Bryne hugged her knees to her chest. “Once my body shifts, I can’t control myself. The part of me that is dragon takes over, and I just react. I killed everyone in the market that day and I haven’t gone home since, just in case my parents turn their backs before I can warn them. The aeldorman of my village vowed that if he ever saw me again, he would kill me.”
Fenn scooted closer. The gold around Bryne seemed to pulse with gentle heat.
There were tears in Bryne’s eyes, but when Fenn opened her mouth to ask how long ago this had happened, the dragon girl hastily blinked them away. She patted Fenn’s hand and gave her a wry smile, then gestured to the sea of gems and coins around them. “As you can see, I’m a better thief now. I have a knack for finding gold.”
Fenn chuckled, then stifled a yawn. She could not tell what time it was from deep within the mound, but her body was bone weary.
Bryne glanced toward the entrance of the tomb. “We should get some rest. It’s late now, and they probably won’t try to come back until morning at least.”
Fenn reclined on the mountain of gold, then grimaced as the hilt of a dagger jabbed into her back. She tried, unsuccessfully, to fashion a pillow from an armful of coins.
Bryne rolled her eyes and pointed to the far corner of the chamber.
Fenn followed the line of her arm and noticed a pile of pelts. She gave Bryne a rueful smile. “That does look better.”
Bryne bit her lip. “You’ll have to sleep pressed up against the wall to be safe. And I’ll sleep next to you, to prevent you turning over.”
A blush crept up Fenn’s neck and stained her cheeks. But she couldn’t argue with Bryne’s logic. If she was wedged between the stone wall and Byrne’s body, she wouldn’t be able to turn her back on the dragon girl. Besides, she had slept beside plenty of other girls. Before her elder sisters married, they had all shared a bed. She had never felt embarrassed or flustered by it.
Bryne led her across the room and watched as Fenn eased herself down onto the makeshift bed. The stone wall was cold and slick. Fenn shivered as she pressed against it as tightly as she could. Pinned like this, she wouldn’t be able to run if Bryne suddenly shifted into her monstrous form. But when the other girl lay beside her and her impossibly warm body melted against the contours of Fenn’s legs, she relaxed, and a smile tugged at her lips.
* * *
Fenn woke, warm to the point of sweating, with Bryne still curled next to her.
She sat up. Bryne stirred beside her and rubbed at her eyes. Fenn scooted toward the platter of berries that rested near their feet, careful to keep her back to the wall as she moved. Beside the platter, a golden armband lay half-submerged in coins. It comprised four braids of finely woven gold and was dotted with tiny diamonds. She fished it out and fastened it around her bicep.
“If I had so much gold, I could start my own hall somewhere,” Fenn mused.
She would never have dared to give voice to that desire before, but here, her biggest dreams felt possible. She could make her own home, in a place where this one adventure didn’t have to be the end of her story.
“We could start one together,” Bryne whispered. She scrambled to her feet and walked to the other side of the chamber. The dragon girl seized the handle of a large chest. Its wood was rotted and blackened with age. She started to drag it back across the hills of treasure toward the place where Fenn sat.
Fenn got to her feet, but Bryne motioned at her to sit again.
“You have to be careful. You have to think before you move around me,” she said, grunting with the effort of pulling the chest. “We’ll always have to be careful.”
By the time she reached Fenn, the dragon girl’s skin glistened with a sheen of sweat. Exhaling deeply, Bryne kicked the chest onto its side. The lid fell open. Rolls of yellowing paper tumbled out, along with dark dried kelp and gray sand. The smell of the ocean, pungent with fish and salt, filled the chamber. Fenn breathed in the scents of her coastal home.
Fenn approached and unfurled the first scroll. It was a map, that much she knew, though she couldn’t read the fine script etched across it. She’d had a few reading lessons, when the local Christian priest had offered, but her mother had worried he would try to convert Fenn, so she had stopped going.
She traced her fingers along the jagged coast depicted on the map. She didn’t recognize any of the headlands or bays.
