Page 34 of To Touch A Silent Fury (The Bride of Eavenfold #1)

I stared at the Sons, willing them to do something. Anything. This was Vellintris , 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 stack of 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.

I approached her slowly. One step. Into the range of her tail. Her eye was ever steady on me. Another. The edge of where her wing had rested before. She huffed out a breath, and I sensed her impatience.

I sighed. She was right, if she wanted me dead, I’d already be long dead.

Trying to ignore my shaking limbs, I moved up to her belly and dropped the sticks only a few feet from her. I could see the edge of the egg up close, its knitted scales so precise it looked carved .

Vellintris kept her wing raised as I backed away, and I paused, seeing again the huge gash lancing from her belly downwards. It looked like… claw marks. But what could hurt a beast like her?

I shuddered, looking at the festering wound. She must have been flying with it for days, the muscular flesh around it was red and inflamed.

I looked at her huge eye as she lowered her wing with a small grunt, her body shaking the very ground. “I’ll find something for that.”

I retreated a few steps before running back into the forest. This time, instead of wood, I ran straight for the patch of ashraf leaves I’d seen clinging to the roots of a squat pine earlier.

I pulled off my gloves when I found the place, needing the dexterity of my fingers.

I retrieved my hunting knife and pared the leaves from the branch until my hands were full.

As I had with the wolf, I chewed the bitter leaves into a mush and spat them back into my hands.

I kept going, chewing and stripping the leaves as fast as I could until I had a thick wad of mashed leaves in my cold, red hands and my tongue was near numb with it.

This time, when I entered the clearing, she opened her wing immediately. The Sons still eyed me with open suspicion, but they made no move to stop me. They probably had a far better sense of self-preservation than me. Or more likely, their Fates did not hinge on this very moment.

I walked straight up to Vellintris and realised immediately I did not have enough leaf mush to layer the wound as I would have liked. But it would do something.

The dragon looked at me as I came within a few steps of her belly. She made a disgruntled noise, baring teeth as long as my arm. I swallowed and rolled my shoulders back.

I held my hands out so she could see there was nothing in them but leaves. She flared her nostrils and relaxed slightly. I stepped towards her side, and she tensed again. Great Amune, what was I doing?

Then I stepped under her wing and reached my shaking hand towards the wound.

I moved painfully slowly. I told myself I was giving her the opportunity to stop me, and that was mostly true, but I was also more scared than I had been in my entire life.

There was no escape if I hurt her, if she decided she didn’t want my help. I should have just stuck to the fire.

Blowing out a breath, I closed the distance.

My fingers brushed the skin to the side of her wound.

Both of us flinched at once.

Mistrust, pain, anger, terror, and desperation flooded through me.

I jolted as I looked into her calculating, tensing eye, now boring into mine with an entirely new fascination.

She was curious about me, but terrified.

However, her terror wasn’t aimed at me. I knew instinctively she was scared for her egg, that she might be too weak to hatch it.

Before, it had only truly worked on humans. But I could feel her.