Falthyris loosed another roar—declaring his victory, his dominance, his claim on his female—before pumping his wings. Thick smoke swirled into the air, swept along by the wind he created. Elliya clutched at him as he leapt up and sped back toward their lair.
Echoes of the pain he’d experienced during his transformation coursed through him, but he afforded it little of his attention. He was unconcerned for himself. Her pain was far more pressing, and he sensed it through their mating bond with increasing clarity.
He tightened his hold on her infinitesimally and landed as gently as possible on the slope just outside his lair, catching the edge of the opening with his talons. Falthyris drew his wings in tight and hauled himself into the tunnel. The passage seemed wrong now, too small, too tight, and his body too clumsy. But he pressed on nonetheless, carrying his little mate into the main chamber, where he carefully set her down on their nest. He lit the torches promptly.
The scent of her blood was strong enough that he dared not take more of it upon his tongue.
Elliya sat on the blanket with one hand clamped over her leg. Fresh blood flowed between her fingers to stain the fabric beneath her. Her skin was paler than usual, and she was trembling. Several other cuts on her body oozed blood as well, but none nearly as fast as her leg wound.
She locked her dark, pained eyes on him, studying him with both wonder and uncertainty. “You…are a dragon again.”
Not long ago, he’d wanted nothing more than to return to his natural form. After living for nearly two thousand years, it seemed that a few weeks shouldn’t have made any difference, that his mind should not have been changed so quickly or so drastically. But now he felt strange in his own body. He felt too far away from her.
Falthyris lowered his head, making a low rumbling in his chest. “And you are wounded. How do I help you, Elliya?”
Her brows lowered, and she looked down, seeming to take in the damage done to her body. When she lifted her hand from her leg, it was shaking, and blood gushed from the uncovered bite wounds. She clamped her hand back around her calf. There was another bleeding bite on her other forearm.
“Falthyris, I…I need your fire. I need you to seal the wounds, to stop the bleeding.” She swallowed hard and closed her eyes. “But it is likely already too late.”
“What do you mean it is too late, female?”
“Those were dunehounds. Their bites carry a sickness that can kill within days.” She opened her eyes and met his gaze. “They bit me. My blood is now tainted.”
His heartfire flared, making his pulse race and his lungs tight. His wings twitched, nearly snapping open, and it took a considerable amount of effort to keep his tail from swinging restlessly—the lair was weakened enough after his past struggles against Dragonsbane, and he would only endanger Elliya further by lashing out.
“You will not succumb to this,” he growled. “You are the queen of the Shimmering Peaks. You are my mate.”
She reached out with her wounded arm, hesitated, and laid her hand on his snout. It trembled as she smoothed it over his scales. His nostrils flared; the scent of her blood was even stronger with it so close.
Elliya smiled. The expression was uncharacteristically sad and weak. “I am mortal, Falthyris.”
“You are my mortal, Elliya.”
And I am taking too long to help her.
Falthyris released a huff through his nostrils and shifted his gaze to her wounds. They were so tiny from his current perspective, and her body was so small and delicate. Were he to use his fire now, he would only do more harm than good.
He knew what he needed to do, and it stood within reason that he was capable of it—he’d changed to that human form and back again already. The ability to do so again was somewhere within him.
Gently, he nuzzled her shoulder with his snout before backing away from her. His heartfire blazed, and he turned his focus toward it, knowing the key lay within that ancient flame and the mating bond now woven into it. The first hints of that fiery pain coursed just beneath his scales.
He felt her eyes upon him, and he met her gaze again, letting himself see her—all of her. Her beauty, her strength, her fragility, her pain, her joy, everything. It was astonishing how quickly she’d come to mean the world to him. He had never imagined himself willingly facing even the slightest inconvenience for a mortal’s sake in the past, but he knew now that he would endure any suffering for her.
Whatever form will best serve my mate is the form I must take. That is my natural form.
In his mind’s eye, he sank his talons into his heartfire and tore it open.
