The Dragon Writers Collection

by DragonWritersCollective

  She saddled Midnight, the black Palfrey wedding present from her father, one she was certain he had hoped she would use to escape the Seetans’ island. She refrained from chuckling at Lan approaching a white Courser, which whinnied and snorted and backed away from him.

  “Why did you not pick up the knife?” Lan twitched his ears and cocked his head, waiting for an answer.

  Gráinne tightened the girth strap. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I am talking about. I saw you hide the knife. You want to kill him, do you not?”

  Biting her lip, she secured the girth strap of the saddle and grabbed the reins in one hand and the pommel in the other. Stepping into the stirrup with her left foot, she straightened her knee and lifted her lithe body easily, swinging her long leg over the saddle and slipping her right foot into the stirrup on the other side in one fluid motion, even though she winced with the pain of movement. She looked down at Lan, who struggled to thread the girth strap because his arms were too short to hold the saddle and reach under the prancing Courser at the same time.

  “Of course I do. What do you think he will do to me once his future King is born?” Gráinne bounced on the saddle and pressed her heels inward, signaling the horse, which galloped out of the stables.

  For anyone unfamiliar with it, the path winding around the mountain on which Vandovir Estate sat presented a treacherous route. Gráinne knew every twist and turn, and she was especially aware of the spot where the path wound behind the cascade of water that gushed out of the top of the mountain and spilled into the Cove of Tears. Midnight seemed to know it even better, as the mare wove without guidance along the path, stepping on spots where the waterfall’s shrugged off pebbles were packed and stable and avoiding spots where the pebbles were loose and capable of rolling off the precipice.

  Gráinne rode confidently downward and into the forest at the base of the mountain before turning and heading in the direction opposite of any of the places she’d named when Slyxx had questioned her. Instead, she rode straight toward the western shore, where she could look across a narrow channel and see Incorrigible. Halting and dismounting when she reached the bright red tree the Seetans laughingly referred to as a Blood Tree, she released the reins and let Midnight graze on the lush grass edging the River of Blood, so named not because of its colour—as were the Blood Trees that punctuated the northwestern and southwestern shores of the river—but because it spilled with merciless fury into the seaway between the two islands.

  Lan had spoken the truth; a thin, grey fog shrouded her homeland, and crumpling timber added to the shroud with occasional flare-ups that sent embers floating into the air amidst dense, black smoke.

  She couldn’t see the western side of Incorrigible or make out the castle atop the southwestern hills. The Dancing Goblin, a tavern nestled in the woods on the eastern shoreline, had become a pile of collapsed beams still smoldering. Gráinne looked toward the northeastern side of Incorrigible. The thatched roofs of village cottages were missing. They should have obscured the docks. Instead, the view all the way to the harbour remained unobstructed.

  Her temples pounded as her gaze took in one empty space after another. A few stone warehouses where the Harbour Master and a group known as the Obdured had kept the inward and outward flow of trade goods lined the eastern and western sides of the docks. The roofs and doors of the storehouses were gone.

  “I have to go there. I have to know. Maybe the creature is wrong . . . or not telling the truth. Maybe there are survivors.” she said under her breath. Not finding survivors because she trusted the word of a creature who served the Marquis would have brought more guilt. She already had enough of that. She didn’t need more.

  Midnight lifted her head from the grassy spot where she grazed.

  Gráinne turned and mounted the horse again, urging her up the western coastline toward the stone bridge connecting the northwestern corner of Vandovir with the docks of Incorrigible.

  “Stupid woman!” she heard Lan scream.

  So he managed to get the saddle on, after all. Let us see how well he rides.

  Gráinne didn’t slow down until she had crossed the first bridge. When she reached the second one, the one spanning the river between the northern and southern sides of Incorrigible, she looked back toward the first bridge. Lan was approaching it, waving furiously at her. Still one bridge ahead. He cannot catch me before I get to the gate of the Village on High.

