Page 6 of Valor’s Flight (The New Protectorate #5)

Chapter Four

Taevas woke to the sound of a door swinging open on rusty hinges.

He didn’t recall having fallen asleep, and it felt as though he awoke with a terrible jolt, but in fact he didn’t move at all.

He lay partially on his side in the dust, his normally powerful limbs useless.

All he could do was crack his eyes open in time to see a woman silhouetted against blinding light.

It took him a moment to recognize her, and not just because his mind was addled. She’d washed and changed since he closed his eyes what felt like a moment ago. Though she was still bruised and had a cut on her brow, her skin was scrubbed clean of blood and filth.

She wore a fine linen dress belted at the waist and neat little boots that had gone out of style a century past. One knee was badly bruised and swollen beneath the hem of her olive-green dress. Dark splatters decorated her shoulders and the slopes of her heavy bosom.

Rain, he thought, scenting the air. Droplets clung to the stray curls around her brow, too. Her dark hair was secured behind her head with a length of ribbon that appeared to snake in and out of her fascinating curls.

She was disarmingly lovely — even staring at him with that grim expression. Nothing but soft curves and even softer brown skin, she looked like something otherworldly against the backdrop of squalor and decay of the barn.

That thought roused him a bit more. Where am I?

The woman didn’t appear to notice he’d awoken.

She was busy shutting the huge barn door with one hand, her other occupied with a comically oversized basket.

When the door closed, he was startled to realize she’d built a large fire in the center of the floor.

It was carefully ringed with stones and the smoke escaped through the collapsed portion of the ceiling.

She built me a fire?

It was a humbling thing for a powerful dragon, especially when he realized he needed it. Taevas was wracked with shivers. To him, it felt as though the temperature had dropped fifty degrees between one blink in the next.

The fire filled the building with flickering light and just a little bit of dry heat.

He noticed she’d positioned it slightly closer to him rather than the true center of the room.

A pang of feeling struck him — gratitude, certainly, but also mourning for a time when his parents stoked the fire to keep him warm at night.

It’d been a very long time since he thought of that old life. It seemed odd to him that those memories, best left in the past, would resurface when he couldn’t even recall what had happened the day before.

The woman still didn’t notice him. She hurried across the floor with her basket, her brow furrowed and her gaze down. It was a marked contrast from how she acted before, he thought. The memory was fuzzy, but he knew she’d been afraid of him.

Ridiculous. I’d never hurt you, he sternly informed her. I’m your Isand, and I don’t break pretty things. Don’t you recognize me?

Now she appeared not to care about him at all as she fearlessly scurried around the fire.

He watched her avidly, fascinated by the dusky flush of her full cheeks and quick, efficient movements.

She knelt beside him, close enough that he could feel the very slight heat of her body, and set her basket down.

She rummaged around in it for a moment before she extracted a series of glass containers and first aid supplies.

That done, she pulled out a wicked-looking needle and a spool of thread, which she carefully set in one of the containers.

Donning a pair of sterile gloves from her kit, she took up the sewing tools.

He watched all of this with rapt attention, his drowsy mind fascinated by her graceful movements and the way she bit the cushion of her lip, but the moment she leaned over his neck with the threaded needle, he found himself rearing back in alarm.

Panic, searing and unreasonable, sent his heart rate skyrocketing.

She jumped, startled by his sudden movement, and sat back on her heels to stare at him with wide eyes.

“Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’re awake.

” She swallowed hard and, with a somewhat awkward movement, lowered her needle.

“Um, you’ve been asleep for several hours.

I already cleaned and dressed most of your cuts as best I could, but this one is really deep.

It needs stitches — or better yet, a healer. ”

It took him a long moment to understand what she was talking about. I’ve been injured. Right. I was attacked, wasn’t I?

He blinked owlishly. His mind was a bit clearer than it’d been before, but only just. He got the sense that he’d been out of it for far longer than a couple days.

There’d been the bite of a needle several times, each one followed by his mind going slushy and strange.

