Daybreak (41 page)

Kael had to concentrate to keep his voice even. “Yes, well, she’s known for keeping secrets — to the point that she gets herself into trouble. She’s miserable,” he said, watching as the dragon’s eyes twitched uncertainly. “I’ve never seen her so unhappy. I only want to help.”

Kyleigh hadn’t been herself, of late — a fact that exhausted him more than all of Rua’s laws put together. It wasn’t like her to disappear all day. When she finally did come back, she was careful to keep her eyes cast down. She hardly looked at him any more, let alone touched him. And when he tried to reach out to her, she would back away like there were barbs growing from the tips of his fingers.

Then one night, a thin line of earth appeared between them. Now it had stretched to nearly a hand’s width. He wasn’t certain she would’ve returned to him at all, had Rua not forbade her to go flying at night. It made Kael sick to think she was miserable, but his prodding only seemed to make things worse. He wasn’t sure what to do.

If Rua would simply tell him what her task was, he might be able to help. But the dragon flatly refused.

She asked
in earnest
that we keep it from you. We cannot ignore a request asked in earnest
.

“Who’s
we
?” Kael said again, hoping there might be someone a little less ridiculous on the island to deal with.

My mate
, Rua replied. His great chest swelled with the word, stretching the blackened scar across its middle.

Kael leaned around him, to where the glittering purple dragon lay sprawled in the grass below. “Is that her?”

Her
? Rua’s eyes bulged from their sockets.
Are you blind, human
?
That isn’t a
her.
That is Corcra — a friend from the north. You would know my mate if you saw her
, he added with a rumbling growl.
There would be no doubt
.

“All right,” Kael said slowly. He was fully aware of how Rua’s sharp teeth pressed against his leg, and couldn’t forget how the dragon had mentioned he was less than a bite. He tried to speak carefully. “Who is Corcra?”

He lives with his mate inside the great caverns to the north, in a land that is always evening. I’ve not seen him for a hundred years, but my daughters have been spreading word throughout every roost that there is a halved one and a human living here. So he has come to see —

“Wait a moment. You have daughters?” Kael said.

Yes
. The words came out somewhere between a growl and a groan, and Rua’s yellow eyes rolled back.
I fear their chattering will end me, human, if time does not end me first
.
Normally, I would not have allowed Corcra into my lands
, he went on, his stare roving back to the valley.
But he flew in respectfully, so I could not deny him a glimpse.

“How does one fly respectfully, exactly?” Kael wondered.

Rua looked at him as if he was stupid.
By slowing one’s wings and dropping beneath the clouds, of course. Height is everything to a dragon. The further in the air you are, the more power behind your fall. So a male who wishes me harm will fly in above my head, while one who wishes me respect needs no such advantage.

Though he hated to admit it, Kael supposed it made sense. “Is that how your daughters traveled around, then? Flying respectfully?”

Rua’s laugh rumbled inside his chest.
No, human. A
daughter
is a female
—
females
do not battle for skies or lands
, he said when he saw Kael’s confusion.
They are not a threat to us, and so they may fly wherever they wish
.

Kael was still trying to wrap his head around it all when Rua crushed his spines tighter against his knee, bruising him again.

I must go now, human. Corcra will look after you while I am away, and you would do well to stay beneath his eyes.
Rua’s voice dropped to a crackling growl as he added:
If not, he will slip beneath your belly and spill your guts upon the ground. I have seen far greater beasts than
you
fall dead before him
.

A chill raced up Kael’s spine. He kept a wary eye on the purple dragon, who’d crept from the grass and now rolled contentedly in an obliging patch of thorny shrubs. “Where are you going?”

To see my mate
, he murmured, eyes brightening.
The ache in my chest has grown unbearable. Her heart calls to me, and I must answer it.

*******

Days crawled by, and things only became worse.

Corcra wasn’t at all interested in speaking with him. Any time Kael got close, he would take to his wings and circle the sky — and he could circle for hours, using the gusts of wind to hold his slender frame aloft. Kael stared at him for nearly a full day once, hoping Corcra would eventually tire and come down. But he never did.

