Page 35 of To Touch A Silent Fury (The Bride of Eavenfold #1)

Tani

H er emotions flooded me, so intelligent and distinct. There was nothing animalistic in them, bar that maternal urge to keep me far away from her baby, which was as human as anything.

I had to stay focused. The last of the light was fading, and soon I wouldn’t be able to see my own hands. I returned to my task, relieved that at least she didn’t seem to want to kill me at this very moment.

The wound was the size of my leg, and I focused on where it was worse, where the skin heated and broke, oozing a mixture of old blood and new pus. I pressed the first leaves to it, as my shadow trotted up, dropping another large stick next to Vellintris.

Amusement flared, and my jaw fell open for a second when I realised the emotion was hers .

I pressed the rest of the leaves to the wound carefully, concentrating them where they were most needed. Then, with a strange reluctance, I moved my hand away from her, my access to her feelings dropping with it in an instant.

I knelt, ignoring the hulking size of her and keeping my focus on my hands as I found bits and pieces from my pile which would catch easily. I grabbed the fire-starting bundle from my small pack and used the striker and flint against a crumbling handful of dried moss.

The salve of leaves was too mild to heal her alone, but I couldn’t see a wound like that and not try something.

Yvon would likely call it cacof behavior.

I snorted softly to myself. No, if she saw me here, starting a fire under an ancient sapphire dragon, I think she would find something worse to call me.

If Vellintris was too weak to produce her own fire, I would do it for her.

Vellintris’ breathing was laboured as the first spark caught.

I picked up the small bundle and cradled it in my hands, nursing the spark as I blew into it softly.

A gust of wind drove through the clearing, and I put my back to it, protecting the small growing flame.

Once it had grown hot, catching from cobwebs and feathers to the smaller pieces of bark, I carefully set it down on a dry piece of wood next to her belly.

I laid a few of the smaller sticks over it and sent a prayer under my breath to anything that could hear me.

The fire caught onto the narrow branch as the light of the day faded to nothing.

I blew into my hands as I stared at the tiny fire.

I stoked it with care, moving the fire until it was up beside her belly.

In all the diagrams I could remember, the hatching egg and the dragon themselves were lying on an active blaze.

Vellintris would not have pulled the sticks alongside her body if that were not her intention.

When it had taken, I finally stood and took a few steps back, watching the orange dancing flames with blurry eyes. I appraised the dragon then, finding her calm. She shuffled on the warming branches, letting out a rumbling noise.

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 her love 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. There was nothing 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.

The man stopped, more out of surprise than fear. When the howl ended, there was a moment of chilling silence, those behind him pausing at the edge of the clearing.

The first man raised his sword, and those behind jeered.

Then a thunder of paws raked across the clearing.

Streaks of fur and flashing yellow eyes appeared as yowls filled the air.

They flashed in the darkness, jumping with great bounding leaps towards the men.

The beasts’ paws alone were the size of my head; their haunches thicker than half the yew trees, and their heavy long fur cast their shadows long past the tree line.

A huge wolf pack had descended.

I watched as a grey wolf sunk its claws into the first man’s chest, knocking him to the ground and pulling his head clean off his shoulders like a toy.

I froze, entirely stiff, as my shadow jumped over Vellintris’ tail, and whimpered next to me. He licked my hand, and I shuddered. It wasn’t like with Vellintris, I couldn’t understand his emotions. But I knew he wanted to run. He wanted both of us to run.

I turned back to the dragon as flesh tore behind me.

My terror had reached such a point I no longer understood how to feel it, but I knew without touch that Vellintris was dead.

I had given her the strength to aid her final act, and I wouldn’t let it be in vain.

This was her forest, hers and Amune’s. I understood why the Sons worshipped her as they did.

I would not let her egg fall to the cacofs.