burn out of my control.
Now visible, the cave’s interior is simple and shallow. If I somehow stumbled onto it by accident, I wouldn’t think there was anything special about it.
Ortansia reaches the uneven back wall and uses the heel of her palm to press on a particular knob of jutting rock, at which the stone grinds apart.
She steps into a smaller cavity, and I catch sight of a wooden table that fills the cavity from side to side before she pulls its treasure into her arms.
A rare single piece of dragon skin that’s so large, it’s a mountain in her arms.
I try to quell my hope, but it rises like the crashing waves outside this cave.
Reverently, Ortansia unfolds the dragon’s hide, letting it fall to the floor on either side of her arms as she reveals its scales, the same color as the sand dunes.
“This is everything to my people,” she says, her whisper nearly drowned by the crashing waves outside the cave, a constant roar. “How can I part with it?”
I hesitate to touch it.
This priceless hope.
I exhale slowly, making her a promise I’m not sure if I can keep. “If I can bring it back, I will.”
The day I can control my fire.
The day the curse is broken.
I reach for the hide, preparing to take it from her, when a glint of metal flashes at the corner of my eye.
In a heartbeat, I spin, registering the blade shooting toward me and the male figure crouched in the cave’s entrance.
The roaring waves must have muffled his approach.
My fire rushes to my hands, and all I have time for is a shout. “Ortansia! Get down!”
Flames pour from my palms, filling the air in front of me, lighting up my attacker’s features.
I make out his short beard, sallow skin, and faded, blue eyes.
He doesn’t try to run, remaining crouched, his palms together as if he’s praying to whatever goddess he worships.
A heartbeat later, fire consumes every inch of the space around him, and he is no more.
I clamp my hands closed, scrunching them into fists, desperately trying to rein in my power, to calm it, horribly aware that my shirt is burned and that means fire exploded from my torso, which means…
Spinning to Ortansia to check on her, I find myself staring at a mound of dragon scales. I hope this means she darted beneath the hide in time to escape my flames.
I let out my held breath when her muffled voice sounds from beneath it. “Is it safe to come out?”
“Wait a moment,” I reply, quickly assessing the heat in the rocks around her. Much cooler than the ground between me and my would-be attacker, so it should be safe enough.
I’m about to tell her to come out when my focus catches on a piece of wood lying near my feet.
What…?
I bend to it, scooping it up from the hot rock, only to freeze.
It looks like the wooden hilt of the man’s dagger. Smeared with melted steel but otherwise completely intact.
But…how is that possible?
How the fuck did I melt the steel blade and not burn the wooden hilt?
For another moment, I remain frozen, trying to find logic in a piece of unburned wood, but Ortansia begins stirring behind me.
Quickly, I slip the hilt into my pants pocket, concealing it before Ortansia peeks out from behind the hide, gripping its edge as if she’s uncertain if she’ll need to quickly seek shelter beneath it again.
“Well.” She clears her throat as she pulls the covering back further. “Now you know the dragon’s hide works.”
Not a single scorch mark blemishes the hide’s surface. Or Ortansia’s body. As she rises to her feet, still gripping the hide, she shakes her head. “That was one of the travelers, wasn’t it?”
I nod.
With a quick exhalation, she gathers up the dragon skin and shoves it at me. “Take it and go. I have visitors to take care of.”
The dragon’s hide weighs heavy in my arms.
A heavy hope.
Folding up the hide as tightly as I can, I pull it to my chest, where my shirt and cloak are hanging on by threads. At least my pants have remained intact. “I could obliterate them for you?”
“And make it known you’re here?” Ortansia glares at me. “I’m more than capable of taking care of them. Or is it your intention to insult me as well as to rob me?”
All I give her is a shrug. Making my way to the cave’s entrance, I pause, certain I’ll regret it when I say, “If you ever need help, come to me.”
Chances are, she never will.
Her quiet scoff tells me she knows my offer is hollow.
She would be smart to avoid ever coming near me again.
I slip through the narrow entrance, brushing past the now-scorching stone without harm. Ortansia will need to wait for it to cool, which gives me time to whistle for my serpent and wait for him to arrive. I’m confident he’ll stay out of sight on his way to me.
Finally, I allow myself to breathe easily.
I have the dragon’s hide. I can keep the Oracle safe from my power when I seize her.
Even if I burn everything else down.
Despite my hope, an unwelcome uncertainty swirls in my stomach when my hand brushes the dagger’s hilt within my pocket.
What wood doesn’t burn in my fire?