They traveled from the city in quick order. No one stopping them as they took streets and turns she wouldn’t be able to recall any other day.
The sun was just barely rising on the horizon as they passed the final gate and left the great sandstone walls guarding the citadel and its people from whatever creatures still managed to survive in the great desert beyond its boundaries.
Sand became a sea of its own unending waves before her.
The markers her mother had followed into the city were nowhere in sight.
Her hands tightened on the pommel horn.
If she lost sight of the prince in his equally austere black robes, she would be lost in the desert and live only long enough to wonder if remaining in the city would have proved a more merciful fate than trying to flee.
It seemed like forever before they slowed to a stop at the bottom of a dune, great walls of sand rising on either side of them to cage them between the uncertainty of the desert.
“The sun is high overhead now. No one will risk following so late into the day. We will have some time to rest and recover before we move again.”
“The horses need water.” As do we.
The prince nodded and dismounted.
Ven did not mean to smile at his obvious discomfort at having been in the saddle so long. She would look the same when she swung her leg over the side of her horse and slid to the ground in companionship to the man, but still, to know she was not alone in her suffering was somewhat of a relief.
It put the prince on the same level as her, relieved some of her suspicion.
He did not offer her assistance as she dismounted and waddled away from her animal. His hands were busy removing the saddle and bags from his horse, too busy to aid her in doing the same for her beasty.
They worked in silence, the sun beating down from overhead.
Ven pushed back the hood of her veil and opened the front of her jacket for what little relief from the heat she could find. No wonder the top was truly no more than a breast wrap. This far into the middle of the desert, the heat could not be born with much more clothing. At least her trousers seemed airy enough, moving with the breeze, failing to stick to her sweaty thighs despite the temperature.
She missed the sea breeze.
She missed her home.
She missed her mother.
“A sand storm is coming. We’ll wait it out and hopefully the sky will be light enough to continue a little further before full nightfall.”
For a prince, he was surprisingly adept at erecting the cloth tent he pulled form his saddlebag.
They climbed into the space together, pulled their mounts’ heads in at either side of the opening to protect them from the sand as well.
The first gust of wind had the horses whinnying, but she emulated the male’s movements and called to her steed and they sat in silence waiting for the storm to end.
“And we feared the rains and snows of the dragon over the harsh winds of the sand.”
Her lips quirked at his tone, the exaggerated sarcasm of his words.
The intent behind them one she’d thought often enough on her own.
“Perhaps the floods and the snows were worse to weather than a sandstorm. I have never known the winds to wail for longer than a few hours before travelling further away across the sands to affect someone else.”
“No, but I have never known the sands to offer life, other than to the venomous creatures that crawl and skitter through its granules.”
She didn’t need to be reminded of the scorpions and spiders that crawled up through the ground to sting at those unaware of them up above.
The insects were not her most favorite of creatures to encounter in the desert.
They did provide a tasty enough repast, when caught and prepared with care.
“Why did you spirit me away? Your father will surely kill you for the deed if he wanted me dead as you say he did.”
The phai stroked his palm over his horse’s cheek, hummed softly to his mount. “I did what I had to do. What my father does in turn is nothing more than what he has to do.”
That wasn’t an answer.
At least, it was not something she could unravel to pull an answer from.
“What you did, at the citadel,” he shook his head, his hand stilling its soothing motion, fingers clenching in the horse’s mane, “the dragon…” The prince trailed off, as though unsure of what exactly he was trying to say, not knowing what all it was he wanted to ask or how to ask it.
“I don’t know what I did, my lord. I swear it. Whatever happened at the citadel, however the dragon was formed, the font revealed, I do not know how to do it again. I don’t know how I did it the first time.”
“You are a witch though. Surely you have been trained in the arts of magic?”
Ven snorted, her abrupt sound making her horse jerk in response though he was quickly soothed. “Magic is not a real thing, phai Roaca. Not in the way you would believe it to be. That type of magic is a myth from my ancestor’s time.”
“That myth has become far more than what you would claim it to be, djinn.”
“That is not my name.”
“No. It is not. It is a title, same as phai Roaca is a title. A name that holds meaning, but that is not who I am.” His head tipped to the side, and he gazed at her, his eyes as intense as his father’s, as disconcerting in their discernment.
What all did he see when he stared at her?
She was not ensnared as she had been by his father’s regard. “And who is the phai Roaca, then?”
“Who is the blood-djinn sea witch?”
It was a bad habit, to bite her lip when she was concerned or confused. Her mother had always known when she lied because of the act. “No witch. I’m an herbalist, some talent with what few ingredients I have to work with. If it is magic, then there was no teaching of it beyond the mixing of ingredients together for some ailment or other. In the citadel,” she looked down, away from his harrowing gaze, the questions in it. “In the citadel, I do not know. I was in my room, and then I was not. I was in the bathing chambers, and then I was not. So much water, and so many people thirsting. It was a thought, that the water would serve them far more than it did the women and men who used it to bathe.” Ven shrugged, her shoulders rising though she kept her eyes down, not wanting to meet his stare lest he read the partial lie to her words, the dragon whose secret she kept, if it was indeed his secret and not her own.
