I stared, unease stirring in my chest at the sudden shift in the atmosphere between us. “Broken, maybe,” I allowed. “But broken things can be fixed. Ruined—no. That part, I don’t believe.”
“I’m no good for you,” he whispered, still not looking at me.
“You have demons,” I said carefully. “So what? Look around. Aristede battles the void in his dreams every night. Rayth pickles himself in wine. I’m terrified to try and bond with the white dragon, even though I know that if I don’t, the species may die out in a single generation, and it will all be my fault. Eldris…” I trailed off. “All right, Eldris is disgustingly perfect. But still, that’s only one person out of five.”
Nyx’s moment of controlled panic seemed to ease as I spoke, leaving him standing with his tunic hanging limp in his hands. “You still don’t understand,” he said, his tone tired. “You don’t know.”
“No,” I agreed. “I don’t know, and I don’t honestly care—except for the fact that whatever happened to you still hurts you so. I don’t care that you’ve killed people. We all have. I don’t care about what happened with Rayth when you were his steward. Nyx—I don’t care. We’re here. We’re together. That’s all I care about.”
“I told you, I have no idea how to do this,” Nyx said, still in the same exhausted voice.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I get that. I do, Nyx—truly. The part you need to ask yourself, is whether you want to try and figure it out with me.”
His eyes met mine, startled. “You know I do.”
I held his gaze and raised my eyebrows. “Well… I’d hoped you did. But, as it happens—I didn’t know for certain until just now.”
His eyes closed, his chin dropping to his chest as he ducked his head. “I’m sorry.”
I clambered to my feet and wrapped the cloak around my naked body to cut the wind. “Aaand… now you’re apologizing again.” I tried to inject humor into the words, and was rewarded when he glanced up, one corner of his mouth tipping into a half-smile.
“So you’d rather I said I’m not sorry?” he asked.
A snort escaped me. “Honestly? I’d rather you give me a hug to show me that we’re all right, and then take me back to the cave so we can start a fire and get something to eat,” I told him wryly.
He nodded, and opened his arms when I walked toward him. I gave him a one-armed squeeze, my other hand still holding the edges of the cloak together at my throat. Then, I groaned as I felt a trickle of dampness seeping down the inside of my thigh.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, easing me back.
I wrinkled my nose. “Oh, nothing important. I just realized how badly I need to clean myself up at the edge of the lake before we go back. The cold, spring-fed lake.”
He blushed again as my meaning penetrated, and his expression turned sympathetic. “We could heat up a bucket of water in the cave instead?”
But I shook my head. “No, it’s fine. It’s not that chilly out here, and it’ll just take a minute. Get Lisha’s saddle and head on back. I’ll be with you in no time.”
* * *
For only the third time since I’d met him, I slept curled up with Nyx that night. We woke in the morning to find that the weather had veered back toward late summer warmth, the wind turning to blow from the south. I tried to give Nyx a bit of space, aware that yesterday had been a big step for him in many ways.
The others might be here by evening—that was the earliest we could expect them to return from Fa’al-whatever-the-place-was-called. There was no guarantee that it wouldn’t take them longer, of course, and I was trying very hard not to worry about it. Unfortunately, after what had happened to Rayth and Aristede in Dhakar a few weeks ago, not worrying was easier said than done.
With Lisha largely recovered from her injuries, we no longer had a pressing need to hunt game for the dragons. They were more than capable of hunting for themselves. We still had to keep ourselves fed, however, so we continued to maintain the network of snares spread throughout the forest near the cave.
Checking all of them took half a day—and could take more, if a bunch of them were sprung and needed to be reset. Nyx and I might have split up to save some time, but it wasn’t as though we had a lot of other tasks to occupy us. Aside from cooking meals and making sure there was enough wood chopped to feed the fire, the only thing that required our attention was checking on the pair of horses we’d chosen for ourselves from the bandits’ surviving mounts.
