“Go to sleep, Shannon,” Ragan said with a sigh.
“Sleep is for those who can rest.” Shan stepped in front of me, a slight smile on his shadowed lips. His eyes flashed silver in the starlight as Lumin trilled and huffed. The dragon was draped over Shan's shoulders like a living stole, his luminescent tail bulb tucked into a pocket to conceal its light. “Listless and restless, the shadows swirl in wait. No comfort in the shadows, no promises in the light. I'm still here, Tessen. Don't push me away because you're afraid of the horrors of change. You're changing, too. I see it in your aura, an aura that never existed before. Red for agony, red for illness, orange for anxiety, but gold now, too, gold for strength and the dragonbound dawn. You're stronger than me and more worthy, now and forever.”
I wiggled away from Ragan and Iefyr so I could reach for Shan. He stepped into my path as my balance failed. His arms were around me in an awkward embrace and his forehead pressed against my chin. Lumin's tail rose and whipped to wrap around my shoulders. A resinous scent surrounded them, a heavy lilac scent with undertones of balsam and myrrh.
“I'm sorry I offended you. I didn't mean any of that,” I said, a tremble in my voice. I was tired, so tired, and a rising headache invaded my pulsating skull. The stars waltzed in time with my unsteady heart, drunken dancers in an ink-black sky.
Shan kissed my neck. “You're supposed to offend me. I expect it. Don't apologize for reminding me that I'm supposed to be alive. I'm alive, you're alive. I think I can sleep now that I know that. Mind if I stay with you for the rest of the night?”
Serida licked my knuckles, then nuzzled my wrist. I hoped she would snuggle up in my arms when I laid back down. I knew there wouldn't be many remaining nights where I could hold her like a house pet. I scratched her outstretched neck as I leaned against Shan. I was taller and heavier than him, so he had some difficulty supporting my weight. I inhaled his strange scent and said, “You can stay with me every night if it helps you sleep.”
“Not every night. Just what's left of tonight.” Shan reached toward Iefyr. “I can't drag him on my own. Take him back to the shelter once he's pissed or whatever you brought him out here to do. Then we can sleep and then we can wake and move onward. Wait for the day and wait for the night, onward and away from the angry shadows and warring Fae. Both fear the strength we carry close to our hearts.”
Chapter 26
Shan's warmth along my side and Serida's heaving weight on my chest drove me into a deep and frantic dream cycle. Without warning or reason, my mind yanked me from one landscape and one scenario to another. A midsummer party on the edge of a volcano became a child's funeral for a foundling squirrel among snow-dusted pines became a bloody elven war on the desert sand. Incorporeal spirits drifted through each scene, oblivious to the abrupt transitions. They were human in shape, but composed solely of purple vapor and acidic whispers. Traitor, they whispered, their voices a bitter legion. Traitor, liar, thief, failure, coward, murderer. I knew I was none of those things, but that didn't stop the voices from squirming beneath my skin and burning me from the inside out as the desert became a frozen waste populated only by gargantuan wolves and ice-skinned, dozen-headed cadra.
The stars condensed and dripped beneath the aurora to land upon the snow as hissing acid. The tundra exploded into a scorched forest smoldering beneath a sky full of dragons. The purple spirits screamed in unison before bursting into a swarm of iridescent bubbles, which zipped and fizzed around me before spiraling into oblivion.
“Serida...” I whispered, my voice a crackling hiss. I felt her presence, but I couldn't see her. Where was she? Where was anyone or anything that wasn't this nonsense inferno? “I can't be alone again. Please don't leave me alone.”
“You stopped being alone the moment we became bound. We exist in unison, our souls tangled like infinite vines.” The sound was a duet, a perfect combination of my own voice and the sing-song chirp of a young child. It came both from within me and from all around me, but I could not recognize myself as the speaker.
“Serida?” I spun around, but did not see her. “Serida? What are we? What are we becoming?”
“Same as my brother, same as your brother, same as my mother,” said the dual voice. Ashy wind licked at my skin and prickled my nerves. “Dragonbound symbiote. Together, always.”
