Page 23 of Valor’s Flight (The New Protectorate #5)

Chapter Fourteen

She was being foolish again.

It wasn’t the whisper of her grove’s ghosts that admonished her. They had been curiously silent since the man appeared in her kitchen. Even when she ran into the woods, seeking shelter amongst the roots of her trees as her people had done since the dawn of time, they said nothing.

She thought, perhaps, that they might have something to say about her leading the man she’d been so frightened of back to her home, but they murmured no warnings, no urgent instructions to run. That gave her a tiny bit of hope that she wasn’t making a colossal mistake.

A very tiny bit.

Taevas stomped behind her, his footsteps heavy and uneven. When she risked a glance back, she found his face heavily grooved with exhaustion, discomfort, and some other nameless thing that made her pity him. He looked lost — and not just because he had no idea how to get back to the house.

There was something unnatural about seeing a dragon in the forest. He didn’t appear to understand how to move.

He was clumsy, loud, and tense. Those impressive wings were folded tightly against his back and his tail remained coiled around his thigh like he worried a creature might pop out from behind a bush to bite it.

The forest didn’t seem to know what to do with him, either. The two beings — one small and one a vast, interconnected network — appeared at odds with one another on a fundamental level.

“You don’t walk in forests much, do you?” she observed.

Taevas’s eyes, a violet so bright they nearly glowed in the night, fixed on her with hair-raising intensity. “Dragons don’t like tight spaces. Even if I had the time to go for hikes, I wouldn’t choose a setting where I can’t spread my wings.”

She nodded, though she couldn’t relate. “You must like mountains.”

“Not as much as gargoyles do, but yes. I prefer cities, personally.”

“Ah.” Alashiya faced away from him. Her pitiful attempt to understand Taevas had failed with impressive swiftness.

There was a long stretch of tense silence before he asked in a strained voice, “Do you like cities, Shiya?”

“I’ve never been to one.”

They sounded wretched to her. Her books sometimes made them out to be places of wonder and activity, but the concept of living so close to strangers, with no green land to connect to, made her skin crawl.

She’d tried to imagine it many times, what it might be like to live in an apartment, to ride a train, to raise a child in a place where they couldn’t run with their shoes off.

Must be miserable.

Taevas’s tone was as bemused as she felt when he replied, “Not once?”

“No,” she said, giving him a quick look. “I’ve never needed to leave home. Why would I?”

He appeared to be at a loss for a moment. Gathering himself, he asked, “Ah, where is home, exactly? I haven’t been able to put that together. You told me the town is Birchdale, but I’ve never heard of it before.”

“Didn’t you fly here? How could you not know where you are?”

“I was drugged and injured. My sense of direction still isn’t right. Even when I try to pinpoint which direction my roost is in, it keeps guiding me back here.” The skin around his eyes and mouth tensed. “I have no idea how long I’ve been gone or where I am, so I need you to tell me.”

Alashiya rubbed the pad of her index finger along the edge of her thumbnail, mimicking the hold she used for needles. A nervous habit. “This is my land. It’s part of Birchdale Township. The outskirts of it, anyway.”

“And where is that? What territory’s jurisdiction does it fall under?”

“It’s the border between the Northern Territories and the Shifter Alliance,” she answered. “Minneapolis is about five hours south by truck. And if it helps, it’s July fifteenth.”

There was a terrible crash behind her. Alashiya swiveled around just in time to see the dragon catch himself against a tree. He’d tripped over a fallen log, half-rotten and nearly hidden by ferns.

Alarmed, she deftly navigated the forest floor to reach him. He’d seemed terribly fearsome when he chased her through the woods, but now he appeared breakable. Touching his arm, she asked, “Are you all right?”

Taevas shook his head. His eyes were wide when he rasped, “Over two weeks? I’ve been gone over two weeks.” He let out a sound that was very much not a laugh, but something like its evil twin. “Good gods, they probably think I’m dead.”

Her stomach sank. “Were you kidnapped?”

She hesitated to believe anything a stranger said, but the distress on Taevas’s face was extremely convincing. “Yes,” he answered, his voice weak.

It seemed obvious, but she had to ask, “And your family has no idea where you are?”

