Dragoon (War of the Princes Book 2)

by A. R. Ivanovich

  “Well can't you try?” I pleaded, squeezing the sheets of the cot in my hand. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. I... he... we were so close. We were right here! Why did it... have to... if he hadn't come down...”

  “Kat, don't,” Kyle said, shifting, his expression grave. “If he hadn't left the ship, it might have been you.”

  “It should have been me!”

  “Don't tarnish his sacrifice by being selfish,” Kyle said. His wisdom was harsh but his tone was soft. “He knew what was at stake. He'd given me enough lectures on courage and honor for a three-year headache. He was my friend too. Gravity, I didn't want any of this to happen... but it did, and he'd do it all over again. For all of us.”

  He walked over to me, and I couldn't meet his eyes.

  “Can I see your leg?” he asked.

  I turned in my seat, extending my calf. As soon as the adrenalin had worn off, the pain in my hands and leg was intense.

  I'd had worse.

  Kyle gently peeled back my torn pants around the calf, carefully removed the bloody strip of scarf, and put a hand up to the spot where Rune had cauterized my flesh.

  He didn't say anything about his Ability to heal. Not a single comment. But it worked. Within moments, I felt normal again. I rotated my ankle and flexed my muscles. The pain was gone and my leg was stiff, but functional. The spot where my skin had been melted remained, a long, smooth slash across the back of my leg.

  “Thank you,” I said awkwardly. It was a strange thing to have your boy-next-door best friend suddenly put your broken body back together. “She did something to my wrists too.”

  “Dylan’s head was scraped up pretty badly too, but I took care of it. You know, he actually said thank you. I didn’t expect that. Let me see?”

  I held them out, and he cupped them in his hands.

  “How are you so okay with this?”

  Kyle’s hands twitched. “What makes you think I’m okay?”

  “You don't know how it feels,” I said, looking at the sheet that covered Sterling's body. Beneath the cloth, we had matching cuts in our chest. “To be drained. There's no pain like it. If Stakes had drained me, it would have killed him, just like Sterling killed Hest. If he would have drained me then, none of this would have happened.”

  Kyle's eyes flashed to mine. “Kat, I love you and everything, but you're being an idiot. Don't bother talking to me until you're done being a victim.”

  He stalked out of the room, hands in his pockets, leaving me to study my mended hands, and stew in my self-loathing. He was right. Regret and blame served no purpose but slow torture. I needed to press on, do my best, and focus on what I could achieve instead of what I couldn’t.

  * * *

  The high-pitched horn keened persistently, calling us to the bridge of the ship. I hurried down the narrow hall through the forward cabin, the tightness in my calf still forcing me to limp. Several of the doors to the bunkrooms were open, and I could see children playing, talking and napping inside. The Fish was filled beyond its capacity.

  The horn sounded again, right as I swung in the door to the bridge.

  “Out,” Carmine barked from her place at the helm. She was flipping switches and pressing levers into position. Lights flashed on her control console, and she spun her hand on the wheel. “I'm dealing with enough, now get... out!”

  “If you'd just listen to me,” a boy was pleading. It was Merritt. He was standing behind a ten-year-old girl with dull, flat brown hair. His hands were on her shoulders.

  The world outside the glass nose of the Flying Fish was a blur. We were over the harbor, wreaking havoc on the ropes, planks and cargo stored on the piers. We tipped off the side, finally hovering over water. The force of air beneath us capsized a pair of small fishing boats, and tore a sailboat free of its mooring. Water sprayed up around us as the Fish stabilized and began to pick up speed.

  Carmine breathed a tenuous sigh of relief. Her piercing eyes held the horizon. “Good. Katelyn, get these children out of here.”

  “Please, Miss Katelyn, she won't listen,” Merrick said.

  “We may have gotten out of the city, but the Cape is filled with Raserion's warships and defensive towers. Some of them have cannons.” Carmine was livid. “If we're lucky enough not to be struck, they're still going to chase us. There's no chance of us outrunning them if our engines overheat again. If it weren't for Kyle, we'd all be dead, and I'm not sure how long he'll be able to work engineering miracles. The last thing I need to deal with is a child asking me questions.”

