Page 23 of To Touch A Silent Fury

I craned my head just as the cloud cover broke above us, and Seth grabbed onto my arm.

Chaethor soared through the air. Her arrow-straight neck widened into a ruby-scaled head and long snout. Her right eye stared down at us, and I felt the chill of her brown gaze. Her jaw opened, tasting the air as she flew across the grey morning.

She shook her head, the red scales catching in the dawn light. Then she let out a roar, showing us her two rows of razor-sharp teeth. We all flinched, but no fire followed it. Instead, she dived down, wings tilting as she careened towards the water alongside us. At the last moment, she pulled up, her four stout legs hanging down and arcing talons dragging across the frothing crests of the black waves. Her wings billowed in the breeze, the light filtering through the red-stained parchment membrane between the darker finger-like ridges, and her tail tapered narrow before widening into a spiked bulb at the end. She was as long as our boat, and with her wings splayed, she was far wider.

Atop her, sitting upon a fine leather saddle, was the Dragon Prince. Back in his riding trousers and covered from the hips up by a fur coat that must be worth a fortune, Langnathin rode without concern, only one hand on the saddle’s loop.

Around us, the sailors whooped and waved, their fear turning to joy the moment they recognised the rider and realised this wasn’t the dark nightmare of Skirmtold, but their own prince.

Seth and I did not wave, but we drew the prince’s red gaze regardless. He stared at us both, inclining his head. Then he spoke something lost to the wind, and Chaethor beat her wings, pulling them up and ahead. Within a few breaths, they were back in the clouds, her tail slipping from view.

Seth looked at me. “We have a lot to catch up on.”

I thought back, remembering everything. What I’d overheard about a weapon in a span’s time, about my own powers, and then my meeting with the prince. How unexpected his line of questioning was—and his feelings. Seth and I hadn’t even spoken about my Fate yet. I’d barely had time to think about it myself.

“Yes, we do,” I agreed with a frown. “Everything is about to change.”

Seth grabbed my hand, and I felt his warmth. “Not everything.”

7

Lang

What are you going to do about her?

We were flying over the port of Verdusk when Chae asked the very question rolling in my mind. It was a dreary place made for utility more than beauty, with a squall of seabirds circling the returning fishing boats and clustered thatched roofs spilling towards the bustling docks. The fog from Stormnoon’s tempest swamped the whole of it in a constant depressing mist.

I don’t know, I responded in my mind, as the cold wind whipped against my cheeks.

I hadn’t been to the port on foot in many years, and a small part of me—the hungry part—was tempted to drop down for a bite of something fresh for breakfast. But as we passed, the air hung with acrid smoke, salt, and fish, and I lost my appetite.

You know what your father will say.

Yes,I replied.She’s too dangerous.

Pretty, though.

I groaned, and Chaethor chuckled in my head. Sometimes I hated how easily she read every part of me.

I think you get it from me. Your appreciation of beautiful things.

I am of the Sightlands. I thinkyougot it fromme,I replied.

Perhaps.

She didn’t ask me again, but I could feel her probing curiosity in my mind. I knew she wouldn’t judge my actions. Everything we thought swirled together anyway, and it was hard to distinguish one of our choices from the other. Whatever conclusion I came to, she would come to the same one.

People used to believe the Moontouch was a curse. Even now, I heard that some folk still thought the Moontouch was a punishment for Hain’s betrayal of the Five. For this reason, or simply for their differences, the afflicted were usually killed by their village before their first span was out.

Those that lived in places like the Cloven or the Touchlands, where the superstitions were different, were rumored to have unnatural abilities. They were seen as an intentional choice of some greater deity and therefore not put to the blade or drowned like a runt. However, even in those kingdoms, they were still not welcomed.

But then a royal Moontouched was born in the Sightlands: Stormnoon. The younger brother of Braxthorn’s grandfather, and my great-grandfather, King Praevontil the Kind. When the king came into his majority, he made Stormnoon his advisor. They were close, and the choice was built on fraternal trust, but more than that, it thrust a Moontouched young man into the retinue of a king. It was a public declaration that not only had this Moontouched been allowed to live, he lived in wealth and privilege, and now attended a leader of men.

It, too, helped that Stormnoon could do something no one else could. He saw things days before they happened. Visions,much like the shepherd Edrin was rumoured to have. The victories he brought for Praevontil helped ease the perception of the Moontouched from a curse to a potential tool. In the Triad, at least.

What if the victor rejects her hand? That would prevent you from having to take any… more unsavoury action.

“You suggest we wait until the Games conclude.” I mused out loud since the wind had dropped enough for her to hear me. “And then instruct the winner not to marry her? On what grounds?”