Soot and dust became a clear night on a grassy plain. Not the Fae plain, somewhere else, somewhere warm and teased by distant mountains. A wildebeest herd thundered across trampled scrub. A thought not my own crept into my head and implored me to wonder what the beasts would taste like if devoured whole.
“Can't go back to what we were. Forward and onward we climb, together. We're changing together, and together we will change the world.”
A scalding tear escaped my eye. I reached up to brush it away. Gold flecked the brown of my skin and illuminated it from within. I held my hands up toward the starlight. Tiny embers broke free from the stars and swirled for a moment before landing upon my skin. The internal glow took on a pattern reminiscent of Serida's scaling as the embers absorbed and vanished.
“We live and die as one. Now and always.”
I opened my eyes to a radiant dawn and the commotion of my companions tearing down camp. Shan was lost in deep sleep next to me, Lumin nestled in his arms. Serida stretched, then sat upon my chest, her claws digging into my skin. She startled and squinted as Rose untied the overhanging tarp and tossed it onto the dewy grass.
“I hope you're ready to go because the Foxfae are not going to stand for us staying here any longer,” Rose said. She crouched at my side and pressed the back of her hand against my cheek. “Just making sure the fever wasn't back.” Her eyes narrowed, then widened as her expression shifted from concerned to confused. “My gods, Tessen. Your eyes.”
“What's wrong with my eyes?” I asked. I wondered if they were bloodshot or swollen, but they didn't feel any different than usual. I rubbed their inner corners, sweeping away the sandy grit of sleep. I blinked at Serida, who stared at me with interest.
“See for yourself.” Rose drew a small mirror compact out of her belt pouch, flipped it open, and held it in front of me.
My irises were no longer solely dark brown. The outer rings were still brown, but they lightened around the pupils. Blue on the right and amber on the left.
“Ohhh . . .” I glanced at Serida, and then back at the mirror. “We match. Why do we match?”
“Physical sign of dragonbind.” Rose lowered the mirror and tilted her head to study my face. “Rare, so very rare. I know you're reluctant, but your souls are so compatible that it's already starting to show on the outside. Let her into your heart and she'll share her strength with you just as you share yours with her.”
“I don't want to look different. I want to be me.” I closed my eyes tightly and tried to will the change away. I wanted my own eyes back.
“I'm afraid you're fighting the inevitable. It will hurt less if you accept it.” Rose stood. She scrunched her nose and nodded toward the horizon. “The Foxfae are circling. We need to leave.”
∆∆∆
Shan and I rode together on Sprite, Ragan's sturdy Fae horse. We didn't want to burden our own horses with the extra weight, especially if a situation arose that called for a sprint. Nador rode Evinlore while Ragan borrowed Saragon.
Each step was an agonizing lurch as we slowly rode across the plain. Time slowed to match the tedious heartbeat of the pain, and every breath crawled on for eternity. I wanted to protest, to cry out that I wasn't ready to leave my convalescence, but it would have been pointless. We needed to leave. The sneers and snarls of the heavily-armed Foxfae we passed made it clear that we wouldn't wake again if we dared stay another night.
Not far to the west, a battle was already underway. The roars of Wolverfae and Foxfae rose above the grasses and condensed above us like a sudden spring storm. A pungent, metallic odor wafted on the damp breeze and landed unwelcome upon my tongue.
“The air smells like blo
od. I can taste it,” I said to Shan, who sat behind me with his arms ready to catch if I toppled. My stomach lurched and groaned. What little I'd been allowed to eat that morning had already been left on the grass far behind us.
“All I smell is you. Fever sweat and vomit. Herbal poultices and ferment. I'm tossing you and a bar of soap into the first body of water I see.” Shan pressed his chest against my back and watched as Lumin and Serida darted past in pursuit of a young rabbit. The dragons could now keep up with the walking horses, but we still had the produce crates strapped above the saddlebags for when they tired or for them to jump into if we needed to run.
