Page 26 of Dream Reaper

“Absolutely not. My wife stays with me.”

Brynja stepped closer to him, angling her head so she could stare into his eyes despite the difference in their heights. “Then you can stay here with her, and your dragon dies alone.”

Another silence fell across the ravine. Other than the wind whispering around them, nothing moved. Ava looked between Jerrid and Brynja, wondering what she could say to convince him that she would be all right. That he needed to go to Echo and leave her behind.

“Very well,” Jerrid said. “One of us stays here. But I need to be the one who stays. Ava is the healer. She goes.”

Brynja took another step closer. Now barely a foot of space separated the two of them, and for some reason this made something unpleasant stir in Ava’s gut.

“She stays.”

Jerrid’s fingers twitched at his sides, and Ava took a quick step forward.

“It’s all right, Jerrid,” she said quietly, urgently. “I can tell you what you need to do. I’ll stay here.”

He didn’t look at her, his scowl still fastened on Brynja, who had an annoyingly knowing twist to her mouth.

Like she had won, and she knew it.

They had no choice but to do what she demanded, unless they wanted a lot of innocent girls to get hurt.

Twenty minutes later, Ava began to regret her willingness to stay behind.

The runaway peaceweavers blindfolded her and shoved her up the steps to their camp. Then they stuffed her into some place that felt unusually cold and closed a creaking door behind them.

Ava stood stock-still, breathing heavily. She eased the blindfold off, but darkness still met her eyes. She turned in a slow circle and finally glimpsed a shaft of light gleaming from under the door.

She shuffled toward the door so that the light washed over her muddy boots. She knew better than to test the door handle—she had heard the distinctive clunk of the lock when the girls left. Instead, she turned around and slowly sank to the floor, her back against the door, the light angling around her.

Her limbs began to shake, her hands so tremulous she couldn’t keep them still. She clutched them together and pressed them against her mouth.

Everything she’d been holding in—the fear, the pain, the anger—came boiling out now that she was finally alone.

Everything hurt.

Every bone, every muscle, every cell…

She winced and dug the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. Even her eyes hurt from lack of sleep and a desperate need to cry. But in her condition, crying would hurt even more than holding it in.

Ava leaned her head back against the door and gently hugged her knees to her chest. Even that motion hurt, but at least it took the pressure off the throbbing ache in the small of her back. She gingerly curled onto her side in a fetal position.

She faced the door so the light could fall on her face. The ground was cold and hard against her cheek. Stone. She must be in a cellar or a storage room. Perhaps somewhere in the ruins.

She inhaled a shuddering breath as memories flashed before her eyes, as if they were being painted on the backs of her eyelids. Talos slapping her, binding her hands with his magic. The dragon, chasing her up a tree.

Jerrid walking away with Brynja and leaving her alone with strangers who hated her.

She wasn’t going to cry. She couldn’t cry. It would hurt too much, and she’d been hurt enough for one day.

She couldn’t take any more.

So, she lay for hours and hours, watching the light outside her cell until it faded away and dragged her into pure darkness. And when she finally fell asleep, she dreamed about Brynja laughing as she plunged a dagger into Jerrid’s heart while Ava watched on in horror.

And as the girl turned her glowing red eyes on Ava, someone else laughed.

Something else.

Something deep and dark and dangerous.