Page 21

Damian

N ot for the first time, I paused to look down into the canyon, trying to judge the depth to the bottom. I took a squat, testing the muscles in my legs. There was no change. They still didn’t have the same snap to them, the same carefully restrained power, that had been ever-present before my dragon up and disappeared.

Come on, you stupid thing. Where are you, wake up, we have shit to do!

Try as I might, there was no response. A hole in my head where its presence had lived with me for nearly twenty years. We’d gone through so much since it had awoken. Now, it was gone.

I reached out to steady myself on the cliff wall.

Now wasn’t the time for this. I needed to find a way down to Aurora. She was scared, alone, and hurt. She said it wasn’t bad, but I didn’t care. That was where I needed to be. I would not have a breakdown over my missing other half while she remained in peril.

Snarling angrily, I set off once more, taking deep breaths to calm myself while looking for anything that might serve as a way to get me down to her—but also allow us back up.

The sound of a female voice shouting reached me. I couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded alarmed.

Something had happened with Aurora.

I was at the edge of the cliff in an instant, heading legs-first over the edge as I slid down the almost completely vertical incline without a care for my own well-being.

A second later, my right foot hit an outcropping, and I bounced into the air. Away from the wall.

“Oh, shit,” I said when there was suddenly nothing below me. I fell twenty feet to the bottom, bracing to absorb as much of the drop as I could with my legs.

The impact came, and I bent into a deep squat, ready to roll backwards to fully bleed off the speed, but surprisingly, my legs held up. The jolt that ran up my skeleton would leave an ache, but I was alive, on my feet, and mostly unharmed.

Not pausing to do more than be thankful, I took off, heading back in the direction I’d left Aurora. I just hoped I wasn’t too late.

Rounding a corner, I vaulted a large boulder blocking most of the path, going over instead of around, not wanting to slow down.

“I’m coming!” I hollered, hoping she would hear me. “Just hold on.”

My boots slapped against the stone, the impacts echoing raucously off the stone walls. If something was down there with Aurora, they would know something was about to arrive.

I came hurtling around another sharp turn and nearly ran her over. I quickly saw she wasn’t alone.

“How did he get down here?” she asked, looking up at me with troubled eyes. I dropped to a knee next to the unconscious guard, noting his broken leg and facial trauma. “He’s not doing well, Damian. I don’t know what to do. Dragons are supposed to heal, but he’s not. He just keeps moaning.”

Hearing her concern was unexpected. Between that and the way she kept stroking the guard’s shoulder and talking to him in a soft sing-song voice, I would’ve expected to find her tending to a human. Not a dragon.

She’s treating him like he’s one of her own.

Or perhaps for Aurora, there was no distinction. All she saw was someone hurt and in need.

Again, I needed to readjust my thoughts about her. My preconceived notions of humans were being thrown out the window at every opportunity by the auburn-haired beauty with eyes of jade.

Another moan, this one louder, grounded me back in reality.

“I don’t know how he got here,” I said, addressing Aurora’s first question. “Not yet, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? He’s here now, and we found him. You found him.”

“Don’t give me any credit. All I did was take a wrong turn off a cliff,” she said. “What do we do with him?”

“First,” I said, looking at his leg unhappily, “I’m going to have to set his leg.”

She looked at me, eyes wide. “You know how to do that?”

I nodded. “Most dragons do. Our bodies heal, but broken bones have to be set to heal; otherwise, they heal badly. It’s a good thing he hasn’t healed; otherwise, this would be a nasty situation to fix.”

“Okay.” She swallowed. It was the only clue to the nerves she had. Her voice was as steady as a rock. “What do I do?”

I directed her through what I wanted to do. “This won’t be pretty or permanent, but it’ll get it straight so we can at least move him.”

“Move him?” She bit her lip. “Is that a good idea?”

“We can’t stay down here. Nobody will find us. There’s no water here, nothing to eat. We have to get to a better location farther inland where we can find all those things.”

“Okay.”

I grabbed the guard’s leg, and then, with a nod at Aurora, I reset it to the best of my abilities, trying to ignore the horrible noises coming from near the break.

The guard’s muscles seized abruptly, and sweat poured from his face, but still, he didn’t wake up.

Aurora dabbed at the rivulets, keeping them out of the guard’s eyes. “Is there nothing more to do?”

“No,” I said. “He’s either going to pull through, or he won’t. At this point, it’s up to him, not us.”

