Page 4 of Heart of Chaos (Chaosborn #1)
Chapter four
Eisa
When consciousness returned, it was to a cool cloth on my forehead, a familiar straw mattress beneath me, and Sigrid singing a ridiculous nursery rhyme about sheep.
“Ah, she wakes,” Sigrid said, just as the black sheep was about to go down the lane. “How do you feel, my Eisa?”
“Like I’ve been trampled by a horse,” I replied truthfully, groaning as I tightened my eyes shut. “I’m not a child, Mormor. You don’t have to sing about sheep.”
“Such an ungrateful thing,” Sigrid chuckled, wiping my brow. “How I’ll miss you.”
“Miss me?” I tried to sit up and immediately fought the urge to vomit. Our tiny room—more of a converted pantry than anything else—was barely large enough for two straw pallets and a tiny set of drawers. Sigrid’s unfamiliar words felt wrong in the room I’d called home for the majority of my life. “I’m not going anywhere. I told them no.”
“Calm yourself,” Sigrid crooned, pushing me back down and placing the cool cloth back on my forehead. “Your lip is still bleeding, and talking will make it worse.” She pulled one of her numerous handkerchiefs from her shawl and dabbed it to my lip.
“I’m not going,” I insisted as she tended to me, keeping my eyes shut tight and willing the drage to just leave. To let everything be a horrible dream. For the damned bleeding to stop already.
Life here wasn’t good, but I had Sigrid to think about. And Anders. Leaving them to face Henrik’s wrath alone was not an option.
“Why not?” Sigrid asked with such genuine curiosity that I opened my eyes to stare in disbelief. “Why would you not take this chance at freedom?”
“It’s a death sentence,” I said. “Everyone knows that.”
“Do we?” Sigrid argued. “The drage who came here appeared healthy, did they not? Strong? Alive?”
I laughed, staring at the old woman. “I’m not like those two. I’m not strong.”
“But you could be.” Sigrid put down the handkerchief and clasped my face in her bony hands. “I have watched you wither here for too long, my Eisa. Every day, you die a little more. This is a chance for you to live. To become powerful. To be free of your contract. Free of us.”
“It’s not freedom if I have no choice in the matter,” I argued. “It would be trading one master for another. And you and Anders are not a burden to me, Mormor.”
“There is always a choice,” Sigrid said, closing her eyes and tipping her forehead to mine as she did when I was a child. “You could choose life , Eisa. When I saw them, I knew . I always knew there was something special in those pale eyes of yours. This is your chance to be free .”
“I can’t leave you here,” I argued as panic and hope and terror warred within me. “You and Anders—you’re my family.”
“And you will always be ours, my Eisa. Even when you leave.” She sat up, pressing a clean handkerchief to my still-bleeding lip. “It’s time, Eisa. I will not watch you die here.”
“Mormor—”
A throat cleared at the curtained entry of our room, and Sigrid patted my cheek as she pushed herself to her feet with her cane. “Remember what I said, my Eisa.”
Arik was standing at the door, his arms crossed as he surveyed the space and me.
Sigrid brushed past him, stopping to give him a narrow-eyed glare. “She is my family,” Sigrid said haughtily. “If you take her from me tonight, it must be for something better than this.”
I paled at the old lady’s nerve in speaking to a drage of all people like this. It was like demanding favors from the king himself.
But Arik maintained that cool expression he’d worn all evening, simply nodding to Sigrid in acquiescence. “I swear it.”
She humphed, apparently satisfied by this response, and cast me a wink over her shoulder as she left the room.
I quickly stood, wavering a little as a wave of dizziness forced me to lean heavily on the little dressing table. “I haven’t agreed to go with you.”
Arik turned his attention to me, silver eyes boring a hole straight into my heart. He looked almost pleased that I was arguing with him. “No,” he agreed. “You have not. Your lip is still bleeding.”
He moved as if he might try to touch it again, and I flinched away. “I’m fine.”
“And the bruises?” he asked, giving my arms a pointed look.
I tried to pull down my sleeves to cover the purple marks that blemished my skin. “Just clumsy.”
