Page 14 of Of Flames and Fallacies (Arterian #1)

fourteen

A BLUE FIRE

Cole brings dinner and several sets of new clothes later in the day. I can’t help but snicker as he turns away while I change. As if he had never seen me naked before. Such a chivalrous act, for someone I know has a feral drive whenever he lets go of his impossibly tight reins.

He must be taking this ‘being careful’ thing seriously, if he can’t bother even a glance.

Perhaps he knows deep down, like me, he doesn’t have as much self-discipline as he’d like to have. That a simple look would be enough to tear down every boundary he’s trying to set. I suppose it only makes me respect him even more.

Cole isn’t able to stay long. He leaves shortly after, commenting that he’s going to try and convince Marge to give me a few days to ‘settle in’ before apprenticing with her.

His tone hints he’s not too confident.

Half the dinner Cole brought — chicken — went to Daeja.

Every piece I tossed her she swallowed nearly whole. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her eyes so dilated.

With the dwindling daylight and Daeja curled into the corner of my arm and chest, I open my father’s journal.

It’s been about a month since I’ve been here. The military general, Jurrock, appeared for a meeting with the King today. They whispered behind closed doors while a group of us were there to guard the windows. We stood at each arched window encircling the meeting room, staring out to ensure no stray arrows came through the glass. I had never seen, nor heard of an arrow piercing glass and striking someone behind it before. But I didn’t question it. I did as I was told.

We were ordered to not take our eyes off, or shift away from, the window frame. I strained to listen to the King and Jurrock’s conversation. I could only catch words here and there, with dragons and rebels grabbing my attention. It took everything in me to not turn and try to read their lips.

Their conversation paused with the sound of footsteps.

Out of my periphery, I saw the King move toward a guard near the door. Both of the King’s hands cradled a round crimson object. Light reflected off the object in a brilliant sheen. Ever so slowly, I turned my chin toward their direction for a better look.

It looked like…a dragon egg.

The King demanded the guard take the egg to the ‘lock.’

I straightened my view back to the window before the King turned, and we were all ordered out.

What was the King doing with a dragon egg?

A few nights have passed since the King ordered the dragon egg to be stored in the ‘lock.’ I’ve been itching to find out where the lock was and who had access to it. The first step was to find who the guard was. But the information I gathered with only a second long side-glance wasn’t enough to determine who it was. He had short brown hair. That’s all I knew.

And it didn’t narrow it down much. Most of the men here had short brown hair. I examined each guard’s profile as I passed them in the halls or as we ate. Hoping to think, “Ahh! That was his nose!” or “That was his ear!” But there was nothing. No indication or pull of who it might have been.

But tonight at dinner, the lot of us sat and discussed the incoming shift changes. With the sun setting sooner, and the nights growing longer, we had to transition our stations and hours. One man looked at my lead and asked about the candidates to replace him in the lock. He was taking leave to spend some time with his terminally ill wife.

Many who overheard the conversation watched in confusion. I realized only the handful of us guards who were in the room that day would have ever heard of the ‘lock.’ My lead shook his head silently in warning and shifted the subject.

Got him.

This morning I strained to listen to the two guards whispering next to me at breakfast.

“The King was shouting last night,” one said.

“Okay? So? The King shouts all the time.”

“Yes, but he wasn’t shouting at anything. Anyone. I was stationed outside his door all night. And unless someone scaled the walls to the top without being caught, he was alone.”

A thoughtful silence settled after the word ‘alone.’

“I…even opened the door and peeked at him. His back was to me, but he was in a full blown conversation. There was no one else there.”

I knew the King killed his sister to rule. That in itself took a certain level of insanity. But to be talking to himself?

“Did he see you?”

“Of course not! I didn’t take more than a few seconds. I wouldn’t still be here if he had—”

“Gentleman.” Our lead came up behind us and clasped me and the guard beside me on the shoulders. I tried not to choke on the food in my mouth.

Our lead called an urgent meeting, and we all gathered in the training room.

Once everyone was settled, he called two names forward. I watched in surprise as the two broke from the group. The two who had sat next to me whispering.

Our lead ordered them to kneel—a custom standard for promotional ceremonies. Excitement danced on their faces. It was the last thing we saw before their faces twisted in anguish as they were decapitated.

My hand flies to my throat, my pulse skittering under my skin. I slap the journal shut, and Daeja’s head jolts up from where it was tucked into my side.

“Sorry, girl,” I whisper and stroke a thumb over her head.

She wiggles herself back into my ribs, and I slide the journal under my pillow.