Kyleigh returned far less frequently. She left at dawn and would glide in with the last remaining shreds of light, her brows dropped low over her eyes.

Kael watched her stomp in from a distance, once. He couldn’t help but notice how she walked — like there was a weight upon her back and stones tied to her feet. Dark lines hung beneath her eyes and dragged at the corners of her mouth. Her stare, when it finally returned from some shadowed trail of thought, was hollow and vacant.

The fires were gone, and all that remained was an ashen shell of green.

When she saw him watching, her face went smooth and her stare returned to the ground. But it was too late. Kael had already decided that he’d had enough.

“All right, Kyleigh,” he said, snatching her around the shoulders. “I can’t stand this anymore. Tell me what’s going on with the dragons. What has Rua asked you to do? Whatever it is, I’m certain I can —”

“You can’t,” she snarled, glaring over his shoulder. “You can’t help me. I’ll figure it out on my own.”

“No, you won’t. You’ve been at it for days and all you’ve managed to do is snap at me. You’re getting darker by the minute, and we’re running out of time …”

His words trailed away as something in the back of his mind woke with a jolt. Pictures slid behind his eyes for a moment, dulled and gray at their edges. A wave of heat coursed over his flesh; he heard voices and screams.

“What did you say?” Kyleigh whispered.

Her question broke him from his trance, thrust the pictures aside. When he blinked, he saw she was staring at him very intently — as if she could see the pictures, as well.

“I said we’re running out of time.” Voices drifted through his mind for a moment, carried softly by the wind. “I’m not sure why, but I feel like there’s something we ought to be doing, someplace we ought to be … but we can’t get there unless you …”

Kyleigh placed a hand against his throat. Her fingers splayed across his neck and her thumb pressed very firmly against his chin. A soothing warmth stretched out from where she touched. It slipped inside his veins and Kael shut his eyes as the warmth numbed him to his toes. But it lasted only a moment.

When he looked up, Kyleigh’s face had changed.

It happened in a blink, a breath. Flames swelled inside her stare — not as bright as they’d once been, but driven to a sharpness that must’ve pained her. Her brows clamped down and her mouth twisted in what could’ve only been agony. Her look was too furious, her face too pale for it have been anything else.

Kael’s heart leapt up his throat. He lunged for her instinctively, prepared to do whatever it took to stop her from hurting. But she shoved him away with a roar.

“Leave it alone, Kael! For once in your life, just leave it blasted well alone!”

She left him, then — marching into the woods, where the trees’ shadows draped across her blackened armor until she slowly disappeared.

Kael stood alone in the darkness for a long moment, trying to make some sense out of what had happened. But it didn’t make any sense at all. He had no idea why she was angry with him. All he’d wanted to do was help her, to try to stop her pain if he could.

Perhaps she was right: perhaps he really ought to leave it alone.

When a few hours dragged by and Kyleigh still hadn’t returned, Kael fell into a restless sleep. Things clawed at him from the darkness. They were hurt and angry things. More than once, a pulse of heat from deep within the earth dragged him from his sleep. He woke feeling sick, the warmth too much for his stomach.

It was in the hour when the night air was coolest that he finally relaxed enough to dream … and it was a horrible dream.

He dreamt that he stood in the Unforgivable Mountains once more. Snow blustered so thickly about him that he couldn’t see what lay ahead. Still, he walked very purposely onward, picking his way down the slopes and across the frozen lands.

Every once in a while, he heard a cry on the wind:
 

… finish it … finish what we started …

The voice was so faint that Kael wasn’t sure he’d heard it. When he turned, the world behind him was too shrouded to tell if someone followed. His legs kept moving even as he watched, as if they were determined to carry him down. And after a moment, his eyes turned back to the frozen path ahead.

…
finish it, lad …

The voice had grown louder. He was certain he’d heard it, this time. Kael twisted against the march of his legs and stared intently at the thick curtain of snow behind him. It swirled, pulsing against the tug of the wind. He stared until his eyes ached from the strain, but the voice didn’t come again.

