Page 35

CHAPTER 35

AURIA

A fter a night of restless sleep, I met Bowen in the meadow clearing behind Deadwood. It had been too late in the day for him to take me as soon as I’d asked, so he’d promised this morning that he would follow through on my request to see the bison. To my surprise, he was waiting where he’d told me to meet him with his back against a tree, one leg kicked up with a foot resting on the bark as he bit into an apple.

“Sleep well?” Bowen asked, pushing off the tree as soon as I entered the grassy expanse surrounded on all sides by thick groups of trees.

“As well as I could,” I replied, suddenly thirsty for an entire bucket of water. The ale had dehydrated me, and I greatly regretted overindulging.

He crossed the field, holding the apple out to me. “Long night from the anticipation of seeing me again, or the alcohol?”

I ignored his offering as well as his snarky question. “Are we walking to the bison?” They had seemed far off in the distance on our way into Deadwood, so I doubted it’d be a short trip on foot.

He dropped his hand. “You know, there are far more interesting things to see in Deadwood than a herd of bison.”

I quirked a brow. “Oh, yeah? What did you have in mind?”

He shrugged, eyes scanning the trees behind me. He was about to open his mouth when my memory struck me. “Actually, now that you mention it, I do recall seeing some sort of building in the forest.”

His gaze shot to mine, and it seemed he was trying to cover his surprise at my acknowledgment of it. “When did you see that?”

A smile tugged at my lips for taking him off guard, but I stifled it. “The night I went to the cave.”

A gust of wind blew through the trees, rustling my hair, but neither of us took our gazes off each other.

“Best to stay away from there,” he finally said.

“The building or the cave?”

“Both.”

With the vulnerable look in his eyes, I assumed that, whatever the structure was, it meant something to him, so I decided to let it go. “I suppose we’ll have to settle on the bison, then.”

He tossed the apple in the air, his casual demeanor slipping back into place seamlessly, and caught the half eaten fruit again. “Might want something in your stomach for this, Princess.”

“How do you know I haven’t eaten breakfast already?”

He admired the fruit like it was the most interesting thing he’d seen all week. “I think you rushed here first thing, forgetting to even have a sip of water.”

My eyes narrowed on him. He had no right guessing correctly. I plucked the apple from his fingers. “Fine. I’ll eat as we walk.”

I took a step but immediately stopped in my tracks as a massive, midnight black dragon landed directly in front of us. The earth shook as it set massive, taloned feet on the ground, the ends digging up soil. My grip on the apple slipped, and it tumbled to the ground as I hurriedly stepped back, though it was a feeble attempt as the dragon could easily eat me whole if it wanted, no matter how far I was. It folded in its wings, the grass and leaves rustling in the breeze it created with the movement.

Bowen simply stared up at the beast like it was just another day for him. “That’s how we’re getting to the bison.”

My eyes widened, darting between Bowen and the dragon. As it shifted, the tips of its black scales sparkled a shimmering gold. “We’re riding it?”

“ Him ,” the dragon corrected, his voice like a landslide in an empty cave as it filled the space around us.

I gawked at the beast.

“This is Vulcan,” Bowen introduced, like he was some kind of close friend rather than a fucking dragon.

“He has a name ?”

Bowen fought to keep a smile at bay, clearly finding amusement in my reaction to the dragon, who stood taller than the trees, huffing in front of us.

I spun on Bowen. “How am I even supposed to get on that thing?” The pitch in my tone was high, doing little to hide my nerves.

The ground beneath me shook, causing me to stumble as I faced the dragon again. He’d come closer.

Vulcan’s nostrils flared, his pitch black eyes narrowing on me. “ Does the burned one have no manners ?”

My jaw nearly fell to the lush grass. The burned one ?

Bowen stepped forward, his shoulder slightly blocking me from Vulcan—as if that would do anything against the beast—with all traces of his smile now gone. “Vulcan, this is Auria.” He accentuated my name, putting emphasis on it.