“You stink, too,” I said. A shriek and a snap rose above the grasses. The rabbit was no more.
“I don't doubt it, but I don't smell sick like you do. Could be worse. You could smell like patchouli. This is not quite that bad. Close, but not quite.”
“You smelled like seared flesh and death the first time I saw you after the caves,” I mumbled.
“Don't you dare bring that up.” Shan's arms were around my chest, squeezing me tighter than I could bear. My healing wounds stretched to their limits. Any tighter and I was certain he'd rip me open. I yelped and tried to wrench away from him, but there was nowhere to go. I'd be in even more pain if we ended up on the ground. The back of a horse was no place for a struggle.
“You're hurting me,” I protested, my voice strained and breathless.
Shan's arms relaxed, but he didn't let go. He exhaled slowly and rested his head on my shoulder blade. “I'm sorry. I . . . I think someone else needs to ride with you the next time we stop.”
“Are you mad at me?”
A long pause, then a sigh. “Not you. The world. You've never spoken anything but your own truth, while the world lies to my face and expects me to accept those lies without question. It expects my loyalty as payment for my life, but I'm not giving my allegiance to deceivers.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, confused.
Another pause. “Nothing. I'm broken. Dreams mingle with reality and I get confused. Just today I dreamed your eyes changed to match your dragon's, and now your eyes are different and I don't know if it's real or if I'm hallucinating.”
“That's real. I had some weird dreams and now there are colored rings in my eyes. Rose saw it first.” A growl jumped from the grasses to my left as the dragons scrambled for the last bites of rabbit. “I think all your nonsense last night and today is just coming from lack of sleep. Marita has valerian. Please ask her for some and get some sleep, some real sleep.”
“I tried it. Tasted foul and amplified my nightmares.”
“Shan, you need to sleep. You've been fighting this for months. If valerian doesn't work for you, I bet Iefyr has something else you can try.”
Shan snorted and lifted his head from my shoulder. “Iefyr's insomnia is almost as bad as mine. I've caught him awake at all sorts of obscene hours. He won't take anything for it. He said rather be tired than return to the addiction that nearly killed him. He has nightmares too, you know.”
“I don't think there is a single one of us who doesn't.” I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth as the pain in my hip flared. It wasn't even midday yet and I was ready to dismount and hide away from the waking world. Shan might not like valerian, but I readily accepted it.
“Guilt, remorse, and sorrow manifest as waking anxieties and terrors in the night.” Shan said. He returned his head to my shoulder and squeezed me, gentler this time. “It's harder to sleep when we fight with things we have no names for.”
“I don't know what you're fighting, but I suggest you name it so you can sleep. Name it Dan or Tom or Roderick or something.”
“All right.” A stifled laugh escaped Shan's throat. “That invisible, incomprehensible menace that has been chasing me for months . . . I name it Roderick. Leave me the hell alone, Roderick.”
“Go away and leave Shan alone, Roderick, you petulant shitbird, you sarding sack of oozing maggots,” I said with a laugh that drove prickling pain into my ribs.
“I'm sure that'll do it, Tessen,” Shan mumbled. He kissed the back of my neck before whispering, “No matter what happens or who we become, never doubt that I love you. I'll always love you.”
“I love you, too,” I said. I rested my arm on top of his. “Now stop squeezing me. It hurts.”
Chapter 27
I drifted in and out of awareness as pain waves crashed into me. I didn't remember stopping for lunch, but we must have because my stomach no longer growled and Iefyr was behind me instead of Shan. War cries still shook the air. We weren't far enough from the Fae battlefront to pause for the rest my body needed.
“You're whimpering,” Iefyr said. “If you need to sleep, sleep. I'm holding on to you. I won't let you fall.”
I slumped against his chest and surrendered to my pain and fatigue. I was vaguely aware of movement and a cold mist upon my face, but I was otherwise immersed in the murky gray of a light and dreamless sleep.
“Tessen, wake up. We're stopping for the night. I'm gonna help you down.” Ragan was next to me, his hand on my knee.
