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Her body didn’t feel her own and he didn’t wait for her to follow his command, grabbing her wrist and wrenching it forward.

“No one else will hire you. No one else will work with a branded traitor. You will have nowhere else to go. So hear me when I say this. You won’t disobey me again. You won’t embarrass me like that again. The next time, I will kill you personally. You and every family member you have left.”

You’re lucky you’re useful, dragon-filth.

Her nails bit into her free palm as she tried to block out the chief commander’s words. The searing agony that followed did the work for her and in that moment, her brain only knew pain. Any thoughts of Mina or Gabriel or her future washed away as her skin sizzled.

CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE

FOX

The next morning, Fox stayed behind when Clarita picked Sofia up to show them the way back to the ruins. He didn’t know what to make of the small bubble of dread that settled in his stomach as she disappeared between the trees. They left in a group of seven, Sofia with a new bow and arrow set. He shouldn’t have worried—why worry about the Dragonborn that had captured him and gotten him into this disaster? But he was still uneasy with their separation, well aware they weren’t in friendly territory. They may have only been tolerating them to get back to the dragon altars.

But Sofia was right when she said he needed to rest. Every time he stood and moved around, he felt the stitching tugging at his skin. He continued to take the tincture the healer—Lia—gave him, but he was looking forward to the day he wouldn’t need it. More importantly, he was looking forward to leaving once Sofia was back.

It was nearly noon by the time he convinced himself to stand and stretch. As much as he preferred to stay lying on his bedroll all day, he still had hiking to do tomorrow, if not the next day, and it would do him no good to be stiff and sore.

If anything, the last week stuck out here in the rainforest had simply reassured him that his people were right. It was a dangerous and wild place where only a few could survive. He had to give credit to the Dragonborn who had made a living out here, and he would be all too happy to get home.

He wasn’t sure if Clarita had told the others to keep an eye on him, but no one appeared to care as he started walking around the cenote. It wasn’t nearly as large as the ruins he and Sofia had found, but there were elements of the same artistic flair of the Dragonborn. The main cavern was tiled, although the tiles were as old and cracked as the ruins had been. He imagined they had been here before the tribe had even found the cenote. The walls were freshly painted, however—one vibrant teal, another an orange the color of sunset. Flowers were painted at random intervals, brightening the space with even more color. It made the cave-like space feel alive even in the shadows.

He stumbled upon a dragons’ shrine, two doors down from the bathing room. It was nowhere near as big as the previous one, with three small altars and crude paintings of the dragons along the walls. He might have found the murals beautiful had he not seen the ones in the ruins a couple days ago. These were paintings built off stories, not memories. They were the type of reproductions that Fox could have done from the books he’d read growing up, rough illustrations that were missingsomething.

There was nothing of the true terror and power that the dragon he’d seen held. The very air around the dragon had seemed to breathe with danger.

He stood in front of the altar that sat under the cenote dragon, staring up at the blue-eyed beast, and wondered what it had been like for the great king when he decided to turn on thesegods. He’d read the accounts of the sea dragons destroying an entire fleet of ships in a single hour, hundreds drowned on a whim.

The dragons held a power of the land that no human or faery could come close to replicating. How many had been saved from drownings and storms because the great king had exterminated the dragons. And how many would die if they returned?

He hated himself for thinking it. If he said the words out loud, Sofia would hate him more than she already did. But even if the dragon they had seen had been beautiful—and it had been—it had also almost killed them. She was blinded by her own stubborn faith.

“Do you want to make an offering?” A small voice spoke behind him and he saw a young girl standing in the doorway, arms cradling a bundle of purple flowers. She had thick black hair, nearly as curly as Sofia’s and somehow so much more tangled. Her freckled cheeks had deep dimples as she smiled.

“Oh, I was just?—”

“Here,” she said moving forward, carefully plucking one of the flowers from the bouquet to hand to him. The stem was soft against his fingers. Up close, he noticed that the purple petals weren’t a single color, but a blend of blue and purple with streaks that looked nearly silver through them.

“I don’t know…” he started, but before he could finish, she pressed a finger to her lips as she motioned for him to kneel beside her. She set the flowers along the cenote dragon’s altar and he followed suit when she looked at him, eyebrow raised expectantly. She said a prayer slowly, likely for Fox’s benefit. As each guttural word slipped from her lips, a sense of knowing and familiarity grew in his chest, expanding and cutting off his breath. He didn’t know what the words meant, the dragon-tongue not magically forming into understanding. But heknewthe words. He’d read them only one time before, but they were burned into his brain, branded there with his grief. He pictured them now, written gracefully on the first page of a book long hidden in the darkest corner of his bedroom.

The girl pulled the small dagger from the altar and drew the sharp blade across the inside of her wrist. It wasn’t a large or even deep cut and it took a second before the blood beaded and she let a droplet fall into the golden basin on the altar.

Fox’s stomach turned as she passed the blade to him and stared, waiting. He wasn’t sure he remembered this part in the book. The small dagger was warm beneath his fingers from where her hand had been. He realized it was also the first weapon he had held since the Dragonborn tribe had found Sofia and him outside the canyon. He could take it. He could run. He could stab this small child and make his way back home to tell them everything he’d seen.

Instead, he lifted the blade and hesitantly ran it across his wrist, wincing at the sharp sting of it breaking skin. He didn’t acknowledge the chuckle that the little girl let out as his blood dropped into the bowl. He quickly pulled his arm back, wiping his wrist and pulling his sleeve down to hide the evidence. What would his father say if he could see Fox kneeling at the altar of the dragon gods?

He started to stand, sure they were done, but the little girl stopped him, a small hand on his sleeve. He noticed she was holding one last bloom, pinched between her fingers and as she pulled him down, tugging on his shirt, he leaned over and she slipped the small flower behind his ear.

Before he could thank her, she turned a bright red and ran from the room, her high giggles echoing in the passage beyond. Fox followed a moment later, holding back his smile. The scent of the flowers had been cloying in the small worship room, but as he left, he smelled the small whiffs from the bloom behind his ear, delicate and sweet.

He didn’t bother exploring farther down the hall, heading back toward the main cavern. He was hungry and hoped he’d find someone willing to part with food.

As the tunnel ended, Fox stumbled a few steps, blinking into the sunlight and letting his eyes adjust to the sudden brightness. No number of torches could push away all of the shadows of the caves. But the day outside was cloudless and the sun relentless.

It might have been better to have remained blind, because the moment he stepped into the sunlight and looked around the cenote, he saw the two small black canines running down the sides of the steep cliff. He opened his mouth to scream and warn the few people milling about, but a moment later, two small boys stood in their place. Fox recognized them from that morning at breakfast.

The people around the children didn’t flinch, noting the transformation with the casualness that one takes in the dying of a flower in the cold season. The little girl he’d just seen inside the worship hall ran up, laughing and chattering at the two boys before slipping into the form of a rabbit. His eyes flashed to the others that milled about the cenote, a new understanding in his gaze. He saw the way their muscles shuffled beneath their clothes, the gait of their walks. The gracefulness of their movement not quitehuman.

They hadn’t stumbled upon a hidden oasis of Dragonborn living peacefully in the rainforest. They’d wandered into a viper’s nest of shapeshifters.