Fifty Two #2
“Alara!” I turn to the sound, the voice penetrating through it all.
The one I need the most.
Rohan.
Rohan, make it stop.
I look for him frantically, trying to pinpoint where he is. Then I spot him in the fray, bloody axe in hand as he heads toward me.
“R-Rohan…” I stutter, making my way toward him past Agnar’s dead body…
But something is wrong.
He’s angry, yes, furious even, but more than that…
He looks… scared.
“Rohan?”
Movement over his shoulders catches my eye, there are guards at his back, weapons ready and coming for him.
But he’s not looking at them, he’s looking at me.
“Rohan, watch out!” I scream, but he doesn’t look, he’s focused on me.
No, not on me.
But the man I didn’t see coming at me from the side until now.
His face is twisted into a snarl, mask broken, face bloodied, but I know who it is.
The red cloth on his arm gives him away.
The sneer curling his lips is familiar.
Karag.
“Alara!” Rohan shouts, and I freeze. Karag reaches me, his own blade held high and… this is it.
After everything, this is how I end.
Right here on the bloodied sand, not being able to do one single thing to help—to save them, to save him.
My vision blurs, and I try to move back, but my feet won’t cooperate. Karag growls, swinging his blade down.
Then he just… stops.
His eyes widen as his body jolts, a choked sound coming from him. A patch of red spreads across his chest. It’s small at first, growing larger as he chokes, blood coming from his mouth.
And then, like time has slowed down, he drops to the bloodied sand.
I stare down at him in shock, at the axe embedded in his back in disbelief.
Then my head snaps up, my eyes locking with Rohan’s.
To the somewhat fifteen men coming for him.
He knows they’re there too. I can see it in his face, the tightness of his jaw. And yet he lifted his axe, his sole weapon, and threw it straight at the one who was inches from hurting me.
Relief enters his eyes for a moment, at the knowledge I’m okay, that he made it in time, but then he goes down, the men descending on him.
I cry out, stumbling over Karag, and Drogonah roars, the other dragons echoing it.
I’m hit from the side.
I scream as hands grab me, watching where Rohan just was.
“That’s the end of the round!” The king shouts over the buzzing in my head. “Still!” he commands, and when the fighting continues, Nighturn arrows begin to rain down.
Dragorie cry out as they’re hit, their bodies dropping, then the dragons are next. Some roar, trying to resist but the Nighturn is too strong.
I break free of a hand, Declan’s, I realize, but he hits me in the face, pinning me there. I pant, face pressed into the sand, tears tracking down my face as my eyes stray to where Rohan should be.
“Now!” the king booms. “This is a wonderful sight.”
I blink slowly, tracking everywhere I can see and all there is… all that I feel… is death.
Dead dragons lay on the sands, others sleeping, their chests rising and falling. The only ones awake and swaying are the bonded dragons.
I eye Drogonah as he growls, and I spot a smaller body below him, laying on his side.
Escor.
I struggle, Declan’s hold on me tightening painfully as I kick out my feet to no avail. He laughs cruelly.
“Such wonder in seeing the Dragorie fight, yes?!” Halen asks. The crowd cheers, some booing at the dead bodies.
“R-Rohan,” I croak out. “Rohan!”
“Seems we’re a Dragonbond down,” Halen muses.
I jolt, and then my eyes go to Karag.
He’s talking about him, isn’t he?
He has to be.
Rohan’s not…
“I wonder if another is lost? Hmm?” The king jokes. “Off him.”
The guards where I last saw Rohan move, stand, and I whimper when I see him on the ground on his side, a pool of blood surrounding him.
He doesn’t move, not a twitch.
“Rohan!” I shout, or try to.
Droganah lunges, roaring, but his legs buckle, coming down with a crash, barely avoiding Escor.
I hack and cough into the sand, throat dry.
“Rohan!” I scream at his unmoving body, as I desperately try to get Declan to release me.
“Keep fucking still,” Declan growls, grabbing my hair and yanking my head back.
“Get off me!” I scream, cry, kick. “Get off!”
A cough, a small one, reaches my ears and I still.
My eyes are glued to Rohan and I see it, a twitch of his fingers.
I sob, watching, never once looking away. Drogonah rumbles, trying to make his way to him.
Rohan coughs again, and I hold my breath. The crowd is silent now, all looking down at Rohan.
Then his bloody face turns, searching, until his eyes land on mine.
He growls, the sound raising the hairs on the back of my neck.
Blood seeps from his side as he rolls over to his stomach, palms flat on the ground. Then he pushes up, arms shaking with the effort of holding his weight, eyes still locked with mine.
He’s trying to get to me, I realize, and that makes me cry harder.
“Rohan.”
