“Go on,” he urged. “Wait over there with your nestmates so we can help Nyx, all right? It’s crowded in here as it is.”
Warily, the green dragon moved away from the fire, giving me a better view of Nyx. His skin was pale and waxy, and an examination of the back of his head revealed extensive swelling and blood stiffening his unruly black hair. I pressed around the injury with careful fingers, glad that he was unconscious and unable to feel the pain associated with what I was doing.
“I can’t detect any signs that his skull is cracked,” I said with relief. “Eldris, get his shirt off while I get his boots, trousers, and smalls. I want to check those damaged ribs, but I also need to make sure nothing else is broken.”
“What are you thinking, then?” Eldris asked, as he eased Nyx’s shirt over his head and tugged it free of his arms.
“Trampling is my best guess,” I replied grimly. “And if I’m right, he’s lucky he escaped as lightly as he did.”
Nyx’s boots came off easily enough. I fumbled with the lacing at his crotch for a few moments before the knots finally came loose beneath my fingers. Without much thought I grasped the waistband of his trousers and smallclothes, tugging them down over his lean hips. An instant later, my head shot up as the eerie warning hiss of an angry dragon sounded from near the cave entrance. That distraction was probably why I didn’t see the fist coming at my face, as Nyx swung at me with a strangled cry of rage and fear.
Chapter 6: Haunted
Nyx
PAIN AND CONFUSION made my eyes water, blurring my vision into uselessness. My head felt as though someone had split it open like a ripe melon, but one fact shone like a beacon through my disordered thoughts.
Daarvin had caught me again, and he was going to punish me.
I cried out and flailed, the noise tearing at my throat and driving a sharp spike through the back of my head. I knew on some level that fighting back would only make things worse. He was too big, and I was too small, and now I’d angered him. A chill skittered along my spine. Maybe this would be the time he finally killed me afterward.
I couldn’t help striking out, though. When I awoke to the feeling of hands pulling my clothing down, baring my lower body, only to see that familiar curtain of dark hair falling over his shoulder when I blinked my eyes open, rational thought fled. I swung fists that were too weak, too heavy, feeling my knuckles connect with a sharp cheekbone even as chaos erupted around me.
Something stirred inside my mind beneath the heavy pall of throbbing pain. A piercing, inhuman cry joined my shrieks of denial, stabbing into me until my ears rang. I could barely make out a deep voice shouting “Nyx!” from close behind me. Strong arms tangled with mine, wrenching them backward. Fresh agony stabbed at my ribs as I kicked and spat, trying to get free.
“Ari, stay low!” said the deep voice. “Stay behind him—she won’t breathe fire as long as Nyx is in front of us!”
“No!” I cried, heaving against the hands restraining me… trying desperately not to lose my grip on consciousness despite the pain in my head and chest. If I fainted now, I might never wake again. Though—it might be better if I never woke again. “No no no…”
“Leannyck!” It was a new voice. One that cracked like a whip. A voice that… shouldn’t be here, not in the same place as Daarvin—
The unexpectedness of hearing it under these circumstances momentarily penetrated my haze of confusion. Two conflicting realities overlapped, fighting for dominance as my heart thudded painfully against my aching chest. I panted wildly, every breath stabbing my damaged ribs.
“Leannyck.” Calmer, this time. “Tell your dragon to stand down, before she burns someone you’ll feel guilty about killing afterward.”
I blinked rapidly, the wheezing of my own shallow breath echoing in my ears. My… dragon? The presence lurking in my mind stirred again, restless. Agitated.
“Nyx,” the deep, accented voice behind me said. “We’re in the cave. It’s just you, me, Aristede, and Rayth. You’re injured. You and Frella went out yesterday to check the snares. Someone attacked you. We found you unconscious, and brought you back here.”
Connections sparked, the unwanted visions of the past floating away like smoke. I choked on air as I remembered the mountains… the dragons… Frella.
“Oh, god,” I rasped.
“Tell your dragon to stand down.” It was the voice of Prince Rathanii. Memories of that commanding voice were wrapped up with a different kind of fear… but it wasn’t the same gut-twisting horror from my childhood. It wasn’t the memory of being caught and punished by Daarvin, his cruel voice taunting me, laughing at me as he held me down and—
I rolled to the side and retched, bringing up a thin stream of acrid bile and nothing else. The arms that had been restraining me moved to support me instead. It was no surprise when my sudden heaving spiked the pain in both my skull and the side of my chest to nearly unbearable levels. This time, though, the sharp bolt of agony somehow served to clear my head rather than muddling it further.
Lisha’s presence surged inside my awareness. My dragon. She was worried for me. Frantic. And it was up to me to make sure that her fear didn’t explode into violence against the others.
Rathanii… Rayth, as he preferred to be called now.
Eldris, holding me from behind.
I swallowed hard, my throat raw from vomiting.
Aristede, with his long, dark curtain of hair and his sharply drawn Alyrion features—so reminiscent of a man from the past whom I feared and hated above all else.
“Shit,” I breathed.
Calm, calm, calm, I tried to send through the dragon-bond. I’m all right.