Falthyris welcomed the agony as his inner fire swelled. Flames pushed through his scales, building to consume his body, blinding him with pain and light. He gritted his teeth and held still despite that pain; he would not risk his mate by thrashing about.
The change came more swiftly this time, and his awareness of it seemed to be magnified. He felt his old body burn away and crumble to ash, felt the fires coalesce to create his human form, felt the world grow around him. But that mating bond kept him grounded. It remained his tether to the present, his tether to her.
He was on hands and knees when the flames finally went out, and he released a ragged breath that made the smoke surrounding him swirl. Echoes of pain pulsed across his scales and through his bones. He shoved himself onto his feet, pumping his wings to dissipate the smoke, and hurried back to his mate.
As soon as he was near, she cradled his jaw and pressed her lips to his in a desperate kiss. He reached up and grasped her head, his claws tangling in her hair. Thrilling tingles raced outward from those points of contact, and the Red Heat stroked along his spine, rousing his loins. After all that had transpired, he’d have loved to stay like this, kissing her, touching her, loving her, making up for the harsh words he’d spoken. But now was not the time.
Falthyris broke the kiss far too soon and called upon all his willpower to thrust his desire aside. Keeping his hands on her head, he met her gaze. “We need to tend your wounds, Elliya.”
She nodded and lowered her hand. “Grab my bag.”
He nearly hesitated, nearly placed a tender kiss on her forehead, but he did not allow himself to tarry. He rose and strode to her bag, which sat a few paces away, snatched it up, and returned to her in a single bound.
Elliya opened the bag and dug inside, removing her waterskin, a small clay jar covered with a piece of hide, and a stone spearhead. Though her hands were unsteady, her voice was even as she instructed him to rinse the wounds with the water. Each time he did so, she flinched and hissed through her teeth, and he felt a stab in his heart for causing her more pain.
Many of her cuts were shallow, but the bite wound on her arm was slightly more severe, and the ravaged flesh of her calf was still bleeding freely. She cried out when he poured water over the latter wounds, squeezing fistfuls of the blanket hard enough to make her knuckles white. Even with the blood washed away, the flesh around the bite marks was already red and inflamed.
Falthyris had to swallow down the useless urge to kill those beasts again. One death had not been retribution enough.
Picking up the spearhead, Elliya held it out to him. “Heat this. It must be hot enough to burn my flesh. You will need to do this for the bite wounds, and try to damage as little healthy flesh as possible. When you are done”—she pushed the clay jar toward him—“apply this.”
He took the cold shard of sharpened stone between his fingers and dropped it onto his palm. He knew that if he stopped to consider what he was about to do—what it was going to make her feel—his resolve would waver. Even his arrogance could not shield him from that absurd truth. The Scourge of the Sands, once the most feared dragon in the region, barely had the stomach to cause pain to this little human.
Falthyris turned away from her, held his hand out, and unleashed his fire. When he ceased the jet of flames, the spearhead was glowing dull red. He turned back to Elliya.
She had a stick in her m
outh, clamped between her teeth. Her eyes flicked briefly toward the glowing piece of stone before returning to his. She gave him a single nod and lay down, grimacing as she angled her leg so the wounds on her calf were facing him.
Taking the spearhead between forefinger and thumb, Falthyris braced his free hand around her wounds, pinning her leg in place, drew in a deep breath, and lowered the stone to the first of the bloody tears.
The sound of her flesh sizzling beneath the stone was drowned out by her agonized cry, which was barely muffled by the stick in her mouth. Her whole body tensed, and she jerked her leg, but Falthyris held it down firmly. His own body was tense, and he felt flares of her pain through the bond. The scent of her burning skin soured the air. Over his long life, he’d experienced that smell so often—before, it had been the scent of victory. Of superiority. Now it made his stomach churn.
He longed to stop, to give her time to recover, but they did not have that luxury. He moved on to the next wound and repeated the process. She tried to silence her cries, to breathe through the pain, but it was too much for his mate to contain completely. Her every pained sound left a new scar upon his heart.