Bryne lay on her stomach beside Fenn and squinted at the map. She tapped a few places with a chewed nail. “I’ve been to many of these places already,” she said. “Gathering gold for my hoard. Mostly from tombs and burial mounds—places where no one will miss it. There are places in these mountains where no one lives, whole valleys free for the taking.”
“Aren’t you afraid of the gods’ wrath? Robbing tombs?” Fenn asked. A shiver passed through her. She was still concerned for her own soul’s fate after desecrating Cyng Aella’s bones. How much angrier would the gods be if she became a tomb robber?
“I’ve come to understand that the worst part of being cursed is being alone in it. Being what I am is not so bad in itself. I can fly!” She gave Fenn a shy smile. “And if the gods cursed us for this, we’d be together. We could build another hall in the shadow realm.”
Fenn smiled back. It should have scared her, but people sang songs about the cursed too. The cursed were remembered. And what Bryne was offering her was a chance to continue her adventure, not settle down and be forgotten. If the hag goddess cursed them to wander the earth forever, neither of them would be alone.
Shouts echoed in the mouth of the tomb. Bryne turned to face it and her expression hardened. The fire coating her fingers turned brilliant blue.
“I’ll go talk to them,” said Fenn, brushing off her tunic. “Stay here and press your back against the wall so they’ll all be in front of you.”
“You should hide,” Bryne hissed. Her gentle voice was ragged with panic. “You should go back down into the crypt with the skeleton and wait for me there. I will position the stone so there is no gap. My fire won’t reach you, and, in my dragon’s form, I won’t be able to fit down the stairs.”
Fenn shook her head. If Ecberth had come back for her, then she owed him a warning. She was not so naïve as to think that he would behave differently toward Bryne than any of the men before him had done. He and his warriors would dismiss her and, if she refused to come with them, they might grab her. Even if Bryne told them what she was, they wouldn’t believe her.
They might not believe Fenn either, but she had to try. She had not seen Cedric among the bodies and still did not know for sure that he was dead. Even though he had dismissed her in the aeldorman’s hall, they had shared friendship once, and that was worth something.
She backed away from Bryne, raising her hands. Eyes filled with tears, the dragon girl edged toward her. But it seemed Bryne did dare rise to her feet, lest she prompt Fenn to turn around and run.
“It will be okay,” Fenn mouthed across the chamber.
“Fenn?” hissed a familiar voice from the darkness behind her. “Fenn, is that you?”
A strong hand reached out from the gloom and tugged her backward into the damp, cave-like entrance chamber. She tumbled into Ecberth’s chest, and he enveloped her in a hug, before he stiffened and gently pushed her away.
The corpses that lined the walls had started to rot, and Fenn nearly gagged on the smell. She shivered as a breeze of cool air from outside whispered through the tomb.
“You survived, then?” Ecberth grunted.
Fenn grinned. “I told you I would.”
“Didn’t find the girl?” He sighed.
Fenn braced herself. “I did.”
Ecberth looked down and scuffed his foot on the tomb’s floor. He swallowed hard. “And is she…already dead? Are we too late?”
“She’s inside.”
A huddled group of shado
ws stood behind Ecberth. They held torches and iron weapons, and each wore thick black cloth covering most of their faces. One of the shadows stepped forward. He reached out and grasped Fenn’s arm. She recognized Cedric’s green eyes above the line of black fabric. He embraced her, and the familiar scent of woodsmoke filled her nose. She expected to feel relief and safety, but when he cupped her cheek and his gold armband brushed against her skin, her anger brimmed over.
“Thank the gods,” he whispered. “One of our horses threw a shoe on the road and went lame. We arrived just after you did, and Ecberth told us what happened.”
Fenn crossed her arms. “If you’d taken me with you, we’d have arrived at the same time.”
Cedric laughed, a low rumble that echoed through her. Once, she had loved that laugh, had thought it sounded like thunder. Now it was a war drum to her fury.
She pushed away from him. “I am the only person who has entered this mound and survived. Now, if you all want to live, you should listen to me.”
Cedric’s eyes widened. Behind him, a few of his friends chuckled.
