My father studied the line of swords. Each was unique, made especially for the person it was bought for. If my father could tell me which was the newest, I could save the dragons that had been taken the most recently, thereby preventing their illness in the first place.
“This one,” my father finally said, picking up a blade with a golden hilt featuring opals. “This belonged to Hecta. She turned eighteen just before you did and made her first kill...er...took her first soul on her birthday.”
I nodded. I remembered it well. I’d been so excited watching her go off up into the Triad Mountains and wishing it was me. Taking the sword from my father, I held the blade to my hand. It was already crisscrossed with scars so what was one more?
“Stand back,” I warned, knowing that freeing the dragon would make sparks fly from the sword.
I drew it across the meaty flesh of my palm and waited for the burst of fire.
Chapter Ten
Nothing happened. Where I expected flames to shoot out of the end of the sword and the soul of the dragon to whoosh across the sky back to its body, the sword remained exactly as it was.
“Did it work?” asked Spear, staring down at my hand. Blood dripped from the long cut onto the grass below while the people surrounding me looked at me in confusion.
“I don’t know,” I replied uncertainly. “I don’t think so.” I gazed up into the sky, searching it for the soul of the dragon, but I already knew it hadn’t worked.
Spear took my hand and gazed down at the red line I’d just created. “Why didn’t it work?” He searched my eyes for an answer, but I had none to give him. It had always worked before and nothing had changed. I’d not killed anyone, which was the only thing I could think of that could take away my power.
A voice piped up from nearby. “She’s a fraud! Why are the Slayers here anyway?”
“We’re here to save your asses!” bellowed my father.
“You are the ones that caused all this in the first place!”
So many people were shouting at each other I couldn’t tell who was who. A brawl had broken out beside me but all I could look at was the sword. Why hadn’t it worked? It always had in the past.
“Maybe you are too tired to release any more,” offered Ash, who was also ignoring the chaos. “Come on, we need to get out of here before anyone punches either of us. Let Spear deal with this mess.”
I looked up then. Most of the crowd was fighting. Actually fist-fighting. A few people were trying to calm everyone down, but most were too angry to listen.
I saw Morganna trying to pull Alpha from one of the dragons, and Xander was holding Jasper back from one of the Wolvren. All around me, the world had turned to madness again. Spear was now back on the steps, shouting for calm. It was a disaster and I was sick to death of it. Everybody was always fighting, no matter what I did. Ash was right. Spear could deal with it. I’d go back home with Ash and wait it out there. I turned to follow him, but as I did, a thought struck me. I realized what the problem had been with the sword. My father had told us all only a while ago that sometimes he brought back dragons that had already had their souls taken and pretended he’d made the kill. What if he’d done that with Hecta? If Hecta had been too scared to kill, or they simply hadn’t found a live dragon, would my father cover for her? I believed he would. Letting go of Ash’s hand I dove at the line of swords next to Spear. Pulling the nearest one to me, I dragged the blade across my calf.
Like an explosion around me, everything turned orange. A loud bang escaped from the sword and someone screamed as I was engulfed in flames. It took a second or two to register that the screams were coming from me. I was on fire. I was burning. The sword in my hand was white hot and vibrating. I dropped it to the ground, hearing it clang as it hit the wooden step.
Searing hot pain flooded through me, filling my senses. I’d gone from a sword not working to this. The sounds of arguing had stopped, replaced by reactions of shock. I could just about hear them over the roar of the flames.
I thought then that I was going to die as fire licked me from all sides. Surely no one could withstand this much pain and survive. Something knocked me to the ground and then everything went black. At first, I thought I really had died, but then whatever had been thrown over me, covering my eyes, was removed.
I blinked. The flames were gone but my whole body was in pain. Looking up I could see the shocked faces of Ash, Spear, and Morganna. Edeline came into view with a bucket which she promptly upended onto me, covering me with icy water. Another woman I’d never met followed suit and threw another bucket of water over me. The coldness soothed my skin.
“She needs to change out of those clothes and get some burn lotion on,” Edeline demanded, pushing everyone else out of the way. “Can you stand, Julianna?”
I was in pain but I tried to pick myself up. Ash took one hand, which was fine, but when Spear went for my other hand, I cried out in pain. It had been holding the sword and was badly burned. I wouldn’t let anyone else touch me as Edeline guided me into the house. In the upstairs bathroom was a large claw-footed tub which she began to fill with cool water.
“Everybody out!” she demanded. I looked back to see Ash, my father, Spear, and Morganna behind me. All but Ash back out through the door. Edeline had to push Ash out and lock the door behind him to keep him out.
She peeled my burned clothes away from my body carefully before helping me into the bath.
“You’ve got some blisters from the flames, but nothing that won’t heal given time,” she said, carefully wiping blackened ashes from my naked body. “I’ve got some burn cream which will do wonders, but you are going to be in pain for a few days. You are lucky Ash acted as quickly as he did. He threw his jacket over you and put the flames out.”
“What happened?” I croaked. It was the first thing I’d said since going up in flames. Even my throat hurt from the smoke I’d inhaled.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it. Once we’ve cleaned you up I’ll go and speak to the others and see if they know.”
