by Grace Martin
‘This is mine,’ I said firmly, closing my hand around the ring. I looked up at Ronan accusingly, like he’d stolen it. ‘This is mine!’
‘Yes, Bach Chwaer, it is yours.’ He looked down at me in Umbra’s light. He looked so much like Caradoc. For a moment I fancied I could see him as he’d looked that night, his long hair wild around his shoulders, the light of the flames flickering to warm up the fair skin of his face and shine in his hair. His blue eyes had been so bright, so stunned when I’d kissed him for the first time, flushed with disbelief and delight that not only had we survived, but we’d killed the dragon. No one believed that was even possible until that night.
I swayed towards Ronan. He put his hands on my shoulders. I looked up at him longingly. Caradoc was dead. I would have given anything to be back in his arms.
‘You’re tired,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, we can’t rest. We need to keep moving until at least we reach the shelter of the forest.’
That brought me back to reality. Now the light from Umbra and the moon was cold against his skin and the delusion was gone. ‘Right,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Let’s get going.’
After a few minutes’ walking Ronan asked, ‘How did you remember him?’
‘Who?’ I’d been thinking of Caradoc, but I doubted that was who he meant. He’d been a hero in his own time. In my time, no one even knew his name except for those who had actually seen him.
‘The guard. As Bach Chwaer, you must have seen a thousand guards the day Darragh attacked Rheged. How did you recognise this one?’
I picked my way carefully over the uneven road. ‘I didn’t,’ I admitted. ‘I made a guess. He looked old enough to have been there that night. I hoped he would have some romance in his soul.’
It was just as well it wasn’t light because I probably wouldn’t have liked to see Ronan’s face with his eyes bugging out and his mouth open. His silence said it all for him. ‘You mean, you hoped that a random guard… would fall for a romantic story?’
‘It wasn’t a story, it was true. I was there. I just wasn’t sure that he was. And it paid off, didn’t it? Your big, scary guard melted like butter at the very mention of my name.’
I may have been unnecessarily dainty, picking my way over the rocks for a minute there. I was feeling smug. Ronan’s astonishment was more addictive than a drug.
Chapter Six
When we reached the shelter of the forest, Ronan announced that we would stop and rest. I hadn’t realised that Lynnevet had been so quiet. She’d been trudging along obediently, but she could barely put one foot in front of the other. Ronan was no mage. He didn’t know how important it was for us to be under the moon. Magic was probably all that was giving Lynnevet strength to go on. I pushed us to get to a clearing.
‘We can stop here,’ I said, as soon as I saw a place where moonlight peeked through the dark canopy above us. Lynnevet just folded up where she stood. It was all I could do not to do the same. I made sure I was sitting in a patch of moonlight, too. Ronan sat in a shadow beside a tree and pulled his backpack off.
‘I’ve got some rations,’ he said. ‘It’s not much, but it will keep us going.’
Bread, cheese and water were more welcome than I would ever admit.
‘Lynnevet, wake up,’ I said gently, reaching out to touch her shoulder gently. She opened her eyes but didn’t get up. ‘Sparrow, are you feeling OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, but she moved stiffly. Her eyes brightened when she saw the food. ‘Is that for me?’ she asked.
‘All yours,’ he said. She was already eating.
I tore into the bread but forced myself to slow down so I didn’t make myself sick. The guards didn’t waste much money feeding their prisoners and we hadn’t eaten since the previous morning before we’d gone to trial. Maybe the Palace of Justice only fed innocent prisoners. What’s the point of feeding someone you’re going to kill tomorrow anyway?
It was an awful thought to cross my mind in the moonlight, so I concentrated on chewing. Ronan opened a jar of cold meat and we took turns scooping it out of the jar with bits of the flat bread. I noticed that he wasn’t having any, eating only bread and drinking water.
‘Here, have some,’ I said. ‘You can’t give us all the food.’ The meat had been cured with something salty and spicy and it was absolutely delicious. If I didn’t make sure he had some now, I was going to eat it all and fight Lynnevet to lick the jar.
