Page 31

Chapter 30

M adan sprinted from the treeline at the same moment Brutis landed beside Razer. Gray wings remained spread and ready to take flight again as he hauled himself up onto the dragon’s back.

“ Whelan !”

As though summoned by his silent scream into their shared mental void, Whelan stumbled out of the forest. His feet faltered at the sight of Kall on the ground and Azriel half-throwing, half-wrestling Ariadne onto Razer’s back. Turning his red eyes up to Madan, he waved for them to go, then continued on to where Oria soared in.

With a great surge, they shot into the sky. Madan clung to the spike before him, blood dripping from his amputated arm. He’d used it too many times to block incoming swings. If it hadn’t been removed already, he was certain he’d have lost it in this fight.

Looking over his shoulder, his heart squeezed at the sight of Razer scooping Kall’s body into a foreclaw before launching after them, Oria just behind. “ Where’s Bindhe ?”

At first, none of the dragons responded. The three were so focused on finding a place to hide them safely that not one stopped scouting to reply. Or, maybe…they couldn’t find it in their hearts to share it just yet.

Their silence weighed on Madan. No one opened to him, and while he hated it, he understood their reservation. He wouldn’t want to open his mind to them, either. Not with the hollow, echoing agony that gripped him like a vice, strangling every thought from his mind.

Five centuries. After five centuries of fighting and death, Madan thought himself immune to it, with the only exceptions being his partner and family. But after spending most of that time training and fighting side by side with Kall, the dhemon had become a brother to him. One of the closest in his small circle, with Bindhe carving a similar place over the last hundred years.

Now, within the span of a few heartbeats, they were both gone as though they had never been.

Such an abrupt end to their lives left him reeling. They’d gotten through worse before. Raids that took a horrible swing when it turned out to be a trap, and they had to double their efforts. Outnumbered battles against an army of vampires. Even when Kall lost his sight thanks to his brother, they thought he might die from blood loss.

How could this have been what pulled them apart so violently? An ambush.

They flew on in silence, streaking east across the sky until Oria found a rocky perch at the top of sheer cliffs with a large enough overhang to provide them all with cover from the elements. More importantly, it hid them from Ehrun’s cronies, who were no doubt on the hunt.

Madan tossed the two packs onto the broken slate below before sliding down Brutis’s side. For a long moment, he stood there staring at the gray scales, mind blank. The mere thought of turning around and facing his half-siblings and partner churned his stomach. There should’ve been one more. One more who barked orders at them as he ensured they were fed and rested for the next leg of their journey.

When he gained the courage to look, he found three faces with the same expression—the same expression, he assumed, as he also wore. Distant gazes. Voids. Cheeks streaked with rain and tears. Even the dragons looked at one another with empty eyes. They couldn’t cry, but their pain was no less evident.

Then, as though of one mind, everyone turned in unison to the body Razer had set so carefully on the stone. Blood covered the front of Kall’s shirt. Streaks of it, thinned by the rain, spread across his face from the wind. His eyes—one red and one foggy—remained open, staring unseeing at a point in space their living minds could not comprehend.

“How did it happen?” The question left Madan unbidden. It wasn’t often he didn’t think before speaking, but the act of thinking at all only brought misery.

It was Azriel who replied, his voice low. “Ehrun had Ariadne.”

Turning his attention to his sister clutching her arm to her chest, Madan frowned. “Are you hurt?”

Whelan jumped into action. Something—anything—to keep them distracted. Anything at all that could prevent them from having to stop and think and remember. He crossed the distance to her and spoke in as soothing a tone as he could muster. “Let me see.”

Seconds passed before Ariadne relented. Slowly, she released her arm winced as she held it out to him.

Gentle fingers ran over her arm, and a slow grimace formed on Whelan’s face. “It’s starting to heal.”

At that, Azriel stepped between the dhemon and his wife. “Don’t. Please.”

“If it’s going to heal properly,” Whelan said, not loosening his grip, “it’ll need to be rebroken and set.”

Madan moved closer and nodded to Razer. “Let’s go for a ride, rholki .”

Ariadne winced. At first, Madan thought it to be from pain, but Whelan hadn’t moved. She looked away, saying nothing but biting her lip with silver rimming her eyes.

“You don’t have to hide your grief,” Madan said quietly, his own throat burning at the renewed pain. He swallowed the hard lump in his throat, then turned back to Azriel. “Help her.”

Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, Azriel nodded. He turned to Ariadne and whispered something in her ear, to which she nodded, tears leaking from her eyes again. Then he kissed the top of her head and took unsteady, forced steps to Razer. When he reached Kall’s body, he stopped and stooped down, murmuring something else as he closed the dhemon’s eyes, then hurried the rest of the distance to his bondheart.

“Thank you,” Whelan said as Madan took his hand. “I’ll be as fast as I can.”

