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“I’m here,” Doshir whispers.
The thought floats away, another puff of seed caught in the breeze. There’s nothing I need to hide now. My eyes close and the world fades, a shoreline receding and receding until nothing remains but light and warmth.
* * *
“Ow,”I cry.
My voice sounds like a neglected hinge that’s rusted shut. Someone makes a clucking sort of noise above my head, not quite accusatory but not exactly sympathetic either. My eyes snap open, and I see that damned white cloth again.
“Can’t be helped,” the voice says. “Pain’s a part of healing, I’m afraid. We’ve gotten you over the worst of it, at least, but you can’t stay asleep for everything. As for the rest of it—”
There’s a shuffling sound, claws on stone, and then the voice speaks from closer to the cloth.
“That’s up to you,” she says.
I huff out a breath. Pain throbs through my body, low and angry, radiating out of my— Of my—
My what? What happened to me? I twist toward my side and see nothing but white cloth. I stiffen, fear riding the pain. Where in the nine hells am I? How bad is it, the wreck of my body?
“Easy,” the voice says. “I’m right here. Are you ready to see?”
I let my breath out in a trembling rush. Memories slam into me, sharp and hard as arrowheads.
The Throne of Claws. Nightmare steel in the moonlight, glinting dully beneath Rensivar’s ebony scales. His claws twisted in the metal. The sound he’d made when I slammed into him, when the throne began to tip. Beating my wings against the sky, desperate to shove the throne over and into the crack in the mountain. The ache of my muscles.
And then the searing agony of Rensivar running his claws down my wing. Memories come in jagged little flashes; the back of my throat tastes like blood. Limp, bloody tatters of my own wing. Red scales scattered across grass as blue as the summer sky. The glint of Rensivar’s teeth, the growl rising through his throat. His claws on my neck. Stars exploding across my vision as Rensivar dragged me down with him.
I swallow, trying to keep the heat and pain swirling inside my chest from strangling me.
“Doshir saved me,” I whisper. “Didn’t he?”
The voice makes a strange sort of purring sound.
“He pulled you from that hole,” she replies.
I remember. Gold scales against black, Doshir flinging his body at Rensivar’s gaping maw, the ache in my chest screaming even louder than my ruined wing. Reaching for my human form, thinking I wouldn’t be able to find it, stretching, pulling. Doshir leaping into the air, his wings billowing all around me.
Wings. I feel like someone slid a dagger through my ribs. What happened to my wing?
“I’m ready,” I whisper. “I want to see.”
The voice makes another sound, a little harumph that’s almost proud, and the white gauze ripples. The fabric goes limp, then pulls to the side.
And I’m staring at the face of a white dragon. Dim memories flicker from some far recess of my mind. Doshir carrying me through a long tunnel, following a white dragon. Following this dragon. She bends her neck and tilts her head toward the ground in a strangely deferential gesture I don’t recognize.
“The first few days are difficult,” the white dragon says as she moves to the side to pull on another section of the curtain. “It’s standard procedure, the curtains. Not everyone is ready to see, you know?”
I nod my head, although I honestly have no idea what she’s talking about. The curtains fall to the side, parting all around my body. I’ve been lying on my belly on a huge bed of pillows, with curtains pulled up over my neck. All alone in a world of white. The dragon gives me a sympathetic little smile, then pulls aside the final curtain.
And I see my wing. Or rather, I see a mess of plaster, bandages, and what looks like wooden scaffolding surrounding the place where my wing should be. I twitch, then almost sigh in relief when the plaster moves.
“Yes,” the white dragon says. “Bend it now, please.”
I do, although the burst of pain that follows is so intense I feel like I’ve been smacked in the head with an iron mace. The dragon clucks again, more sympathetically this time. A large chunk of plaster falls to the stone floor.
“It’s best to keep it immobile at first,” she says. “But now, the more you work it, the faster you’ll heal.”
I swallow, searching for the courage to ask the one question that’s chased me ever since I opened my eyes.