  Carmine was right. There was a massive ship up ahead and there was no way we could maneuver around it without being seen.

  The young girl looked up at me with wide, round eyes. One of those eyes was green, the other was a silvery grey... the natural color of my own eyes.

  She broke away from Merritt, ran ahead of the helm and threw herself on the floor, planting her palms firmly on the ground.

  “Get. Her. Out!” Carmine repeated.

  “No,” I said, hobbling gingerly forward. “Wait.”

  We were in range of the dark hover ship now. They didn't move to intercept us. We grew closer, and I could see tiny figures atop their high deck. They were pointing at us... or below us. I walked to the glass at the front of the ship and looked down. All I saw was mist, and churning water.

  I looked down at the little girl. “What are you doing?”

  She looked up at me again. Those eyes were so strange, so bright. Keeping one palm on the ground, she used her other hand to draw the symbol of the Shadow Chasers in my shadow. Two dozen of the little salamander-like creatures climbed out from the darkness. They made tiny burping sounds, and crawled over one another, looking up at us with milky white eyes. I'd always found them cute. Now they reminded me of the Voice of the Prince. I shuddered.

  The little girl with the mismatched eyes held her free hand over them, the way I would if I was to offer them lightning. As her hand moved out over the Shadow Chasers, they vanished. Two, eight, fifteen, twenty-four. They were gone!

  I looked up from the creatures to the little girl, astonished. A smile grew on my lips. “You've made us disappear!”

  She smiled at me, and put her other palm back on the ground.

  She's half Lodestone. That's where she gets the power to do this.

  “What?” Carmine blinked.

  “That's what I was trying to tell you,” Merritt said with annoyance.

  “Why didn't she say something?”

  “Holly doesn't speak,” Merritt told her. “Now can we please stay?”

  “Yes,” Carmine said, distracted. “Yes, of course.”

  Merritt smiled and went to sit beside Holly.

  The world spread out before us, beyond the panoramic panels of glass. We were speeding through the cape, gliding past the menacing ships, leaving only the trail of disturbed water behind us. At this rate, we'd quickly reach the open ocean.

  We were nearly safe. My happiness about it snagged in several places. I found no good reason to celebrate just yet.

  I limped back over to Carmine, and she gave me a beautiful smile.

  “Can you believe this?”

  I wished I could mirror her excitement. “Carmine, thank you.” If she hadn't pulled such an insane maneuver, I'd be dead. She'd agreed to let me go when I'd left. What changed? My curiosity had gotten the better of me once again. “Why'd you do it?”

  She glanced at me quizzically, keeping most of her attention on the controls.

  “Why'd you come back?”

  “Your friends wanted to go after you, both of them. When Dylan arrived on the ship and said he knew where you were, I figured there was only one chance for you to get out of there alive. So, I thought, why bloody not? Cape Hill never treated me particularly well, why shouldn't I mess it up a little?”

  “But your ship.”

  “Yeah, she'll need some work. But how many times do you get to pull a stunt like that, hmm? Not many,” she snickered. Her
expression became more serious, but the hint of a smile remained. “Besides,” she told me, meeting my eyes. “Not a single thing has been normal since I met you. Profitable, yes, but not normal. I'd like to see how this plays out.”

  “That doesn't sound like something a woman caring for children would say,” Dylan broke in from the doorway.

  “I'm a pilot first,” Carmine said with a sparkle in her eye. “And a guardian second. Life punishes those who ignore their true nature, wouldn't you agree, Lord Axton?”

  Dylan snorted and left the bridge.

  I trailed after him, knowing what I had to do, and not liking it one bit.

  “Dylan, wait.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said as though talking to me was a tedious occasion. “I shot the puppet, I'm a terrible person, etcetera, etcetera. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known we were still in danger. ‘Oh, that doesn’t make up for it, Dylan, you monster!’ I know, I know. You have to admit it though, I was right about him. Look at what he did to you.”