“You’re small,” Cedric said through ground teeth. “Perhaps you hid in some unlit corner while the beast prowled by. I would never hide. I would have confronted it.”
“I did,” Fenn growled. She turned back to Ecberth, ignoring the way Cedric’s hand tightened on his sword hilt. “You have to listen to me. The maiden and the dragon are one and the same. She’s cursed.”
“Fenn,” Ecberth said, his tone low and very gentle. “That may be what she told you, but do you think it’s possible the girl has lost her wits? Who knows how long she has been in there alone with the monster, never seeing the sun? If the dragon has not returned, we should act quickly to rescue her now. A few weeks of food and rest, and she’ll forget these delusions.”
Fenn shook her head. It was this line of thinking that had gotten so many warriors killed already. “It’s not a delusion. When I first entered the tomb, I saw her sleeping. I went to wake her and, in her shadow, I saw the dragon. I’ve talked to her—”
“Her? You’ve been talking to a dragon?” Cedric spat. He glanced over his shoulder at his friends. Their laughter, when it came, was nervous. “Maybe it’s Fenn who has started to lose her wits.”
Fenn’s hands curled into fists. Cedric had been dismissive before, even defensive, after she’d bested him with swords or beaten him at Hnefatafl. But she had never heard him speak with so much venom.
“I have to admit,” Ecberth said, each word slow and measured. “It does sound far-fetched, Fenn. Is it possible the dragon has put a spell on you? To make you believe such things?”
Of all of them, Ecberth’s disbelief hurt the most.
“It’s a curse,” Fenn repeated. “She won’t transform until you turn your back. Until then, she’s just a normal girl. You can talk to her.”
Ecberth sighed and rubbed his temples. His hands were coated with earth and sweat. Fenn wondered if he had even stopped to bathe since his first encounter with Bryne. She knew he was a good man, and he was trying. She had to make him understand.
Cedric’s white teeth flashed in the torchlight; his grin was almost feral. “Well then, killing her will be easy.”
He pushed past Fenn and ran into the tomb’s main chamber with his sword drawn. He stopped and stared at the mountains of gold for only a moment before charging up the hill of coins.
Bryne sat where Fenn had left her. Her back was braced against the rear wall of the chamber, and her knees were raised to her chest. Her hands were submerged in the gold. Her red hair made a halo of flame around her pale face. Around herself, Bryne had arranged a circle of armbands, taken from the fallen. A torch sat beside her, and her winged shadow fell over Cedric as he raised his sword.
Fenn reacted on instinct. She raced after Cedric as he climbed, shouting at him to stop. Bryne was not a monster, and she had to make Cedric see it, if only for long enough so that she and Bryne could flee. She had glimpsed a possible future in the maps and she wasn’t going to let him take it from her. Despite what the town, the aeldorman and Cedric himself had always believed, she had never seen such a future with him.
Cedric’s eyes were clouded with confusion, and his scowl deepened as he searched Bryne’s face for the truth of her curse. He was too close to her now to see the outline of her enormous shadow.
“Stop and listen to me!” Fenn’s heartbeat ratchetted, and she felt the drum of it in her ears. She flung herself between Cedric and Bryne and rounded on him. She bent down and grabbed a handful of the armbands. She threw them in his face. A rough gem sliced a cut beneath his eye.
Cedric went still. His eyes widened with terror, and he stumbled back, dropping his sword. His lips parted in a soundless scream and a trail of urine snaked down his leg.
A low snarl whispered in Fenn’s ear.
* * *
Fenn whirled around.
The dragon crouched behind her, as large as a drekkar ship. Its scaled hide was the deep purple of a midnight sky, its horns were white ivory smeared at the pointed tips with crusted red. Its massive jaws hung open, revealing double rows of sharp teeth, like the sharks Fenn had seen washed up on the beach. Slitted, reptilian eyes stared into hers. This creature was not Bryne. There was nothing human left in those eyes.
It unfurled its wings and screamed. Deep within its throat, orange fire bubbled.
Something gold, a plate or a crown, sailed over Fenn’s head and connected with the dragon’s forehead. The beast’s attention snapped to the rear of the chamber. It squared its body and sucked in a deep breath.
