Dragonoak (27 page)

“...
might actually work if you do it,” Kouris said.

The room
set aside for us wasn't large and we kept our voices down, when
speaking of Kastelir. It would've come across as nonsense to anyone
eavesdropping, but we were unduly cautious. No one would've
recognised us, and in the grand scheme of things, we meant nothing;
but we had to find a way to use that to our advantage.

It
wasn't difficult to convince myself that Katja wasn't there, or
that she didn't matter. What I felt for Kouris, Akela and Atthis
negated any fear or anger I might've lost myself to, and she sat
with her shoulders hunched, eyes fixed on the food she wasn't
eating. I doubted she heard anything any of us were
saying.

“You know,” I began, and they
did
know. Our first stop on our
journey was obvious, but I hadn't allowed myself to say it out loud
until we were back on solid ground. “I was thinking that we
could—”

“What
were
you thinking?” Katja asked, gaze shooting up. She tilted her
head to the side, fingers wrapped around her cutlery. “That we
might march into Kastelir and you would find Claire there, waiting
for y—”

Every
dish on the table rattled as I brought my fist down against
it.

Even
Katja started in her seat. The others had been on the verge of
silencing her, but the words rushed back inside them at the sight
of me meeting her gaze, teeth grit.

I wasn't
going to listen to her. Wasn't going to let her words twist inside
of me, forcing their way into my thoughts, pushing out what little
comfort remained to me.

“I'll kill you,” I said slowly, not understanding how much I
meant it until the words crept out of me. “If you say another word
to me, or about me – if you
ever
say her name again – I'll kill you again. And
again. And I won't even use my powers to do it.”

Katja
recoiled, awed that I'd had the audacity to say such a thing to
her, but it worked. She didn't say anything more to me, couldn't
set her eyes on me.

“Uncle!”
she whispered, certain he would do something for her.

“Quiet
, Kouris,” he hissed back,
helping himself to another glass of wine.

I'd
scared her. I'd forced her to go back to staring at her plate, lest
I catch her eye, but I didn't feel good about it. I hadn't won
anything. All I'd done was put myself on her level, spouting
threats that terrified me because they hadn't felt empty.
Everything I'd eaten stuck to the bottom of my stomach, caught in
my throat, and I wished, more than anything, that she'd never
twisted the faith I'd once had in myself.

“What
were you going to say?” Kouris asked, pulling me out of my
thoughts.

I
glanced away from the knife trembling in my grasp, saw that her
eyes were on me, as well as Atthis and Akela's, and took another
mouthful of the wine.

“My
father. I want to go see him, and... and I know he'd be happy to
have you all stay with us,” I said, drowning out the voice in the
back of my head that said I'd been gone for too long, that he'd be
angry at me for running away. “It'll be a good place to stop, for a
while. To make plans. Our gold isn't going to last
forever.”

“Excellent,” Atthis said, moving to squeeze my hand and then
thinking better of it. “You said your village isn't far from here;
twenty or so miles from the coast? We could leave here in the
morning and be at your house in time for dinner.”

I
smiled, mood shifting into something brighter, doing all I could to
claw at the guilt that said I shouldn't have calmed myself so
quickly.

“When I left my village, it was because they'd done all they
could to chase me out, without actually
chasing
me out. Because they were
scared. And now, now I'm going back with a pane, a King and Akela,”
I said, biting the inside of my cheek. “I don't know what they'll
think, but I hope they think Kouris is going to eat
them.”

Laughing, Kouris shredded a steak between her fangs, and
said, “I'll give 'em my best grin. Maybe lick my lips a
bit.”

We ate
until our stomachs ached, and Akela kept on eating. Katja seemed to
wilt in her seat, drawing away from us bit-by-bit, until she was
but a ghost, long-since faded from the conversation, from our
thoughts. I folded my hands across my stomach, leant back and
closed my eyes, and allowed myself to soak in how wonderful having
a mattress beneath me would be.

Full
stomachs paved the way to pleasant exhaustion, and stretching out
at the table, we all decided it was time to turn in within seconds
of each other. I didn't know where Katja was staying, whether she
had her own room she was being locked into, or whether Akela or
Atthis were standing watch over her, and didn't care to find
out.

“It's
been a long time since you've seen your father, Rowan. I doubt
you'll want us crowding around you,” Atthis said. “Head out with
Kouris in the morning. She'll get you there hours ahead of
us."

I squeezed his hand, bidding him goodnight, and let my covers
swarm me.
Blankets.
It was actually cool enough to need
blankets
. I pulled them tight around
me, comforted by the weight and warmth, and drifted off to the
sound of the sea lapping against Asar, wind carried across the
waves all the way from Canth.

The next
morning, it all became real. The journey over wasn't a dream I
thought I'd never escape and I didn't awaken in Canth, in Reis'
hut. Almost two years ago, the opposite had happened; I'd expect to
open my eyes, to find that the dragons had all been a dream, and
wander back through Isin's castle.

Knowing
how distracting such thoughts could be, I didn't waste any time. I
double-checked everything was still in my bag, felt for the chain
around my neck, and met Kouris down in the lobby.

Travelling with a pane was the best way to go unnoticed. Had
someone actually been tracking me down, they would've looked
straight over me, attention fixed firmly on Kouris. Other patrons
were side-eyeing her warily, whispering things she could clearly
hear with ears like those, and the innkeeper was working on
building up the courage necessary to ask her to hurry
on.

There
were a lot of things I was going to have to get used to again about
Asar, but this frustrated me the most.

“Good
morning,” I said, making a point of pushing myself up on tip-toes
and kissing her cheek, when she bowed towards me. “Are you
ready?”