Besides, I was thrilled to have this time alone with Nyx. The man was hard work sometimes, it was true. Even so, I’d felt a sort of kinship with him since the first night we’d met—to the point that I’d asked him to flee the palace in Safaad with me rather than remaining in his life of drudgery at the king’s stables.
Mind you, I’d felt a similar kinship with Eldris and Aristede after meeting them. What could I say? I was a greedy little bitch sometimes. A greedy bitch, with a weakness for pretty men who also happened to be both honorable and kind.
Of course, there was another man in my life these days, as well. But that last part about being kind was why Rayth could go fuck himself. It was the reason I didn’t remotely find myself wondering if he ever got hard for me when we were training with weapons, like he had the first time we sparred together. I never wondered if he’d ever used the gentle tone of voice he’d directed at me, after he found me crying over a dead horse in the wake of the battle with the bandits, when speaking to anyone else. Or if—
Argh. No. Rayth was a drunken asshole, and he could go fuck himself. That was my unambiguous policy on the matter, and I was standing by it.
Damn it.
So, anyway, Nyx and I were in the forest, checking the last of the snares together. We’d only bagged two rabbits today, but that was all right. We didn’t really need more than that. After getting something of a late start in the morning, it had taken us until early afternoon to reach the final stretch of trail where we had traps set.
This string of snares ran along a narrow animal track that branched off from the main trail on the western edge of the valley. It was the same path the others had taken to descend from our secluded mountain hideout to the town nestled in the foothills, and I’d put it off until last with the vague notion that the others might return while we were out here, and we could meet them coming in.
It wasn’t all that likely, to be honest. If they showed up today, it would probably be much later. But… someplace had to be the last on our rounds, so I’d decided this trail would be it.
I’d even gone so far as to scratch a crude drawing of a sapling bent over with a noose attached in the dirt near the hearthfire inside the cave, so they wouldn’t be worried if they came back early to find both of us gone. The whole thing was a bit silly of me, really, but I was still recovering emotionally from their last expedition, when Rayth and Aristede had showed up several days late and half-dead.
“Do you hear something?” Nyx asked, straightening from the loop of twine he was tying to replace one that had unraveled. Our brace of hares swung against his chest, where he’d tied their hind legs together and slung them across his shoulders to carry them.
I stilled, straining my ears until I could make out the sound of leaves rattling and horses’ hooves moving at an unhurried pace through the woods. Relief surged through my chest, and I let go of the flexible sapling I’d been bending into an arch.
“They’re back early!” I exclaimed, heading in the direction we’d come so I could reach the main trail before they passed us by.
Nyx followed a couple of steps behind me. “Very early,” he said in mild surprise. “Not even mid-afternoon yet. They must’ve ridden hard.”
I shrugged. “You know Rayth. He probably pushed them. But I can only hear a handful of horses, so it’s not like it’s the Utrean army marching on us.”
One thing about armies—it took time to get them organized and provisioned for travel. It was conceivable that Midhan, the escaped female ban
dit, might’ve made it back to Safaad and spilled her story of dragons by now, but it would take much longer than this for the Prince to mount any kind of large-scale response. I broke into a jog as the horses grew nearer, approaching the point where the two trails intersected. Behind me, I could hear Nyx increase his pace to match.
“Frella—” he said, just as I reached the main trail.
The lead horse was closer than I’d thought. It spooked and came to an abrupt halt at my unexpected appearance in the center of the path—an unfamiliar gray, with an unfamiliar scowling man wearing scout’s leathers on its back. Three more horses I’d never seen before milled behind the leader as their riders reined them in.
“Oh, shit,” I said brilliantly, and scrabbled for a throwing dagger.
Chapter 4: Taken
Frella
“GET LISHA HERE! Fast!” I snapped at Nyx. Damn it, damn it, damn it. Organizing an army to march into the mountains in search of dragons to kill might take time, but sending out a few groups of fast-riding scouts to double-check a bandit’s unlikely sounding story was the work of a mere couple of hours.