The dragon’s tail swished through the grass, the movement anything but settling.

“That is what you will call her from now on,” Bowen warned. Was he really ordering a dragon around?

“As for your question,” Bowen said, turning to me, “I’ll help you up.”

“I’ll need at least a twenty-foot ladder to get on him.” There was no way I could manage this just by a helping hand. Bowen was tall, but not that tall. The dragon dwarfed us. To him, we were the ants littering the ground.

Vulcan seemed almost reluctant as he bent, lowering his wing to the grass. The gold flakes shimmered as he stretched the limb, but the beauty was nothing compared to the deadly look of his talons, dirty and sharp, along with his dripping fangs hiding behind a scaled mouth that surely held a few dozen more, primed and ready to swallow me whole.

I shook my head. “I take it back, I don’t want to see the bison. I would much rather hang out with Siara, or even Lux, or really do anything but this.”

Bowen stepped in front of me, doing his best to block my view of Vulcan but failing miserably. “He won’t hurt you.”

A disbelieving laugh escaped me. “He’s a thousand times your size.”

Bowen cocked a brow.

“I mean that he’s not going to listen to you!”

Behind him, Vulcan practically rolled his eyes—if dragons could even do that.

“He has no reason to eat you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Bowen said.

“Until he does,” I hissed out.

Bowen looked over his shoulder at the dragon, impatiently waiting with his wing still lowered to the grass. “Did you hunt this morning?”

“ Only innocent people ,” Vulcan replied, bored.

My mouth fell open again.

Bowen faced me, grabbing both my hands and giving a reassuring squeeze. “He’s only kidding.” Then, louder, “Right, Vulcan?”

“ I suppose ,” the beast purred. His voice, deep and full of gravel, grated over my body, sending chills prickling across my arms.

“If you truly don’t want to ride on him, I can saddle up some horses and we can be on our way. He’s the quickest means of getting there, but horseback is fine if that’s what you’d prefer.” It almost shocked me how willing he was to accommodate me if I didn’t wish to ride a fortress of a beast.

I stared at Vulcan’s shimmering wing, finding it almost hypnotizing. If Bowen said it was alright, I had no reason not to trust him with this, too. Right? Surely, he’d done this before, and so far, he’d proved that keeping me alive and unharmed was important to him. After all he’d done for me thus far, he wouldn’t put me on the back of a dragon who would drop me from the air like a flea on his back and be done with me.

Hopefully.

“No,” I said, shoving all the confidence I could muster into the word. “We can do this.”

“We?” Bowen repeated. “Princess, I’ve ridden him hundreds of times. It’s you who needs convincing.”

Refusing to lose the confidence I’d just meagerly gained, I stomped past Bowen, my boots flattening the grass as I approached Vulcan’s wing.

“Auria—” Bowen called out, but I didn’t stop.

I reached up, grabbing hold of the bony part at the tip of his wing. With a swivel of his head, he shot me an irritated glare, a rumble sounding in his throat as the bottoms of his very sharp, very horrifying teeth bared at me.

“Auria, it was a joke,” Bowen said after I hefted myself up, digging the toe of my boot into Vulcan’s scales with a white-knuckled grip on his wing.

“What?” Was he kidding me? Now I looked like an idiot. Riding a dragon?—

Bowen placed strong hands on my waist, lifting me off the wing and bringing me back to the ground. The warmth of his skin seeped through my loose, leather corset where it sat over my white blouse. Every nerve in my body focused in on his touch, but then, somewhat reluctantly and to my slight disappointment, he dropped his arms to his sides. “You climb up his leg, not his wing.”

I let out a frustrated huff of air, tossing my head back. “Gods, save me.”

“ Not even a god can save you from this, burned one ,” Vulcan muttered, lifting his wing in a high arc before stretching out his front leg before me and Bowen. The size alone made me have to swallow the nerves that crawled up my throat. He was massive—almost the same size as the snow dragon in the Brimstone Mountains.

