He stumbled slightly.
“I can walk,” Marielle said, her voice fainter than she would have liked.
“You don’t have to, Marielle.” He said her name like he enjoyed it on his tongue and his head dipped for a moment and she felt the brush of his lips on the shell of her ear as his whisper tickled her ear. “I have you. I have you safe.”
His golden scent was melting over her like hot honey running over her tongue. She would have liked to stay like that, to listen to his whispers and smell his tender scent.
There wasn’t time for that.
“We only had four hours,” she said, her voice still raspy. “Four hours until the dragon leaves and takes us with him. How many have already passed?”
The meaningful silence between Tamerlan and Etienne was worrying.
“How did you know there were only four hours?” Tamerlan asked in a choked voice. His grip around her felt tighter. Etienne was right in front of him before Marielle could blink, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Easy Tamerlan. Easy. Maybe some things are better to keep from the Legends in your head, hmmm?”
She could feel Tamerlan tense at his words, but for once there was no edge to them. Did that mean that Etienne was free of the Grandfather as she’d hoped he would be? If he was, she would be able to trust him again. And she needed to be able to trust him. Her plan was too big for just her and Tamerlan. She needed someone else working to help her.
“I see Jhinn up ahead,” Tamerlan said, breaking into their thoughts.
Ahead of them, something was glowing and as they strode toward the little boat Marielle saw a fire lit in a small brazier.
“You actually got him wood first?” Tamerlan asked Etienne. “I thought it was just a ruse so you could stalk us and attack us.
Etienne sounded superior as he replied. “I was able to do both.”
The glow was tiny and far away, but Marielle could already feel the warmth of the fire on her skin as she drew in a long breath. Everything was going to be fine.
Her belly dropped and for a moment she thought Tamerlan had dropped her. She bit back a scream, but she could still feel his arms around her, tense and hard, could hear his quiet grunt and Etienne’s bitter curse. The whole city was falling.
“Run,” Tamerlan yelled to Etienne.
“Let me down!” Marielle demanded.
“Never.” He was already running on soft, wobbling legs as they fell through the air with the whole city. The water surged across the streets and Tamerlan slipped, falling to the ground and grunting again.
Marielle scrambled out of his grip but took his hand. If he wasn’t touching her at all he might panic – and besides, the world was spinning. She was having a hard time running with just one eye. She wasn’t used to this at all.
“Hurry,” Etienne choked out as they hit the freezing water, splashing and churning through it as it became waist-deep. “The lower the dragon gets, the more powerful the current!”
He was right. Marielle could barely keep her feet under her at all as it pushed against them. Tamerlan found a railing – the type that edged the canal – and grabbed it with his free hand, holding her in place as the current tried to pull her away. The water was rising. It was almost neck deep.
Etienne kicked through the current to grab the railing beside Tamerlan.
“I’ve lost sight of the glow,” he gasped.
Marielle followed his gaze, her heart sinking when she saw he was right. What had happened to Jhinn and the gondola? Without him, they’d never get off H’yi’s back before he rose into the air again and took them with him to the portal back up in the mountains.
She tried to scent for him, but all she could smell were their own panicked emotions swirling above the turgid waters.
Her heart was in her throat.
GO. NOW. OR LOSE YOUR CHANCE.
They were out of time.
A surge in the current tugged her so hard that she was ripped away from Tamerlan, pulled through the current and down the street more swiftly than they’d been running only moments before. She began to scream, but she only sucked in water. Tamerlan, Etienne and Jhinn were lost to her. She grabbed a signpost as she was swept by and held on for dear life. But why was she fighting the current at all? Why not just let it take her? She had already lost her companions and leaving this place now was her only hope left.
She was about to let go when out of nowhere the gondola appeared.
“Marielle!” Tamerlan called from the bow. He was soaking wet, Etienne beside him. Marielle couldn’t make out Jhinn in the dark at all. Their scents were masked by the flowing water, misting and blanketing everything in the scent of living water.
“Here!” she called. “I’m here!”
Her grip slipped and she was whirled away again in the current, battered against stone buildings and swirled under the current and around again until she didn’t know up from down.
She was going to die down here.
How long had she been under?
Her head broke the surface for a moment, and she took a breath, only to be swept away down another street, down another canal. She didn’t recognize where she was in the city anymore. But she knew the water was rising. She was only seeing the very tops of the buildings now.
And then, they rose around her and the water began to flow even faster as the dragon rose from the river and the water spilled off his back.
Marielle spilled with it.
Perhaps, if she had been on the mountains, she would have seen him stretch his wings, shake his head and neck and then kick up from the rocks and mud and rise into the air.
Instead, she saw nothing but the corner of a building that cracked into her shoulder and then another that slammed into her leg. And then she was underwater and praying desperately to find the surface again.
It was long minutes until she clawed her way up to the surface and gasped in a long breath. She was no longer on the dragon’s back. She’d been swept off and into the river below.
It was even longer until she washed up on a riverbank shrouded in reeds. She pulled herself up on the mud, but she didn’t dare rest here. She had to keep moving or she would die.
She told herself that as her head lolled to the ground.