“Why a dragon’s head?”
She had no answer to that, though it threatened to break the very silence she was trying so desperately to keep. “I don’t know.”
This time, the prince was the one to snort and his horse to flinch with the sound. “A dragon’s head.” A small smile flitted across his face, broke the austere look of his façade, gave him some heart, some small emotion that did not immediately instill terror in her breast or make her want to flee. “I have never seen a dragon but have always longed to. For the beast to rise out of sand and stone to guard a monument my father would have kept hidden forever,” this was no small expression, the grin that split his lips wide. “It was a sight I will treasure for all my life. To see a dragon in truth? Selish! But to have the beast flying free over the land. That would be something else.”
“He would kill us all.”
The prince’s smile dimmed. “He? You would make claim to knowing the creature’s mind?”
Ven forced herself not to react, forced herself to offer a wan smile in response. “The beast has always been belligerent. Was that not why he was forced to the bottom of the sea in the first place?”
“It was a long time ago.”
“And he has been imprisoned for that long. I am not sure I can blame him for his hatred,” she sucked in a breath, looked up and away just as quickly, “if it is hatred and revenge he should feel.”
“Indeed.”
“What of yourself? Who is the phai Roaca?”
“The witch would ask after the prince?
”
She tried not to flinch at his response, to pretend it was just in reaction to the wail of the wind that picked up at just the same moment outside their tent.
“I am just Emery. And my father would have me be so much more.” The soft smile returned to his face. It was his turn to look aside, whether in hidden secrets or because of the red cast to his cheeks, Ven couldn’t say. “A witch with no magic, known for her potions and tonics and spells she doesn’t know how to cast. And a prince who is heir to his father’s kingdom, and too weak in the eyes of the king to rule. I wish I had the power to shift sands into dragon heads.” The phai met her gaze, “Even as he fears you, Havence Ilvanysto, he respects the power you can wield. Would that he would respect his son as much.”
She could hear the bitterness in his tone, the way he looked at her that held more self-loathing than any regard for his feelings towards the witch. “We live in different lime-lights, my lord. Both wishing to step aside, away from the titles that we were born to, to live as we would, be seen as we would by those who look upon us.”
He held her gaze for too long, things shifting in his stare that she could not make sense of, that she could not decipher or determine. Dark things, that she didn’t understand, didn’t know if the emotion was leveled at her or the father that would hunt them both down.
His gaze cleared, the smile he offered a mask, a veil she could not see beyond. It did not put her at ease. “Emery. You may call me Emery, lady witch. Perhaps here in the desert, we can be who we wish, as you say.”
“Ven. I am only Ven.”
“Rest now, Ven. We will need to travel hard once the storm ends if we hope to escape.”
There was no sign of pursuit as the storm cleared and they quickly untangled their belongings to re-saddle the horses and mount for their ride.
“I know a place we can stop for the night. It will offer us a good vantage of the surrounding dunes, unimpeded views of all avenues of approach, and escape should it be needed if my father’s men come for us.”
“They will come?”
“Undoubtedly.” Emery unwound the turban from his head, pulled free the end of the cloth and wrapped it across his mouth and nose, obscuring his face from view. “He will come. It is best all be settled when he does.”
An interesting turn of phrase, but she did not know, as with most of what he said, what to make of it.
She followed his lead and untangled her veil from her hair.
They had stolen a few hours of rest during the worst of the storm, she likely more than him. Her sleep had been troubled with currents and eddies and the mad swirl of sand and sea turning red around her. Golden eyes had chased her. Aqua scales swept up to bar her passage.
Sharp teeth and deadly fangs.
But were they sand viper or sea dragon, she couldn’t say.
Her eyes were gritty and not with the winds.
She pulled her veil across her face and fastened the pin above her ear. The jacket she had discarded while in the humid tent, she donned.
They mounted. And they rode.
He slowed his horse to a gentle walk when the sun began to set along the horizon.
She’d seen it rise from horseback, and now it sank the same.
Watching the sun’s movements here, in the deep desert, was not like it was at home. She missed the colors of the ocean growing bright in the fullness of the dawn, fading away into blackness with the night.
The phai pulled his cask from the saddle bag. He dropped his veil and she watched the muscles of his gullet work as he drank.
If she were honest with herself, he was a handsome enough male.
She had not seen all that many in her life. More since she’d come to the capital than those who had ventured to her mother’s cabin for treatment, and the ones in the citadel had been priests, soldiers, and kings.
Her horse came alongside his.
He handed her his water skin, and she took it readily.
“Only a little further, Ven. There are monuments there, at the top of that rise, that will offer us protection enough. An hour, two at most.”
