I clear my throat and set my bag on the ground, looking around, the layout akin to the house I asked Bulder to craft Mah closer to the plains. Copied from this, of course, because I wanted it to feel like home whenever she came.
Like herrealhome.
I smile at the memory of her stepping through that door for the first time, casting her eyes across my wonky counterfeit. At the memory of her growling at me when I begged to straighten the walls once my stuttering finally stopped, like getting threatened by a huggin. Endearing, given all they’re really capable of is cuddling you to death.
She loved that house. Doesn’t change the fact that mine’s a steaming pile of dragon shit compared to this;impeccablysung.
I crouch, Rygun’s flame still roaring through my veins as I brush my hand across the chiseled patterns on the ground—a vista of dragons,flowers, and vines. A perfect ode to Mah’s soft and loving heart, etched by her well before she bound to the monster who sired me.
My smile falls as I trace the shape of a bloom cradling a Sabersythe …
Her absence is louder within these walls so scored in her naïvety. The gentle, nurturing soul who thought she could wear down Pah’s sharp edges—irrevocably drawn to him despite their moral differences. But I wonder …
Had she known the carnage their offspring would inflict on the world—myself included—would she have taken the same path? Refused his hand? Stayed here amongst these mountains she loved so much?
Lived?
I stuff the thoughts down and straighten, rest my hand against the wall, and begin wedging off my boots just as Pyrok and Roan jostle through the doorway like it’s about to close in on them—elbows out, still bickering beneath their breaths.
Finally making it through, Roan easily lifts his feet from Pyrok’s spare boots and moves past the low seater toward the kitchen counter. He begins unloading supplies from the scoop of his robe, looking more coiled than a spring. “You, ahh … think she’s taken off with the book?”
“Probably,” Pyrok mutters, blindly kicking off his boots while rooting through his basket’s contents—enough bottles of spirits to comatose an army. He ambles to the seater and flops down, still jiggling through his options. “She had this look in her eyes as she came down the stairs. Like she was bolting from something.”
Correct.
Even the most experienced blue bead can’t do what Raeve did in the anthe den and not cop some degree of whiplash. The fact that she held it together for so long is a fucking miracle.
One of these daes, she’ll let me see her cracks. Until then, I’ll gorge on the hitched breaths and pinched brows. The slight widening of her eyes before she shuts her features down. The heavy silence that tightens the air whenever her mind turns.
“So yes, I think she’s gone. Along with your precious book,” Pyrok continues, pops the cork on a bottle, and tosses back a swig, his next words hissed. “That’ll teach you for being such a shit thief and getting condemned.”
I stifle a sigh as Roan drudges out a teeth-clenched groan. “For the last time, I wasn’t trying tosteal it.Just look at it. Something I doubt you’d appreciate since I’m not even sure you can read.”
“I can read just fine. I just don’t see the point in hinging my existence off the scrawled words of dusty old fucks who spend their downtime crunching through shards of dragon bloodstone in order to extend their gluttonous lives,” Pyrok drawls before he downs another mouthful, swallows. “And I trust you about as much as I trust the contents of this bottle.” He closes one eye and peers down the nozzle. “Tastes like dragon piss.”
Fuck me, it’s going to be a long few daes.
“She’ll be back,” I murmur, hanging my robe on a wall hook. “Withthe book. She knows how important it is, given the protection it could offer from the coming falls.”
Silence stews while Roan tinkers with his mending station, nicking looks at his brother. Still needing to fire the fine-tipped prongs, prepare tinctures and balms, and sanitize his filthy hands.
All things that take time.
There’s no honor in continuing to accept Rygun’s strength now that I’m safe, but if I shut him out while I wait to be plucked and etched, I’m almost certain I’ll have to trust Pyrok to drag me up the stairs to slumber.
I look at him now playing with a ball of fire, still sipping from the bottle. One wrong word away from turning himself into a torch.
Bruised and beaten enough as it is, I move past the brothers, grab my bag, and make for the stairway, stifling Rygun’s flame and fortitude and everything else he’s been stuffing me with the moment my foot hits the top landing. Then I slam a wall down, using almost every bit of my remaining strength to bolster it.
He roars so loud the windows shudder, filling the gorge with his rage, like a nearby volcano just blew its peak.
‘Dath doon ah,’I convey internally, despite losing my footing and my grip on the bag, wobbling so much my shoulder barges into the wall.‘Dath doon ah, Rygun.’
We’re okay.
Darkness pulls at the edge of my vision, fatigue hitting me like a plank of wood to the head. Fatigue that somehow trumps the painful punctures in my flesh and bone, the pins thatgrindevery time I pull breath.
“Fucking blood-rune,” I mutter, moving down the hall and into the main suite, filled with colorful shards of light cutting through the window. The large four-poster pallet pressed against the back wall calls my name, but the moment I hit those thick tawny furs, I’ll probably slip into a coma.