She told herself that as her body refused to move and her eyes closed.
She told herself that as sleep washed over her like the deluge had – just as impossible to fight and just as deadly.
4: Winter Cold
Tamerlan
Tamerlan’s hands shook as he leaned out over the bow of the gondola and strained to see. He’d lost feeling in his feet an hour ago. His fingers were thick with numbness. They’d stopped hurting – which couldn’t be a good thing. There was no way to get dry in the gondola and they were all soaked to the skin and wearing soaking wet clothing.
“She’s lost to us,” Etienne said quietly. He hadn’t said that for at least ten minutes – a record amount of time considering how many other times he’d said it over the last hours.
“She’s here somewhere,” Tamerlan said. “We just have to find her.”
“There’s a cabin up on the bank in the land of the dead,” Jhinn said through chattering teeth. His lips were blue.
Tamerlan had only ever read about cold so intense or about people freezing to death, but the books had all been clear that it was pretty much inevitable if you were this cold and wet.
Forget the girl. We have a greater calling, Ram said in his mind. Tamerlan shook as the Legend tried to wrest control from him again. He’d been doing that ever since the clock was shattered, ever since they plunged off the side of the dragon and into the river below, ever since the dragon flew away.
Marielle had surprised them both with that cunning move. Etienne most of all. And though he’d fought against it, the look in his eyes now was one of pure relief. He was almost too cheerful considering their circumstances. Tamerlan thought that might be why he wasn’t fighting hard to stop looking for Marielle.
He was a free man. Free in a way that Tamerlan never could be. It wasn’t just one Legend in his mind but all of them. And there was no way to destroy every Legend.
“You could find wood in the cabin. Maybe even a brazier. We lost the one Etienne found in the city in that mad flurry over the edge of the dragon. We could dry our clothing and warm ourselves.”
“Marielle is here somewhere,” Tamerlan said through thick lips. It felt like too much effort to talk when his face was so numb.
“We can’t find her if we’re dead,” Etienne said reasonably.
He was endlessly reasonable now that his mind was his own again.
Tamerlan looked up at the cabin Jhinn was pointing to, but his eyes were so tired. They drifted down as if he couldn’t even spare the energy to keep his gaze raised. And as they drifted down, his eyes caught on a heap of something dark in the dead reeds on the shore.
“There,” he choked out, pointing to the spot. “There.”
Jhinn was already turning the boat. “Etienne will just go up to the cabin and find something to make a fire and then we’ll keep looking, okay, Tam? We aren’t giving up. We just need a fire.”
Tamerlan wasn’t listening. His eyes were glued on the heap of cloth. Was that steam rising up from it? Just enough that it might be someone’s breath? Did no one else see this?
“Back there!” he yelled and with a long-suffering look, Jhinn pedaled the boat toward where he was pointing.
The second their boat hit the reedy shore he leapt from the bow and ran to the heap of cloth, parting the dead reeds around it. They were heavy with water and clinging ice.
Behind Tamerlan, Etienne cursed. “You couldn’t have helped us land the boat, Tamerlan? You had to jump out like a lunatic?”
He parted the last reeds and laid a careful hand on the cloth. Was it?
Marielle!
Breath gusted out of his chest as relief flooded over him. Her hair was frozen to the ground and he had to tug it free before he could flip her over. When he did, a stab of fear shot through him. Her lips were blue, barely a hint of breath was coming from them at all. How long had she lain here in the ice?
At least she was still alive. He lifted her with numb fingers, wrenching her cloak free from where it was frozen to the ground, and clutched her against his chest. Sweet Marielle. She was too fragile – too human – for this insane task she’d set herself, defying Legends and involving herself in the affairs of ancient dragons.
He scrambled up the slope toward the cabin. Was Jhinn right? Would there be the means to make a fire there? He’d burn the walls if he had to. He’d do whatever was needed to keep her breathing.
“Hold on, Marielle,” he said through chattering teeth.
He stepped wrong on a numb foot and twisted his ankle, but he couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t feel anything in his feet. He was lucky his hands were still working – sort of.
By the time he’d scrambled through the rocks and trees and found the cabin, Etienne was there huffing in the cold beside him.
“You’ve got the luck of the Legends, Tamerlan.”
Tamerlan flinched. Whatever the Legends were, they were not lucky.
“If Jhinn hadn’t seen that cabin, we wouldn’t have stopped, and we would have all frozen to death trying to find her.” Typical Etienne with his cold way of thinking.
“You sound lighter,” Tamerlan said, reminding the other man of the gratitude and debt he owed Marielle. “Like a burden has been lifted.”
Etienne fumbled with the latch on the door. His hands were just as frozen as Tamerlan’s
The door fell open and the smell of must spilled out into the world beyond. It was hard to see anything in the dark of the cabin with only the moon to light the way, but Etienne moved into it with confidence. Tamerlan stumbled in behind him, barely biting back a curse as his shin struck a stool inside the dark room.
“Someone must use this seasonally. For fishing, perhaps,” Etienne said. There was the sound of him shuffling something around. “They even laid a fire ready. One moment.”
