Authors: Kate Sparkes
I looked away from the intensity of his gaze. “I don’t know. I feel like I’m hanging by my fingertips on the edge of a bottomless chasm. I’m afraid. Before you, I only had my husband, and a few other clumsy encounters before him. None of that ended well at all, and rarely meant anything. I know this is more important than any of that, and will be so much better, that
you
are so much better...”
Goddess and gods, am I going to cry?
“I don’t know why I’m afraid of something so good except that maybe I do believe that we could have that forever kind of love, and it feels like this—” I gestured between our bodies. “Like this really would seal some kind of contract between us.”
He leaned back in the chair. “I know. It’s an exciting thought, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t terrifying. But I still want to find out.” He stood to leave, and smiled down at me. “I’m ready whenever you are.” He brushed his lips against my forehead and walked slowly away.
“Kel?”
He turned back. “Yeah?”
“We have time to work this out. When we reach Luid, we’ll stay back.” I took a moment to think, to finalize my decision. “I’m not going into the city. Not going after Severn. Someone else will take care of him.”
The smile that broke over his face covered any lingering hint of exhaustion. “So you’ve chosen?”
I grinned back, and felt the armor I’d spent years building crack. I’d start letting people see beneath it. Start opening myself as Mama Bunn did. Start caring and being a part of the world again.
“I have. And I want you. We’ll get there.”
Mama Bunn shuffled back into the tent and dunked her wrinkled hands in the dishwater. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere, Mama,” I said as Kel winked and ducked out. “Nowhere at all.”
20
ROWAN
F
lying made everything easier. A quick flight into the sunset, a night of rest, and then we were on our way again over a broad and wild section of mountains too remote to be populated or guarded by humans. Florizel had no trouble soaring so high with only one human on board, though she faltered a little as the air became thin, and we stopped to rest once on the way up. When I looked back, Tyrea stretched out below us, bright and beautiful.
By midday we’d reached the western downslope. The forest spread out wild and untouched below us, a green blanket cut through by a silver river flowing into Darmid. We dropped low over the trees, so close that Florizel could have reached out and brushed her hooves over the tops. I sat up a little and enjoyed the air flowing over my skin and through my hair. It had been a little hard to breathe at the top, but now—
Aren shrieked. I turned just in time to see him flying straight at me, hard and fast. I ducked as he passed so close that a few strands of my hair tangled around his outstretched talons. An answering scream echoed over the forest, and I turned to see a dark-brown gryphon, nearly as large as Florizel, streaking toward us.
Florizel glanced back, and the whites of her eyes appeared. I leaned in closer to her neck and held on tight as she beat her wings harder, pulling away. I should have held still, but couldn’t help looking back when another piercing cry cut through the air. Aren and the gryphon rolled, locked together, but I couldn’t tell who was holding whom. The gryphon was far larger, and equipped with a sharp eagle’s beak and fore-talons, with a mountain lion’s claws at the back. All four of those limbs scrambled to grab at the lighter brown form attacking its face. Aren broke away, but the gryphon followed.
I lost sight of them as Florizel found an open patch of forest and landed, pulling up short on her stop so as not to run straight into the river.
“We have to go back!” I cried. “We have to help!”
“How?” she asked. “That was a gryphon. You don’t run to them. You flee, if you live long enough to be able to.” Her sides heaved beneath me, and I slipped off her back. Her body was slick with sweat now, panic evident in every twitching muscle.
“You came into the city to get me before,” I said. “You were so brave.”
She snorted. “I did what I had to, and it was horrid. I can’t again. Please, Rowan.”
I gave her a quick pat on the neck. “Rest here. I’ll come back.”
“You won’t!” she whinnied, but I was already running back up the slope beside the river, struggling to listen for Aren over the sounds of my pounding heart and gasping breath. I had no idea what I was going to do to help, but I couldn’t let him fight alone.
I didn’t dare call out in case there were more of them around. My steps slowed, and I caught my breath.
I should have left the bag,
I thought. It was too heavy, but I knew I might need its contents. I pulled it higher on my shoulders and walked on, though the sudden exertion had made me light-headed.