Carefully, with Aurora’s help, I lifted the guard onto my back, letting his legs hang freely. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best I had to work with until we could get out of the canyon and find something to splint his injury with.

It took nearly an hour of walking the winding canyon to find a reasonable path back to the surface. Then it took us another hour to actually get up it. I went first to ensure it was doable, then I returned to help Aurora to the top. After that, I spent some time gathering wood and enough of the natural growing long grass to fashion a very basic splint to steady the guard’s leg.

Then, with one hand holding the guard, the other clutching desperately to the incline in front of me, I ascended to the top.

“Here, let me help you.” Aurora grabbed under my arm and added a little boost to get me over the top. I gently set the guard down without causing too much discomfort.

The unconscious dragon shifter moaned softly, then subsided back into silent unconsciousness, only the slow rise and fall of his chest giving away that life remained within him.

“Thank you,” I said, meeting her eyes and smiling slightly.

She smiled back, a hint of red flowing into her cheeks. Why was she blushing?

“Where do we go now?” she asked, quickly distracting me.

“Somewhere we can camp for the night. Make a fire.” I gestured toward the plains in the distance. “That way.”

“Do you want some help carrying him?” she looked skeptically at the much larger border guard.

“I appreciate your willingness, but no, I’ve got this,” I replied, already bending to lift him into a modified fireman’s carry. “You can lead though.”

Aurora’s eyebrows rose slightly, but then narrowed in fierce determination. “Okay.”

She set off, and I followed along. We walked for hours, mostly in silence. I watched the sun set behind the horizon in front of us, the sky slowly darkening.

“We should set up camp soon,” I told her, gesturing to a nearby stand of trees. “There will do.”

Aurora came to a stop, scanning left and right.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“No,” she said confidently, shaking her head. “But it’s getting late. We should find somewhere to sleep for the night. I’m thinking those trees will do.”

She pointed in the same direction I had just moments before. I looked at the trees. Then at her.

“Do you disagree?” she asked.

“Nooo, but …”

“You told me to lead. So, I’m leading.” She stuck out her tongue.

Despite everything, despite the emptiness where my dragon should be, I laughed. As I did, a fresh tingle swept over me, brightening my spirits considerably.

“Very well, Commander. Lead the way,” I said, grinning from ear to ear.

“Much better,” she said under her breath, though loud enough she knew I would hear.

We got the guard settled in, and then I cleared an area in the dirt and began to build up tiny twigs and dried grasses into a little tent.

“ Come on, please work,” I whispered to myself while Aurora was out of hearing range collecting larger pieces of wood. “Please.”

I called forth fire and ordered it to flick from my finger to the little pile of kindling. Nothing happened. I tried again. And again.

We needed the fire. The temperature was dropping. It wouldn’t drop to the point of freezing, but it would cool off significantly, and I wanted to make sure Aurora would stay warm. I knew humans were more susceptible to that sort of thing, but I didn’t truly know much.

Focusing harder, I demanded fire respond to me as I flicked a finger toward the kindling. I didn’t see anything, but I felt … something .

Again. Nothing. Again. Nothing. Again!

A tiny hint of a flame sparked on the tip of my index finger and disappeared.

AGAIN!

I poured all my energy and anger into the command.

A couple of sparks scattered across the kindling, and my head erupted in agony, doubling me over. But one of the sparks caught a piece of dried grass just right, and it began to smolder.

I had to keep it going. This was the only chance I was going to get. Ignoring the fierce pain hammering at the insides of my skull, I blew softly on the grass, feeding it with oxygen. The headache wasn’t getting better. Instead, it was worsening, tightening into my temples like vise clamps.

But the grass caught. True flames ran up its length, jumping to other grass.

Fire.

On my side from the pain, I grabbed for some smaller twigs to keep feeding it, but I couldn’t find them. The moan I heard this time wasn’t from the guard. It came from me.

“Easy,” a feminine voice said, hand resting on my shoulder. “I’ve got this.”

I lay there in blinding pain as Aurora slowly and expertly fed the fire until it was a nice, respectable size, with several large pieces of fallen branches crackling away merrily.

“You’ve done that before,” I said, having waved off her concern. I could handle a headache for the time being. After all, it actually helped calm me because it proved that my other half was still a part of me. If I could still control fire, then my dragon was in there, too. Somewhere.

Aurora nodded, watching the fire with her eyes but her mind somewhere else.

“Tell me about her.”

She looked up. “About who?”

“The woman you were before you came here. Who is she? I want to know her.”

I want to know you, Aurora.