“I’m… here.” He coughs around the words, his hands slipping and he falls back to the ground with a grunt.
But that doesn’t stop him, because he starts to crawl.
The leader of clan Blackscale, rider of Drogonah.
My Dragonbond.
My Rohan, starts to crawl to me.
His fingers dig into the sand, grunting as he heaves himself forward a little at a time.
I thrash against Declan’s grip more, wanting to go to him, needing to go to him. I cry out when my face is smashed to the ground.
Rohan growls again, still crawling, still slipping in his own blood.
“Get… away… from her.”
“What do we have here?” the king taunts, and my blood turns to ice. “What a pathetic display. A mighty Dragonbond crawling through the blood of his own people.”
Movement catches my eye, and I turn to see Drogonah twitching like he’s fighting the Nighturn to try and get to Rohan.
“No,” the king says, sending arrows down at their feet in warning. “We will watch.”
“Get. Off her.” Rohan says, his breathing too fast, losing too much blood.
Declan laughs, pressing me down harder.
The crowd murmurs and whispers, and I look at the royal section, to my sister who has her hands on the half wall, her face looking pained. Alexandar at her side, gripping her arm.
“Alara…”
My head turns back to Rohan, who’s still crawling to me.
“Come to me.”
I choke on a sob and struggle harder against Declan’s hold.
I want to go to him more than anything, but I’m not strong enough to get him off of me.
Then I feel something hard digging into my hip.
The blade.
I reach down with a hand, trying to get to it.
Rohan still stares at me, still crawling slowly across the sand to me. Declan raises my head and smashes it back down. Blood spills from my lip as I bite down hard so I don’t cry out.
But Rohan notices, he always notices.
“Get away… from… her.”
He may be bloodied, he may be crawling, but the death in his tone rings true.
But Declan laughs. “Or what?”
I’m dragged up, my knees nearly buckling and I thrash harder, shouting when more hands grab me, pulling me further away from Rohan.
“Come and get her.” Declan taunts. “If you can.”
I grab the knife, my fingers finally grasping the hilt and I pull it out from my side, cutting myself in the process. I stab blindly backwards, hearing a pained grunt.
“Get away from me!” I kick out, but a punch to the face has my head snapping to the side, my vision doubling.
Drogonah roars.
I’m let go suddenly, and I stumble forward heading straight for Rohan.
He tries to crawl faster when I trip, but I right myself. Heart in my throat, breathing ragged, I run as fast as I can.
“Rohan—Argh.” I’m snatched by my hair and dragged backwards, landing in the sand.
They all laugh, the crowd laughs.
The king laughs.
They’re playing with me.
“I will kill you when I get to you!” Rohan says, and they laugh more.
“If you may, Declan,” Halen says.
“Of course, my king.”
I have no idea what he means by that, but then I feel it, a sharp pain in my side.
It takes my breath away, my lungs freezing as agony suddenly spreads through me.
I blink lazily, and then I look down at the red blooming there.
“You don’t seem to take my threats seriously, Dragonbond,” Halen says.
A sword pierces me, and it continues to go deeper.
I grab for his hand on the sword. Rohan roars, Drogonah roars, as I try to push Declan away. But he pushes in even deeper, and I sob, hands going to the wound, my hands slicing open on the blade.
“You think you can conspire against me and I won’t know?” The king continues. “How na?ve of you.”
Nausea rises, my breath stuttering in my lungs, and then Declan pulls the sword out.
The Enclave tilts for a moment and then I’m falling to the ground, my body hitting it hard.
I gasp into the sand, hands going to the wound, the warmth of my blood seeping through my fingers.
“I warned you Rohan, leader of clan Blackscale, what would happen if you were to deceive me,” Halen says smugly. “But it seems you didn’t listen, and now all of you will die here, and you will watch that elf you seem to love so much die while you bleed.”
The guards laugh behind me, the crowd cheering. The sound starts to feel like I’m underwater, my eyelids becoming heavy, as my heartbeat slows.
My eyes search for Rohan, face down in the sand.
He’s still, so very still, a single arrow piercing his back.
So still that for a moment, I think he’s dead as my vision darkens at the edges, my heart stuttering a beat.
But then, my chest heats, more than ever before, more than I can take. I gasp for air that burns its way down my throat and into my lungs.
But Rohan… Rohan rises in my blurry vision.
It’s slow, painful, and his skin… it… steams.
Like a mist flowing over him.
He gets to his feet, head down, fists clenched, his Dragonbond mask still in place yet cracked, and I feel… hot.
The air feels hot.
Thick.
Like a volcano ready to explode.
And when my eyes begin to close, unable to keep them open any longer, Rohan lifts his head, purple eyes locking with mine, and everything burns.