“I’ll be able to speak with the dragon,” Ariel gloats at me, “and I’ll be able to direct her as to which of your limbs she should tear off first. But you won’t know what I’m telling her. It will have to be a surprise.”
“Well, then, why don’t you just practice your silent communication skills starting now?” I wearily reply.
Ariel smiles wickedly and flashes her long, stained teeth at me. “Perhaps I’d feel friendlier toward the Black Witch,” she says to Yvan slyly, “if she hadn’t kept me up all night.”
A sickening panic shoots through me and halts my steps. Ariel slows then stops, as well, the rest of our party following suit as they regard the two of us with wary curiosity.
“Ariel, please,” I plead as I become uncomfortably flushed.
“She talks in her sleep,” Ariel explains to Yvan, her smile widening. “It was especially annoying last night.”
I feel exposed and raw, ready to burst into tears at any moment.
“Ariel.” Diana takes a menacing step toward her. “Enough.”
“We should be on our way,” Rafe breaks in. “There’s only so much daylight left.”
I nod at him stiffly, feeling bolted to the ground.
Ariel glances around slowly, taking her time, savoring my misery. “Don’t worry, Black Witch,” she finally says. “I won’t tell Yvan what kind of dreams you have about him.”
Yvan’s eyebrows fly up, and he glances at me in surprise before looking uncomfortably away. Diana emits a low growl, her lip curling up.
Ariel hisses at Diana in turn and crouches into a defensive posture until Diana relents and lets Rafe lead her away, almost everyone following.
Wynter pauses, her expression of sympathy the only thing able to get me moving again.
I follow them in a daze of shame and fight back the urge to burst into tears.
So Yvan knows I’ve dreamed of him. So what? People can’t control their dreams.
* * *
My painful humiliation dissolves when we reach Yvan’s dragon.
The dragon lies on her side, eyes closed, in a large pool of blood, her spectacular onyx hide covered, just covered, with gashes and lash marks. One of her wings and a hind leg are bent at odd, unnatural angles.
My hand flies reflexively over my mouth, my breath cinching tight, overcome by such sadistic cruelty.
“Oh, no,” Yvan gasps as he lurches toward the cage, dropping to his knees before it and grasping at the bars. Looking stricken, Wynter goes to Yvan, her wings wrapped tight around her small frame.
“Whoever did this needs to die,” Diana snarls, low and menacing, her eyes lit up with wild fury. Fury that’s reflected in both Jarod’s and Andras’s expressions.
Ariel is frozen, a look of shock on her pallid face. Unexpectedly, she bursts forth with a jolt of violent outrage and hurls herself at the cage, her eyes wild. “Get her out!” Ariel cries. “Get her out of that cage!” She crumples to the ground, her face ravaged, her fists clutching at the steel bars.
Trystan moves forward to speak to Ariel, cool and collected, as he holds up the white wand. “That’s what we’re going to try and do,” he tells her gently. “But we won’t be able to do it if you alert every soldier within ten leagues of our presence.”
Ariel clings to the cage, her breathing ragged, her look of rage lessening to one of pure devastation.
Yvan’s arm is stretched through the bars, his hand on the dragon’s bloodied back. “She’s still alive,” he says, his voice uncharacteristically shaken.
The dragon opens her green eye halfway and looks right at Yvan, an ocean of misery in her gaze.
Tears sting at my eyes.
Andras goes over to where Yvan kneels and surveys the scene. “Her wing is broken,” he observes with barely concealed outrage. “So is her leg, and she’s lost a great deal of blood. Perhaps the Empath can tell us if there is any hope.” He glances pointedly at Wynter, who takes a deep breath before kneeling down and reaching toward the cage.
