Page 66 of To Touch A Silent Fury

But they did not move.

So this was why Vellintris had not made her fire. This was why they had enough time to reach her, uninterrupted by cacofs. The dragon was too hurt to ignite the flame beneath her egg.

Vellintris pulled in yet another huge breath, pushing it through her as she failed to summon her fire yet again. The bray took on a difficult tone I now understood. She was in pain, a lot of it.

The thought flickered then, that maybe if I was fast enough, I could run in and haul the egg somewhere. The dragon might be too injured to fight me off. But I studied the way she coiled around it, and I knew in the next instant that Vellintris would happily give her last breath to protect it. At this rate, she likely would do so sooner rather than later, wearing herself out like that.

I stared at the Sons, willing them to do something. Anything. This wasVellintris, a deity throughout Gossamir. Yet they did nothing as she raggedly pulled in another breath, her attempt pitiful this time. They only hummed and kept their distance.

My shadow turned, then, looking straight at me with a penetrating gaze. There was something there that should not be, in his eyes. Some awareness he should not have. There was magic here, in this forest today. Magic that unsettled me, magic I had never heard of before. Either that, or I had finally lost it.

Was this it, then? The great sapphire dragon would die of an infected wound, and her final cold egg would fossilise in her clutches.

Without a dragon to my name, I was just a girl who could not return to any of her homes. And if Yvon’s reaction was anything to go off, I would no longer be welcome here either. I might as well just die on this spot, and none of the last five years would matter.

‘Fine,’I signed to the wolf. ‘I’ll do it myself.’

My shadow only turned back to Vellintris. Exhaustion had finally made a madwoman of me, then, to have imagined such intelligence in his gaze.

I stalked into the woods, returning a minute later with an arm full of broken branches. Without stopping to think, without allowing myself to question the stupidity of the move, I walked straight into the clearing.

Vellintris shifted in an instant, lowering her wing over her belly and hiding the egg. She turned her head towards me with such hideous speed I thought I was going to piss myself.

I held firm, walking until I was just shy of the range of her thumping tail. I stared directly at Vellintris, taking in her piercingly blue eyes as she arched her neck up and stared down at me.

The Sons had fallen silent. I wanted to glance at them, see if they were signalling, if they would intervene, but I could not turn away from the huge beast before me.

Dragons were deeply proud creatures, and I would not insult her by looking away now. As gracefully as I could with a stackof dry wood already burning the muscles of my arms, I dipped down, bowing to the dragon.

She sniffed, pushing her head in my direction as I raised my eyes back to her. She looked at me in my entirety. My hair, darkened by the mud Yvon had given me; my clothes, hanging off me after four hard seasons in a row. And then my eyes. Inescapably white.

The moment held, her breath falling hot against my face. This was it. I could die right here, and no one would really even know my name, my story. Anything.

Then the great dragon moved back, and she let out a deep guttural shudder.

It was the best I was likely to get. It didn’t sound aggressive, and I had no other chance. I stepped a few paces forwards and dropped the wood at the end of her wing. I turned back, my heart pounding near out of my chest as I disappeared back into the woods.

This time when I returned with another armful, she did not engage me, only watching with her wing tucked to her side as I deposited another load of firewood beside her.

On my third trip, I risked a glance at the Sons. They were silent, their faces a picture of shock and horror. Whatever they had signed and decided of my actions, I would be in the dark. Even if Vellintris didn’t kill me for this, those men would for meddling in their pilgrimage.

I didn’t let myself stop to think. I just kept moving, dropping the third armful of dry wood on top of the rest. Vellintris had stopped huffing, curling into a ball as she watched me with one huge sapphire eye.

This time, when I entered the forest, my shadow trotted up to my side. I had to go a little further afield for another armful, but it was still easy enough to find, branches littering the floor.I returned with my fourth load, stepping straight over to my gathering pile and clattering the new wood on top of the rest.

My shadow dropped the large stick he’d found on top of the pile. He was helping me. A wolf had discerned my purpose and mirrored it. I shook my head. If Yvon had not acknowledged him earlier, I would have thought myself to have invented him entirely.

Vellintris moved then, and I jumped back a pace as her tail swooped round. But she only used it to pull the wood in towards her, swooping it in towards her belly.

I stared up at her eye, but she only blinked disinterestedly. The dragon was helping, too.

I breathed out a quick breath, gathering the fragments of my sanity, and turned back to the forest. When I got to the sixth drop, I could feel the sweat running down my arms and back, but I couldn’t stop. Vellintris would only get weaker, and it was only a matter of time before her noises made their way to unfriendly ears.

When I returned with my eighth bundle, Vellintris opened her wing as I walked up to my established drop-off point. She looked down at the sticks she’d gathered to her side.

I swallowed as she waited.

We were doing this, then. Fine.