“Vulcan,” Bowen reprimanded, glaring up at the beast.

Vulcan chuffed, a puff of warm vapor rising from his nostrils. “ You call her by a different name as well. ”

Bowen’s jaw clenched. “Not to degrade her.”

I snorted. “That’s not how I’ve taken it.”

His eyes held mine. “Maybe in the beginning, Auria, but not now.”

Like a trance, he pulled me in with words I so badly wanted to hear. Something was changing between us, and maybe it wasn’t anything big, but the subtle shift that had occurred between when we first met and now wasn’t lost on me. I only hated that whatever this was was temporary.

“ Her name does not suit her, ” Vulcan defended shamelessly, breaking our short stupor.

“Your attitude does not suit you,” I spit back, trying to find a place to grip onto his scales. Behind me, Bowen set his hands back on my waist, and I froze. They fit so perfectly—like they belonged in that tiny divot between my ribs and my hips.

“Careful, Princess. He can bite.” Bowen lifted me higher, helping me get my footing. Though Vulcan’s leg was outstretched, it still gave us a steep incline.

Vulcan stared out at the tops of the trees, waiting for us to get our act together. Well, I supposed just me. Bowen was apparently a pro. “ Yes, and I’m feeling a bit snappy. ” For emphasis, he made the closest resemblance a dragon could to a smile, bearing his yellow teeth dripping with saliva.

Bowen shook his head behind me as I breached the top of Vulcan’s shoulder, climbing onto his back. With his size, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be to stand and get my footing. Still, though, Bowen kept a hand at my waist, his touch light, to keep me from losing balance. I didn’t want to know how far of a drop it would be, even on the ground.

“Sit here,” Bowen instructed, gesturing to the center of Vulcan’s shoulders.

“We just…sit? There’s nothing to hold on to?” I asked.

Bowen must’ve seen the slight fear in my eyes because he stepped behind me, his chest brushing my back.

“You can hold on to me if you’d prefer,” he murmured in my ear, brushing his hands down my arms to grab my hands. He helped lower me to straddle the peak in Vulcan’s spine. Once I was seated, his hand slid down my outer thigh toward my knee, then back up to my hip. “You hold on here”—he trailed his hand back down to my calf where it was slightly angled toward him—“not here. He doesn’t like when you dig your heels in.”

In response, Vulcan blew a burst of steam through his nose. From this angle, I could barely see over the arch of his neck to the back of his head. But even from here, he was just as menacing.

“Ready?” Bowen asked, situating himself behind me in a similar position. His knees brushed the backs of my legs, his body flush with mine.

I gave a stern nod, despite the flutter of my heart. From fear or Bowen’s presence, I wasn’t sure. “Ready.”

His hands fell to my waist like an anchor, and my stomach dropped as Vulcan flared his wings, beating them against the wind. My eyes wanted to squeeze shut, every instinct in my body screaming to lie flat and hold on for dear life, but I held my position. Almost reassuringly, Bowen’s thumb brushed the skin peeking out from under my shirt. I wasn’t sure if the sensation was more thrilling than the ride itself, but I didn’t have time to think about it as Vulcan banked left, throwing my body to the side. Despite gravity trying to pull us down, Bowen kept me in place until Vulcan straightened out. The sound of his wings was like a steady heartbeat, and once we were off the ground, the flight became almost peaceful.

“You’re doing so good,” Bowen praised, and his words shot straight to my core, heating me from the inside.

To distract myself from our position in the sky and Bowen’s hands on me, I focused on the gold shimmers hidden in Vulcan’s black scales, the sun dancing over them almost like the blazing ball of fire was meant to do just that. The glimmering splotches stole the rays, soaking them in and spitting them out with ten times the vibrance, the beauty almost blinding me.

“They manipulate the light when he needs them to,” Bowen explained, his mouth close to my ear in order for me to hear him over the howl of the wind. “Comes in handy sometimes.”

“Manipulation?” I clarified.