Tears were leaking from her eyes and her breath was ragged by the time he finished sealing all the wounds on her calf. When he finished with her arm a short while later, she was shivering, her body coated in a sheen of sweat.
Falthyris’s heartfire was roiling, low but intense, and his heart was racing. He was certain his tail had dug out a wide patch of the sand behind him as he’d worked, result of its ceaseless back and forth motion. He tossed the spearhead aside; it was already forgotten before it hit the sand with a dull thump.
Releasing a growl, he swept loose strands of pale, clinging hair out of his face with one hand and plucked up the little clay jar with the other. He didn’t bother fumbling with the rawhide tie securing the leather lid—he sliced it off with a claw and opened the container.
The pungent odor that spewed from the jar was strong enough to make him pull his head back and wince at the sting in his nose. It obliterated the scents of blood and scorched flesh. He knew by the smell that the jar’s contents were made from some sort of plant, but he could not identify which.
Falthyris shook his head sharply and looked at Elliya, lifting the jar. “You are certain you want this on you, human?”
She turned her watery eyes toward him and nodded. The stick was still in her mouth, but her jaw was slack, and her skin was somehow even paler.
He reached forward and carefully removed the stick, tossing it away. He returned his fingers to her face, caressing her cheek and brushing the corners of her lips. “We are nearly through, Elliya. A little more, and you may rest.”
She turned her face, pressed her forehead into his palm, and closed her eyes. “Do it.”
Falthyris withdrew his hand from her face, dipped a finger into the jar, and removed it with a clump of thick green paste on his fingertip. Using both hands, he divided the clump and smeared it over one of her raw, tender wounds as gently as he could. She hissed, flinching from his touch. When he moved to the next, she pressed her lips together and didn’t make a sound, didn’t move other than to curl her fingers into the blanket.
Clenching his jaw, he worked as quickly and carefully as he could, feeling the constant twinges of pain through their mating bond despite her silence.
After the last of the wounds and scratches were covered, and he’d cleaned all the blood and dirt from her skin, Falthyris lay down beside her and drew her into his arms, tucking her head beneath his chin. Her shivering body felt chilled against his. Extending and raising a wing, he lay it over her like a blanket, curling it protectively around her.
Elliya pressed her hand against his chest. “Thank you for coming for me,” she whispered, her breath warm on his neck.
“I will always come for you,” he replied, overwhelming, indecipherable emotion constricting his throat to make his voice little more than a rumble. “But I will never let you go again.”
She curled against him, her blunt claws lightly raking his chest scales. The placement of her hand produced a deep ache in his heart, a tightness in his lungs, a dryness in his throat. Despite what he’d said to her before she’d left, despite the hurt he’d caused her, she was clinging to him for warmth, for comfort, for strength.
How many centuries had he spent caught up in his pride, absorbed in his own prowess? How had he existed for so long without learning the simple truth that strength came in many forms—and that acknowledging one’s own limitations was not a weakness?
In her own way, Elliya was far stronger than Falthyris could ever be. She had known that her years were numbered, that her death was inevitable, that she was mortal, and she’d fought unwaveringly regardless. And when the odds had fallen so heavily against her, she had set aside her pride and called for Falthyris.
She had called for him.
What dragon would have done that in the face of similar danger? Pride was everything to his kind, and what had that won them? Dragons were as damned as the mortals they had always spurned.
Falthyris shifted his head and pressed his lips to her hair, drawing in a deep breath. Her scent was weak now, buried under the smells of that pungent paste, of blood and smoke, dust and scorched flesh, but he could detect it still, and he focused on it beyond all others.
Slowly, his awareness of her pain faded, and her body eased. He knew by the sound of her breathing that she was asleep. Falthyris held himself still, daring not to disturb her rest. He could only imagine her exhaustion after her ordeal, undoubtedly exasperated by the blood she’d lost.
He closed his eyes, keeping his other senses focused on Elliya as his mind turned toward a new feeling that had taken root after their earlier argument—regret.