‘I could stand to miss a few meals,’ he joked, slapping at his belly. I tried not to follow the action, but the belly he’d just slapped was rock hard. He was a beautifully made man, broad shoulders, lean hips and long legs, in the peak of physical condition. He looked so much like Caradoc, I knew it wouldn’t take much to let me convince myself I was in love with him, and I didn’t care. If he was all that was left of Caradoc in the world, then I’d take whatever part of him I could get.
‘You two haven’t eaten today,’ he went on, completely unaware that I was looking at him as hungrily as I looked at the food. I looked away. I’d never been so forward in my life. ‘What’s that star on your brow, Emer?’
I put up a hand to where Umbra had taken up residence. ‘It’s… it’s complicated,’ I answered. ‘It’s nothing you need to be afraid of.’
When we finished eating, we had to get up and walk some more. Ronan wanted us to get as far away from the Caillen hive as possible. I agreed with that, but I kept my eyes on the stars to make sure we were going in the right direction. I was already planning to abandon the pair of them when they slept. I could turn myself into a bird and fly away and they’d never know. Lynnevet would do just fine with Ronan. He seemed to be a better man than I deserved. He would be a good father to Lynnevet. He would make sure she was safe, give her whatever she needed to be happy and that was more than I could give her.
Frankly, I didn’t want her. I didn’t want to raise a child. I wanted Sparrow, that was all I wanted, all I had wanted for so long that to want anything else seemed like blasphemy. If I couldn’t have Sparrow, then I was going to have revenge. A few more nights under the moon and it would be full and I would be back at the height of my powers. It wasn’t arrogance when I said that when I was linked with Umbra my magic was more powerful than Aoife’s. No one had ever known a mage as powerful as Umbra and I was no shrinking violet. I would find a way to get revenge.
We thought we were alone in the forest. We didn’t bother to be quiet ‒ who else would be out in the forest at this hour of the night? Even friendly woodcutters from fairy tales have to sleep sometime. When I finally heard the noise, it sent chills running along my arms. Despite myself, I cried out. I tilted my head back, just in time to see the huge shape of a dragon gliding overhead.
Ronan and Lynnevet followed my gaze. Lynnevet screamed. Ronan gasped so deeply it sounded like he’d hurt himself. ‘The White Queen’s Dragon Guards!’ he cried.
We tried to run, sprinting off the path and into the dark undergrowth, but dragons have excellent vision. They circled overhead, while guards dropped from their backs, dropping so lightly they had to be assisted by magic. In mere minutes, they had us surrounded.
I like to think I’m brave. I am very brave. When a judge had told me yesterday that he was going to burn me at the stake, I didn’t cry, I didn’t try to deflect the blame on another person, like someone else I could mention. I’d faced the White Queen, one of the most powerful magi of our time with nothing more than a wand’s worth of magic and half a breath left in my body. I am brave.
But when those soldiers surrounded us on the dark road, the moonlight splintering through the canopy of trees around us, I nearly lost my mind. Only a few weeks ago I’d been in a near-identical situation ‒ the road, the moonlight, the soldiers. That night there were six soldiers who took me and Aine hostage, but they each had a go at us first.
That night, I’d been frozen in fear, unable to move, unable even to scream as we were assaulted. Now it was like delayed reaction and these soldiers got everyth
ing I could throw at them. I wasn’t going to scream this time, either. This time I was just going to kill them.
There were more of them this time. There must have been twenty of them, all dressed in black dragonscale armour, circling us carefully. Ronan had his sword out. Lynnevet was crouched on the ground behind him, her arms wrapped around her knees, her head buried in the space between her arms. She was whimpering. It was the only sound in the moonlit-silvered darkness. I reached out to Umbra. At my request she stayed dark, waiting for the right moment to reveal her power.
There was another sound in the dark now. It shocked me. It was my own slow, quiet chuckle. ‘Come on then,’ I invited, my hair flowing in the wind around me caused by the magical presence of the dragons. ‘Just try it.’