“No, or my people would be here already.”

“Is it possible they think you’ve gone on a trip or something?”

“My people would never think I’d abandon them without a word,” he snapped.

She shrank back a step. “Sorry. It was just a question.”

Taevas thrust a knuckle into his left eye and rubbed hard. There was no softness, no understanding in his voice when he said, “I’m Isand.”

He said the word like it explained everything. Ee-zand.

The trouble was that she had no idea what it meant, let alone the weight it apparently carried.

He’d called himself Lord of the Dragon Clans, too.

Taevas seemed to be someone of importance — or that’s what he said, at any rate.

She wanted to believe he was who he said he was, and that everything that had happened to him was the truth.

She wanted to help him in what small way she could.

But even she, a woman who’d never left the bounds of Birchdale proper, knew that people lied.

Plenty of people thought they were important when they were really just like everybody else.

Or worse. Rich recreationists often thought themselves above the people who lived in Birchdale.

In her experience, there was very little more dangerous than a man who believed in his own importance too much.

Alashiya’s heart went out to Taevas for his clear suffering, but she also felt a deep, instinctive distrust of his attitude. Being Isand meant nothing to her, and she was fairly certain she didn’t want to dig any deeper than she had. His world wasn’t hers and they were all better off for it.

Decision to not pry any further firmly made, she turned and began walking again. He said something under his breath, but it was in a language she didn’t understand, so it wasn’t meant for her ears.

Taevas continued his clumsy, limping steps behind her. Hearing his obvious struggle, Alashiya slowed her pace. They walked for a long time before he said anything more.

Breathing heavily, he murmured, “I’m sorry I was short with you.”

“It’s fine,” she replied, eyeing the familiar break in the trees that indicated they were near home.

“It’s not. I’m exhausted, in pain, and unhappy — but you aren’t to blame for any of that. You are someone I respect, Shiya. That means I should treat you as such.”

“It’s already forgotten.”

And it was, for the most part. Alashiya had shifted her focus to figuring out what the next several hours would look like, how she could help Taevas without getting burned in the process, and, most importantly, when she’d be able to get back to work.

Her lips pursed at the thought of what she had to do next.

It was all well and good when he was a dragon trapped in her kitchen, but now he was a man.

He’d need a proper place to sleep. There were many rooms on offer, but none of them had been lived in for nearly twenty years, and all of the usable bedding had been pilfered.

Some of the rooms weren’t suitable for habitation at all, even for a night, after so much neglect.

She wove through the gap between two young birch trees and stepped out into the grassy field just beyond her garden. Her home sat on the small hill above them, its hulking form slouched and dark against the star-strewn sky.

Working out how she was going to safely cohabitate with her guest for the night took up so much of her focus that she barely noticed Taevas had stopped halfway up the hill.

Frowning, she glanced over her shoulder to find him standing stock-still.

He’d dug his fingers into the long hair by his ears and appeared to be staring at her home with abject astonishment.

Raising her eyebrows, she asked, “What?”

“This is where you live?” She wasn’t sure what to make of how his baritone went up an octave when he asked his question.

Looking back at the house, then at him, she answered, “Yes? You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”

“I don’t remember looking that closely when I…” He made a high, crooning noise she’d become familiar with during her time with the dragon. “But… but why is it— Shiya, why does it look like the ground is trying to swallow it?”

She supposed it did look a bit like that.

There wasn’t much of the walls left visible these days.

Some of that was intentional. Her grove had worked hard with shovels and wheelbarrows for over a week, building up the earthen barrier along the walls.

Nymphs preferred to be as close to the earth as possible when they slept, and modern housing didn’t support that.

A compromise was made by raising the earth around the house, with space made only for doorways.

The converted barn would’ve gone the same way, but the grove hadn’t survived long enough to do it.

Over time, as was always the hope, nature moved in step with their work.

Grasses, vines, ferns, and even some small saplings took root in the berms, shielding the home even further.

Then moss began to dominate the home itself.

It crawled over the roof and across window panes.

She gently scraped it away once every few years, since she liked natural light when she worked, but never completely.

The overall effect was that of a home built into, and indeed swallowed by, Burden’s Earth.