That wasn’t something I wanted to end on, but the light in my room starts to dim as the last light of the day fades. I stare up at the ceiling until sleep eventually pulls me under.

Something wet grazes my cheek. I use a hand to swipe it off and turn to my opposite side. A sniff pulses in my ears, and another wet flick tickles my face. Except this time, it doesn’t let up.

My eyes flash open, and I shrink away from the sensation.

Daeja’s wide eyes twinkle in the starlight. Staring directly at me.

“What? What is it, girl?” I grumble.

She whines, nudging her nose under my hand. I pat her, and she grabs a mouthful of my sleeve and pulls.

“What are you doing?” I whisper.

She tugs until I sit up, before she pounces off the bed and scurries over to the door. Dragging her front claws down the wood, the grating sound shoots me to my feet.

As I dart over to her, she scratches more insistently. Frantically.

I grab her, pulling her into my arms and placing an ear against the door. Did she hear something I couldn’t?

But it’s quiet.

I flick a look down at her. Cautiously, I open the door a few inches to peer out. An orange glow of a fire pulses from the center of camp, blocked by shadowy silhouettes of soldiers gathered around it.

Daeja moves fast. Too fast for me to stop her. She jumps from my arms and slips out the door. Her body flickers, as if testing her newly acquired disappearing skill.

Cursing, I sprint after her. She skirts left, away from the center of camp and around the backside of the storage tent facing the forest beyond. The farther away we get from the glow of the fire, the harder it is to track her in the night.

As we reach the outpost’s crumbling stone wall, I jet a glance over my shoulder toward camp. No one follows us.

Daeja disappears into the shadowy forest beyond.

Once I’m in the thick of the trees, I call her, “Daeja?”

I tip-toe around shadows stretching across the forest floor. Scanning every lifted tree root or pile of leaves.

“Daeja,” I whisper again, hoping she will reveal herself.

My breath is stuck in my lungs as I scan the stillness of the trees. My eyes search the shadows, my heart sinking with every passing second. I reach a break in the tree line giving way to a glittering lake. Off in the distance, a soft glowing moon hovers above Dragon’s Back Ridge. As I cup my hands to call for her again, the shadow of a large fallen tree shifts. White ghostly eyes blink at me, and my breath loosens.

I close the distance between us, scooping Daeja into my arms. “What has gotten into you?”

I draw her face to face with me. Her hot breath billows against my nose. Setting her down on the ground, I watch as her attention jets over her shoulder, and she stills. She swings and launches at her own twitching tail, spinning circles, and grappling with outstretched claws. She eventually ends up on the ground.

A smile lifts my lips at the innocence of it. I can’t place why she might have slipped out until the scent of the forest lingers over me: sap, earth, and cedar. Flooding me with memories of home. I didn’t realize how much it reminds me of my father, my brother, and my mother.

How much I miss them.

What if keeping her at the camp is a mistake?

Perhaps she was safest out here. In theory, she should be able to take care of herself, given the fact she’s a dragon: a flying, fire-breathing—

Wait—flying. If she could fly, she could at least get away if she were in trouble. If something kept me from being able to return her to the Dragon Lands myself, she could go on her own, at least.

Daeja jumps back up to her feet, her tail clutched between her teeth as I crouch down near her. I take a fingertip and start at the bridge of her nose and slowly drag it up between her eyes, over her head and down her neck between her shoulder blades. I stop at the joints of her wings and recall my father’s journal entry about hatchlings. Gently hooking a finger under her wing, I lift. Her wings flare to life. The newfound weight makes her topple over, and I catch her before she falls. Once I steady her, I stand.

“Ok, now fly!” I call out and point to the sky.

She tilts her head with a blink but doesn’t move. I raise both of my arms above my head and flap them. The muscles above her eyes raise in question. I jump into the air as I flap, and I’m sure if anyone else saw, they’d think I’ve lost my damn mind.

“You can do it! Just like this!” I pause to see if she’s catching on.

She jerks her chin up repeatedly, like a series of small nods, and pauses. Watching me.

I gesture again with a flap of my arms and jump.

She lifts her chin again.

Oh…she’s encouraging me.

I chuckle. “No, no. Not me. You . I don’t have wings.” I reach forward, delicately grabbing her wings and flapping them.

She looks at her wings and wiggles them slightly. Her eyes round in amazement and realization that these things are attached to her.

“Now flap them, and fly!” I hint at the motion again.

She grits her teeth at her first attempt. But she isn’t able to lift off the ground. She just slowly falls to the side. We try again and again, until I realize she might need a running start. My gaze travels over to the lake, my heart pounding in my ears.

