Page 41 of To Touch A Silent Fury (The Bride of Eavenfold #1)

Lan g

A wheelbarrow full of dragon’s teeth rattled past, and I couldn’t help the shiver. Chaethor was thankfully too far away to see the barbarism of her species through my eyes.

An ancient sapphire dragon, now dead. There was no doubt that another dragon was the perpetrator of her wounds.

“Did you speak to Chae?” Foxlin asked, his mind clearly similarly occupied.

It was unseasonably warm for Gossamir in late Ergreen, which meant it was mild at best, but that felt like a blessing. I wore only a loose cream shirt, unlaced at its top, with my sword belted to me with thick brown leather which matched my heavy long boots.

From a walkway knocked halfway up the fence, we could see everything happening below.

After Vellintris, I’d given my troops the order to evacuate by the end of Ergreen.

Already half the camp had left, and those who stayed only did so because their jobs required them to.

The harsh forest we’d bent into a home was left behind without a backwards glance, and for most, five years of their lives were packed into a single bag.

I only wished my own relief matched theirs, but my stomach clenched knowing what, or who, had enabled us to leave. I set my jaw with a grim determination. “I did. It wasn’t her.”

In our first season here, years ago now, Chaethor had kept me company.

But within days, the locals had set up archers to shoot at her when she left to stretch her wings.

Better a dead dragon than one controlled by a cacof , one tribesman had said.

I had only laughed at his naivety. If anything, she controlled me .

Still, it proved their morality. Nature was nothing to their hatred of us.

Chae had wanted to stay, of course. It pained us to be away from each other for this long. But there was nothing for it, and I had sent her away. She was an adult dragon, but only barely, and her wings weren’t tough enough yet to withstand a barrage of arrows.

I saw her whenever I travelled back to Droundhaven, and she often flew up to the Flourine Mountains, up at the very border of the Soundlands.

From there, if we both called to each other with pure focus, I could hear the edges of her.

We could speak, if only barely, and I knew the strain weighed on us both.

When we found Vellintris dead, I reached out for Chae in my mind. She had been waiting in the Flourine Mountains, hoping for a word from me.

If it wasn’t her, for she had stubbornly refuted the accusation with more than the necessary anger, then that only left a few options.

The first, that Vellintris had injured herself somehow, and dug her own claws into her belly.

The second, that Skirmtold had left his usual pattern around Skinreach.

In my entire life, over six spans of it, I’d never heard of a sighting further north than Droundhaven.

“So, it’s dear old dad, then? ”

I gritted my teeth as Foxlin casually voiced the third option. Kallamont. “That,” I replied. “Or Amune is real after all.”

Foxlin laughed at my reference to the dragon spirit. “I suppose we will find out soon enough. Edrin knows I cannot wait to be back.”

“You’ll have to wait a couple more weeks.”

“What?”

“Chaethor can’t hold three men,” I replied.

He groaned. “I’ll send for Ravi.”

I shrugged as he referenced his wyvern. “Be my guest, but I’ve already sent our few birds out with messages of our departure. They won’t be back for days. By the time your letter gets to the Vidarium, you could be walking through Manniston.”

“You’re sure Chaethor can’t take me, too?” He asked. “The girl weighs nothing.”

I frowned. “Trust me, you’ll probably be glad to miss whatever conversation will follow our arrival.”

He shook his head. “You distinctly underestimate my desire for a scented bath.”

“And you distinctly underestimate my father’s rage.”

“The speed of Vorska’s bond could not have been predicted.”

I stared out at the barracks through the dull light. “Still.”

“She hasn’t left her room,” Foxlin said, after a pause. “It’s been three days.”

I stared down at the door housing our new guest. “You said it yourself, you knew where you hit her. It’s a wonder she’s alive, let alone walking here.”

He hummed. “In the forest, just before I tried to shoot that wolf. You told me to stop.”