I picked up a few decent-sized rocks from beside the river and carried them with me. A cliff loomed to my right. As I passed into its shadows an eagle shrieked, and I ran toward the noise. Aren, still in his familiar avian form, lay chest-down on the rocks. A few paces away the gryphon crouched on the ground, head held low at an awkward angle, gaze fixed on Aren.
“No!” I yelled. The beast didn’t change its position. I threw one of the rocks. It bounced off the gryphon’s feathered skull with a dull thunk, but still the creature didn’t move.
I stepped closer. Its eyes were closed under the heavy feathers, and its massive talons curved uselessly beneath it. The animal I’d so heroically attacked was already dead.
Aren let out a softer noise, calling for my attention. His left wing stretched out over the rocks, dripping blood. He stood and shuffled forward, head held high, apparently uninjured otherwise.
“Well, this looks familiar,” I observed.
He snapped his beak at me.
I set my bag on the ground and pulled out the few bandages I’d brought, and Nox’s ointment. “Can you transform without making it worse?”
A moment later it was done, and he sat beside the river in human form with blood streaming down his arm from a row of three gashes that cut deep into the muscle. I tossed him his pants, and he sat next to the river while I examined the injury. “Not far off the last one,” I said. “Deeper, but no bones broken this time.” The scar from that injury was long gone, but I remembered it well.
“I do aim for consistency.”
I studied the wounds, remembering. “I could try it again,” I said. “Maybe healing isn’t a natural skill, but if I’ve done it before, I might be able to pick it up.”
“All right,” he said, but he tensed. “Not too much, though. Remember the last time.”
We’d tried it during our time at the school, after I lost that ability. He’d come out of the experience badly burned. A complete failure on my part.
“Maybe I shouldn’t,” I said. “It was a silly idea.”
“No.” He took my hand and placed it on his arm just below the wounds. “Nothing is going to get better if you don’t try. We’re going to work together, remember? Consider it part of our practice.”
“We’ll need to be careful about the magic in this country,” I reminded him. Even if I weren’t having trouble replenishing mine, we’d both be in danger of running out once we reached the inhabited parts of Darmid, where the magic hunters had done their destructive work.
I closed my eyes and remembered how my magic had flowed out of me through a weakness in the binding, performing healings I’d never have thought possible at the time. The way it seemed to be pulled from me, the rush of it leaving. My magic stirred at the memory.
“Rowan, stop.”
I looked, and pulled my hand away from the frosted-over skin of his arm.
“Did it get any better?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Blood coursed from the slashes in his skin, worse than before.
“No. But at least you didn’t burn me.”
I hid my disappointment by turning to reach for the bag and Nox’s potion. “I liked the idea of being a healer,” I said, surprised by how hurt I sounded. As though my magic had betrayed me. “I didn’t want to hurt people.”
“I know. The gift suited you, and would have been useful. That doesn’t take anything away from what you can do. Perhaps you should look at the lives you’ve saved rather than the ones you’ve taken.” He winced as I spread the slimy pink goo over the cuts.
“You’re right. I know.” I popped the lid back on the jar and set it down so I could wrap bandages tight around the ugly wounds, holding them closed until his magic could knit the flesh back together. I tucked the end of the cloth strip under the bulk to hold it in place, then sat down hard, suddenly light-headed. I’d tried to joke earlier to lighten the mood, to turn away from the horror we’d so narrowly avoided, but it took my breath as it finally came crashing in.
“I thought that was the end for you when that thing attacked,” I said.
“Me, too.” He rubbed the gooseflesh from his arms. “I think it was more luck than skill that saved me that time. I blinded him, and he broke his neck when I pulled him down. I’ve never fought anything like that alone, or as an eagle.”
I closed my eyes and leaned against him. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say about it. Promises to be careful were well and fine, but we both knew he’d risk his life for me again if he had to, as I would for him.
“Thanks for coming back for me. That was an impressive throw.” He nodded toward the dead gryphon and the smooth river rock lying amongst the jagged stones at the bottom of the cliff.