The first one who rushed at me received a streak of lightning right to the heart. He dropped dead where he stood, like he hit an invisible wall. Umbra flared so brightly that she was brighter than the lightning and the boom of thunder that engulfed us made the ground shake. My hair whipped around my face as I looked around for the next one who dared attack.
I was at the height of my power and I didn’t hesitate to strike killing blows, but there were so many of them and they had magic of their own. They cast lightnings and fireballs at us and I had to stop attacking to shield. I had my left arm raised to protect us, my right hand flung out in an attack, when one of the guards came up behind me and dropped a cloak over my shoulders.
I screamed as the familiar smell of feathers engulfed me. They’d wrapped me in a featherskin. The feathers on the cloak moved from the fabric to my arms, anchoring themselves in my skin, every one a small, devastating pinprick, chipping away at my ability to do magic. I flailed my arms and fought them with my bare hands, kicking them with the beautiful boots Caradoc had bought me, even as I felt the feathers slipping down inside the boots to coat my feet.
Ronan fought bravely, but there were still so many of them, even with the loss of those I’d killed. They took Lynnevet easily. She wept as they dragged her towards a dragon who’d landed nearby. Ronan was shouting as they dragged him away. I was shouting too, even though I had no power to do anything. I shouted every threat I could think of, every vile word I’d ever heard, every plea that had ever crossed my mind, if he’d only get his hands off me.
‘Stop screaming in my ear!’ he shouted. I drew back, rigid for a moment, because I knew that voice. He was ahead of me, pulling me behind him as he headed for his dragon. He turned to look at me, to jerk me along faster and I caught sight of his face in the moonlight. Jerk was the right word. He looked cold and angry, his face lean and handsome, a lock of thick, dark hair falling over his forehead.
All of a sudden, I was less afraid than I was angry. While he’d been at least a hundred years old the last time we’d met, he’d still looked like a young, devastatingly attractive man. He’d known it too, and that made me nervous. He was one of the people I’d met in the past who’d promised me that we’d meet in the future ‒ in the now. He’d never indicated that we were friends.
‘Kiaran, you arsehole!’ I shouted. ‘You let go of me right now, or I swear I’ll kill you before you reach old age!’
He jerked me closer. ‘Just try it, featherskin,’ he grated. He paused. ‘How did you know my name?’
‘It’s some Prophecy of the Ages bullshit,’ I snarled, because that’s what he’d tried to pull with me twenty years in the past. I took the opportunity to reef my hand out of his grasp and ran off into the dark forest. I realised that he must have been the one to cast the featherskin over me, because he pulled it off as I pulled my hand from his. The feathers dropped from my skin and I could reach my magic again.
With a sudden surge of wind that blasted through the trees in response to my magic, I turned myself into a bug and clung to the side of a tree so I could see what was happening.
Kiaran couldn’t find me. He hunted for me, beating at the undergrowth with his sword. He was lucky he didn’t cut his own feet off. He cursed, using every word I’d used at him. Finally, he raised his face to the canopy and shouted incoherently.
#
Insects are tiny and you might think they’d have to go slow because of those little legs, but if you think that, you’ve never chased a fly around the house with a damp tea towel trying to kill the little sucker.
I beat the soldier to Lynnevet by several seconds, which always seem longer when you’re a bug. I tangled my tiny, sticky arms into her hair and changed her into a fly too. She was frightened enough that she didn’t fight me or just fly away, just flew alongside me while I went to Ronan and did the same to him.
The soldiers didn’t have a chance of finding us. It was dark and we were tiny. Ronan had never had wings before, so he wasn’t able to fly far. It was all I could do to stop him dropping heavily out of the air. The three of us huddled under a bush and waited until the soldiers left.
When I turned us all back into humans, Lynnevet turned and stalked away.
‘Lynnevet!’ I cried. ‘Lynnevet, come back here!’
She ignored me. I turned back to Ronan, who was maybe not OK after being an insect for the first time in his life. He was sitting on the ground, his head in his hands. ‘I’ll be back,’ I said, and went after Lynnevet.
‘Lynnevet, where do you think you’re going?’
‘Away from you!’