The dragon’s gaze shifts to Wynter as she places her pale hand on the dragon’s gleaming, scaled hide and closes her eyes tightly, her expression pained. “She wants me to know her name is Naga. And that she wants to move, but she can’t. She is in too much pain.” Wynter’s voice is a choked whisper, her thin mouth trembling. “Her thoughts are full of despair. All she ever wanted...” Wynter momentarily breaks off, tears trickling down her cheeks. “All she ever wanted was to fly free. To feel the wind on her wings. But...there’s no fighting them. An image fills her mind. Yvan. Her good friend. Her only friend. She wants him and his people to flee before these Gardnerian monsters find them. Yvan thinks he can save her, but he can’t. Even though he is a...” Wynter gasps, her eyes flying open with shocked realization, her head swiveling around to face Yvan.
Yvan blanches, and he stands up and backs away from Wynter. “Wynter, please.”
“Yvan,” she breathes as she shakes her head in disbelief. “It can’t be. How can it be so?”
“I beg of you,” he pleads.
Wynter bows her head as if attempting to collect herself. She closes her eyes tightly for a moment, then opens them and regards Yvan calmly. “Give me your hand,” she directs as she holds out one of her own, the other on the dragon.
“Wynter, I...”
“You do not need to fear this with me,” she says firmly, her hand still outstretched.
Yvan looks positively stricken. But then he surrenders and gives his hand to her. Wynter closes her eyes as she reads both Yvan’s thoughts and those of the dragon, her brow periodically tensing, her head nodding as if engaged in some private, hidden conversation. Finally, she opens her eyes, Yvan’s hand still in hers. “Empaths are the keepers of secrets,” she tells him.
I glance around in confusion. Jarod’s and Diana’s expressions are stern and unreadable, and Andras’s fist is tight on his ax handle. Trystan and Ariel are looking at Yvan with wary concern.
“I don’t mean to interrupt you,” Rafe tells Wynter, stepping forward, “but if there’s something we need to know about Yvan, I think you should tell us. If there’s some danger...”
“He is no danger to any of us,” Wynter states with calm certainty. “He can be trusted completely.”
Rafe looks hard at her and at Yvan, eyes narrowed, before relenting. “All right,” he says to Wynter, “what can you tell us about the odds of getting Naga out alive?”
Wynter concentrates once more on the dragon.
“Naga,” Yvan asks the dragon, anguish breaking through, “who did this to you?”
The dragon’s gaze tightens with pain. “A soldier,” Wynter translates for the dragon. “Their Dragon Master.” She winces sharply. “Mage Damion Bane.”
“Ancient One,” I fume, disgusted. “Of course it would be one of the Banes.”
“We’re going to get you out of here,” Yvan tells the dragon, his lip curling with white-hot resolve. “We’ll find a way.”
“There is no way,” Wynter translates. “He’s going to come back. He’s going to torture me until I break...or die.”
“We’ll stop him,” Rafe says.
“Then they will send another,” Wynter continues. “There is no stopping them.”
“No,” Trystan remarks as he runs his hands up and down the bars, studying them. “We’re going to find a way to break this cage and get you out.”
“Then you must find it soon, Gardnerian,” Wynter translates, the dragon’s eyes full of dark urgency. “Very soon.”
* * *
We don’t see much of Trystan over the next few days. He’s careful to keep to his regular schedule, as we all are, all of us overstretched with exhausting work assignments and exam time looming. Even so, Trystan takes the time to disappear into the woods every evening to practice spells
on the arrowhead with the white wand.
Ariel takes to pacing the room, her raven keeping a close eye on her from its perch on her bed. She’s angry, morose and more on edge than usual. We all are. The Selkie seems to sense this. Like the raven, she watches us closely with worried eyes, curling up with Diana at night, her greatest comfort.
And Yvan seems troubled and distant, his private focus as intense on me as ever, but fully at odds with how he’s holding himself back from me. He stays by the Keltic and Urisk kitchen workers, careful to pick tasks that don’t send him into close proximity with me. And he avoids the small opportunities for conversation that he was starting to take advantage of, even though I can sense our intensifying pull toward each other from clear across the room.