  Digging her heels into Midnight’s flanks, Gráinne pushed the horse into a full gallop and pointed her toward the gate leading home. On the other side of the gated stone wall lay the most recently built village in Incorrigible, which wound up the hill on either side of a cobblestone path to the castle. A tall, grey stone wall built into the sheer face of a plateau surrounded the entire complex, castle and village. It had proven unscalable, making the gate the only way in to the village, and, ultimately, to the only home she had ever known—her mother’s castle.

  As she passed through the stone archway, Gráinne pulled back hard on the reins. “Whoa!”

  In front of her lay a looking-glass reflection of death. Charred rubble had replaced wooden houses. Stone homes and shoppes looked like eviscerated prey, their upper floors and roofs spilling out windows and doorways, their cavities filled with mounds of burned timber. Soot and smoke stained the cobblestone street, strewn with items tossed from windows and doorways in hopes of saving them—copper pots, urns, family portraits, trampled clothing, broken chairs, a butter churn, and a spinning wheel lying on its side. The only signs of life, hundreds of birds landing atop the rubble piles squawked and pecked at each other over what Gráinne feared were the remains of unidentifiable dead.

  “I told you there were no survivors.” Lan’s voice interrupted Gráinne’s survey of the scene.

  His words pressed down on her hope. “Perhaps some escaped or hid until the soldiers left.”

  “There are no survivors, you stubborn woman!” he hissed at her, clearly miffed at her deception and winded from the hard ride to catch up with her.

  “I do not believe you!” she yelled back. Gráinne nudged Midnight with her heels and moved slowly through the lifeless village toward the castle.

  Lan followed suit.

  “My father lived there, along with my aunt and uncle and cousin,” she said, pointing toward the dark stone building at the top of the hill.

  “They do not live there now. Turn back. You do not want to go there.”

  “Yes, I do,” she barked at him. “I have to know. What if it were your family?”

  “I do not remember having a family, and if I did, why would I want to see their dead bodies?”

  Lan’s words stole Gráinne’s venom, and she remained silent the rest of the way up the hill, the desolation around her seeping into her mood. She slid off the saddle and let Midnight graze when they passed through the castle’s gates and reached the meadow in front of the castle. Lan did the same with the Courser.

  Gráinne took a deep breath and walked through the entrance to find the scene inside much the same as that in the village. Everything made of wood was debris or ash. Items that might have survived fire, such as the granite statues and carved stone benches, were either gone or reduced to smashed bits. She saw not a single personal item—not a treasured urn, a trinket box, a portrait—nor items completely impersonal, like the ash bucket next to the fireplace or the array of flower pots for kitchen herbs. As she roamed from room to room, she prepared herself to find the bodies of her relatives, but she came across nothing resembling either a human or an animal form’s skeletal remains.

  Lan coughed. “Are you satisfied? Can we go now? The day grows late, and the wolves will come as soon as darkness falls. Besides, I cannot breathe in here.”

  “Wolves?” Gráinne’s eyes widened. She thought back to the birds pecking at the rubble piles and shuddered. Wolves demonstrated more aggressiveness toward live prey. She hadn’t thought about having to fight her way out of
the castle. The thought terrified her.

  As she walked back out to the lawn, she took note of what remained indoors. If looters or anyone else moved anything, she would know when she returned. She prayed that on her next visit, she would discover a chamber pot, a basket of wood, anything indicating her father, aunt, uncle, cousin, or anyone had come back to reclaim the castle.

  Silently, the pair rode back toward Vandovir. By the time they reached the bridge at the docks, Gráinne had come to a decision. She stopped and looked behind her.

  “What do you think now? Will you believe me when I say there is nothing here for you?” Lan asked.

  “What do I think?” she replied. “I think there is plenty here for me.”

  Lan’s mouth dropped open. “Are you mad, woman? It is gone. All of it. The buildings, everything, everyone, an entire realm!”

  Gráinne looked from the island to Lan and shrugged. “Maybe I am mad, but you are wrong, cat. It is not all gone, and I suspect they are not either.” She nudged the mare with her knees and crossed the bridge, carrying out of Incorrigible the stubborn spark of hope she’d brought into her homeland.