“She’s on her way,” Nyx said grimly, tossing the rabbits aside and going for his own blade.
It was the only thing he was carrying that could be used as a weapon—the same little throwing dagger I’d gifted him in Safaad. He wasn’t skilled with throwing knives, though, and given that fact, a short blade would be of limited use against mounted opponents. I cursed my naive assumption that the approaching riders were our returning friends, and then I cursed Nyx’s resistance to carrying more effective weapons on his person.
The lead rider wrestled his horse under control, his eyes falling on me and narrowing. “Looks like that bandit bitch was telling the truth about one thing, lads. Golden hair and blue eyes—the prince’ll be happy to get his lost concubine back, I’ll wager. Capture her, and kill the man!”
Any distant hope I might’ve held that these were just random travelers who’d stumbled across us innocently fled. I let the dagger I was holding fly, and the blade buried itself in the side of the speaker’s neck, just above his collarbone. He made a choked noise and grabbed for the wound. It wasn’t the clean kill through the throat that I’d hoped for, but the volume of blood spurting between his fingers argued that he wasn’t going to last long.
I jerked in surprise as Nyx shouted and sprang past me, waving his arms like a maniac. Comprehension dawned as the leader’s horse—the one that had spooked at my sudden appearance on the trail—skittered sideways, dislodging its injured rider. The others emerged from their shock at the unexpected attack on their leader when their horses shied nervously in the face of Nyx’s charge.
“Get ’em!” one of the others snarled, wheeling his horse and spurring it toward Nyx.
My breath caught as I grabbed another knife and tried to find a clear target in the confusion. I let fly at the man charging toward Nyx, but the blade lodged harmlessly in the thick leather pommel of the beast’s saddle, rather than in its rider’s stomach. The horse plowed into Nyx, and I cried out as he went down under its hooves and lay still.
“Nyx!”
The other two were upon me before I could go for another knife. In the distance, I heard the enraged screech of an angry dragon. Lisha. That had to mean Nyx was still alive, didn’t it?
I tried to lunge for the nearest horse’s reins, but its shoulder hit mine and sent me staggering to my knees, disoriented. The man who’d run Nyx down dismounted, drawing a sword as he strode toward me. I staggered to my feet, but one of the men on horseback reached down and grabbed me by the hair. I shrieked at the pain in my scalp and reached instinctively for his wrist, rather than doing the smart thing and pulling another blade from my belt.
That mistake cost me dearly a moment later, when the approaching man hauled off and slammed the pommel of his sword into the side of my head. Pain exploded like a brilliant white lightning bolt across my vision, a ringing sound filling my ears as my balance deserted me. I fell backward against the horse’s side, fresh agony erupting as the man’s grip on my hair kept me from crumpling to the dirt.
Strong hands spun me around and dragged my wrists behind me, binding them. I was hefted onto the horse like a sack of grain, lying across its neck and withers in front of the saddle. Before I could recover enough to struggle, my ankles were bound as tightly as my wrists.
The blood rushing down to my injured head was agonizing, and my vision swam as I tried without success to get a glimpse of Nyx. The horse beneath me half-reared and tried to bolt, the man in the saddle cursing as he yanked at the reins.
“Holy shit!” yelled one of the others.
That was all the warning I had, as a huge shape crashed through the branches from above and plowed into the other mounted man. The horse screamed as the green dragon’s claws raked into it. I had a confused vision of her jaws clamping around the rider’s torso and shaking him like an angry hunting dog with a fresh kill.
Then the horse I’d been hoisted over whirled around and took off at a dead run, until all I could see was a nauseating blur. Every stride beat against my stomach like a punch from one of Eldris’ massive fists. I retched weakly, red haze closing in around my swimming vision.
Lisha… she’d come, but she wouldn’t give chase and rain fire down on my captor. For one thing, she’d be crisping me at the same time, and for another, Nyx was hurt. She was Nyx’s dragon, not mine. She would protect him, not me.