I had no doubt that Lisha could sense my lie, clear as day. I also had no doubt that she would obey my silent directive regardless. Don’t hurt them.
“It’s all right,” I croaked, casting that same lie out into the wider world. And then, the truth. “She won’t harm you.”
My eyes still weren’t working right. I kept blinking until one of them focused enough to get a proper look at my surroundings. The other was still blurry. Rayth was standing with the black dragon, their backs turned to us. Beyond, I could make out Lisha, her threatening posture subsiding now that my mind was back under my tenuous control. The pair—man and dragon—had placed themselves between Lisha and the three of us huddled on the ground, acting as a barrier to any possible attack.
Eldris carefully let me go, and I rolled onto my back with a groan. Aristede straightened from where he’d been flat on the ground behind me, using me as last-ditch cover from Lisha’s threatened wrath. There was a red mark with a scrape in the middle decorating one of his high cheekbones. A blow from a fist. My gut twisted again.
“Well,” he said philosophically, casting a wary look at Lisha. “That was certainly exciting.”
With his unruffled delivery, he might as well have been discussing the weather, rather than the fact that my dragon could easily have killed him for no good reason other than my own hysteria. I should apologize. I tried to draw breath for it, knowing that the words would get tangled up in my throat like they always did when I was upset.
Eldris snorted. “Now you know how the rest of us feel when you come up swinging in the middle of the night, Ari. Nyx—how do you feel, lad?”
I felt like I was about to pass out again. “Not… good. S-sorry about—”
But they weren’t after apologies, apparently.
“What do you remember?” Rayth asked bluntly.
I blinked again. So many things… I remembered so many things that I’d rather forget. That wasn’t what he meant, though. I tried to cast my mind back, but everything was scrambled. Nothing made sense.
“I… I don’t…” I started to shake my head in hopes of clearing it, only to realize at the last moment what a horrible idea that would be. “I can’t think. Everything’s muddled.”
My voice was this awful hoarse rasp. I realized with a jolt that my trousers were still pulled down
around my thighs, and a fresh flutter of panic tickled the edges of my awareness. I fumbled for them, trying to pull them up and grunting when the movement pulled at my ribs.
Aristede tossed a corner of the blanket I was lying on across my lap, and that was a little better.
“First things first,” he said in that calm, cultured voice, as though I hadn’t just punched him in the face while shrieking like a terrified child. “We think you were trampled by a horse. Eldris and I were removing your clothing to make sure you didn’t have any injuries we hadn’t noticed yet. It looks like a hoof took you in the back of the head, and another cracked some ribs.”
Well… that certainly explained a few things, I supposed. “Oh,” I said brilliantly.
“Based on that swing he took at you, Ari, I’m pretty sure his arms are all right, anyway,” Eldris said dryly.
Aristede shot him a quelling look before turning his steel-gray eyes back to me. I tried not to flinch under his regard.
“Can you bend and straighten your knees? Wiggle your toes?”
I did as he asked, my joints feeling stiff but not injured. “Yes.”
“Does your back hurt? Your neck?”
At the moment, pain was entirely relative. My neck felt like I’d slept on hard ground in an uncomfortable position, but that was about it. “No.”
Aristede nodded. “Do you remember going out to check the snares yesterday?”
I frowned, trying to think past the throbbing in my skull. “Not… really?” Something niggled at me—a memory of soaring through the sky, followed by a memory of warmth, soft curves, and the most excruciating pleasure I’d ever known. I cast my blurry gaze around the fire-lit cave. “Wait. Where’s Frella?”
Aristede and Eldris exchanged another look, but it was Rayth who spoke.
“You and Frella were attacked on the trail. There were two horses and two riders killed at the scene, apparently by a dragon attack. You were unconscious when we found you, with Lisha protecting you. Frella is gone.”
The world slewed sideways. “No she can’t be,” I said, a bit desperately. “I’d remember something like that.” My eyes flew to Rayth’s, begging him to believe me. “I wouldn’t have let someone take her. I wouldn’t have just stood by and—”
“You didn’t stand by and do anything,” Aristede interrupted. “You were trampled during the attack, and your head was nearly caved in. You’ve been unconscious for the better part of a day, and you’re concussed. I’m going to bind your ribs and make you a tea that reduces swelling. After you drink it, you’re going to rest—though someone will have to wake you every couple of hours.”
“But—” I protested, not understanding how they could be standing here, fussing over me like this, if something had happened to Frella. “We need to—”
Rayth spoke over me. “If a scouting party from the palace took Frella, that’s where they’ll be transporting her. It’s a three-day ride, at least… possibly longer with an uncooperative captive. They won’t be taking the river route to reach Safaad —they’ll be returning through Dhakar and skirting around the edge of the mountains, through the foothills.”
“But they already have a head start!” I burst out.
Rayth lifted his chin. “They do. And we have dragons. It’s unlikely we’ll be able to find them while they’re traveling—the tree cover is too thick to search effectively from the air. But we can reach Safaad in only a few hours. First, though, we need you patched up enough that you can fly… and we also need a plan.”