“Are
you
?”
she asked, holding the door open for me.

“No.
Really, really not,” I said, shakily laughing it away. “It's been
so long since I've seen my dad – more than two years! – so of
course it's going to be hard. But I've got to go. Because I just
feel like... like I can't leave it a second longer than I have to.
As if a few minutes are going to make a difference. That sounds
weird, doesn't it?”

“Not at
all,” she said. “I think I understand how you feel.”

Breakfast came in the form of the baker's first batch of
bread that morning, and at the edge of Ironash, Kouris knelt down.
I climbed on her back, not ready for the miles to fade away in
minutes, but unwilling to let myself linger for more than a moment.
I couldn't stop now. I'd come back for a reason; to be
useful.

With my
arms around her neck, cheek pressed against hers, I said, “I feel
like I've never been away. But I feel like I was never really here,
either. Like it was all a dream. I don't think I'm going to believe
it until I'm there, back at the farmhouse. And even
then...”

Closing
my eyes, I felt the wind rush across my face, felt Kouris chuckle.
I'd fallen asleep dull and woken up much the same, and as long as I
kept my mind clear and my thoughts focused forward, I'd be able to
keep control over it all.

“Can't
wait to see the look on your dad's face when you drag a pane home
with you.”

“And not
just any pane,” I said, leaning back and holding onto her
horns.

I'd
never been south of my village, had never gone anywhere near
Ironash, but it didn't take long for my surroundings to become
startlingly familiar. Every tree we passed jogged a memory, too
many of them coming to me at once to be made sense of. I'd
forgotten how rich the landscape was, couldn't appreciate the
wealth of life therein until we were rushing through the long
grass.

A rabbit cut across us as I found myself grinning. I hadn't
seen one of those in
months
.

“What's
he going to think?” I murmured a few hours into the journey,
knowing we couldn't be far off. “I sent him letters, I let him know
I was okay, but that was so long ago, Kouris. It was spring when I
left, spring two years ago. He'll know what happened to Kastelir,
everyone will, and if Michael wrote to him...”

“He'll
be thinking that he's so happy to see you that anything he's
thought before suddenly won't matter, yrval,” Kouris said firmly.
“No point in worrying yourself now; that's all gonna turn to relief
quickly enough, trust me.”

I
occupied my thoughts with things that didn't matter to me. I
wondered how the village would react once they knew I was back,
wondered if Thane or any of the other elders would march up to the
farmhouse and knock on the door, demanding to know what I thought I
was doing. Blaming me for all that had happened in Kastelir, no
doubt.

I saw
the forest surrounding the valley before the village itself, and
planted my hands against Kouris' shoulders, pushing myself up for a
better view. There it was, same as it'd ever been: the buildings
hadn't rearranged themselves, nor had the streets taken on any new
twists and turns. I wasn't close enough to be able to spot anyone
on the streets yet, and I gripped Kouris' horns tighter, thumbs
pressing into the grooves Reis had carved.

I
would've steered her away from the village, into the fields and up
to our farmhouse, but something was wrong. We drew closer and
closer and still I didn't see anyone; Kouris skidded to a halt
outside the first building on the outskirts of the village, and I
jumped off her back, running ahead.

I was
met with emptiness, with silence. None of the fear or repulsion I'd
expected was to be found within the village, and none of the
resentment they'd once felt for me lingered in the air.

“Hello?”
I called out against my better judgement, spinning on the spot,
desperate to find a sign of life.

I
reached out with my powers, grasping at nothing.

The
windows of the building in front of me were boarded up, and all
around, planks of wood had been nailed across doors.

The
plague. The plague had been creeping along the coast, before I
left.

It would've been easy for Kouris to catch up with me, but she
let me run on alone, up the dirt path leading to the farmhouse. I
could've stopped this. Had I still been here, I could've cleansed
the plague in a matter of moments. But would the villagers have let
me? The farmhouse –
my
farmhouse – was right in front of me, washed-out red paint
peeling off the front door, and I couldn't have ever gone to
Canth.

I barely
knew my way out of the valley.

I
pounded my fists against the front door, light slipping from my
grasp, not knowing what I expected to find within. A note on the
table to say where he'd gone, at the very most. I gripped the
handle and shouldered the door open. I used more force than I
needed to and ended up flinging myself against the opposing wall,
knocking over an empty bucket and a shovel in the
process.

Momentum
finally lost to me, I crouched down to pick the things back up and
fell to my knees, breathless. Coming back hadn't been a waste, I
told myself. My father had simply... headed to Kyrindval, where
Michael was, or taken refuge a few villages over. Hands twisting in
my hair, I did what I could to draw in my light, when a voice from
behind me cautiously asked, “Rowan... ?”

My
father stood in the kitchen doorway, gripping a hatchet in one
hand. All of the crashing about I'd done had put him on edge, but
the second he set eyes on me, he lowered the weapon, placing it on
the ground. He moved to put his hands on my shoulders, but I rushed
to my feet, launching myself at his chest.

“Dad!” I
said, feeling his arms wrap around me in spite of the glow he
didn't understand emanating from me. “Dad, I'm sorry, I'm so, so
sorry.”

“Shh,
shh,” he said, hand on the back of my head. I clung to him tighter,
doing all I could not to shake, and he swayed me on the spot,
saying, “There, there, Rowan. I'll get us some tea, shall
I?”

I found
my way to the kitchen table, and nothing in there had changed but
me. I sat with my hands clasped together beneath the tabletop,
trembling in what my body had yet to register as relief, and my
father stood by the counter, boiling water. He kept glancing over
his shoulder, ensuring that I was really there, and my teeth
chattered together every time I tried to smile.