I wanted to insist she take me but highly doubted that I’d feel able to walk downstairs and have a conversation about swords. Even with the cool bath water, I was still in agony. My skin was an angry red color, and most of it was marked with small blisters. Edeline let me drip dry rather than use a towel, which I was grateful for. It meant I took longer to dry, but the thought of moving a towel over my skin was enough to bring tears to my eyes. I had no idea how I was going to put clothes on without screaming.
“This is a miracle cure,” Edeline assured me as she took off the lid of the burn cream. “As you can imagine, in a colony of dragons, we had to come up with something amazing to treat burns. We can withstand high temperatures in our dragon forms, but we can burn in our human form.”
I nodded, not expecting much, but as she applied the cream, the pain began to dissolve. It was as if the cream leeched the pain right from my skin. By the time she’d slathered it all over me, I was able to put on a light cotton dress she’d found for me.
“You’ll have to wear that for a couple of days, but you’ll find that the cream will get rid of those blisters pretty quickly. I’ll let you have the tube.” She handed it to me. It smelled like nothing I knew, floral with a hint of something else, coconut, maybe.
“Thank you,” I said, placing the tube in one of the dress’s pockets.
She bustled about in a cupboard and came back with a roll of bandage. “You are going to need this on both hands and your calf. You’ve certainly done a good job of hurting yourself!”
She cut the bandage into three strips of equal length. The first she wrapped around my leg where I’d sliced it with the sword, then she wrapped both of my hands—my right because of the cut on it from Hecta’s sword and my left from the burn from the other sword. I was such a mess.
“I guess I won’t be entering any beauty contests anytime soon?” I joked.
Edeline laughed. “You look beautiful to me, and
I’m betting there is a young man down there that only wants to know you are alright. Do you feel well enough to go downstairs and talk to the others?”
I nodded. We found them in Spear’s study. The last time I’d been in here, we’d been planning to raid Dronias. Now my father sat in there, munching on a cookie. How times had changed. When I walked through the door, everyone stood. Ash came running up to me.
“How could you have done something so stupid?” I could see the tears in his eyes as he approached.
“Stop!” Edeline demanded when he was still a foot away. “She’s burned her skin. You can’t touch her for a few days. She’ll not thank you for it. Her skin is very delicate at the moment.”
“I wasn’t going to,” objected Ash. “Is she going to be OK?”
“I’m right here!” I said. “And I’m fine. Your mom’s burn cream has taken most of the pain away. She thinks I’ll heal within a few days.”
Ash nodded and gave his mom a small smile. “You shouldn’t have done it though,” he insisted.
“No, she shouldn’t have,” agreed my father. “I told her not to. I’ve been telling everyone, including her, that this is too much for her, and now look what’s happened.”
“I’m agreeing with you,” said Ash forcefully. “I didn’t want this any more than you did. I hate that she got hurt.”
“You were close enough to stop her,” replied my father angrily. “If you didn’t want her to do this, why did you let her pick up the sword?”
“I’m right here!” I repeated, this time loudly. “Stop talking over me as though I’m not here. I am here and I can hear you. Does anyone know what happened? Why did the sword do that?”
Nobody said anything. I looked at the sword I’d picked up. Spear had it propped up next to him on the sofa. It was blackened by the flame, but I knew which sword it was. When I’d first picked it up, I’d just grabbed for the nearest sword, not thinking of who it belonged to, but now I could see it was my father’s sword. Even though it was covered in soot, I recognized the shape of it. That’s why it, and me along with it, had gone up in flames. I’d not released just one soul, I’d freed many. All the dragon souls my father had caught were now free.
“How many were there?”
“A lot,” said Spear “You did it, Julianna. You saved many dragons.”
“How many, Father? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?”
My father bowed his head. “At least.”
I smiled. Soon, over a hundred dragons would be flying across the sky and coming home. It was worth the pain. It was worth everything.
“You’re not doing this again,” my father demanded. “I won’t let you.” He turned to Spear. “You hear that? She’s my daughter. She’s been hurt enough. I’m sorry about the rest of your dragons, but there is no way I’m going to let you subject her to that again.”
Spear nodded. “You are right. Julianna has done so much for us already. I won’t ask her to do it again.”
They were talking over me again, but I didn’t have the energy to argue. In fact, I didn’t have the energy for anything. The room began to spin and I felt myself falling to the ground. Everything around me went black.
Chapter Eleven
I awoke in a room I’d never seen before. Light shone through a window, illuminating the white walls. It was sparse but large, with a large, ornate wardrobe at one side and a soft chair next to the bed I was lying on. Slumped in the chair, Ash was fast asleep, his mouth slightly open, one arm hanging over the side. I watched him for a while. The rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, the way his eyes moved under his eyelids. I wondered what it was that he was dreaming about.
The rest of the room gave me no clues as to where I was. There were no pictures on the walls and no personal items. I only knew I wasn’t in Ash’s house, with its walls carved out of the cliff rock, nor were we in any house in Dronias. The houses there were beautiful and quaint, but they didn’t have the perfectly straight lines of this room.
Someone knocked on the door lightly, waking Ash from his slumber.