It’s upsetting and confusing, but I try to stuff the hurt down and focus on studying and remaining above suspicion.
I fall to brooding over what will happen if Marina is found, over whether or not Yvan’s dragon can possibly survive and what it is that Wynter now knows about Yvan. There are so many strange things about him, like his speed and strength in dealing with Damion when rescuing the Urisk girl. How he seems to be able to communicate with the dragon just by staring at her. How he appears to sense my thoughts. The unnatural heat of his skin.
What secret is he hiding?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Yvan
“Are you still mean?”
The small child’s voice coming from high above startles me. I strain in the darkness to make her out among the thick branches of the pine tree that stands outside the kitchen. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the little Urisk girl, Fern, in a long time. I’m surprised she’s still here.
“Where are you?” I call up, keeping my voice as low as possible, remembering that she’s illegally here, smuggled off the Fae Islands by her grandmother.
“But are you still mean?”
I think back, with no small amount of shame, to that day when Lukas came into the kitchen with me and threatened everyone so coolly, reducing little Fern to terrified tears.
“Iris and Bleddyn say you’re still mean,” she muses, her voice tiny, “but Yvan says you’re not. Not anymore.”
“Did he really?” A warm, pleasant flush prickles through me.
“Grandma says she doesn’t know. And I don’t know, either.”
I consider this. “I was mean, but I didn’t want to be. And I’m sorry. I’m not mean anymore. At least I hope I’m not.”
“Oh, okay.”
Everything is quiet for a moment.
“Fern?”
“Hmm?”
“Why are you up in a tree? It’s not safe to be so high.”
“I’m playing Black Witch.”
My eyes widen with surprise. “Black Witch?”
“All the kids used to play it on the Islands. When the overseers weren’t looking. Someone gets to be the Black Witch, and everyone else has to hide.”
“What happens if she catches you?” I ask.
“She kills you, of course.”
I freeze in place. “That...sounds like a scary game,” I say, shame seeping through me.
This is my grandmother’s legacy? A child’s game where she’s the evil monster out to kill them?
“You’re pretty,” the little voice says.
“Thank you,” I reply, and I can hear her giggling through the leaves.
“Yvan thinks you’re pretty, too.”
“He does?” My cheeks grow warm with surprised delight.
“I told him you look like a princess, and he thought so, too.”
“Oh,” I say, charmed and lit up by this.
“He’s my friend,” she prattles on. “He plays with me sometimes.”
“Does he, now?”
I try to picture it. Serious, intense Yvan playing with a child. But then I remember that time I saw him with little Fern when she spilled the bubbles all over his shirt. I remember the smile on his face. How patient he was.
“He makes me toys, too.”
“Really?”
“Yup. He made me a bubble wand and a duck puzzle out of wood.”
“That’s nice.”
“He’s nice.”
When it happens, it’s so fast I don’t have time to react. There’s a loud crack, a high-pitched shriek and a sickening thump.
And then the screaming begins.
I drop my book bag and leap toward her small form, crumpled on the ground in front of me. She’s fallen from the top of the tree, all the way down to land on the sharp end of a hoe that lies at the base of the tree. It’s so dark, I can’t make out much, but I can see that her right leg is very broken and that blood gushes from the wound.
“Oh, Ancient One,” I breathe, my heart racing as Fern writhes and screams at the top of her lungs. Panicked, I look wildly around for help and see Yvan running toward us from the livestock barns.
“She fell. From the top of the tree. She fell on the hoe. She’s bleeding. Her leg’s broken.” My words come out in a tangled rush as he kneels down and takes quick stock of the situation. His head darts around. Fern isn’t supposed to be here. If anyone finds her here...
“Keep her quiet!” he orders.
“How?”
“Just do it!”