I snorted. “It would have been a lot more impressive if you hadn’t already killed him.”
“You didn’t know that.” He pulled his socks and boots on, then his shirt. I stood and offered a hand to help him up. “Where’s Florizel?”
“Here.” Her voice drifted up from the forest downhill. “I came. I was afraid, but I thought you might need to escape.” She stepped into view, looked at the gryphon, and shuffled sideways to get farther from it. “I see that everything is under control.”
Aren stepped closer to the gryphon. “I wonder what these taste like. Probably not great, but we don’t have many options at the moment.”
Rocks shifted and clinked under Florizel’s hooves as she backed away. “You don’t want to do that. Bigger and worse things will be along soon to take care of the body. We don’t want to be in their way when they come.”
“We have to eat. Rowan, do you have a knife?”
A few minutes later we had chunks of bloody meat wrapped in large leaves. Aren carried those, and I took the pack. Florizel led the way downstream, and none of us spoke until she slowed her pace late in the afternoon.
“That’s better,” she said. She lifted her nose to sniff the air. “We can stop now, if you want. I know I’m feeling a little worn out.”
We made camp on the banks of the river, in a sheltered spot where we could build a fire on the rocky ground without setting the entire forest ablaze. Florizel went deeper into the woods to find her meal—and, I suspected, to get away from the smell of ours as it cooked.
“Is it strange that I’m sort of enjoying this?” Aren asked.
“Definitely strange,” I replied, “but I know what you mean. Not that being attacked by wild animals is fun, and neither is everything we have to go back to. But this, being together, traveling again.”
He smiled contentedly. “And actually liking each other this time. It’s nice.”
Darkness enclosed the world around us, but the fire burned bright and warm. Half of the meat separated and fell into the fire when it was cooked through, but I speared it on a stick and took that part for myself. The outside had burned black in spots, but it smelled fine, and the meat looked palatable.
Aren bit into his and grimaced.
“Is it that good?”
“It’s simply delicious,” he mumbled.
The flavor was unlike any meat I’d tried before, tart and overpowering. Still, once I’d forced the first bite down, the rest followed easily enough. “I won’t be recommending it to anyone,” I said after it was gone, “but it did its job.”
“Assuming it stays down.”
I lay beside the fire, full and sleepy. “What’ll we do now? I assume you can’t fly with your arm injured. I mean, wing.”
“Not yet. We’re going to have to—”
Something crashed through the trees, and Florizel screamed. Aren and I jumped to our feet as she burst out from the forest.
“Run!” she yelled.
We left the fire, abandoned our things, and took off.
The river curved left ahead of us, and we followed it. As we rounded the corner, we slid to a stop together. The river banks widened there, but not one of us wanted to risk passing the dragon.
The thing wasn’t huge by dragon standards, at least in my experience, but was larger than Florizel and could have killed any one of us with a single bite, or knocked us flat with a lash of its serpentine tail. Moonlight glinted off its whitish scales as it lowered its horned head and bared its dagger-sharp teeth.
The dragon peeped.
Aren and I looked at each other. “It’s a baby,” he said, voice calm and quiet.
“Does that help us?”
“Not at all. You’re not going to be able to reason with this one. Back away slowly. I’ll try to grab its attention and run.”
The dragon lurched forward, then paused and peeped again.
“Peep?” A low, inhuman voice behind us asked. I didn’t dare turn my back on the dragonling, but a chill ran up my back. “No. Like this.” The voice growled, and the growl became a roar that made a nearby tree shed several leaves.
I winced, and Florizel let out a weak whinny of terror.
The baby dragon tilted its head until it was on completely sideways and let out a high-pitched whistle, then planted its scaled butt in the water.
I glanced back to see a massive form straddling the river behind us. She looked even larger outdoors than she had the first time we’d met, and she’d been more than imposing then. Standing, the arch of her blood-red back rose higher than some of the trees next to the river. Forefeet with fingers nearly as long as I was tall settled into the riverside stones as she stepped forward, and her massive head swung low to sniff at me.
“Good evening, Ruby,” I said, and was surprised by how calm I sounded.