It makes the most sense.

If she crashes, it’ll be into the water.

But what if she can’t swim? What if she drowns?

My thoughts spiral. Down and down. And now I’m stuck at the bottom, clawing my way back up as emotions swarm me.

I miss him.

I miss my brother.

Had I only listened to him when he told me to stop playing near the river, he might still be here today. I might not have accidentally knocked him into the current rushing with Dragon’s Back Ridge’s snow melt. I should have been strong enough to pull him out. I should have been able to save him. But I couldn’t.

And I didn’t.

I bite my tongue at the surge of sadness and guilt. The fact that I couldn’t save him or my mother.

What makes me think this will be any different—

Daeja touches my hand.

The warmth of her breath blows against my sweaty palm. I drag my gaze away from the water and toward her glowing white eyes, sparkling in the moonlight. I scratch underneath her chin, and she melts into a purr. A smile cracks at my lips.

Daeja stills for a few moments. Her eyes focused on the lake ahead. She dips her head and charges for the water. Flapping as she goes.

“Daeja!” I bolt after her.

As her feet graze the sandy shore, she lifts into the air, flapping against the wind and soaring over the water.

The icy cold water sloshes against my shins as I race after her, my voice tight as I whisper, “I don’t know if you know how to swim…”

She dips and swerves, and she struggles to maintain a leveled glide. Her dark shadow grows smaller and smaller as she approaches the opposite side of the lake and toward the black silhouette of trees outlined against the night sky.

Turn, turn, turn!

My feet catch fire, and I run for the other side of the lake. I don’t know if she knows how to stop or turn. My panic rises as I realize I don’t see her anymore. My lungs scream with each stride, my heart hammering in my ears. By the time I finally reach the other side, my cold, wet legs threaten to buckle underneath me.

Daeja’s dark shadow is slumped against a tree. I run faster. Closing the distance between us, I fall to my knees beside her.

“Are you okay?” I pant as I try to assess her.

She stands, wriggling and shaking her body, as if she were drenched with embarrassment. I pull her into me, my arms trembling around the warmth of her scales.

“You...did...it!” I say between breaths, pride welling in me as I scratch her cheek. She melts into my touch, as she always does.

Her relaxed expression melts away, her gaze locking in on a spot in the woods.

Something flickers in my periphery. I turn toward it, pressing a hand to her side as I follow her stare. In the darkness, the distant trees pulse a soft glow. Not with the warmth of a fire of orange and red and light. But a cool, icy blue flame floats up from the ground and fades into the shadows like fog.

What is…that?

Daeja bristles, the spikes on her neck and head fanning out. My fear melts to curiosity—it doesn’t dance like fire. It lacks the crackles and spits a flame would produce. Completely entranced by the beauty of its color, I move toward it. Daeja follows me and touches her muzzle to my leg. I pause mid-step and meet her round eyes. In the stillness of the moment, a distant hum buzzes beneath my feet.

As Daeja and I draw closer to the light, the hair on my neck stands. I’m oddly aware of how the blood in my veins sing, and the sweat rivers down my back. Close enough now to notice the lack of warmth a normal fire would create from this distance. Mesmerized, I watch how the flames flare and dance.

Is this the same blue flame Willard had mentioned all those months ago? That could have been the cure to my mother’s insanity?

If it is the rumored flame, I’m not sure what it could offer me now.

But it still calls to me the same, beckoning me forward with invisible fingers as if I were in a trance.

Daeja and I are a few steps from the edge of its blue fire as my hair lifts and floats up toward the sky. The air tightens around us with a hidden electricity. A jagged glowing crack in the earth sways and whips sporadically, the blue and white flame ebbing and flowing from it. Daeja stiffens beside me as we stand there, staring for a few moments.

She walks to the edge of the cracked earth to sniff it before I can stop her. The wicked flames flare in the same moment, brushing her nose, and she staggers back wildly.

“Daeja!” I hiss in surprise and reach for her.

Daeja’s pupils blow wide, the blue reflection of the fire bursting in her irises. Her mouth parts as she crumples to the ground.

I dart forward with a cry, folding to my knees to pick her up. As I brace my hands under her cold body, something shifts. A distant thunder rumbles beneath me, and Daeja rises. I fall back onto the heels of my hands as she grows and grows. Her dark shadow casts over me, drowning me in darkness. Where she had been the size of a kitten before, she now towers above me as high as any steed would.

Like a dark horse with wings.

My mouth drops open. “By the gods...”