With a nod, Madan stretched up to kiss Whelan’s cheek before jogging to Brutis. The great dragon nudged him with his nose as he passed, and Madan drew his hand down his bondheart’s neck. Dragging himself up into his place on Brutis’s back, he watched to ensure Azriel followed through with leaving as well.

But Razer and his brother were already departing. Massive blue wings spread wide, and they dropped off the ledge into the sky, disappearing almost instantly in the darkness.

With Azriel on Razer’s back, he had no way to return until Whelan had finished setting Ariadne’s arm. As such, the dhemon moved at an easy pace. Madan watched for a long moment as he offered Ariadne a strap of leather to bite between her teeth. She took it, then closed the distance between her and Kall’s body with slow, purposeful steps before sitting beside him and curling her fingers into his shirt—as though her friend, even in the afterlife, could provide her with the strength to face what came next. After adjusting the animal hide behind her long canines, she held out her crooked arm.

Brutis took flight at the same moment an audible crack rang out, followed by his sister’s muffled shriek of pain. Not enough distance had been put between them before a second snap had her wailing anew.

“ Azriel .” He reached out through the vinculum for his brother. “ It won’t be long now .”

At first, there was no response. When Azriel’s voice came through next, it was more deadened than Madan had heard it for a long time. “ We need to bury him .”

Sick relief spread through his bones. At least his brother hadn’t heard the scream. His mind was on Kall, not Ariadne, and…that was better than needing to be ready to hold him back from beating Whelan into the stone.

“ We will see to him ,” Madan promised.

Razer cut in, “ Bindhe asked us to burn them both .”

And Brutis followed with, “ She fell not far from here .”

Alarm radiated out from Azriel. “ Dhemon tradition —”

“ Kall agreed ,” Razer said, stopping Azriel’s pointless explanation of how dhemons buried their dead in cairns. “ He never said , but the feeling he sent was …”

“ Acceptance .” Oria’s voice was lighter than the others, though not as gentle or soft as Bindhe’s had been. “ They want to be together .”

Bindhe’s words echoed in Madan’s mind. I won’t leave you . She hadn’t. She stayed with Kall as he died, accepting her own death as a result. To lay them side by side for their final rest would be the best way to honor them.

“ Take me to her ,” Madan said. If they were going to burn them with dragonfire, their bodies would need to be somewhere the flames couldn’t spread.

Without argument, Brutis banked right. Razer flashed in and out of view as he and Azriel kept pace through the clouds. They flew in silence for several minutes until they circled above a mountain peak capped with snow, at the top of which sparkled the pale green scales of the beautiful Binde.

Landing beside her, Madan’s stomach knotted. She hadn’t fallen from the sky as he imagined. Rather, she had curled in on herself as she always did when she slept, her tail tucked close to her nose half-hidden beneath a partially outstretched wing. Her big eyes were closed, and she looked to be at peace—as though merely napping.

No heat radiated from her, though. No deep breaths expanded her chest. No smoke curled from her nostrils.

And damn him, Madan covered his face as the grief struck again. It twisted his heart tight so when he leaned forward, the press of the great spike before him on the center of his chest felt normal. The sorrow crashed through him like a tsunami, barreling across his body in great waves that grew and eased with each breath.

“ They’re finished .” Oria’s voice, a bit faint due to their distance from her, prodded through their minds.

Before Madan could so much as consider looking at Azriel, he and Razer sprang into the sky, vanishing into the clouds and shooting back toward the overhang.

But neither Madan nor Brutis wished to leave. They looked over Bindhe for a long time in mutual silence, exchanging the waves of their shared heartbreak. After all, they hadn’t lost companions or even friends today. They lost a brother and sister, and the wounds left by their absence could not be healed like bones.

Azriel froze after dismounting Razer to stare at his wife, eyes closed and draped over Kall’s unmoving body.

“She passed out from the pain,” Whelan admitted, wisely keeping his distance.

But Azriel held no animosity towards his friend as his heart cracked for Ariadne, her fingers still curled over the hole in Kall’s chest as though she could force life back into him through touch alone. Bloodstained fabric wrapped her broken arm with a pair of long, straight sticks holding it in place. The sight of her unconscious and fighting some dark dream by the tension in her face had him sucking in several deep breaths before turning to Whelan.

“Thank you,” he croaked, not looking the dhemon in the eye. He didn’t trust himself, knowing it’d been his friend who caused her more pain. More than that, he couldn’t look at the grief he knew would be in Whelan’s eyes.

The strips of cloth used for Ariadne’s splint, he knew without needing to investigate further, had been taken from Kall. He glanced at their dead friend’s face, that horrible, dull ache returning in an instant.

“You should eat,” Whelan said, pulling a sandwich from one of the two packs Madan had had the foresight to grab. The dhemon stared at it for a long time, his eyes welling with tears before holding it out. “There’s only a few left.”

