Page 20 of Deadly Maiden (Dragons and Darkthings #1)

Rorsyd

“Wait.” Wyntre throws up a hand and reins in her dun mare. “Can we stop here?” She casts about, no doubt searching for onlookers.

I ride up to her, where a narrow track branches to the left, going westward. A gray stone building is visible past overgrown branches. “The road is clear. We haven’t passed anyone for an hour. Langordin is a day away, and this is the least-traveled road that heads there. You know all of this. What interests you?” I thumb toward the track. “That?”

“Yes. That.” Her hands are relaxed on the reins, but she studies the track or the building as if it intrigues. Her brow creases. “I can feel something.”

That’s vague. “You know the place, somehow?”

“No.” She puffs out her lips.

It’s been two days since my disastrous shift and the blood hawk killing. They’ve been uneventful, apart from the combat practice with sword, hand, and dagger. Wyntre can fight but only passably. In a close fight with a blade, she has skills. Hand to hand with a male, she will lose. It worries me.

Worries me almost as much as my own deficiencies with shifting.

Well, far less than that, really.

I extrude my claws while I let her think. They slide in and out easily. That’s a tease, a torture. Why did I shift that once, and fly, and yet now I’m useless? My tentative attempts to shift when she slept have only reinforced that I’m crippled. The flaw remains.

Flying is good. Fucking her is also good. Tying her up and then fucking her ? —

Enough! I bring a halt to these lascivious thoughts that have bothered me lately.

I bother you?

For a second, a scrape of a second, I see something more than myself, within myself.

What in the?—

“Rorsyd?” Wyntre is leaning low and peering up at me.

I straighten. “Yes?”

“I think I know what attracts me to that place. Since you’ve no objection, and were falling asleep, I’m checking it out.”

“What?”

She dismounts to lead Blossom down the trail.

The most ridiculous horse name ever, that. Wrong-footed, I do the same and follow her.

What are you? I’m talking to myself, aren’t I? Insanity beckons. This must be related to my damage inside.

*I am you.*

I halt, shocked, but I can feel the difference now. There is something within, an alien, perhaps an evil presence.

* I am you! Your inner dragon is I .*

Is I? Who taught this thing grammar? Can that be correct? Rhetorical question , I hurriedly add. Why am I not horrified? What the hells is an inner dragon?

* I’ve always been here. I think. You just never saw me .*

“Rorsyd!” Wyntre is looking miffed and has slowed, waiting for me to catch up.

I hurry forward, pulling to get Snake-eyes moving again. He’s joyously yanking at the long grass and crunching it up. He rolls those eyes but obeys.

Later, I will talk. If you are me, you know she is important. She is ours to guard even if we suck.

In some ways, it is a relief to be able to share my…our failings. I have an inner dragon? I believe this. Now that I have had my eyes opened to this inner self, how can I not believe?

The faintest whisper of that inner dragon’s thoughts waft in and dissipate. * She likes our sucking .*

What? The rudeness in that. I’ll call you ID from now on. The D is for ? —

* Dragon?*

For dick. You are my Inner Dick. I think that, smugly, then shut down the conversation.

“Wyntre, why?” I gesture at this ornate crumbling archway. It’s what we saw from the main road. A fence of wrought iron has fallen into disorder to either side, and great sections of the head-high fence are bent over, twisted, or toppled. Beyond fence and archway is a landscape that must have been cleared long ago. The trees are younger, and their roots have dislodged stones from the earth and partly covered a small building further in.

“This is a graveyard?” The knowledge arrives like a gong being struck. “Oh.” I stare at her.

She shrugs, then knots Blossom’s reins to the fence. “There must’ve been a town somewhere here. You’re thinking this is to do with necromancy?”

“Yes.” Of course.

Hands on hips, she nods, making her shorter hair curl about her neck. That’s cheating, that pose. It lifts her breasts, accentuates all her delicious curves, and I pause to drink in the sight. It makes my heart sing. I am ready to agree with her, and I’m sure this will be bad.

“Continue,” I prompt.

“I haven’t yet explained the gheist gun but you know it uses getharum, which is also known as gheist, and therefore…” She inhales, exhales, frowning. “I’m hoping I can recharge the crystal from what is in here. If I can do that, maybe we can recharge the crystals for the disguises. The magik is so close to the same form—getharum and etharum.” I must look puzzled, and I am, because she adds, “I can feel a ghost, here, maybe even two. Gheist is the essence of a ghost.”

A chilling fact. I should, perhaps, have guessed that.

I step past her to study the graveyard, rest my hand on the hilt of my sword. Nothing moves apart from the sparrows and a few grasshoppers. What did I expect? I can’t see ghosts.

“Is this dangerous? Do you know enough?”

“I think so? I’ve been in a graveyard recently, with Landos, when he bought an ampoule of gheist to recharge the pistol.”

“That’s not a lot of know-how. You should really study this first.”

“Uh-huh. And I get to do that how? We need this now. Saphora…” She waves vaguely westward. “She’s across the Fathomless Sea.”