Fenn grabbed Cedric’s arm. Whatever he had said to her, she was not going to leave him to face a dragon alone. She hauled him under the dragon’s massive wing as the beast rounded on Ecberth’s warriors behind them.
As they slid into the burial chamber, the dragon turned its head toward Fenn. Something flickered in its expression: concern or confusion. And a tiny spark of hope ignited in Fenn that somewhere within the beast, Bryne had recognized her.
She didn’t wait to find out.
At Fenn’s command, Cedric lifted the heavy stone lid off Cyng Aella’s coffin, exposing the steps beneath. He would not look at her. They jumped inside, and Cedric pulled the lid shut behind them. He was stronger than Fenn and was able to seal it from below, despite the angle.
Fenn prayed that Bryne, when she came back to herself, would not forget where they had gone. With the coffin’s lid sealed, there was no light, and she knew there was no hidden way out of the tomb. They would not know that Bryne had transformed until she came for them, and Fenn doubted that Cedric would emerge again until he knew it was safe.
They collapsed against the stair together, shrouded in darkness. Cedric’s breath came in short gasps. He reeked of urine and sweat.
Fenn touched his face and found that his cheeks were hot and soaked with tears.
* * *
“Do you think they’re all dead?” Cedric whispered, what seemed like hours later.
His voice was hoarse with tears, and Fenn pictured the faces of all the boys who had volunteered with him. She had grown up with them, but they were Cedric’s best friends, his brothers. But Ecberth had been her friend, in his own gruff way. He had given her a chance when nobody else would and had kept his promise to come back, after all. To imagine them all dead, incinerated as they ran, made her stomach clench.
And yet, imagining the alternative, that Ecberth and Cedric’s band had prevailed and Bryne was dead, made tears sting her eyes. She bit her fist to muffle a cry.
They sat still on the stone steps, shoulders pressed together, listening. The tomb was silent.
“How long should we wait here?” Cedric asked. “I don’t hear anything.”
“I don’t know,” Fenn said.
Bryne had never told Fenn how long she remained in the dragon’s body after she
transformed. The beast could be coiled on its mound of treasure, waiting to ambush them as they emerged from the coffin. She wanted to wait for Bryne to come and get them, just to be sure, but if Bryne was dead or Ecberth’s men had chased her away, they could be waiting forever.
Whatever had happened, Fenn needed to know the truth of it.
“I’m sorry,” Cedric whispered, and she wished she could see his eyes as he spoke. “I shouldn’t have said all those things to you. I just thought things were settled between us.”
“I don’t want to be your wife, Cedric,” Fenn said, finally voicing the words she had thought a hundred times.
Perhaps if he, like Bryne, could have accepted Fenn for what she was and not what he wanted her to be, things might have been different. As it was, voicing her feelings after so many years concealing them made her feel light and giddy with relief.
She touched his arm and felt him tense.
He said nothing. A twinge of guilt twisted in Fenn’s stomach, but she did not retract her words. Cedric would find someone else, and they would both be happier for it. Slowly, he shifted beside her onto his knees and, grunting with effort, pushed the coffin’s stone lid aside.
The air was thick with smoke and ash. Fenn coughed into her sleeve as she emerged from the burial chamber. Cedric followed her, and together they crept into the tomb’s main chamber. The smoke grew thicker, but when she squinted around, she could see no trace of the beast. A charred body rested beside the entrance; its mouth gaped in a grotesque final scream.
Crouching low and pressing herself against the wall, Fenn hurried forward into the tomb’s entrance passage. Behind her, Cedric tripped over a chest and swore. His voice echoed. When they reached the warrior’s burned body, he sank to his knees beside it.
Fenn expected to find the rest of Ecberth’s band in the passage, but the only corpses there were days old. Heart racing, she sprinted up the hall. Ecberth had planned to wait outside the tomb, to trap the dragon as it emerged. Perhaps the lone warrior had sacrificed himself to get the beast’s attention, in order to lure it outside into a trap. She imagined Bryne’s body, broken and impaled, at the bottom of a pit. She ran faster.
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