Dragonoak (48 page)

Claire furrowed her brow, unable to counter me. She knew I
was right. I should've gone to her, should've put my arms around
her and told her I didn't
want
to leave her side again, but I could only stand
there, head full of flames.

“If...
that is how it must be,” Claire said, nodding slowly. “I only
regret that I could not do more to ensure your safety.”

Darkly
resigned to what had to be done, Claire returned her attention to
her desk, eyes darting around to find a document that may well have
not existed.

“I don't
want to leave you, Claire,” I said, taking a single step closer.
“I've just found you after all this time, and... if it was just you
and me, if we didn't have a whole city to worry about, I'd say we
needed each other. But I can't stay here. Everyone knows what I am,
and that won't be the last fire they light for me, Claire. I can
get someone to help me to write to you. I'm sure one of the pane
will be willing to help me. It doesn't have to be forever,
right?”

My words
got through to Claire. Instead of raising her shoulders and
defensively digging through the never ending pile of work strewn
across her desk, she turned to me, holding out a hand.

“I don't want you to go, Rowan. I truly don't,” she said,
taking my hand in hers once I was close enough. “I thought that if
I found you again – if you
had
survived – I should never let you out of my
sight. But things have changed for both of us. We are not the
people we were two years ago, and that cuts deeper than anything
else.”

I
wrapped my arms around her shoulders, letting her pull me
close.

“We're
not,” I mumbled into the top of her head. “But that doesn't have to
be a bad thing, does it?”

Her
fingers tightened in the back of my shirt, and my heart sank deeper
with every second she held her silence.

“The
world has been cruel to us both. I neither wish to hold you back
nor force you to endure it alone,” Claire said, “I am not... I
shall be here, for as long as you need me. I do not know if your
letters will reach me, but write. I shall certainly do the same,
even if I have to wait until next we meet to read them to
you.”

Taking
her face between my hands, I leant back, knowing there was still so
much for me to say. Too much. I reined it back in, remembering what
Claire had told me: bit by bit, and when we were both
ready.

“Can I
kiss you?” I asked, trying to smile as I used up the last of my
courage.

“Kiss
me...” Claire repeated dryly, as though it was the most ridiculous
notion she'd ever heard and couldn't fathom why I'd ask such a
thing.

“You're
beautiful, Claire,” I said, proving myself wrong and dragging up
the last few dregs of bravery. “You've always been beautiful, and
you always will be.”

Her
knee-jerk reaction to scoff was buried beneath a smile. She glanced
to the side, nodded shallowly, and I didn't waste a moment. I bowed
my head and pressed my lips to hers. I breathed in as she did. The
shape of her mouth had been forever altered, the edges of her lips
made rough, but there hadn't been a single moment scattered across
the past two years where I felt so wholly at peace.

Claire
lifted her hands, holding my face as I held hers, and I cursed
everything that conspired to keep us apart. I looked at her and
didn't believe she'd been forged by fire and force and
fear.

“...
you'll go to Kyrindval?” Claire asked, not breaking her lips from
mine. I nodded, foreheads coming together, and she said, “The way
there ought to be safe. If you encounter any Felheimish soldiers on
the way, they'll genuinely wish to aid you. Let them help and they
shan't cause you any trouble.”

Before I
could stand back up straight, Claire brought a hand to the back of
my head and kissed my forehead.

I
couldn't say anything more to her. Couldn't give her the goodbye
she deserved without reducing myself to tears. Desperate to spare
us both from that, I fled the tower before I could change my mind,
and rushed out into the open where the air wasn't cool enough to
soothe me.

There
wasn't much I could take with me. Claire's dragon-bone knife was in
my pocket but would've survived the fire regardless, and I'd have
to worry about finding food on the way. I needed to collect Charley
and head north before the entirety of Orinhal knew what happened
and decided to retaliate against the threat of fire; but even more
than that, there was something else demanding my
attention.

Ash
wasn't hard to find. She was doing her best to calm the humans
taking it upon themselves to feel personally targeted by a fire in
the pane district and came running over at the sight of
me.

“Rowan!
Rowan, hey,” she called out, as though I'd wandered across her by
chance. “Listen, you've gotta talk to the Marshal for me. All of
this trouble with the necromancer thing, you know I didn't mean for
any of it to happen. Thing is, I took that stag you offed back to
the butcher, and he wanted to know how it'd been killed without
leaving a mark on it, an—”

“I don't care. I don't care what you said, or to who. People
have been saying things about me my whole life, and it always ends
up like
this
,” I
said, determined to not let her get another word in. “I need to
know where Katja is. Take me to her.”

“You
know the Marshal didn't want m—”

“But you still know where she is. You owe me, Ash. You owe
me
twice
.”

Swearing
under her breath, Ash cringed and set off without another word.
There was a chance I could've found Katja myself, had I wandered
down every street and felt for her presence, but there was no
telling whether she'd be hiding from me or not.

The
cabin Ash led me to did nothing to stand out. The guards watching
over Katja were stationed inside, and from the street, I could've
convinced myself that a family like any other lived in there.
Curtains were pulled across the windows but candlelight ebbed
gently through them. It was as though she'd been waiting for me, I
thought.

“C'mon,
Rowan, if you could say something to—”

I headed
into the cabin and closed the door before Ash could finish her
sentence.

The
guards within leapt to their feet, causing me to break my
stride.

“What do
you think you're doing?” one of them demanded, and I had no answer
for them.