  All the way back up the mountain, Lan grumbled under his breath. “What . . . think he will say . . . . You cannot expect me . . . . I cannot lie . . . .”

  Gráinne caught all of Lan’s last, exasperated mumble, “You are as mad as he. And I am not a cat.”

  When they reached the castle in Vandovir, Gráinne walked quietly into the hallway, where she spotted candlelight streaming from Slyxx’s study. Knowing an encounter with her husband would not go well, she took the back staircase to her chambers and avoided the study altogether. Once safely to her private space, she pulled off her riding clothes and threw them against the wall before slipping under the bedding. Memories of home before and after the attack swirled in Gráinne’s mind until she wasn’t sure if her hope of finding survivors was founded or if it signaled impotent desperation or, worse if the cat was right, madness.

  Weary, sleep mercifully overtook her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Distractors

  Waking was less merciful. The clamor of chains startled Gráinne out of sleep, and without regard for her bruises, welts, and aches, she sat straight up in bed. The bare-chested figure of her husband at the end of the bed smiling lewdly as he untied the cord lacing the front of his pants came into focus in the morning light. He knows!

  “Get out,” she hissed at him as she contemplated which direction to move. She would be vulnerable during the Shift, but she thought she could stave off an attack if she could get the bed between them until the Shift was complete.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” Slyxx warned, grasping the chains stretched between iron cuffs wrapped around her ankles, cuffs she hadn’t noticed.

  He laughed the same cruel laugh she'd heard before, the one that made her crave to Shift and slash unreservedly at him with her claws. Gráinne knew Shifting was impossible, though. Her ankles were bound. There was no way to know what kind of damage she'd do to herself. A larger animal frame would surely form in and around the cuffs.

  Gráinne had heard tales of such tragedies. Her grandmother had told her about a Shifter captured and sentenced to Endurance, one of the abominations of justice during the Sieges. In his panic, he had Shifted, and the iron cuffs—large enough to accommodate human ankles but not remotely large enough to accommodate those of a bull—had all but severed his feet from his legs. He had bled to death while his captors mocked the mournful lowing of the dying bull. Gráinne shuddered at the thought of the bull’s agony. What good would a deformed and crippled animal be in this situation? Her reasoning resolved the question before her tremble ended.

  “I said get out!” Gráinne drew her knees as close together as she could and bent them, drawing herself into a ball sitting up. She let her eyes Shift to their feline state and snarled loudly at her husband. As the sound rumbled out of her, it grew in intensity until it became fierce, deep, and threatening. Perhaps a partial Shift would suffice.

  The Marquis dropped his pants to the floor and stepped out of them, his manhood erect. Almost breathless, he mocked her. “That sound is so alluring.” Crawling onto the bed, he jammed one knee and then the other between Gráinne’s calves before spreading his knees outward to force her lower legs as far apart as the chains would allow.

  The rumble became a roar as Gráinne Shifted her hands and fingers into paws with sharp claws. She took a swift swipe at Slyxx’s face. His hands flew up to grasp her wrists, but not before she caught the tip of a claw on the side of his neck. As he forced her arms and body backward, falling forward onto her, the claw raked downward and gouged his skin. Blood trickled down his neck and soaked into the collar of his open muslin shirt. Feeling the ankle cuffs tightening as her legs thickened, Gráinne reversed the Shift to avoid malforming.

  “Bitch!” His huge hands imprisoned her wrists, and he pressed his weight down harder onto her.

  “Get off me!” She struggled for breath as all her energy streamed into shaping her human form again.

  Slyxx tightened his grip on her arms, and Gráinne screamed. He lifted her wrists above her head and pressed her hands together so that he could hold both slender wrists with one of his mammoth hands. Though she struggled to liberate one hand, she couldn’t manage to do so. With his free hand, he roughly turned Gráinne’s face to one side and plunged his mouth onto the curve of her neck, biting her skin hard enough that she screamed again as his incisors pierced her skin. He clamped down harder on her neck so that she couldn’t move without ripping open her own throat. Releasing his hand from her face, he slid it down the outer curves of her body. When his hand reached the level of his own hips, Slyxx slipped it between their bodies. Sticky moisture dampened her public hair as he stroked his member against her. Slyxx moaned, and Gráinne stared at the stained glass window she faced.