Spots of clarity had been few and far between, but there’d been one in particular—

I escaped. I escaped and was nearly dragged back.

It’d been dark. The wind was like icy knives against his wings, which screamed in agony.

He was disoriented, his higher functions nearly snuffed out altogether, and another dark, winged shape had appeared against the velvet black of the sky above the clouds.

They’d tangled in the air, claws raking at soft underbellies and throats, wings snapping as they fought to stay afloat.

He thought he’d injured his opponent. There’d been a great push as he disengaged and plummeted toward the Earth. Then it all got fuzzy again. There were snatches of memory, of the view from high above the world, and then closer, closer—

“If you don’t want me to do this, I can call the rangers.

They’d come get you in a heartbeat,” the woman gently offered, her soft voice breaking through his rising panic.

A high note finished off the question. It was the unmistakable tone of someone who very much wanted whatever it was that she’d suggested.

He focused on her again. She was so very small.

Even in his bipedal shape, he’d tower over her.

An unnamed radiance seemed to shine from her, like the very essence of life itself lay just beneath her skin.

Magic hummed in the air all around and saturated the very concrete on which he lay, but it seemed to emanate directly from her — like the glow cast by a brilliant little flame.

Despite that vitality, something about her seemed incredibly fragile. Yet she sat there with a needle in her hand, prepared to risk a dragon’s ire in an attempt to help despite the fact that she clearly wanted him to leave.

Taevas respected her gumption, if not her lack of caution. The ancient beast in him hissed a warning. That would have to be addressed later.

He’d been under threat for a very long time. No one could be trusted. Even so, he laid his head down again, one eye fixed on her, and forced himself to relax. He wasn’t entirely sure why, but he was certain it was the right choice.

She looked at him in silence for what felt like a long time. “You must really be in trouble.”

He chuffed. You have no idea.

Leaning in again, more cautiously this time, she pressed her needle against the edge of a deep slash.

He barely felt it. Taevas watched her dubiously, wondering if he could somehow warn her that dragon skin was a lot tougher than most people thought.

A flimsy sewing needle wouldn’t stand a chance of puncturing his flesh.

It was a bit of a shock, then, to feel the momentary bite of pain that accompanied it sliding in.

The woman grunted with the force it took, but she’d done it.

Maybe sensing his scrutiny, or perhaps merely uncomfortable with the silence, she explained, “This is an embroidery needle I use for leather. I thought it might work better than my smaller ones. And don’t worry, the thread is nylon.

I keep it in my first aid kit, so it’s all sanitized.

You’ll have to have the stitches removed, but if we keep it clean, it shouldn’t get infected. ”

You sound like you’ve done this before, he silently replied, ignoring the bite and sting of her work.

As if she could hear him, she said, “Living out here, it’s good to have this stuff handy, you know? I’ve stitched people, animals, even myself a couple times when— well, when it’s more convenient. We don’t have any healers close, and the nearest medical center is forty-five minutes away by car.”

Feeling more like himself with every painful stitch, he thought, Forty-five minutes?

Where am I — Siberia? He looked around with growing disgust. It didn’t appear that there were any electric lights, no modern amenities at all.

In fact, he was fairly certain he was in some sort of converted barn, one built a century ago, if not more.

The gods knew he’d seen enough of them in his youth.

He was once again reminded of an old life, an old pain, and he didn’t like it at all.

This is worse than Siberia. I’ve gone back in fucking time.

“Mind you, I’m no healer. You really should get to one as soon as possible.

I can walk to the Thompsons’ farm and call the ranger station.

They could send out an emergency unit for you.

” She didn’t look at him as she said it, but kept her eyes lowered to her task.

That’s why it surprised her when he lifted his head just enough to blow a large, annoyed breath over her.

As if I’d let you walk anywhere in this weather, he thought, appalled by the very idea. Wherever they were, it was storming. Even if he trusted that he hadn’t been tracked down by his attackers, he’d let her do that over his dead fucking body.

Casting him an exasperated look, she replied, “Fine! I get the message. No rangers. Stop moving, please.”