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13
“What do you mean, she’s not here?” My bellow echoes across the courtyard, reverberates into the cavern. “You were supposed to be watching them.”
Gosrik recoils, his bronze tail dragging and his head lowered. “The women began fighting, my Prince. I feared they would injure each other. While I was intervening, several of the other captives slipped through the barrier and ran off into the forest. I called for Rytar and Ixione immediately, as they were the nearest. They went to hunt for those who escaped, while I remained behind to watch the other women.”
“You hoped you could retrieve them before I found out.”
He cringes lower. “Yes, my Prince.”
I glance over at Varex. He’s sitting in front of Jessiva while she stares at him defiantly.
“She masterminded this,” I snarl.
“It could just as easily have been your woman who planned it,” Varex retorts.
“Remove Jessiva from this enclosure, where she can’t cause any more trouble,” I command. “Take her far from here, but remember what the enchantress said. When she transforms, she won’t know how to fly yet. She will need you there to teach her.”
“I heard,” he snaps. “I was there. Fortunix and Ashvelon are already spreading the word that everyone must roost on the ground tonight. Don’t you think it a strange rule—”
“I think it strange that I am still here, talking to you, when Serylla is roaming the island unprotected.” With a final roar at the cowering Gosrik, I take off, catching a swift breeze from the ocean and using it to speed across the belt of forest near the women’s enclosure.
I don’t bother checking the broad, open fields or the cliffs that make up most of our island’s geography. Serylla is clever. She’ll keep to the densest parts of the forest where it’s harder for me to spot her, where I can’t fly in to grab her. I’m a good hunter, but only because I know the habits and patterns of my usual prey. An intelligent, defiant little human will be much harder to track.
“Fuck!” I vomit the curse on a stream of orange flame.
For hours I hunt her, landing occasionally to sniff the grass and the trees, trying to discern her scent among the myriad of odors. For some reason, I can’t smell her anywhere. I waste time following a trail that smells sweetly human, only to find a girl with coppery curls huddled beneath a stand of fir trees. She looks petrified, but I merely huff an angry breath and take to the sky again. Let someone else take care of that one. My sole concern is the aggravating little princess.
A few times I spot dragons with thrashing bodies grasped firmly in their claws, flying back toward the clan caves. Despite my satisfaction that some of the women are being retrieved, I’m annoyed as well, because I can’t seem to find mine. The sun is sinking, and still there’s no sign of her anywhere.
Finally I land on the north beach and prowl along the treeline, peering deep into the gloom beneath the branches. I even stalk into the forest, cursing every time branches drag at my wings.
I keep going, until at last I wedge myself through a tight gap between tree trunks and find a steep, grassy slope ahead. Jutting rocks and lumpy ridges of turf scar its surface, and among those ridges and rocks are large holes, half-hidden by long clumps of grass.
I forgot there was a voratrice nest here. Fuck.
We should have been more forthcoming with the women about the dangers of Ouroskelle, like the poisonous vines, and the wolves who hide in caves too narrow for us and come out at night to steal our prey. Worst of all are the voratrix. Each voratrice is something between a titanic earthworm and a carnivorous plant. It cannot move through the earth, but must stay rooted in one spot. Deep beneath the ground, all the serpentine appendages of the creature share one bloated stomach, and during the night, its long necks extend, carrying its many mouths closer to the surface. Each wormlike neck emerges through a separate tunnel, like the many stalks of a single plant—and on the blunted end of every writhing neck-stalk is a toothy maw which can shoot out several long, tongue-like feelers. Those feelers are the true danger to dragons. They can reach far into the sky, and are so transparent they’re nearly invisible until it’s too late.
Once prey is caught, the voratrice swallows the victim down one of its gullets into the shared stomach. The creature can live on one deer or dragon carcass for weeks. They reproduce rarely, sending out runners to form new cores only once every ten years or so. Old cores are tough and fibrous, nearly impossible to destroy, but when we discover a new core, we send fire down its throats and burn it out while it is still young and vulnerable.
The voratrix are only active at night, so in most cases we can avoid them. But there have been a handful of dragons killed by the voratrix during my lifetime—most notably the Bone-King’s life-mate, my mother. She went out for a night flight with Varex and was caught by the feelers of a core no one had spotted. Vylar and I mourned her deeply, but my brother’s pain was worse. He had to watch her die; in fact he nearly perished himself, trying to save her. All he brought back was her claw, which had been ripped from her foreleg as she struggled to free herself.
After Varex reported my mother’s demise, the Bone-King took several dragons with him to the spot, and they spent a day and a night vomiting fire down the voratrice’s tunnels. They even dug deep into the earth, trying to locate the core. But the creature was old, massive, and deeply buried in rocky soil. It never emerged, and the dragons could not find its root. My mother was gone.
The sun hangs low in the sky, and its golden glow bathes the slope, throwing the hollows and holes into sharp shadow. The voratrix always emerge at dusk. In moments this monster will be active, eager for prey. I should go.
As I start to turn away, the skin beneath my scales tingles with a sudden awareness. My nostrils flare, catching a faint scent mired beneath a layer of foulness. The heavy odor is dragon dung, and the scent beneath—it’s unmistakable. It’s her.
Whirling back around, I peer at the slope again, scouring every shadow.
There she is. She appears to have smeared her arms and legs with dragon scat, to camouflage both her pale skin and her scent. She is a disgusting, clever little creature.
And… fuck me. She’s sitting in the entrance to one of the voratrice holes.
A chill of violent horror sets my scales on edge. Any moment now, the monster’s sinuous necks will slide up those tunnels, at a speed faster than dragon-flight, and one of its mouths will scoop her up and carry her back to the underground stomach, to be slowly digested while she remains conscious. She won’t last long in that corrosive acid, with her soft skin, but she’ll be alive long enough to suffer agony. I cannot think of a more gruesome death.
“Princess,” I say quietly. “Please, let me speak to you.”
She retreats a little way into the tunnel. “Don’t come any closer. I know you can’t fit into a space this narrow, and if you approach me, I’ll go deeper.”