I sit down behind Fern, grab her head and cover her mouth firmly, her screams quickly and effectively muffled, and start to feel immediately sick to my stomach at having to do this. Her little body bucks and tenses against me as her hands claw at my arms and at the air. I try harder to restrain her. Yvan pulls up her pant leg and I can make out a shard of bone sticking clear out of her leg.
“Elloren,” Yvan orders me sharply. “Hold her steady.”
I keep one hand wrapped around Fern’s head and covering her mouth, and grasp her arms with the other. Yvan takes her leg in his hands and feels around with dexterous fingers. Then, out of the blue, he jerks her leg back into position. Fern convulses and she moans with terror and pain.
“What are you doing?” I cry, wildly confused.
Now he’s grabbing the newly straightened leg with both hands, completely covering the wound. He closes his eyes, as if in meditation, and holds the leg steady.
“Yvan!” I cry. “Why are you doing this? We need a real physician! Right now!”
But Fern’s screaming begins to lessen, and her muscles go slack, her arms falling limply to her sides. She whimpers softly, and then even that begins to subside. Yvan stays where he is, eyes closed as if he’s concentrating all his energy on her leg.
Fern is quietly trembling now, and I see the familiar figure of her grandmother hurrying over to us.
Fernyllia drops the scrap buckets in her arms when she catches sight of her granddaughter lying on the ground.
Yvan opens his eyes and looks over at me. “Release her, Elloren,” he says.
Wildly unsure, I take my hands off the child and sit back, Fern’s head limp in my lap.
Fern sniffles, her body still trembling, but she doesn’t seem to be in pain anymore.
Yvan takes his hands slowly off her leg. The blood on his hands, on Fern’s leg and her clothing looks like splashes of ink in the darkness. Incredibly, Fern pulls her leg in and holds out her hands to her grandmother. I sit back and stare at her, unable to believe my eyes.
How can it be? The bone—it was sticking clear through her leg!
Yvan steps back as Fernyllia takes Fern into her arms and hugs her tightly.
“My precious girl,” Fernyllia says as she kisses her granddaughter’s head. “What happened?”
“I fell out of the tree,” Fern sobs, “and Yvan fixed my leg. But it hurt.”
“It was just a scrape,” Yvan tells Fernyllia.
What?
Did we just witness the same scene? I saw the odd angle of her leg, the bone sticking through it. And her blood is everywhere. Proof that I’m not mistaken.
Yvan takes in my wildly incredulous stare and looks back at me, his face harsh, as if willing me to remain silent. I glance pointedly at his hands, at the bloodstains all over his lap. I know that there are healers who can fix such extreme breaks over a span of a few months, but I’ve never heard of anything like this.
“Thank you, Yvan,” Fernyllia says with deep gratitude. She turns to me. “And thank you, Mage Gardner.”
“Elloren helped me,” Fern tells her grandmother, her head flat against her chest, clearly exhausted by her ordeal.
Fernyllia kisses the top of the child’s head before looking at me meaningfully. “Perhaps Elloren and Yvan would like some tea and apple pie,” she says in that singsong voice people use with children, and her use of my first name stuns me. Fernyllia gently bops her granddaughter’s nose with her fingertip. “And I’ll make some hot maple cream for you, little one. Would that make you feel better?”
Fern’s head bobs up and down weakly. Fernyllia stands up, her granddaughter cradled in her stout arms.
“Go ahead,” Yvan says kindly. “We’ll be right in.”
A quizzical look flashes over Fernyllia’s features before she nods and leaves us.
“How did you do that?” I demand in a low, urgent whisper as soon as Fernyllia is out of earshot. “That’s healing magic. And Kelts don’t have magic.”
He won’t meet my gaze. “I don’t know what you mean, Elloren. Her leg was dislocated. I simply popped it back into position.”
“That leg was broken. In half. I saw the bone, Yvan. With my own two eyes. And you’re covered in blood. That was no scrape!”
His eyes meet mine, the angry intensity back in full force.
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