‘Don’t be stupid! You’ll die out here on your own!’
‘I’ll die out here if I stay with you!’
That brought me up sharply. I drew in a swift breath. ‘You ungrateful little madam.’
‘You’re the most dangerous thing in these woods, Emer. I’d be better off without you. You know you’re not the nice one.’
Those words stung, and for a moment I remembered Caradoc telling me that the words we use to describe ourselves are important. I knew that was true. Maybe it was true that I shouldn’t let other people use those nasty, hurtful words about me, either, even if it was my sister who was using them.
I tried to regain control of my temper. ‘That isn’t fair, Lynnevet. I’m doing everything in my power to keep you safe.’
‘You drew them to us!’ she accused. ‘How did you even meet a Dragon Mage? Were you that desperate for a boyfriend?’
‘He wasn’t a Dragon Mage when I knew him!’ I retorted. ‘If I hadn’t known him, we would all be guests of her Majesty by now.’
‘You’re the one who keeps nearly getting us killed!’ she shouted back. ‘If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have got captured!’
‘If it wasn’t for me, we wouldn’t have escaped!’
‘Back in Cairnagorn, the White Queen was waiting for you! It’s only a few years since you were my Emer and look at all the damage you’ve caused since then!’
‘Says you, who hung me out to dry at the trial!’ When she pulled away, I realised I was standing over her and shouting into her face. Good God, what had I become? She was right. I wasn’t the nice one.
I took a step back. ‘Get away from me,’ I muttered. She just stared at me, so I lunged towards her threateningly and bellowed, ‘Get away from me!’
Lynnevet vanished. It took me a moment to realise that she’d changed her shape to escape from me. I tried to breathe, but the air didn’t seem to make it past the lump in my throat. My breath shuddered its way in. She would be better off with the creepyguardians than with me. I was dangerous like this. What did I know about looking after a child? I wasn’t even a good mother to my own child. David was back with Maldwyn, no better off than he had been before I’d tried to help him.
She would have to find her own way back, when she was ready and when I was calmer, for both our sakes. I went back to Ronan. He was still sitting on the ground, his face pale, but he’d stopped checking his hands to make sure they weren’t still mandibles.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, because it was so damned overdue, but it was to the wrong person. ‘I had to get us away. We weren’t going to escape the Dragon Magi if I didn’t do i
t.’
He looked up at me, the movement a tiny bit delayed. ‘I’m all right,’ he said, though he clearly wasn’t. ‘It was just a shock. That’s never happened to me before.’
He looked so much like Caradoc, there in the moonlight, that I was moved to pity.
‘You will be,’ I promised. I sat down next to him and put my arm around him to bring his head down to rest against my shoulder. It was a mark of how shaken he was that he let me.
Chapter Seven
Somehow, we fell asleep and when I woke in the morning, I was nestled against him, my head on his chest, his arm around me. My limbs were warm and heavy, soft with sleep.
I’d never woken like this before without going into a panic. I’d laid next to Caradoc once ‒ only two nights ago, twenty years in the past. I’d woken in fright at finding a man beside me. Caradoc, bless his gentle heart, had understood. He’d soothed me with words, knowing I wouldn’t be able to tolerate touches or kisses. I’d felt so wretched that early morning with Caradoc because I loved him so much and it seemed like the worst kind of betrayal to be afraid of him.
And here I was with a man I barely knew, nestled against him like I’d never known fear in my life. I pulled myself away from Ronan, gently, slowly, so as not to wake him. This felt like the worst betrayal of all ‒ to allow Ronan to hold me like this when I hadn’t been able to allow Caradoc.
What was I? I’d frightened Lynnevet. I’d shoved her the other day. Was I really such a violent person? Sparrow had always joked with me that I wasn’t the nice one, but was I really so bad that I would hurt and frighten a child?
And here I was in a stranger’s arms ‒ was I a slut? That was what Maldwyn had called me. Was there a word bad enough to describe a girl too frightened to sleep with the man she loved, but happy to sleep with a stranger? Could I be a slut, a tease and frigid all at once?