  “That was the Voice of the Prince! No one would have done any better.”

  “That is true,” he turned to face me head-on. “And it wouldn't have happened at all if you hadn't gone back for a hollow pawn like him.”

  And now he was blaming me for Sterling's death, in his passive aggressive sort of way. I should have expected it, but his words lanced me through the chest anyway.

  “I'm n-not here to talk about this,” I stuttered, battling off the emotion creeping into my throat.

  “Of course you aren't,” Dylan snorted, looking away from me like he was unimpressed with my existence.

  I swallowed hard, looking at the perfect lines of his face, wondering how I had once seen him as handsome. I could hardly stand to look at him. “If you hadn't found us, Rune would be dead and I... I don't know what would have happened to me.”

  “You'd have died too, eventually,” he offered as though he was being helpful.

  I ignored him, forcing the words out of my mouth. “What I’m trying to say is… thank you.”

  Dylan brushed the blonde hair away from his eyes. His usual wit and cruelty subsided, leaving him genuinely sober.

  “I didn't do it for you.”

  * * *

  I found Rune in the cargo hold with the children. Thin, soft grass sprouted out from the metal floor beneath them, and tiny red flowers bloomed, no doubt the creation of someone's Ability. Rune didn't elevate himself above them, but sat cross-legged on the grassy floor. Even so, he looked like a giant in his glossy black armor. Two rings of kids sat around him. They were smiling, and so was he. I'd never seen him smile for so long before.

  No one noticed me come in.

  “We thought it'd be fun to tie straw into our hair for the autumn festival,” one of the children said. “Lina braided so much in hers that when she walked by Farmer Nedry's elephant calf, it chased her halfway across town square!”

  “One time, she painted a beard on her face and pretended to be the town magistrate,” one little girl said. “I laughed so hard, I snorted the juice I was drinking and it came out of my nose.”

  I pressed my lips together, afraid I might cry.

  Just as I turned to leave, Rune spotted me.

  “Excuse me,” he said addressing the children as though they were highly respected adults. He joined me beside the horse stalls. “I wanted to get to know her better. This was the only way.”

  “Rune, I'm sorry,” I told him honestly. I'd known Lina too. Her loss struck me in a personal way. She was just a kid... a good kid. “I'll go with you... to tell your parents.”

  “You don't need to. They're dead.”

  “What?” I was stunned. How could he have lost so many people in so short a time? “How?”

  His face remained perfectly blank, emotionless. “My father was trapped in our house when the city burned. My mother was working to retrieve people from the homes, give them medical attention. She died four days later from the build-up of ash in her lungs.”

  Gravity.

  I clutched the battered orange scarf that looped around my neck. Rune's mother was a strong woman. I found myself wanting to cling to a denial, that she could not possibly be dead.

  “And Lina escaped the fire...” I said feeling the tragedy weaving into my bones.

  “Yes.” We began walking slowly toward the cabin exit. “I didn't want it to reach her. The war. Everything. But nothing I did made any difference.”

  I knew how he felt, but commiserating wouldn't help either of us. So much death. So much loss.

  We stepped out onto the main deck of the ship. Carmine had set the Fish down in the water, now that we were two hours away from Cape Hill and any searching ships. The engines needed to cool as much as Kyle needed a rest. Sails unfurled, we coasted slowly with the breeze. The sky was clear, the sun was high, and the ocean was at peace. The storm that was sweeping over Cape Hill was far behind, lending us the strength of a fair wind and hurrying us home. I inhaled, exhilarating in the smell of the salty, fresh air. For the first time in days, I was warm.

  “You did make a difference,” I reminded him.

  He nodded as though it was a minor consolation.

  “Really,” I told him. A shallow laugh nearly escaped me. “Rune, you tore the capital installment apart! You planted the idea of freedom in the other Dragoons. You saved all these kids! Has any Dragoon ever done so much?”

  He gave me a sidelong glance, his blue eyes warm. “None who lived.”