What use had a mighty dragon for regret? It had always seemed a thing for the weak, for the insignificant, for those who could not achieve greatness on their own. A thing for mortals. Regret was a sign of failure, the antithesis of an all-powerful being who could’ve shattered mountains and laid waste to the human cities of old had he chosen to do so.
And yet have I not harbored regrets over all these centuries?
Falthyris could no longer lie to himself—regret was not new to him. It was in his guilt regarding his parents and his role in their deaths. His hubris, his ambition, his reckless challenge had exposed his mother and sire that night. The wounds he had inflicted upon his sire had left the elder male in a weakened state. And Falthyris’s efforts—all his prowess, all his rage and might—had not been enough to stop the comet-maddened dragons from slaying his parents.
But that regret, however old and deeply rooted, was miniscule compared to what had become the greatest regret of his life—speaking words in anger that had driven Elliya away and placed her life in immediate danger.
He retained at least a modicum of instinct to shun responsibility for that, to tell himself that she had made the choice to leave of her own accord. To tell himself that he’d not meant those words—that it had been his anger speaking, worsened by weeks of the Red Heat mercilessly beating down upon him. Shouldn’t it have been a point of pride that he’d maintained as much self-control as he had while Dragonsbane was in the sky? What other dragon could boast as much? He had seen his kind worked to bloody frenzies by the comet, had seen them tear into each other like rabid beasts. Had Falthyris’s outburst not been tame in comparison?
His tail lashed restlessly behind him, and it took a considerable amount of willpower to keep from squeezing Elliya tighter.
That he still came up with such justifications for his behavior was sickening. Whatever anger he’d held toward Elliya, however strong it had been, it was long since gone. All that remained was that old bitterness, rage, and arrogance, none of which was her fault. So many of the memories associated with those emotions had long since faded during his years of slumber and Dragonsbane’s intense cycles.
And yet the Red Heat could not be blamed in this. While he coul
dn’t deny its influence upon him, which he strained against even now, it hadn’t compelled him to say those words. It hadn’t forced him to hurt his mate.
Falthyris clenched his jaw and drew in a slow, deep breath despite the discomfort in his chest. As though in response to his thoughts, the Red Heat flared inside him, rushing through his veins and quickening his heart, which had only just begun to slow. His scales tingled, suddenly far more sensitive to the feel of Elliya’s body against them. That too-familiar stirring sensation pulsed in his loins.
His only concern now was for his mate’s wellbeing. He would not succumb to Dragonsbane again, not while she was in this condition. She needed to rest and recover. Falthyris’s lust would not help her.
I nearly lost her today because I did not control my fury…and she may not yet be safe.
That thought struck Falthyris with a fresh blast of guilt, sorrow, pain, and impotent anger. The effect was sobering. Nothing in all his centuries of life had ever been so precious or important as Elliya. Knowing that he’d driven her away—potentially forever—was nearly more than he could bear.
I am not losing her. She is mine for all eternity, and she will remain at my side throughout.
Barely suppressing a growl, Falthyris forced his mind to still, just as he would have before settling into a decades-long slumber. All those thoughts and emotions continued roiling within him, but they were now well below the surface.
Though he kept his eyes closed, he shifted his full attention to Elliya. He listened to her breathing, which remained somewhat labored. He felt her smooth skin, which was currently too cool for his liking, and measured her slow, weak heartbeat through the contact between their bodies.
His body was surprisingly weary—likely the result of the transformations rather than the battle—but sleep did not claim him. That was for the best. He neither wanted nor needed sleep, especially not while his Elliya was in this state. And yet, just like it did during his long naps, time ceased to hold meaning.
The torches burned out at some point, and it was an infinitesimal dimming of the light in the cave afterward, paired with an equally tiny dip in the air temperature, served as his only indication that night had fallen. Elliya stirred not long afterward, groggy and disoriented, eyes opening to slits as she ponderously lifted her head. Her skin was warmer than before—he mistakenly believed it to be result of sharing in his body heat.
To Tame a Dragon (Venys Needs Men) Page 15