He was about to turn away when something inside the blusters began to take shape: the stocky figure of a man limping through the snow. The man’s pace was short and halting. He seemed to more stumble than walk. Though the ground was treacherous, he kept one arm clamped against his chest — nursing it as if it were broken.

Kael tried to turn back, but his legs wouldn’t let him. They marched on at a steady pace even as the man behind him stumbled and fell. The snow stormed in as Kael outdistanced him. Everything he tried to yell was torn aside by the wind.

In the moment before the man could be lost behind the next rising hill, he raised his arm. His hand was gone, hewed from his wrist. A torrent of blood wept thickly from its ragged nub. The bright red somehow cut through the winter and seemed to glow as he cried:

You finish it, lad
!
Finish what we started
!

Kael cried out when the man collapsed. He grabbed his knees and tried to force his legs to turn, but they kept marching on. Behind him, the man’s blood became a river: it ran down the slope and washed over Kael’s boots. The blood pooled in a mirror before him, and he saw images swirling inside the red.

A black dragon fell from the skies, wildmen clashed against a gilded army. Villagers screamed, fires churned the seas aside — a castle moaned as it crumbled to the ground.

Kael leapt away from the cackling of a horrible, grinning skull, and the shock jolted him from his sleep. He woke with the sun blaring above him.

And he remembered everything.

“Kyleigh!”

Kael roared her name into the sky, the trees. He searched throughout the forest and hardly paused for a breath. He didn’t know if it was a trick or a curse, or some ridiculous brand of dragon magic.

But he knew for certain this was all her doing.

No man simply lost his memories. It was no coincidence that he numbed every time she touched him. He should’ve known when his mind went soggy that there was something odd happening. There had to be a reason his head had been so muddled the past … however long it’d been.
 

Blast it all, he wasn’t even sure how long they’d been trapped in the Motherlands. The whole Kingdom could’ve fallen apart by now.

They had to get out.

Kyleigh was nowhere to be found. Either she was still sulking from the night before, or she’d heard him cursing at the trees. But it didn’t matter where she hid: he was determined to find her.

After a few hours of combing through the woods, he thought she might’ve gone back to camp. There wasn’t any sign of her beneath their tree. His filthy clothes and armor sat untouched upon the scant pile of their belongings. He marched out from the woods to the cliffs that overlooked the valley, hoping to catch some sight of her there.

Instead, he found Rua.

The red dragon was curled atop his usual hill, so unmoving that Kael might’ve mistaken him for its jagged crest, had the sunlight not revealed his scales.

Rage carried him over the valley and up the side of the hill. His warrior strength pulled him swiftly across the earth, cutting through the mile between them in a handful of minutes. He thought of nothing as he ran — every bit of him was focused on finding out what the dragons wanted.

Rua’s red body seemed to swell as Kael drew closer. With his limbs sprawled and his wings unfurled, he capped the entire hill. Kael climbed as far up the slope as he could without coming within reach of Rua’s spiny muzzle. He focused on donning his dragonscale armor with one half of his mind — while the other tried not to think about the fact that what he was about to do might get him eaten.

“All right, this has gone on long enough,” Kael shouted, even though he knew the dragon could’ve heard him at a whisper. “The Kingdom is in danger. There are far too many people depending on us for you to keep us here. Either tell me what you want, or let us go.”

For a long moment, Rua did nothing. His great head stayed tucked beneath his wing and his breathing rumbled as if he was lost in a deep sleep. Kael was trying to decide whether or not to risk kicking him in the claw when the dragon raised his head.

At first, Kael thought he might’ve been mistaken. The dragon who glared at him now didn’t look a thing like Rua. Sharpness creased his brows and brought his teeth from his lips. His eyes roared inside their sockets. The scales across his muzzle burned red-hot: they flared in warning as his spiny face darkened, glowing like embers.

Kael stepped backwards when the dragon’s great voice crackled inside his chest — the noise of a tree splitting into two. But he forced himself to be calm, holding tightly to the image of his dragonscale armor.