This is painfully true. I don’t want to watch her die or be disfigured…eaten by a ghost.

* Same here .*

I grunt, nod to Wyntre. “If you think you know enough, because I can see part of this is simply your innate magik, then do it. I’ll jump on any ghosts that try to hurt you.” I smile weakly.

“You do that.” She comes over, goes up on tiptoes, and drags my head down for a brief kiss. “There. That’ll make it better.”

I’m chuckling at that but also sad, because… Because we have so much here, so much potential love, and I’m not worthy. I need my magik to return. It came back after that battle. Or before it? Can I count that shifting explosion that killed the enforcers? I don’t know. I’m in the dark and useless unless I can fix this.

Wyntre removes her rucksack from Blossom and rummages, pulls out the box that contains the gun.

“First, I want to show the gun to you. Properly. Let’s sit. I’ll get a blanket.”

This I can do. I retrieve my bedroll that is strapped to Snake-eyes, and spread it on the barest patch of springy grass, squash it as flat as possible.

Wyntre kneels and unpacks this gheist gun and the ampoule from the raven. I sit cross-legged opposite, admiring her as much as I do this new weapon. Though we’re still disguised, as usual I can see through hers. Her cute, shorter hairstyle frames her face, and the blueness contrasts with her rose-red lips.

“I figure I should tell you a bit about where it comes from and so on. So we both understand this equally. This gun derives from Aos Sin magetech, and Landos got the diagrams and all from someone I don’t know. He worked on this for a year, making his own version. I was with him when he bought the gheist in an ampoule, and I have seen the gun pulled apart. So, here goes.”

She sucks on her lip then dismantles the gun into several parts that she names—barrel, butt, bullet chamber with some decorations on the side—a snake entwined with tiny pink flowers. Trigger, blueish warnite crystal. There’s even a spot to clip an ampoule onto.

“This still has some gheist charge”—she taps the crystal—“but I used some shooting the blood hawk.”

“Of course.” I’m mostly just nodding. Here I am listening to a necromancer girl describe the bits and pieces for a weapon that uses necromancy, and I am okay with it.

“This is no more evil than any weapon,” I muse, mostly convincing myself. A quiet unease remains. Bad things do look better in daylight.

“I never thought it was. This isn’t necromancy though.” She studies me. “I guess the gheist sort of is? Except Landos said some people have the knack or talent at collecting it. They are not necros though.”

“Okay.” I was wrong, but still, my thought stands. “How do you know you can collect this essence of ghost? Or even change it to etharum for our pendants?”

“I don’t.” Rapidly, she clicks, twists, slots the gun pieces back together. “And the bullets go here.” Wyntre unhinges a smaller chamber in that central part. “So you know what to do if you need to. And! The bullet comes out here, from the open end of the barrel. Please point it the right way.”

“Sure.” I grin. “I had decided that already.”

“Then.” She unfolds her knees and rises. “It’s time to try this. First, I will see if I can collect some gheist.”

Side by side, we enter the old graveyard. Is it scary or eerily quiet? No. The breeze swishes the grasses. Sparrows flit past. Our boots crush the gravel, the dirt, the dead leaves. The sun beats on my neck, and wavering leaf shadows dapple our path.

We wander beneath trees and past gravestones that are intact, but most are sunken into the ground, askew, or covered by leaves and mold.

I can’t see the full extent, but at least fifty graves must be located here. If you could create guns like Wyntre’s in large quantities and harvest ghosts for power, mages might be dispensed with in war? That quiet unease settles in like a toad on a lily pad.

“I’ve heard stories about malevolent ghosts. No?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know, but I had no real fear of the gheist. Or of the ghosts that might be nearby, last time. That day, what I was afraid of, and angry about, was the unknown in my past. That’s when Landos first told me I had necromancy in my blood. I hated the deception, the lying I saw in that.” She stops, opens her hands, palms upward. “I see no reason a necromancer should fear the dead, whether they decided to hang about as ghosts, or not.”

“Interesting. Keep going.” Strangely, maybe, I feel pride. I love how matter of fact she is about this. I hope she is right.

“Here. In there is the strongest feeling.”

A fig tree shadows the tomb, thick roots tangling and twining over one another, knotting, strangling, draping over some of the stonework, as if ready to ambush the unwary.

“Inside the tomb?” Though part of the right-side wall is damaged by the tree and the door hangs half-open, the steps leading down inside seem intact. “Damnation. It looks…ominous?”

Wyntre laughs. “Scaredy cat?”

“No. Enter. I’ll follow your badass ass down the steps.”

“ Ooh. Poetry there? Badass ass?” Still smirking, she skips down the steps to vanish into the tomb.

“Fuck.” My heart is galloping herds of horses about in my chest, from the feel of it. However, I’m a dragonshifter not a pussy. I follow her, cautiously, descending into the darkness.

Why did I not think to light a torch? I won’t need it to see, but fire is always good.

* Definitely a nice, fuckable, badass ass .*

“And the Inner Dick returns,” I mutter to myself.