Behind me, Iefyr shifted and shook out his arms. “I need a minute. Legs are asleep.”
“Take your time. Can't have any more injuries. Tessen, I can drag you off if I need to, but it would be easier if you'd open your eyes.”
It took some convincing for my eyelids to respond to command. Ragan was backlit by a gray twilight that crept between the branches of dark and spindly trees. His tawny tail swished behind him in a motion I knew signaled early impatience.
“I'm awake,” I mumbled, my tongue barely managing to articulate. I sat fully upright and grasped Ragan's shoulders. I braced myself against the pain as he pulled me off the horse and onto muddy earth. “I don't hear them anymore. Did they stop fighting, or did we get far enough away?”
“We made a fair distance. Night doesn't stop them from killing each other, so I'm sure they're still going.” Ragan kept his grip on me as he led me away from Sprite and under the boughs of a massive weeping pine.
Shan was already there, snoring softly beneath a dirty blanket. Lumin was sprawled along his side, his eyelids and feet twitching in response to a dream. I sat down next to them on the moss and drew my knees toward my chest. My joints were stiff, but the position hurt less than I expected.
“How is he already asleep?” I asked.
“Don't know. Don't you dare wake him, though.” Ragan shrugged and returned to Sprite to help wobbly Iefyr down.
Marita looked up from arranging a campfire. “I gave him a sleeping draught. He's been bordering on incoherent, so I made it this morning before we left. No valerian since I know it affects him negatively. Lavender, poppy serum from my med kit, some honey to make it palatable. One drop and he fell straight to sleep.”
“Good.” I shivered and wished I had the strength to get up and find myself a blanket. I reached toward Serida instead. “Serida, come keep me warm.” She snorted as she trotted toward me. She climbed onto my lap, then wrapped her tail around my waist and her neck around my shoulders. Her warmth spread first across my chest, then through my entire aching body. “Thank you. Good girl.”
Marita smiled at me. “I can see the change in your eyes from here and I don't think they're done changing yet. I hope you're not too attached to those lovely brown eyes of yours, because I doubt they'll have any brown left in them before long.”
“I have my father's eyes. I look like my mother except for my eyes and Satlan skin. I'm not comfortable with this change.” I nuzzled Serida's face and she let loose a contented purr.
“I'm sorry you're losing that link to him.” Marita struck a flame in the kindling. “The little I've read about people like you said physically-changed dragonbound are the rarest of dragonbound. It will take years, maybe even decades, to find out just how far your physical changes will go. Even without natural magical ability, you have the potential to become quite powerful.”
“I wanted
to be a silversmith. Just a silversmith.” I closed my eyes and focused on Serida's steady heartbeat. Its rhythm nearly matched my own.
“That's not possible anymore. You can still be a silversmith, but you'll never be just a silversmith. You'll only hurt yourself if you don't acknowledge it. I know this is a difficult transition for you, but you'll learn to accept it and you'll thrive.”
“All I want is to go home.” I opened my eyes and watched Marita fan the fire into crackling embers. “I want to go back a year and convince Mom not to go to Greeble. Home hasn't been home since my family was kidnapped. I felt lost even before Serida hatched and I ended up here. I don't even know what I'm looking for.”
Marita pursed her lips and tilted her head toward me. She studied Serida's wings and the scales and ridges on her back for quite some time before lifting her attention to my face. “Some of us will spend our lives searching for a place to belong. We won't find it, either of us, any of us in our little group here. We're all perpetual outsiders, and not one of us fully by choice. Home isn't something we can have for more than a single, fleeting moment at a time.”
I stroked Serida's neck and her purring intensified. “Do you ever get used to it? Being an outsider?”
“No.” The word was barely audible above the popping and hissing fire. Marita picked up a slender stick and prodded the heart of the growing flame. “We both need to learn to live with what we are. That takes time and tears, but I think if we're patient we'll find something approximating home. Maybe it will be internal instead of external, just a sort of peace within to counter the war outwith.”
Faelost Page 19