“Come in.” I tried sitting up to welcome whoever it was, but pain shot through me. I cried out as Edeline ran through the door.
“Don’t move!” she commanded. “I’m here to put more of the lotion on you.” I did as she asked and stayed still. To move was agony, anyway. “I was hoping this would have worked faster,” she said, pulling the light cotton cover gently away from my skin. Underneath, I still wore the white cotton dress.
“Where am I?” I asked as Edeline got to work, smothering my dry, cracked skin with the cream. As soon as she started to apply it, the pain began to subside.
“This is Spear’s room,” Ash said, taking my hand. “He said you could stay here as long as you need to. He’s been sleeping on a couch downstairs.”
Sleeping on a couch? “How long have I been up here?”
Ash gave his mother a look.
“Tell me,” I demanded.
“You’ve been out of it for a week,” Edeline began. “I’d hoped that the lotion would work a lot faster, but you’ve been through so much that your body is taking its time to heal. The blisters are gone now and your skin is looking a lot better than it was.” She gave a slight, comforting smile.
It certainly didn’t feel any better. Nor did I feel better knowing I’d been asleep for so long. “A week? What’s been happening?” I tried to sit up again. This time, it was slightly easier thanks to the soothing properties of the lotion.
“Please don’t panic. You’ve not missed anything.”
I saw another look pass between her and Ash. There was something they weren’t telling me. “What is it? You are hiding something.”
I saw Ash fire a warning look at Edeline, but she ignored him. “The dragons you saved haven’t returned.”
If I’d been asleep for a week, it meant the dragons’ souls returned to them at the same time. They should have been back with us by now. “What happened?”
“We don’t know. Spear is forbidding anyone to turn into their dragon form at the moment. The disease seems to be contagious. Some of the other dragons have caught it, but no one has contracted it in their human form. Because of that, we are all trapped here. No one can fly. We’ve been spending the week looking after the sick dragons. Your father has outdone himself. He got together a crew and between them, they’ve made a shelter outside. It’s almost like a hospital for dragons.”
“My father is still here?”
“Of course,” replied Ash, taking over for his mother and applying the lotion to my arms. “He can’t go because no one can get out, but I doubt he’d leave anyway. Not with you still here like this. He’s been checking up on you every couple of hours.”
“But what about the steps up the cliff face? Has no one gone up there?” I remembered the time I tried going home. There was a steep set of stairs carved into the cliff with a set of tunnels through the mountain to the other side. It was a grueling journey, but it was certainly doable.
Edeline shook her head. “The stairs are impassable. Heavy rain caused parts of them to wash away.”
So, we were well and truly trapped here. The only way out of Dronias was from the south, the way we’d come in a week ago. I sighed and closed my eyes. Nothing was going to plan. The Goblins had lied to us, we’d failed to collect any more swords, and I’d almost burned all my skin off freeing the dragons. Worse still, the ones I did free hadn’t returned, and there was no possible way to find out why.
I thought back to Dronias, to my mother. We should have been back by now. She would be beside herself with worry. I wondered how the Slayers were dealing with the dragons. If they were ill like the ones over here, they would need caring for. Would they do that? I didn’t know. It was one thing to open the doors to let them go free, but it was quite another to actively care for them, and that’s if they knew they were ill in the first place. If the souls had returned to them and then they’d promptly fallen ill to the ground after waking up, there was every cha
nce that the villagers wouldn’t have even spotted the souls returning.
“Can I speak to Spear, please?” I asked Edeline. She looked unsure of what to say but nodded her head.
“I’ll go get him. He wanted to be the first to know when you woke up anyway.”
She left me alone with Ash. He didn’t speak as he carried on applying the lotion. My skin, no longer hurting, tingled under his touch.
“Kiss me.”
He looked surprised by request. “Are you sure? I don’t want to hurt you.”
I gave him a smile. It had been so long since he’d last kissed me, I could barely remember. Our lives were a maelstrom of chaos and adventure, and because of that, we’d not had time alone for a long while. I almost wished I’d sent Edeline away instead of to fetch Spear.
“My face wasn’t burned, and even if it was, I’d still want to kiss you.”
He leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the lips. I leaned into him, but at that moment, Spear opened the door and we shot apart.
“You look to be doing better,” smirked Spear. I felt the blush rise to my cheeks. Typical. My face was the only part of me that wasn’t already bright pink.
“Edeline tells me you want to see me.”
“Yes,” I nodded. “I want to know what our next move is.”
“To be honest with you, Julianna, we’ve been too preoccupied to come up with a plan. Everyone has been busy looking after the sick.” He sat on the only place he could, the end of the bed, careful to stay away from my feet and legs.
“How is everyone?”
Spear sighed. “The dragons that were ill that managed to change into their human form have recovered, but those that were too weak to transform back are still sick. I don’t know what to do for them. Thanks to your father, they’re sheltered from the weather and being kept warm, but unfortunately, there seems to be no improvement.”
“What about the swords?”
Ash jumped up. “What about the swords? You aren’t suggesting cutting yourself again, are you?” He turned to Spear. “I won’t allow it. Look at her. The blast nearly killed her.”
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