Please, mighty Deresta, don’t let him die, I prayed, my thoughts going strange around the edges as the punishing pace continued to rattle my throbbing head. I retched again, choking on bile.
I was only distantly aware that the fourth man had apparently managed climb back on his horse and escape the dragon’s wrath. A second set of hoofbeats pounded next to me, barely audible above the ringing in my ears and the sound of my thundering pulse echoing through my skull.
“Fucking hell,” the rider behind me muttered. “Fucking hell. That bandit wasn’t lying. There are fucking dragons up here. God preserve us.”
My last coherent thought before my body gave up the struggle to maintain consciousness was, Frella, you bloody idiot—if you’d bonded with the white dragon, he would have come to your defense with Lisha and saved you from this.
* * *
It was dark when the outside world next intruded on my awareness. I was no longer jouncing across the back of a horse. Everything hurt. Everything.
I’d heard people joke on occasion about being so sore that even their hair hurt, and I’d laughed right along with everyone else. But, damn it—my hair did hurt. Vaguely, I remembered a meaty fist grabbing handfuls of it, and the awful burning, tearing sensation in my scalp as my weight had sagged against that hold.
Other than my hair, the pounding agony seemed to be centered in my head and my stomach. I tried to blink my eyes into focus, not realizing until too late that it might have been smarter to keep playing dead until I could get a better idea of my circumstances. My left eyelid didn’t want to work properly, the area around it feeling hot and puffy. My abdomen felt like someone had thrashed it with a broom handle for hours.
I opened my mouth to draw breath… perhaps to speak. The air rasped along my dry throat like desert sand, and I descended into coughing. The pain in both my head and stomach flared, nearly sending me straight back into unconsciousness.
“She’s awake,” said a rough voice from a short distance away.
“Oh? D’you think?” replied a second voice. “Idiot. Of course she’s awake. Give the bitch some damned water.”
I got control of my coughing, and the vision in my right eye cleared enough for me to make out a campfire and the two men. I appeared to be leaning against a tree trunk, but when I tried to push away from it, my wrists came up short, something tugging at them. An experimental pull revealed that my arms had been tied around the back of the tree trunk with a length of rope. Moving my legs revealed that my ankles were still bound, as well.
Any idea I might have had about kicking my feet out at the man approaching me was a lost cause. I was too weak; too disoriented. Besides, what would be the point? I was tied to a fucking tree. It wasn’t like I was going anywhere.
The man crouched beside me with a scowl on his face and lifted the neck of a waterskin to my lips. I drank thirstily, little rivulets spilling down my chin. My abused stomach cramped as the water hit it, but on the positive side, at least my throat didn’t feel like the dry Utrean lowlands anymore.
“Untie me, damn it,” I rasped, once the water was taken away.
The man sitting by the fire snorted. “Yeah, sure. I’ll get right on that.”
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked, wincing as a fresh stab of pain shot through my temple.
The man by the fire leaned back on one hand, regarding me critically. “What do you think, Goldie? We’re dragging your vicious little ass back to the prince, so you can tell him all about what you’ve been doing up here with a bunch of dragons.”
I shivered.
“Mind you,” the scout continued, “I’d dearly love to take a few strips out of your hide first, as payback for murdering Cal. I knew that man for years. Never expected to see him go out with a knife in the throat from an uppity little bint who barely comes up to my collarbone.”
The man holding the waterskin shifted next to me. “Wouldn’t mind getting some payback for Aali, either. Torn apart by a fucking dragon? What a way to go.” He ran a finger down the uninjured side of my face and I jerked away.
“Don’t touch me,” I hissed.
The one by the fire let out a huff of breath that was too jaded to properly be called laughter.
“Lucky for you, bitch, I’m not a rapist.” He gestured toward his companion with a jerk of his chin. “Mind you, he is… but he’s not dumb enough to put his dick in the prince’s property, either. We’ll deliver you where you’re supposed to go, and get our payment for your capture. You’d do better to worry about what’ll happen to you after we hand you over.”
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