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“When I went back to his inn the night before His Majesty’s wedding,” I answer, in a voice that’s almost a whisper, “Doshir was gone.”
Ensyvir’s laugh is louder this time. Rage pulses crimson behind my temples; I close my eyes as if that could block out the infuriating hiss of Ensyvir’s obvious delight in my suffering.
“Child,” Ensyvir says. His voice feels like being dragged across broken glass. “Did we just learn a valuable lesson about what happens when we chase a pretty cock?”
I grit my teeth together so hard my jaw aches and force myself to nod. Weak, I think. Foolish.
“And what do you want now that your little fling has run off and left you behind, Rayne?” Ensyvir asks.
I pull myself up to standing, cross my hands behind my back, and meet his eyes.
“To serve my king,” I reply. “Sir.”
Ensyvir snorts.
“Jumping from one cock to another,” he mutters. “Idiot.”
I try to tell myself that my disguise is working, that it’s far better Ensyvir sees me as some sort of love-struck fool than an enemy, but it’s hard to reason with the cloud of rage flooding my mind and body. Ensyvir waves his hand, dismissing me without even bothering to utter the words, and I spin on my heels and stomp down the darkened stairwell, tears flooding my vision and leaking down my cheeks, as hot and salty as blood.
Chapter4
Doshir
How long have my limbs been shaking? I press my teeth together as my nostrils flare, pulling cold night air into my lungs. The trembling started after the moon rose, right? Sometime after. After I started climbing, at least, but before I crested the foothills of the Knife’s Edge Mountains.
I glance down as if reassuring myself that I’m still carrying my mother. That my numb, trembling, blood-streaked arms still hold her, even if they’re filling the night sky with the soft hiss of shivering scales.
And they do. My mother is still here, clutched to my chest, her head tilted back in the crook of my arm. She hadn’t exactly woken when I’d shaken her at sunset, although her heart still beat and her chest still rose and fell. She’d made a few garbled moans as I’d flown, my wings beating against the night, in a desperate race against the enemy that can never be beaten, only forestalled.
But not yet. Death comes for us all, but not now. Not tonight. Not my mother.
I exhale in a long hiss, then tilt my left wing slightly as the thermal drifts over me. Almost to the descent now. All downhill from here. Just like falling, I think, and then I’m remembering my father trying to teach me how to fly. Mothers, I’d been so little, hardly more than a newly hatched baby.
“It’s just like falling,” he’d said, his lips pulled back into a smile that revealed every single jagged tooth in his massive jaw. “Except at the end.”
And then he’d thrown me off of the Iron Mountains. I remember the wind rushing past me, the whistle of it in my ears, the press of air against my scales, as if the entire world were pushing back at me. The jagged granite spires beneath me, closer and closer, until I could make out the individual blades of grass struggling to grow between the boulders. Then the solid crush of my father’s claws around my ribs, the jolt as he’d yanked me back from the ground.
“You’re supposed to spread your wings!” he’d yelled as I’d hung, limp and numb, between his claws.
Our relationship probably went downhill from there, I realize, with a bitter little twist in my chest. The horizon tilts suddenly; panic surges through me, as hot as the blood still leaking from my shoulder. I drop my right wing, my sore muscles screaming in protest, and the sky goes back to where it belongs. Sky above, sea beneath. The world rolls like a ship on the ocean, and then I’m remembering the ship I rode with my father. The smell of the sea.
The sea. I blink, shake my head, and shove myself back into the present. The sea spreads out before me, achingly vast and lovely beneath the waxing gibbous moon. I look down, past my mother’s unconscious body, to the spires and cliffs and merciless rocky slopes of the Knife’s Edge Mountains.
Yes. I’ve crossed them. The final obstacle, the last thing standing between me and my thrice-blessed home. Cairncliff. I turn my head to the side. My wings tremble in the night air, and there she is, gleaming like an array of precious jewels spread across black velvet. Cairncliff. All her lights ablaze, her doors and windows open to the sea. Music and laughter and the scent of roasting meat rising in the air.
I tuck my wings in closer, angle them down, and fall. Wind hisses as it rushes past my scales, heavy with salt and moisture. The lights of Cairncliff swim and bob before me, trembling in the darkness. Rising up to meet me. Rising quickly.
Very quickly. Alarm flickers inside my chest, small at first but growing noticeably more insistent. There’s the harbor. The towers of Noble’s Hill. Music whistles past my ears, and little snatches of conversation. And then a scream.
I rear back, agony coursing through my wings as I beat against the night sky. The whole world shivers around me, the towers of Noble’s Hill pulse and sway like they’re underwater, and suddenly Cairncliff is so very big, and so very close.
My arms tighten around my mother as my talons scream over Lord Elziah’s gaudy turquoise tower with the gold railings, then snatch at empty air above the cobblestone street beyond. My own garden swims into view, dark and secretive, with its open bluff overlooking the city. The place where I once seduced a beautiful dragon.
Something deep inside my chest feels like it’s cracking open. Now I can see the pines bending toward the opening, the little bluff coming into view. The grass where I’d pretended to steal a silk blanket. Where I’d pretended to be someone interesting, someone who would trespass and seduce. Someone human.
My left foot hits the wall surrounding my garden, sending a bolt of pain through my wrecked body. Tears smear my vision, and then I’m stumbling across the grass, my mother’s limp form clutched to my chest. There’s a single orange light in the kitchen window, one tiny, flickering flame, and I remember Rayne whispering in the night.There’s a light in the window, she’d said as she’d pulled against my arm, trying to tug herself back into the shadows.
My chest feels tight; I stagger across the grass like a drunkard, my claws leaving long, dark gouges in the lawn. Breathing hurts. Standing hurts. Raising my head toward my own house hurts.