Arik made a sound that was almost a laugh. “That and your brute of an employer.”
“He doesn’t employ me,” I corrected icily. “He owns me.”
“Not anymore,” Arik said, producing a roll of parchment from his leather vest. He handed me the papers, careful not to come any closer to me as if worried I might skitter away.
“What’s this?”
“Open it,” he growled.
I unrolled the top of the paper and read, “Contract of Indenture.”
“It’s yours,” Arik said, folding his arms again. “Keep it, burn it, frame it. I don’t care.”
“I….” I wasn’t sure what to say as I unrolled the paper and traced the signature that twelve-year-old me had scrawled across the paper, a fat tear smudging the final letters of my name. “So who owns me now?”
Arik stalked closer, taking two long strides into the room until we were practically sharing breath over the papers. I could see every freckle and scar that marred his almost perfect face. He had rugged features: a strong jaw under the beard, a straight nose, and those piercing gray eyes. The tattoos across his scalp matched the ones across his knuckles, and I wondered where else that ink kissed his skin.
He reached out, catching a drop of blood as it dripped down my chin, and every nerve in my body seemed to reach for that tiny point of contact.
Gods spare me, he was the first handsome man to touch me, and it was to wipe blood from my chin. Typical.
“You have a choice,” Arik said, his voice all gravel and severity. “You can run and take your chances. Hope the crown doesn’t find you when I tell my Dragehersker that the indenture he paid for fled.”
“I don’t know that word,” I said, shaking my head. “Drage—”
“He’s my commander,” Arik cut in, waving away my question. “And when I tell him that you ran, he will send me right back out here to hunt you down and drag you to Ironholm.”
I shivered. “You said I had a choice.”
“Or,” Arik said slowly, taking a step forward that closed the remaining distance between us, “you can choose to come with us now. Become drage. Bond a dragon.”
“Serve a new master,” I countered.
“You will never be free of masters, Eisa,” Arik replied, his eyes holding mine. “Someone is always holding the reins. The key is in knowing which masters are worth shackling yourself to.”
“People die on Ironholm.”
“People die everywhere,” Arik replied. “Children are dying from starvation now. More will die if the odemarksdyr cross the sea and ravage the kingdom.”
I shivered. The monsters that roamed the southern wastes were not just stories told to scare children into staying near their homes. And this man expected me to go and fight them.
“And if I run?”
Arik pursed his lips. “Do you know how many Chaosborn we found on this Dragejakt?” When I replied with a blank stare, he clarified. “How many candidates to become one of us we found on this search? Twelve, Eisa. Twelve humans in all of Stalheim capable of bonding a dragon.”
I swallowed, uncertain what to say. How was I one of only twelve? Me ?
“If you run, the Dragehersker will send all of us to retrieve you. I can promise you then that you will have a new master. One who will chain you to Ironholm and never let you leave.”
“Either way I end up on Ironholm.” I felt suddenly too hot in the close space. He must be burning up, because the heat that rolled off him was volcanic. “That’s not a choice.”
Arik clenched his jaw, a muscle popping. “It’s better than dying here.”
“I…” I swallowed, my heart skipping a beat.
I could free you and Sigrid. We could all be free, Eisa.
Anders’ words hit me like a blow. If I left, Henrik would take out his anger on my family. Unless…
“I’ll go with you,” I said, choosing my words carefully in case I offended the drage. “If you purchase the contracts of my friends as well.”
Arik stilled, his silver gaze holding mine across the tiny room.
“Anything else?”
“They need a place to stay,” I said, praying I wasn’t pushing my luck too far. “Jobs. Far away from Henrik so he can’t go after them.”
Arik raised a brow, waiting.
“And we leave tonight,” I added, adrenaline pumping into me. Was this really happening? “Now. We all leave right now.”
Arik nodded, holding my contract over the tiny candle that lit our room and letting the paper catch fire. It burned and blackened, fluttering to the ground in ashen flakes where the drage smothered the embers with the heel of his boot.
I looked up to meet his gaze, silver triumph shining behind slitted pupils as he said in a voice that was both his and not, “Done.”