Flint struck steel and in the shower of sparks, Tamerlan could see the fireplace and the tinder lighting. Etienne leaned over it, huffing into the lit ball of grass until the flames licked it up and he gently placed it between the kindling in the fireplace. Light flooded the room and Tamerlan stumbled to a small cot on one side of the room. He laid Marielle on it as gently as he could. The blankets smelled of dust and disuse.
“Better strip her clothes off before she soaks those blankets,” Etienne advised.
Tamerlan nodded, but his fingers were fat and difficult to work with. He fumbled with her cloak pin, finally loosening it so he could slip the heavy fur from her. He laid it over the back of a chair and placed it by the fire. His own cloak joined it. Neither was much good soaking wet.
Her boots were next. They left a flood of water across the floor.
There was a clatter from the other side of the room and Etienne emerged with a large cast-iron frying pan and a gunny sack.
“No brazier,” he said tiredly. “This will have to do.”
Marielle’s breath was so faint as Tamerlan worked to remove her outer leathers that he was afraid to even jostle her. Were they too late?
He held his breath as his fingers fumbled over buckles and buttons. There was no sign of Abelmeyer’s Eye anywhere. It must have been lost when she was swept up by the water.
“I’ll bring the pan and tinder to Jhinn,” Etienne said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Tamerlan didn’t answer. He was hesitating over Marielle’s leather trousers. Should he remove those? Would she thank him when she woke – if she woke?
“Stop being a landholder prude,” Etienne said from the doorway. “She’ll freeze to death if you leave her in those wet clothes. Get them off her, stoke up the fire and get yours off, too. The best heat is skin-to-skin. I’ll be back with Jhinn’s clothing to dry by this fire as soon as I can. We won’t be able to make a good fire in this frying pan – not good enough to dry everything.”
Tamerlan nodded, waiting for Etienne to leave and shut the door before he went back to work, doing exactly as Etienne had ordered.
He felt numb all over, but best of all, the voices in his head were silent as if they, too, were too frozen to speak. With care, he built the fire up, laying Marielle’s leathers around it and then carefully stripping off all but her underthings. Those he left on her with the half-sodden blankets on the bed. It wasn’t the best choice, but she should have a semblance of privacy, shouldn’t she?
He tried not to look at her smooth skin as he worked. Tried not to think about what it would be like to touch it with fingers that could actually feel instead of these numb icicles.
When he was done, he shrugged off his own clothing, built the fire up even hotter, and blushing like a boy trying to steal his first kiss, he slipped into the cot behind Marielle, shuffled under the blanket with her and wrapped his numb, dead arms around her. If Etienne was right, the skin warmth would help. And if he was wrong and they were still going to die, then this was exactly where he’d want to die. Just like this. With her in his arms.
His arms began to tingle painfully just below the elbows as feeling started to return, but he didn’t mind. He let himself savor the moment as Marielle’s body went from dead-cold to almost-warm and his own eyelids began to flutter closed as sleep took him.
5: Promises Made
Marielle
She woke to heat on her skin and icy coldness at her core. Her eyes flickered open and she drew in a long breath.
For some reason that she couldn’t explain she felt so completely safe in this moment. When was the last time she’d really felt safe? Was it back in the Scenter barracks in Jingen? Or was it longer ago than that? Was it at Scenter school? Or further back than that? She couldn’t remember. But she embraced this feeling of warmth and safety. Reveling in the luxury of the rare feeling.
Something heavy was over her shoulder and it took her a mome
nt to realize it was an arm – draped over her in the relaxation of sleep. The light hair across the back of it was pale gold like the noonday sun. Tamerlan.
She felt a little thrill stab through her as she breathed in his heady, golden scent, letting it wrap around her consciousness. She shouldn’t be doing that. She should be distancing herself from him. Especially since she was planning to deceive him from here on – planning to tell everyone else her secrets and keep him completely in the dark.
And yet she couldn’t help it. His scent filled her nose, her mouth, her mind until she was soaking in it. Her limbs moved stiffly as she reluctantly pulled away from his embrace, slipping out from under him. The cold air hit her like a thousand tiny knives but under the moth-eaten wool blanket he was sprawled out in sleep, his mouth half-open and his face almost child-like in innocence. The stubble on his jaw was darker and it softened the hard edges that were starting to form in his boyish face.
She bit back a sigh. In another world – a world without Legends and dragons, maybe she would have met him as an Alchemist’s apprentice in the streets of Jingen. Maybe they would have fallen in love – actually, they definitely would have fallen in love – and then she would have married him. And they would be in that bed with a good reason, not just to get warm after an icy near-death experience.
But not now. She pushed back against the memories flooding over her – memories of swirling through the dark waters, memories of Tamerlan breaking down in front of the portal and begging her to stop as she freed the dragons, memories of being in his mind as he battled the Legends.
She loved him. If that’s what you called this deep attachment that demanded her complete loyalty and fervent desire to see him well and safe. If that’s what you called this obsession that wanted to be near him all the time, to smell him always in the air, to see him smile.
But she was going to lie to him. And that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to ask him to love her back when she was going to deceive him and break his heart.
Bridge of Legends- The Complete Series Page 81