  Concentrate on the colours, the patterns.

  She could feel the hardness of his excitement as he repositioned his hips just enough to press toward his target. As he penetrated her, a green sliver of the window glass began to take on the shape of a woman in green robes, and Gráinne’s body numbed. She watched the figure while her husband grunted and stroked repeatedly until a final thrust, delivered with malice, spilled his seed inside of her.

  “Gather the essence of an entity to control its reproduction.”

  Gráinne blinked. The voice had been neither hers nor that of her rapist.

  Slyxx sank onto Gráinne, shoving the last bit of air out of her lungs. She gasped, but she couldn’t catch her breath. Panic overtook her, and she struggled, but with strength rapidly decreasing. The pillow behind her neck grew warmer and wetter. The colours in the stained glass dimmed.

  The smell of rot brought Gráinne wide awake and thrashing, arms and legs flinging in every direction.

  “Stop it, woman! You will hurt both of us, and then who will tend you?!”

  Lan. Was it his voice I heard before? Did he see what happened?

  Gráinne stared at the Kathan, her chest rising and falling with each short breath as she considered tossing him out the stained-glass window.

  Lan stood well back from the bed, the crock of yarrow and fat in one hand, staring back at her. The stalemate of stares between them ended with the Kathan saying, “The bite on your neck is red and swollen. I will leave the poultice for you to dress it, but I would advise you not delay.” Lan set the poultice on the dressing table and left the room.

  Gráinne was suddenly aware of the throb in her neck. She slid to the edge of the bed and lowered her bare feet to the stone floor but stopped short of standing. Every movement sent surges of pain to one spot or another. Looking down, she parted her legs slightly. Bruises on her inner thighs were already darkening to indigo.

  Do not think about it.

  Gráinne stiffened and sat straight up, bracing her hands against the edge of the bed, and stared at the chaise in front of her. She could imagine Slyxx’s figure there,
his shadow behind him on the grey stone. Gritting her teeth, she rose and walked slowly to the bath Caera drew for her each morning and night.

  I will not show pain.

  Surprise washed over her when Gráinne lowered herself into the bath. She had felt tenderness between her legs, but she hadn’t expected water to sting or blood to trail out of her. Washing her wounds, particularly the one made by Slyxx’s teeth, proved even more painful.

  When she finished her bath, Gráinne put on a sleeveless cotton top and long knickers, the latter of which she had lined with thick cotton to absorb the blood dripping slowly out of her. Over the undergarments, she slipped into a simple, long-sleeved black gown with an empire waist and high collar. It was made of thinly woven fabric and edged at neck, hem, bodice, and sleeves with a narrow braid of twisted cord coloured in shades of silver, the brightest shade as shimmery as the pupils of her animal form’s eyes. She slid her feet into a pair of black leather slippers and sat down at her dressing table to comb her unruly hair.

  As she sat staring into the looking glass and gently pulling the comb through her wet hair, Gráinne thought about the voice she’d heard the night before, the one emanating from the window. The voice had sounded foreign, but the words had felt familiar. She tried to recall them perfectly: Gather the essence of an entity to control its reproduction. What does that mean?

  A knock on her chamber door and the familiar voice of Caera calling out, “Marquessa?” interrupted Gráinne’s musing.

  “Come in, Caera.” She gathered her composure.

  “Thank you, ma’am. Will you take your breakfast here or in the dining hall?” the small woman asked as soon as she had opened the door and stepped inside.

  “Close the door, please.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Caera replied, already grasping the iron handle on the door and pushing against the heavy wooden slab to close the door gently.

  “Come and sit with me for a moment,” Gráinne said, motioning toward a small bench next to the dressing table.