Azriel couldn’t breathe. His stomach roiled as he shook his head, denying the offer. “Later. I can’t…”

Whelan nodded in understanding and dropped it back into the bag. “You found her?”

“Yeah.” Azriel stooped next to Ariadne and scooped his arms under her. “It’s the perfect place. We should wait till morning, though.”

A grunt of affirmation, then Whelan added, as though to fill the silence with anything, “It’ll draw too much attention at night.”

Groaning, Ariadne curled into Azriel as he lifted her up. Gods, she was so small when he was in this form. He cradled her to his chest and kissed her cool forehead. “Will it heal correctly now?”

He didn’t know if he could stomach her having to be put through that pain again. Not by Whelan or Phulan or anyone. Ever.

“It should.” Whelan didn’t move as Azriel crossed to Razer and sat with her against the dragon’s warm underbelly. “The wraps can probably come off by morning. It’ll be bruised for a while, though.”

Didn’t he know it? Loren had left a bruise on her wrist—one severe enough to have been present even the following night—and he hadn’t even broken her arm. This? This wouldn’t look the same for probably a week. A week that she’d have to look at it and remember the moments leading up to…

Azriel couldn’t think about it. He closed his eyes, haunted by the images of her screaming and lunging for Kall as Ehrun ripped the dagger from their friend’s chest.

This is your fault . This is what you deserve.

The too-recent memories played in his mind’s eye over and over, stuck on a loop of incessant misery. An unending cycle of torture that he couldn’t escape no matter how tired he was.

So much so, in fact, that by the time dawn arrived, he hadn’t slept at all. While Madan had arrived sometime after him, the shadows under his eyes and those under Whelan’s told him the two hadn’t had much more success in the matter. Ariadne, though she slept, didn’t appear rested when she opened her eyes and accepted Whelan’s help in taking off the bandages.

When the dhemon made to toss the fabric away, however, she cried. Clutching the strips of bloodstained cloth to her chest, she refused to see them abandoned.

It was no easier when everyone forced themselves to eat the food Kall had made. They sat in silence, each engulfed in their own torrent of sorrows, as they dug half-heartedly into the sandwiches. Each bite tasted of a love they would never feel again.

When at last they mounted the three remaining dragons, it was Brutis who scooped the body into his foreclaw before lifting into the air. They soared together back towards Bindhe’s final resting place at the top of a mountain.

At the sight of Bindhe curled in on herself, Ariadne shook against Azriel as her silent sobs began anew. The first dragon on which she’d ridden—the one who showed her the aurora borealis and protected her on their journey to the Saalo Desert. She lifted a hand to her mouth to dampen her wails as Azriel dismounted and held out his hands for her. Rather than swing her leg around as she normally did, Ariadne practically fell into his arms.

They stood together for a long time. She pressed her face against his chest as she cried, and he wrapped his arms around her tight, crying silently into her hair. Razer curled his neck around them in shared sorrow.

Between Oria and Brutis, Whelan and Madan connected in the same way. Their arms held one another close, and when they were ready, the four of them collided. No one spoke as they wrapped each other in one big, tight embrace.

There was something about the pressure of being held—the tightness that squeezed the emotions from one’s bones. It drained them.

After breaking apart, they all moved to where Brutis had laid Kall’s body beside Bindhe. They picked him up, each helping to bear him to his final resting place. Ariadne shifted the spread wing just enough for them to duck beneath it where they could arrange Kall to lie beside his bondheart’s serene face.

Then they stepped back and stared. Azriel took in every facet of the two together, committing them to memory. With how peaceful they appeared, he wanted to reach out and shake his friend—his brother—to wake him. To tell him it was time to go. It was the morning, and they had caves to find and places to explore. They had a ritual to uncover.

But Kall didn’t need the ritual anymore. He was home. He’d returned to the Underworld, flying in on the gentle wings of a pale green dragon, where he’d be welcomed by all the family he’d lost over the years.

Ariadne, however, knelt again. She took her friend’s face between her hands and pressed her lips to his forehead, whispering hoarse words he couldn’t make out. Brushing her fingers over his scars, she let out another muffled sob before tucking something under his hand. Then she stood, exposing the sandwich that had been reserved for Kall and turning to Bindhe’s huge face. There she paused again, sweeping a hand over the dragon’s beautiful scales as she choked out another farewell.

When his wife returned to his side, Azriel didn’t stop the tears from rolling down his face again as he croaked from a raw throat to his lost friends, “See you in the next life.”

One by one, they returned to their bondhearts. He lifted Ariadne onto Razer’s back and pulled himself up after her. Within a few heartbeats, they all took to the sky, circling the scene below.

As one, Razer, Brutis, and Oria let loose their dragonfire.