But there’s no mistaking her round white eyes, nearly opalescent in the soft blue light around us. The wideness of her stare matches my own.

“Why do you look so much smaller?” a voice as slippery as oil and raspy fills my ears.

I scan the forest for anyone else around us, my hand fumbling for a blade I didn’t sheathe before we slipped out of the outpost.

“No one else is here,” the voice echoes again. Except I realize it’s not in my ears. It’s in my mind.

I whip toward Daeja. Stretching out an open hand toward her as if to halt any sudden movements. “ You…you can hear me?”

“Yes.”

My right hand tremors as Daeja leans forward and presses her muzzle into my palm. The part of my palm that used to cover her entire head now only covers the front of her nose. My fingers…

My... fingers.

The light hint of a band that appeared around my middle finger all those months ago when I learned her name has darkened several shades. The ring is now darker than my skin tone.

Daeja breaks our contact, her gaze darting to the illuminated blue river beside us snaking away. The glowing blue mist thins and fades back into the ground until we are left in the dark.

“And…I can…hear you?”

“Also, yes.”

The two of us sit in silence at a loss for words. The moon peaks above the tree line, the light scattering across the forest floor and illuminating the bushes and trees around us.

I rise to my feet and circle her, carefully assessing her transformation as I claw for every memory of my father’s journal entries. But every attempt comes up empty handed.

I can’t recall a blue flame, nor explosive growth spurt. Perhaps I need to consider reading through the rest of the journal a bit faster.

The light casts a silver sheen on Daeja’s back, and she folds her expansive wings into her body. She wiggles, sniffing and inspecting her broad shoulders, whip-long tail, and deathly long talons. A dozen more jagged black horns spike the crown of her head and the nape of her neck.

As I circle around her, I dare a gliding touch against her cool, rugged scales. The rise and fall of her beneath my fingertips is as similar to my own breath.

As I come back face to face with her, I gently tug her upper lip up to reveal rows of serrated fangs. I flick up a look to meet her gaze. Where part of me expected to be fearful, I find myself...sorrowful, in a way.

Stepping back from her, I size up how tall she is, calculating if she’ll even be able to fit through the door at camp. My face falls as I struggle to find any solution.

The small hatchling I once had was gone.

“Well, I guess you won’t be able to fit on my shoulders anymore.”

“Why not?”

I chuckle at the simplicity of her question. It’s so at odds with how ancient and smooth her voice sounds now.

She tilts her head to the side, sparking an ember of joy in my chest at the memory of her doing it so often as a hatchling.

Rubbing my hand against the ridge of her nose, she bumps her muzzle enthusiastically into my hand.

“Do you feel any different? I don’t understand what happened.”

“No, not really. Last I remember, I reached down to sniff the light. My body felt cold and like it was on fire all at once. Everything was white. I couldn’t see anything. And then when I finally opened my eyes, I saw you.”

“I wonder where it went…” My attention floats over to where the blue fire was moments ago. I stare. As if I might look away for a moment and it’ll be there taunting me, like a ghost in the night.

I thought it could have been a delusion, as I had never heard of it before. But perhaps the magical blue flame Willard spoke of all along was real.

It makes me wonder what else he knew.

It’s hard leaving Daeja out in the forest. But no matter how hard I try to come up with an alternative, there’s no way I can sneak her back in and keep her at the camp. Not with how large she is. And definitely not with how clumsy she is. She nearly sweeps my legs out from under me with her tail as she spins around to itch a spot on her hindquarters.

We find her a secluded cave near the southern part of the lake. As I leave, my skin prickles with each step I take back to camp. I can’t help but glance over my shoulder every few yards to check on her.

“I’m still here,” she calls. “I’ll wait for you.”

“I’ll come back.” I promise with tears lining my eyes.

I push through each wave of fear and guilt crashing over me until I finally slip into Cole’s room and update him on Daeja’s growth spurt.

Despite his promise to draw the patrol’s perimeter away from the southern half of the lake, I can’t shake the feeling of unease. Perhaps it’s because Cole says he still needs a few days to figure out a plan. And the plan in the meantime is for me to fake being his sister to stay nearby. And to fake being an apprentice.

Apparently, Marge is a hard woman to negotiate with.

Reluctantly, I return to my room. The overwhelming sense of loneliness nearly chokes the breath from my chest. The ring encircling my finger throbs almost painfully.

“I’m still here,” her voice floats over to me.

For the rest of the night, every time the next wave of loneliness and uneasiness lurches over me, her voice caresses my mind.

“I’m still here.”

“I’ll come back.” I promise.