“The sun will be long gone by then. The footing treacherous for man and beast.”
He grinned. “Do you not trust me yet, my lady? Have I not led you out of your predicament thus far?”
“I trust you as much as you trust me, my lord.”
“True enough.” He did not recover his face before kneeing his steed and setting the beast on its path towards the rise.
Ven bent low over her steed’s neck. “Just a little farther.”
The animal gave no sign that he understood her words, but it heaved a great breath and stepped forward, following its brother’s footsteps in the sand.
Chapter Eighteen
Something was…wrong.
He was a dragon. Dragons lost scales all the time. They shed them, or they battled, and the metal plates were ripped or torn away and discarded to be replaced and regrown. Losing a scale that he’d torn away himself meant little to him, yet he felt it like a physical ache on his chest where he’d peeled the plate from.
Something was wrong.
The scale had already regrown, would never even be noticed as having been lost, but he could feel it now like he hadn’t then. His flesh burned over his chest where he’d peeled the flake from.
It had not burned when she held the piece in her hand or when her blood slid along its shell.
What had changed?
Not even her death should have been enough to damage the metal that protected him, and yet he felt it. Acid that was slowly seeping beneath his skin, poisoning his blood, from a place far from where he laid. The iron taste of old blood filled his mouth. A poison that killed the cells of a body from the inside out, slowly destroying muscle by muscle, blood vessel by blood vessel, moving ever closer to the heart and ultimate demise.
His arm pulsed in remembered pain.
A bite from a viper, when he was still young enough in his form that the snake’s teeth could pierce his hide.
He’d writhed for days in agony. Fire had rained from the skies in response.
It burns…
The scales on his right arm still bore the discoloration, patches of orange and bright red that stood out in stark relief against the blues and blacks and teals of his coloring.
But there were no snakes strong enough to poison him in the sea.
He should not want to claw at his chest in response to the loss of a scale separated from his flesh far distant to him beneath the waves.
Something was wrong, and the girl was too close to it.
Chapter Nineteen
Muscles she had not known existed, ached.
Though she was sore, she managed the task of unrolling her bedding from her saddlebags and laying the lot on the ground beside the small fire he’d built in the shadow of an old wall, long weathered by the sands.
“What is this place?”
“Was. It was a temple built to honor the dragon when he was still a thing to be feared above the seas. There used to be a great dragon’s head atop this wall, much like the one you crafted in the streets of the citadel.” He motioned to the ground beside him, to the blanket he’d laid out, that she should pull it closer to where he sat that they might share the warmth from the fire more readily.
The sands grew cold at night in the open. Her jacket provided little warmth. She shivered, but by his side would be warmer than opposite him.
Ven pulled her bedding closer.
“Rumor has it that this was where the dragon was bound. That he was taken to the top of this hill and Amece cast her spell to seal him beneath the waves here. His blood is said to have begun the killing of the land, even more than the lack of storms and rain. The sand is discolored, and the deeper you dig, the darker it becomes. Some say, if you dig deep enough, it will still be wet.”
The firelight flickered and caught in his golden gaze. The glint of it sent spiders crawling down her spine, an unpleasant enough proposition in it
self.
“A dark place then, for our people to keep as a monument.”
“Not a monument. The dragon’s head is gone. It was destroyed in his binding. I’ve heard it said that Amece was the one to strike it down herself, or that it was the dragon who destroyed his own likeness in his attempt to escape. This is a place of freedom for our people.”
“It’s a place of damnation.”
“What was that?”
She had not meant to whisper the words at all, but they’d slipped past her lips, and she looked to the fire, hoping he would not ask again what she’d said, that he would think it nothing more than the crackling of the dried wood they burned.
“I wonder if the dragon would return to this rock if he was freed. What he would do if he was once more on the land.”
“My mother cautions against such thoughts. He would seek vengeance. Nothing more.”
He nodded, and she closed her eyes when his gaze moved from her face back to the flames. “It is what my father fears most, you see? The return of the dragon. The creature would be, as you said, cross, vengeful. He would kill everyone if he could, his power unstoppable without your grandmother here to corral him. The people would have it so, would have him back and his storms, thinking that they would be spared his great wrath. But you and I, we know better, don’t we? His power is immense. Omnipotent.”
“No. It’s not omnipotent. It’s not unlimited, that’s not the sense of it I have.”
“Sense of it?”
She looked up, not having realized her mistake until he repeated the words back to her.
Not just repeated.
He smiled, and it was the same smile his father had used when he enspelled her in the throne room. There were fangs in his smile, or the shadow of fangs, she couldn’t tell, the curved teeth of a serpent waiting to strike, glistening with venom in the firelight.
“I didn’t mean—”
Emery, the phai, her savior…
He made very clear that he was reaching for something in his breast pocket. His every movement was accounted for, the slow raise of his hands, the disappearance of his fingers into the black of his shirt.
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