Page 68 of To Touch A Silent Fury

I wished to touch her again and feel her emotions as before, but she pulled her wing close to her side, using it to protect the growing blaze from the wind. I looked into the sky nervously, eyeing the growing smoke in the night air. What subterfuge we had gained from the darkness would be lost when the light of the fire spread in the distance. The cacofs would be on us within the hour.

Vellintris took a huge breath in, and that same rumble of light balled in her stomach.

Only this time, it did not die out.

I stumbled back another step as the rumble in her stomach grew. Her tail thwomped down behind me, and I flinched, turning to look at its spiked end slamming heavily into the dirt. Vellintris growled as her tail coiled around my feet.

I looked her in the eyes then, and she stared straight down at me as the rumble only grew louder and louder.

She stretched up, her neck flexing to its full height, and she wheezed, the ball of flame inside her building and building. The wound pulled, the leaves falling off. She curved her head down, jolting towards me as the flame balled ever brighter in her belly.

Her snout stopped just shy of me, her nostrils flaring. My eyes fluttered closed as her hot and salty breath pushed my hair back. When I opened them again, it was just her in my sights.

She bowed her head down, her nose close to the ground. I reached out a shaking hand and touched her, feeling the hard flesh between her eyes. I shuddered as I felt her pain again. But there was more. Gratitude, intrigue. Resignation.

I knew then, in a moment I would never forget, that she had made her choice. If she had rested, if she had lain here and let me tend her, she might have survived her injury. But this final act, this ball of flame she summoned, would kill her. I felt herlove for her egg, her love for the child she would likely not live to meet, wider and larger than any love I had ever brushed against.

Then she pulled back, and she opened her jaw. Tens of arm-length teeth with smaller, but no less lethal, teeth behind and a deep purple tongue. I saw it then, the light of her distant and final fire, all the way down the cavernous maw of her gullet. I was an inch from her front teeth as the light grew, until the fire burned up her throat. And yet, entirely unafraid.

I nodded to her, and she blinked once, slowly.

Thank you, twinblood.

Deep in my head, the words sounded, and I shivered. The voice was as old as the trees, soft as snow, cool as river water, and as clear as ice.

Then she turned her head, and the fire burst free from her mouth, coating her belly and egg in dragonfire.

The fire surged from her. I blocked my eyes and face from the worst of its huge heat, but it still felt far too close. My clothes heated around me, my lungs filled with the burning air, and yet the moonstone was still cool against my breast.

When the firebreath ended, I heard two noises in its absence. The first was a small noise, of scratching and breaking. The other, far more worrying, was the sound of approaching footsteps and hurried shouts.

The Dragon Prince’s men. They had finally noticed us.

Vellintris closed her mouth, and her head slumped. I took a step forwards instinctively, jumping over her already relaxing tail as her cheek settled into the dust. The fire at her belly still roared, even as her eyes drifted closed.

I ran forwards, touching her head as I just had. Already, the emotions were slipping from her. I studied her shape, but I didn’t know what to do. Therewasnothing I could do.

Vellintris was dying.

Behind me, the shouts were louder, and I spun, looking into the trees. The light of Vellintris’ fire helped me see the edges of the clearing, but I didn’t need her flame to see the new pinpricks of light in the distance. Torches, approaching fast.

The Sons were gone, disappeared into the night, running at the first sign of any trouble. The ancient dragon was letting out its final breaths as the cacofs came to plunder her nest and the Sons who venerated her had left her all alone. It was abhorrent.

Shadows of men ducked around the distant trees, and I turned to look at the egg. The scratching noises continued, and in the blaze of the red-hot embers, a piece of shell broke away.

Too slow, far too slow. The men would be upon me before the babe was hatched, and there was no way I could carry that egg.

Amidst the shouts and the torchlight, I had given up on any idea of bonding with the dragon inside. All I wanted now was to stop the Dragon Prince from taking another egg that didn’t belong to him. He did not deserve to plunder it, to reduce a wondrous birth to a scavenge. If I could get away with the hatchling, and give it to the Sons, that would feel like its own victory.

I breathed hard, feeling the last fragments of Vellintris’ life ebb from her. My other hand levelled in front of me as the first stranger stopped at the edge of the clearing.

I’d haunted some of their fires over the weeks, and yet their volume surprised me each time. The first man called back, declaring he had found the dragon. The whoops in the background made me grind my teeth.

My hunting knife flickered with the light of the dragonfire at my back, and I glared at him as he took a few steps out of the trees.

Then, a howl.

I darted my eyes to my shadow, who stood to my right, his head thrown back to the sky as he howled long and deep.