Page 82 of To Touch A Silent Fury

This was where she had ended up, carving out some existence in the same cold direction life had taken me. Was it coincidence that made her choose Gossamir? Or had some greater design come about to push our lives together again?

And why would she ever trust me with her life, after what I did to her on the Isle one span ago? I had destroyed her only chance at power, her chance at the life the Threads had chosen for her. She was no Euphon, and they would have never accepted an outsider like her.

Her allegiance would only last until she was well enough to run away. Once Tanidwen was healed, she would get as far away from me as possible. And after what I had done to her, I could not begrudge her it. I would play along with her ruse and convince the others of it. And when she ran off into the night, I would not stop her.

My father, however, was another matter entirely. How he would react to her arrival, her dragon, and my failure, was something I dreaded intensely.

Did she truly understand what she had risked by walking into our camp?

22

Tani

The night had brightened from pitch black to a dark and foggy grey when I heard the footsteps behind me. They were evidently attempting to be quiet. If I had not spent years in the truest of silence, knowing every drip of every leaf and every skittering of each tiny bird, I might not have heard him.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Something akin to humour, or justice, fell on my mouth when I heard Langnathin’s voice. I prided myself that I did not freeze, nor stumble. I kept the exact pace I had before, stepping forwards with my injured left leg, bending it as I left the other behind me in a soft lunge.

The Dragon Prince had not been able to surprise me.

I remembered his opening words to me, all those years ago, and smiled at the irony.I’ve spent enough time in the Soundlands to hear a mouse move.

For all his time here, he hadn’t truly learnt the ways of the Euphons. He might have learnt to hear more than mostSightlanders, but he hadn’t spent enough time in the silence to know all of his own tells.

I lifted myself back to standing, turning to him. “Stretching.”

Langnathin was wrapped in his heavy coat, ready for the flight. In the winds, even with the season turning this very night to Tanmer, it would be bitterly cold. I, too, wore my coat, using the sheets from the bed to attach my dragon to me.

With the grey fur up to his ears, black fur-trimmed boots, and the calculating expression on his face, I finally saw Braxthorn’s image in him. In our portrait back on Eavenfold, he was similarly clad, always kitted for dragon riding and wearing a stern look.

The prince narrowed his red eyes at me. “I can see that.”

“Then, why did you ask?”

He opened his mouth to retort, and then closed it. I tried my best to ignore him, continuing my stretching. Each long step pulled at the muscles in my left leg, flexing them around the still-healing wound.

“How is it?” he asked.

“Better than I would expect,” I admitted. In truth, it was farfarbetter than I could have expected. The wound felt half a season old already, and the hole was already healthily scabbed.

Langnathin did not seem surprised. “Dragon riders heal quicker than most.”

I straightened, and faced him once more. “Why?”

He shrugged, and it made him look younger than his years. I didn’t know his age for certain, but even with his tiredness aging him, he could not be more than two spans older than me. “It’s the bond, you pull on each other's strengths and weaknesses.”

Guilt flowed through me as I cradled the child at my chest. “Am I hurting him?”

“No, it’s not quite so direct,” he said, shaking his head. “If you were on the edge of death, he would feel very weak. But now, I am sure it is doing little more than tiring him out.”

I nodded, and we were both silent as the end of the night faded into the coming dawn. I heard the first call of the sparrow hawk and a scuffling noise from beyond the fence. A mole, maybe, or a fox.

“He sleeps through the day as it is,” I said into the fog. With Yvon, I’d never felt the need to speak to fill the air. But with Langnathin, I was on edge.

“It is what infants do.”

I studied the prince before me. “What else?”