I looked at him, answering his unspoken question. “Seemed a shame to kill the beast. Didn’t want to annoy the Soundlanders any more than we already have. ”

He narrowed his eyes. “It wasn’t about her? Only, when she walked in, I could have sworn—”

“It had nothing to do with the girl,” I interrupted, tapping my hand on the wooden fence before me. “It took me by surprise is all.”

Foxlin nodded. “You and I both. I didn’t realise they rode them.”

“I don’t think they do. As a rule, anyway.”

Foxlin laughed. “I think it would be hard to find a Soundlander further from the rule than that one.”

I smirked, happy the conversation was on surer footing again. “You say that as if you admire her.”

“And you don’t?” he asked. “Those dragon-blue eyes are something else.”

“You’re only saying that because you’re starved of female company,” I replied, my smile widening. “I’ve got an errand to attend to. Go make yourself busy.”

“Fine,” he agreed with a grumble. “Let’s get back home, and then I’ll let you know if I still think the Euphon girl isn’t the prettiest thing I’ve seen in years.”

I lifted my hands, stepping back away from him. “I’ll be sure to ask you, but as I said, there’s been no competition for that title.”

He shook his head. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Lang. You’re pretty, too.”

I chuckled, walking away from him and down the wooden stairs.

As soon as I was out of his sight, my laughter died.

Foxlin was my closest friend, and I trusted him with my life, and yet I didn’t like how he’d nearly seen through me.

If he could tell from my face that something was awry, I would have to be much more careful.

There were vipers where we were going, and they would be looking for any weakness .

I moved past the meal hall and around to the cooks at its back. Those who remained tended to a stew and kneaded bread.

A man with flour on his red face yelped as I came into view. He ducked down in the worst bow I’d ever seen, nearly hitting his head on his own worktop, and yelled at his younger apprentice, who quickly ducked into a much better bow.

“Hullo, Your Grace,” he said, before coughing into his elbow. “What can I do for you?”

“Have you been feeding our guest?”

The man nodded and sniffed, pointing at the younger one, who looked barely old enough to enlist. At least he’d been given one of the safest roles in the barracks. “Of course, Your Grace. The boy, Raingefort, has been leaving food with her. And some for her… for the creature, too.”

I nodded, and addressed the boy. “How does she seem?”

“Seem, sir?” he echoed, his voice high in its confusion.

“Is she eating? Speaking?” I asked.

“She says thank you when I take it in, Your Grace. And the food is gone when I come back for the next.”

“Good, good,” I replied, and rolled my shoulders. There was nothing to be concerned about, then. I nodded to them both again, and turned from the kitchen. The woman was fine.

“She is abed, though,” he said, almost as an afterthought.

I turned back.

“With respect, boy,” the older man said loudly, cuffing his head.

Raingefort flinched. “Sorry, Your Grace.”

“Abed? Always?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes. Always lying down.” His cheeks flushed. “Her leg in the air.”

“I see,” I responded impassively. “Thank you for your report. ”

He straightened with a proud look. “Of course, Your Grace. I will report to you after I bring her each meal, should you like.”

I smiled and shook my head. “That won’t be necessary, Raingefort. You’ve done well.”

He puffed up as I turned away. It was obscene that after a year with only a few hundred men, there were still many I did not know by face or name. I had tried, at the start. Now, it seemed I only learned a man’s name when I had to write back to his family of his death.

I pushed my hair out of my face as I rounded to the quartermaster.

It had grown long in the near year since I’d last left Gossamir’s clutches.

Somehow it felt like a testament to my time here, some semi-permanent sign of the moons that had passed.

This man’s name, I did know. Clainginnin.

A good man, of Sightlands stock but not of noble birth.

He had tended our needs well here, as best he could in the harsh seasons.

I asked him to give me whatever herbs he would prescribe for a healing wound.

He asked me if the wound was going bad, and I had no answer.

