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I rip myself away from him with a gasp. What the hell was I thinking?
With an arm around me, he swings his leg over the saddle, holds on to something, and we slither to the ground. His booted feet hit first to absorb the impact, and then he sets me gently on the grass.
“Godric,” he bellows in the loudest voice I’ve ever heard. “Godric, where thefuck—”
“Commander?” calls a voice from the other side of the dragon.
“Ah, there you are. Godric, come here and show this woman to my tent. Don’t let anyone else enter, and guard her like you would guard me.”
His tent.His tent. I don’t want to go anywhere near this man’s tent. I want to go home. To hell with the Brethren and being a Veiled Virgin, and to hell with this invader. I want my family. Ma and Dad. My brother and sister. For all of us to be together again.
The stranger turns back to me, and his tone is filled with warmth and velvet. “I will say goodbye, though it makes me ache to leave you.” He reaches for the hem of my veil. He even takes it in his fingers and starts to pull it up over my head but changes his mind.
“No. That will be my reward for killing everyone who tried to harm you.” He bows his head and brings the edge of the veil to his lips and kisses it. “I won’t be long. This is the safest place in Maledin, and no one will harm what belongs to me.”
I wish the stranger could see me scowling at him behind this veil. What belongs to him? I won’t be a tithe, or a sacrifice, or whatever this man wants me to be. I bring my hands up to shove him away from me. My palms land on his chest plate, but before I can push him, he wraps his hands lovingly around my wrists, and the delighted note in his voice tells me he thought I was reaching out for him.
“I don’t want to go either, because if you are who I think you are…”
To my horror, he leans his huge body down and buries his face in my throat, inhaling deeply. Then he groans, a delicious sound like melted butter dripping from a hot scone that caresses me from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair. It takes a full minute for the vibrations to dissipate, and by then, he’s letting me go and climbing up the dragon’s flank.
I swipe my throat and then stare at my hand. Did I get coated in something that smells good to enemy invaders? Or is he a lunatic?
“I wasn’t trying to make you…” I start to say, but it’s too late. “…stay.”
The dragon’s enormous wings unfurl and darken the sky, and a powerful gust of wind knocks me on my ass.
There’s a frantic shout on the other side of the camp. I look up and see a soldier in armor drawing his sword and running away from me, heading for an entrance gate. Fighting has broken out, swords are clashing, and soldiers all around me are rushing over to defend it. So much for this being the safest place in Maledin.
I’m not waiting here to be dragged into that barbarian’s bed. I scramble to my feet and duck into a nearby tent after checking that it’s empty. With my eye to the tent flap, I watch as invader soldiers clash swords with Brethren Guard.
There’s a silvery blur in the sky, and something darts over the battle. It disappears from view, and two Brethren Guard crumple to the ground.
What was that? A dragon?
The dragon I flew on and the ones I glimpsed at the funeral were enormous creatures and couldn’t possibly move that fast. Three more times something very fast appears out of nowhere and takes out Brethren Guard. Whatever they are, they’re vicious, and they’ll quickly kill all the guards at the gate.
I draw back from the tent flap, thinking quickly. If I stay here, I’ll be in the hands of the enemy, and stars and skies know what will happen to me when that black-haired invader returns. I could return to the monasteries and seek shelter among the Brethren, but the monasteries and churches are burning, and the Brethren just tried to sacrifice me to the dead king. The invaders and the Brethren are not my people. My people are at home, in Amriste.
With a pang, I think longingly of the home I was torn away from a year ago. Amriste was where I grew up. Amriste is where my family will be, and with this invasion going on, I’m worried for their safety. Ma and Dad have never been farther than the nearest market town in all their lives. Anise is fourteen and was probably up a tree two miles from home when the invasion began, eating stolen apples. Waylen is twelve and afraid of storms, so the dragons in the sky must be paralyzing him with terror.
What if they’re all dead? A dragon might have burned the whole village. A dragon might have landed on our cottage and trampled them to death. Invader soldiers could have razed the village, and those silver blurs attacked them in the fields when they ran for their lives. They could be shivering and starving in the cold right now. Dad’s lungs were never strong. They could all be lost. They could all be dead.
I press my hand over my heart and find it racing dangerously fast. If I panic now, I’ll be no help at all to my family. With Maledin being torn apart from the inside out, the safest thing for us to do is flee over the border to the west into Grendu. I have heard dark rumors about that land, that it’s full of evil magic, but at least it’s peaceful. I’ll return home, gather my family, and we’ll start walking toward the border. Maybe I can even persuade the whole village to come with us.
Now that I have a plan, I start to feel calmer, and I take a look around the tent. There are half a dozen sleeping pallets on the ground, an open chest of weaponry, and another filled with foot soldiers’ clothing. Shirts, breeches, jackets, simple helms, with muddy boots in a row nearby.
I’ll be conspicuous wherever I go if I keep wearing this clothing. I haul the heavy veil from my head, tip up my chin, and take a deep breath of fresh air. The stench of smoke from the funeral pyre finally dissipates, and I ball up the veil and shove it under a sleeping pallet, where hopefully no one will find it until I’m long gone.
The soldiers who own this clothing seem to be tall and narrow. I’m on the short side, and I’m rounded as well, so I have to wriggle a pair of breeches over my bottom, roll the hems up about ten times, and then stuff the bulging cuffs into too-big boots. These clothes were made for someone with no bottom and enormous feet, so everything feels too tightandtoo loose. The shirt is a little easier to deal with since I’m able to stuff most of the length into the breeches and rip off the cuffs. There’s an old jacket at the very bottom of the chest that seems to have shrunk in the wash, though it still swamps my shoulders. I bundle up my long, dirty blonde hair beneath a helm and squash it down.
I probably look ridiculous and not at all like one of the soldiers currently defending the camp, but at least I’ll draw less attention this way than in a white dress and veil.
With every soldier still fighting at the gates, I’m able to sneak out of the tent and over to a damaged section of fence. It’s been hit hard by something, and I wiggle through a small gap and out the other side. From there, it’s a short dash across some open ground and then I’m surrounded by scrubby trees.
Freedom. For the first time in over a year.
I alternately run and walk through the woods. I have no idea where I am or how far I’m going to have to walk to reach my village, but right now I’m flushed with excitement and relief.