  We leaned against the rail of the ship and looked off at the ocean. I could see the brush of land in the distance. The general direction of the Pull told me that we were facing Breakwater, and Haven beyond it.

  “Well,” I said, plucking up his left hand into mine. “This Historian has chosen to write the ending of this story with you living a long, healthy life. So-”

  He cut me off, “Please don't call me Rocco.”

  “So, Rocco Thatcher, sailed- flew- hovered across the horizon with his lady love, leaving his life of swindling and tart peddling behind him.” I grinned at the gently rolling water, but when I looked up at him, he'd gone distant again.

  He was serious as a person at his own wake. His hand pulled away from mine. “Katelyn, I could have killed you. I couldn't stop myself.”

  “I think crippling was more of the direction the Prince was taking,” I said, trying my best to keep some humor in my voice. It came out a little dark anyway.

  “Hurting you like that is not something I can ever forget,” he said. “I can't forgive myself for what I've done. You shouldn't either.”

  “Well, that's not your choice,” I told him firmly. “I've already forgotten that it happened,” I lied. How could I ever escape the vivid memory of my savior standing over me, his face twisted in horror, as he swept down to cleave through my leg with his sword?

  “My actions came with a price and I was willing to pay for them. Your friend Sterling paid instead. I owe a debt to him.”

  “So do I,” I said quietly.

  It was like he was struggling to balance on a wire. If he fell off the wrong side, his Dragoon training would reclaim him, and he'd disappear within himself. I wasn't so sure about my own mental and emotional stability at that point, but I couldn't worry about myself. Rune had torn himself out of a cast that had held him for nearly half of his life, and now his family was gone.

  “I have some good news,” I said, attempting to sound as cheerful as possible. It may have come out flimsy, but it was the best I had.

  “Oh?” He was curious.

  “I've discovered that I can make arms with functional fingers out of pure electricity,” I said jauntily. So much for struggling to make a solid ball of lightning. Now, if only I could forget the reason I needed to learn how to do it.

  “I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen you do it. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone doing something so complex. Will you teach me?” he asked humbly.

  “Of course, jus
t as soon as that bullet wears off and you get your Ability back.”

  “As it happens, I have some good news as well.” Holding a gloved hand out, a ball of fire circled over his fingertips.

  I gasped. “You still have it! Does that mean the bullet didn't work?”

  He let the flames vanish and produced a tiny object in his fingers, a dense gel bullet.

  I held my hands out and he dropped it into my palms.

  “It was caught in my armor. Your pistol didn't have the force at that range to penetrate hard leather.”

  Taking care not to drop it, I slipped the bullet into my pocket. “If only the pistol wasn't sitting in the middle of a ruined Cape Hill street, the bullet might be worth something.” A thought occurred to me. “How's your arm?”

  He inched it farther down the rail, away from me. “It's fine.”

  “You know you can take off that uniform now. I'm sure we have more comfortable clothes aboard than that.”

  Rune looked away from me. His discomfort wasn't about what he wore. “Having the opportunity to talk with people is enough change. Not having orders, not knowing where to go... I don't know how to begin to deal with that. This armor is mine. It's protected me from swords, fists, and rifles, broken my fall, and kept me from freezing to death. It's a part of me. I'd like to wear it a while longer.”

  “Oh,” I said awkwardly. “It looks nice on you.”

  When I choose to forget that most people who wear it are cold-blooded killers.

  A pair of white birds with long tails chased one another beside the ship and over the bow.

  “I was supposed to die back there. What do I do now?” he asked. There was a shadow of fear in his eyes, of vulnerability.

  What could I tell him? “What the rest of us do. Take it one moment at a time and see where we end up.”

  We stood together like that, side by side for the better part of an hour. A sheet of loss hung between us, separating us and driving us closer all at once. We didn't hold one another. We didn't hug or kiss. We just stood there, not even talking, knowing that it was enough. I couldn't breach the chasm of trauma that we'd experienced, I wasn't ready. And neither was he.