I didn't
know what I was doing there, or why I thought I could face Katja.
Being in the same room as her earlier had reduced me to a trembling
mess, and I couldn't speak for the forces that had driven me to
seek her out. The guards had made themselves comfortable, playing
cards and drinking at a table, but that wasn't to say they weren't
taking Claire's orders seriously. They were ready to throw me out
onto the street in a heartbeat.

It was
Katja who saved me.

“Goodness. Is that Rowan, come to visit already?” she asked,
not sounding half as pleased as I'd expected her to. With a sigh,
she said, “Oh, do let her in. I'm entitled to
some
entertainment beyond these
dreary books, aren't I?”

The
guards didn't look pleased about it, but they relented, letting me
pass. Already under her command.

Like the
guards, Katja had made herself comfortable. She was sat in a
high-backed armchair, blanket draped across her lap and knees
tucked up beneath her, and half a dozen books were carelessly
dropped on the low table in front of her. She'd flicked through
them all and settled for the least dull, which clearly wasn't
bringing her much joy.

Despite
all that, she took no pleasure in seeing me. I braced myself for
her reaction, did all I could to steel myself against what she'd
say about Claire, but all she said was, “It's terribly late, dear.
Do you think you might give notice, next time?”

If there
was no fear within her then I wouldn't let her draw it out of
me.

Gripping
the back of the armchair, I towered over her, aching to make her
lose her calm façade and sink into the cushions.

“You can act like
this
all you want. You can pretend that you're... that
you're better, that you only want to help, but I know what you are.
Claire knows what you are. So do Kouris and Atthis and Akela,” I
said slowly, words chipping my grit teeth. “If you even go
near
Claire, just
remember: I can kill you with a thought.”

“And I
can kill you with a knife,” Katja replied blithely, snapping her
book shut. “I wonder. Which one of us is more likely to go through
with our threat, hm?”

My nails
dug into the back of the sofa. I could've wiped the smile off her
face for good. I could've wrapped my fingers around her throat,
beat my fists against her face; I could've done a lot of things, if
only I could've moved.

“Let me ask you, dear. What
did
you see when you slipped away
from Bosma?” she asked, eyes searching my face for an answer she
already had. Bringing her hands up, she wrapped her fingers around
the collar of my shirt and pulled me close. “I was gone for mere
moments, but goodness, I remember it
so
clearly: the boughs of a great
tree, warming me with its shadow. I was sorry to have been brought
back to this troubled world.”

I'd seen
nothing when I died and she knew it. There'd been darkness within
the darkness and silence beyond all that.

It was
the only thing I'd been able to hear.

With a
shaking hand, I ripped my shirt clean out of her grasp but couldn't
bring myself to move away.

“Really, Rowan. I want nothing more than to help these lands.
I honestly
am
feeling so much more like myself, now that I have something
to focus on. What happened to you was... unfortunate, that much
I'll say. Had you only been more cooperative, darling. I wanted so
much for you to be better, to be all I saw in you.” She heaved a
long-suffering sigh, teeth worrying into her lower lip. “But that's
all behind me. You ought to do the same. All this wallowing
can't
be healthy. You
were a worthy enough distraction, down in Canth, but that was half
a world away. I'm only sorry it can't mean as much to me as it
obviously does to you.”

I pushed myself away from her. I stormed out of the house
quicker than I'd forced my way inside, knowing it was stupid,
stupid,
stupid
to
have confronted her. I hadn't known what I'd wanted to say; I'd
just wanted to
see
her, as pathetic as it was, to know that she was really
there. As close to imprisoned as could be until she lashed out at
me again. I almost wanted her to lose control and follow through on
any twisted, impromptu plans that swarmed inside her skull, all so
she'd be locked away, key thrown out.

I'd
survived her once. I didn't know if I could do it again, but I knew
I couldn't be nothing to her.

“Hey!”
Ash called out after me. “Talk to the Marshal next time you see
her, yeah?”

Maybe I nodded. Maybe I kept on charging down the street.
Either way, Ash didn't follow, and I found myself at one of the
supply units, shoving what food I could grab into an enormous
canvas bag. I should say goodbye to Goblin, to Atthis, to Sen, I
though.
No, no. I should go. I should go,
before anything else burns down around me.
I marched through the streets, only breaking my gait when
Charley met me with all the resistance and stubbornness he could
muster.

He saw
the bag slung over my shoulder, smelled the food within and clopped
his hooves against the floor of the stable, shaking his head every
time I went to put the reins on.

“Come
on
,”
I hissed, one arm slung around his neck. “You'll get to see Claire
again later, okay? For now we've got to get back to Kyrindval. You
remember the way, don't you?”

I
saddled him up, got the reins on and tugged on them; nothing. I
promised him apples, carrots, all the pears on the planet;
nothing.

Exasperated, I scrubbed at my face, stomping a foot against
the floor. “Gods!
Charley
, we've got to go. Claire's
going to be alright. You'll see her before you know it,
you'll...”

I didn't
realise I was crying until Charley bumped his forehead against my
chest. My palm was slick with tears and my nose kept running, no
matter how much force I put into sniffing, and Charley kept nudging
me back, as if his disobedience had made a blubbering mess out of
me. I laughed through the tears, scratched him behind the ear, then
led him out of Orinhal.

A
handful of people caught sight of me as I left. Everyone would've
heard the rumours by the next morning; the necromancer had done one
decent thing, had packed up and left. They'd feel justified in it,
no doubt. They'd reassure themselves that chasing me out had been
the right thing to do; after all, who was to say how far the next
fire would spread? Who was to say I didn't have at least a little
to do with it?