I felt him shake his head, his chin coasting over my shoulder. “No. Working together with an unlikely ally.”

I assumed the sun could make a dragon a target for predators—if they even had any—so the trick of the light would definitely seem helpful to Vulcan in some circumstances.

Daring a glance over the side of Vulcan’s wide body, I looked down upon the tops of the trees, their size seeming almost insignificant from this high up. On one side, the mountains stood in the distance, looming over the land like they, too, knew their beauty and held it proudly. In the opposite direction, the terrain held the desert, bordering the other side of Deadwood. Ahead, the forest ended, opening to a large expanse of green grass. The fields stretched forever, butting up to what seemed to be a river in the distance.

Little brown specks popped up among the sea of green as we flew closer, revealing themselves to be a herd of bison. I sucked in a breath, the confirmation that they were truly alive and indeed not extinct almost threatening to take the air from my lungs. I remembered eating bison as a delicacy growing up, the memory as vivid as when my father told us they had been killed off, never to be seen or hunted again.

Minutes later, Vulcan landed in the field, far enough away from the herd that I had to squint my eyes to make them out. Vulcan dropped his shoulder so Bowen could help me down his scaled leg. All the while, my heart raced with anticipation. For the most part, it wasn’t seeing them that amazed me, but more so the confirmation that my father had lied. It made me wonder how many other things he had twisted for his own benefit—and why.

Vulcan made himself comfortable, finding a spot to lie in the shade, as Bowen walked through the tickling grass beside me. The breeze blew the blades as clouds cast shadows over the ground all around us.

“Your father made the announcement of their extinction almost two decades ago,” Bowen said.

I glanced at him. “How did you know that?”

With his gaze focused on the herd ahead, he said, “It was when he cut off all trade with Deadwood.”

My brows furrowed. “Why would he do that?” The town was full of criminals, but if they provided a staple, surely my father would’ve negotiated a deal good enough for the both of them.

“How well do you think you truly know your father?”

“Enough to know he’s greedy,” I replied.

Bowen dipped his chin, the grass rustling around his boots. “That’s a start.” He hesitated, thinking on his next words. “He doesn’t think he needs to rely on any other kingdoms to remain flourishing.” He glanced sidelong at me. “And I assume that’s because of you.”

“I hardly think I have much to do with it.” I couldn’t produce food or other goods with my power, only duplicate magic that was already in front of me.

Bowen stopped, a finger ghosting my wrist to cause me to face him. “Don’t underestimate your value, Auria. Before I saw you, truly saw you, I did the same. Which was foolish of me, might I add. But you are much more magnificent than you’ve been led to believe.” He stepped forward, a lock of hair blowing over his brow. “That man and those walls are not your end, Princess.”

I swallowed, slightly taken aback by his affirmation of my magic. Still, it felt odd to hear someone speak about it so…openly. But not only that, his confession. His demeanor toward me had changed since my group arrived in Deadwood, and he noticed it, too.

“Your father thinks that with you, he can create all that he needs,” he continued.

“But wealth is not the only thing keeping Amosite alive,” I explained. “They need to eat, to drink, have shelter and clothes.”

He cocked his head slightly, studying me. “When you went into Silicate, did you get that impression? That the people were taken care of?”

The conditions of the citizens had been clear, and Bowen’s point was proven. I shook my head in response.

“Your father’s greed is killing your kingdom. Other kingdoms, innocent people—they’re all suffering at his hands. He doesn’t like Deadwood? He cuts us off. My people have suffered just as much.”

My head tilted at his phrasing. “Your people?”

He sighed, looking up to the sky like it might give him the restraint he needed.

“Bowen. What are you saying?”

His forehead creased as his eyes met mine again. Already, I could tell he was choosing what to tell me, picking each word carefully. Normally, I’d feel upset over that. But if this topic was sensitive to him, a subject he didn’t take lightly, I wouldn’t take it to heart. Not all things were meant to be known.

“Deadwood is a ruined kingdom.”