Chapter 7: Ghosts of the Past
Aristede
NONE OF US WERE happy with the idea of leaving Frella to her fate while we patched Nyx back together and came up with a viable plan. That said, Rayth was entirely correct in his assessment. The scouts had too much of a head start for us to catch up to them on horseback, and finding them from dragon-back along winding, heavily wooded mountain trails would be akin to searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
The only thing that made it bearable was the knowledge that Frella’s captors would have to be insane to let anything happen to her before they reached Safaad. Not only was she Prince Oblisii’s golden-haired concubine who’d gotten away; she was also a valuable witness to the existence of living dragons.
Of course, the downside to all of this was the knowledge of what Oblisii might do to her once he got his hands on her. True, until he’d extracted all she knew about the dragons, she was far more useful alive than dead. Beyond that, however… all bets were off.
“You should try to get some rest,” Eldris said quietly.
It was still afternoon, and Nyx was dozing uncomfortably with his head and ribs bandaged. We’d managed to get a couple of cups of boneset tea and a bit of weak broth down his gullet without any of it coming back up, but the truth was, it was going to take weeks for the lad to heal properly.
We didn’t have weeks.
“Your mind’s running in circles like a rat trapped in a cage,” Eldris observed in a flat tone. “I can practically hear the scrabbling.”
“Of course it is,” I agreed. “What’s your point?”
He sighed. “My point is that you’ll have to sleep sooner or later, and I can almost guarantee that whatever plan we come up with will take place at night. So you might as well lie down for a bit, even though it’s still daytime. I can wake Nyx when it’s time to check on him.”
One corner of my lips turned down, and I met his eyes frankly. “You know exactly what will happen if I try to sleep.”
The nightmares might have faded since that fateful night after the battle, but with Frella in our enemies’ hands, that wouldn’t hold.
“Yeah,” Eldris said. “I do know, and yeah, that sucks. But you won’t be any good to her if you fall over from exhaustion in the middle of the rescue.” He looked uncomfortable. “Maybe you and I could—”
But I cut him off. “No. It wouldn’t be right, with her gone.” The words came out too harshly, and I ran a hand through my hair, consciously softening my features and tone. “You feel the same way, I’m willing to bet. Besides… while I appreciate the offer, I don’t think either of us is much in the mood. Honestly the idea of taking my pleasure while knowing she’s in danger would only make me more upset, not less.”
He nodded slowly. “I get that. And you’re right—I don’t disagree. But you also need to realize that she wouldn’t want you to punish yourself by staying awake for days on end. You’re no good to anyone if you do that. Least of all, her.”
“I’m well aware,” I said, defeated. “Look… I’m going outside for a bit. I’ll sleep this evening, and you can wake me up when I start flailing around like a fish out of water. Just like old times, right?”
The weak attempt at humor deserved to fall flat, and it did. Instead, Eldris hooked a hand around the back of my neck and pulled me in for a kiss. I managed not to sag against him, consoling myself with merely resting my forehead against his for a moment or two afterward.
“We’ll get her back,” he murmured into our shared air. “And then we’ll pull up stakes and get the fuck away from this place. Go somewhere there isn’t a damned target painted on our backs, right?”
“Yes,” I agreed, because what the hell else was I supposed to say?
Outside the cave, the sun was shining merrily, nature unmoved by our current predicament. Rayth and the black dragon, Cheen, were keeping watch, while Eldris’ sapphire dragon, Iyabo, play-fought with the red female over the remains of an unidentifiable half-eaten carcass some distance away. Beyond, Lisha lay curled up on the ground, looking miserable. I wondered if her head and ribs hurt in sympathy with Nyx’s injuries. The white male stood nearby, nuzzling her occasionally with his snout as though trying to draw her out.
Rayth looked up at me—his eyes bloodshot, and a half-empty wineskin at his side.
I met his gaze, unable to hold back a barb. “Deeply engrossed in military strategy, I see?”
One of his eyebrows arched upward.
I knew better than to cross verbal swords with Rayth when both of us were in a foul mood. Honestly, I did. Somehow, that didn’t stop his riposte from sliding into my gut like the finest of steel blades.
“That’s why I’m out here,” I bit out through gritted teeth. “For the dragon.”
I started to brush past him, but his hand reached up to close around my wrist as I passed, surprising me. The firm grip halted me and swung me half around, until I was meeting his eyes again.
“Falling apart won’t help, Aristede,” he said, in a milder tone than I might have expected.
I tugged my wrist away sharply and walked off without answering. He let me go. When I continued further into the valley and sank down to the ground, it took only moments for the red dragon to wander over and start sniffing at my clothing curiously. I stared into her ruby eyes, taking in the dark, cat-like pupils and tiny striations of deeper crimson that turned the creature’s gaze depthless.
“Why?” I asked eventually, not expecting an answer. “Your nestmates came when Eldris and Rayth needed them most, during the battle. I needed you just as much, yet you didn’t come to help me. Frella needed the white dragon, but he didn’t come either.”
The great beast cocked her head, as though trying to understand my words.
“In my case, I’d assume it was merely because you had no wish to tie yourself to someone so broken,” I continued. “That would certainly be understandable. Yet Nyx was the first to bond, and he is, if possible, even more broken than I.”
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