He gathered three different plantstuffs from the back of his storeroom, giving me their names and applications as he prepared them into a poultice.

I found I was too nervous about seeing her to think of remembering any of it.

I had no passion for botany and was pleased enough when he handed me the cloth, moist with its burden of healing reagents, with no questions.

With the bundle in one hand, I knocked on the wooden door that held her.

After a brief pause, and a rustle of fabrics, a soft voice came from inside. “Come in.”

I opened the door.

She stared up at the light filtering in from the window next to the bed. And I was grateful for that, because it took me a second to compose myself .

A white sheet draped over her body. The sleeve of her undershirt had fallen down on her dusky shoulder, and from her bare curved feet and her tanned bare leg propped up on the windowsill, it seemed she had removed her trousers.

The sheet covered her fully, but the contrast of her warm skin to that white sheet stirred something I didn’t want to admit.

She was clearly ill, maybe even feverish, with drops of perspiration at her forehead and dampening her upper lip.

Her piercing blue eyes widened as she slid them my way, clearly not expecting me, and she pushed herself up to a seated position.

I saw the flicker of pain she tried to suppress, the way her rounded lips tightened around an intake of breath.

I focused instead on the creature nestled into her side.

For such a tiny thing, he was already deeply attached to the girl.

He had yet to open his eyes around me, or perhaps at all.

Sometimes it took the young several weeks to open their eyes more than a fraction.

And yet, I knew what I would see when he did.

“Sorry,” she said, pushing a dark strand of hair from her sweaty face. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

I closed the door behind me and approached her bedside. It was impossible not to notice how she tensed, as much as she tried to cover it.

“I brought this for your leg,” I replied, passing her the moist cloth.

She took it from me with shaking hands. “What is it?”

“Herbs. A poultice, I think.”

“Specific,” she replied cuttingly, then she blushed. She sniffed the cloth and relaxed slightly. “Fresh gleadless. Ashraf.”

I didn’t reply, only nodding, the names the same as the ones the quartermaster had rattled off.

She’d missed some powdered root that I had forgotten the true name of, but clearly, her botanical knowledge surpassed mine.

She did not apply the poultice, though, leaving it beside her ankle on the windowsill with no small wince. Then she relaxed back on the pillows.

She wrinkled her nose, and my stomach clenched at the familiar sight. “Why would you help me?”

I kept my face in practiced nothingness. “Because we are to ride in two days, and you have not left your bed. If I am to deliver a living woman and dragon to my father, it would be best for you to be well enough to ride.”

She rolled her eyes, and I struggled not to stare. The blue was truly something else, so bright it was nearly luminous, and pulsing with intoxicating life.

“I will be fine,” she sniffed.

“The ride will take several hours,” I said. “And whilst I’ve seen you ride a wolf, I can assure you, dragonback is worse.”

She crossed her arms, then, and repeated. “I will be fine.”

“You would not rather delay?” I asked, glancing down at her infant dragon. “Wait a few more days?”

She followed my look, and adamantly shook her head.

I resisted the urge to smile.

She knew as well as I did what would happen when the child opened his eyes. What everyone would quickly become aware of.

It was fucking laughable that she thought I would not recognise her.

She had underestimated her own effect. Her hair had been darkened by some odd concoction, and her eyes shifted by her new bond.

But if she thought that was all I had noticed about her, she was distinctly doing herself a disservice.

A span ago, I’d thought of nothing but her face.

I’d only had half of it to study, and so I had studied that ad infinitum.

I knew the shape of her eyes, the flutter of her lashes, the tiny imperfection by her right brow.

I knew the exact shade of her skin and how it flushed warmer under any duress or scrutiny .

This was the woman who had haunted my steps. The woman I had Broken and left for nothing five years ago, and who had by all accounts disappeared into the middle of nowhere. The one with the Broken Fate.

Tanidwen Treleftir.

I slowly nodded. “We leave at dawn the day after next, then.”

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?