I curl up on my side, watching the fire and the two men lying before it, and wait. My body is aching and exhausted from the aftermath of battle and the long ride through the cold night, but I force myself to stay awake. When two sets of deep breathing fill the room, I slowly peel my covers back and sit up. I climb from the bed and silently pad across the wood floor, and stare down at Golmarr.
Golmarr is sleeping on his back, with his right arm behind his head. The blanket covers him to the height of his armpits, and one of his stocking feet is sticking out the other end. I crouch beside his head and listen to his breathing. It is deep and even. His closed eyelids move and flutter with dreams.
I ease down onto my knees beside him and study the laces of his tunic. He has tied them in a bow beneath his chin. Carefully, I pick up the end of one string, and then the end of the other, and ever so slowly pull. The loops of the bow get smaller and smaller as I pull the ends longer and longer, until they slip completely out. Reaching beneath Golmarr’s chin, I hold my breath and undo the last bit of the knot.
Next, I pinch the two divided sides of his collar, but before I have the chance to ease it open, a hand darts out and cinches my wrist, and then I am being flipped onto my back. Golmarr lands on top of me, his legs anchoring my feet to the ground, his hands pinning both my wrists above my head. His breathing is ragged, his face so close to mine our noses bump.
“Sorrowlynn?” he asks, and some of the tension leaves his body. He glances down at his loosened tunic and frowns. Anger darkens his eyes, followed by a nearly tangible wave of hatred. “Once again it seems you couldn’t keep your hands off me.”
Beside us, Enzio clears his throat. “Is this a time when you want me to save you, Sorrow, or go sleep in the common room? Because I can’t tell if he is trying to kill you, or about to kiss you.”
“Hopefully kiss me,” I say.
A roguish gleam enters Golmarr’s eyes, and the hatred dissipates. “I wish I trusted myself enough to tell you to go sleep somewhere else, Enzio, but I don’t. Stay. Please.” He rolls off me and sits cross-legged on the floor beside the pallet. Without meeting my eyes, he pulls the tunic over his head and drops it on the floor. “Is this what you wanted to see?”
I kneel in front of him, and Enzio crouches beside me.
Golmarr’s torso is a deep, golden tan, and lean and muscular from years of training to be a warrior, but on the left side of his chest, right above his heart, is a patch of skin as black as coal. I lift my fingers and gently place them on the discolored skin. It is covered with perfectly symmetrical ovals. “These are…”
“Scales,” Golmarr says when I cannot finish my thought. The scales curve up over the hollow dip of his collarbone and end. I trace my fingers over his collarbone, from the scaled side to the flesh side, and Golmarr closes his eyes. The scales are as warm and supple as his skin, yet as firm as armor. When firelight hits them, there is a deep blue glow in their depths. At the top edge of the scales, the spot where chest turns into shoulder and scales become skin, is a scabbed-over wound. I slide my fingers up to it.
“This is where King Vaunn’s sword hit you?” I ask, sitting back on my heels.
Golmarr shakes his head and presses on the scales directly above his heart. “This is where he stabbed me. He would have killed me if I didn’t have these…scales.” The word comes out a hiss. “The tip of King Vaunn’s sword stabbed right above my heart, but the scales stopped it. His sword slid up the scales and scratched me here.” He touches the scab, and his face contorts with anguish. “I’m turning into a dragon,” he rasps, kneading his shoulder. His eyes meet mine. “This is why I have given you the option of not pursuing a life with me, Sorrowlynn. I will not force you to stay at my side, or ask you to love me, or burden you with marriage vows. Not when I am turning into a beast.”
For a brief moment, my heart falters. He is turning into a dragon. Before the full impact of the realization hits, Golmarr places his hand on the sleeve of my tunic. “May I look at your shoulder where I stabbed you?”
I nod. Enzio clears his throat and stands, turning his back to us.
“Enzio, take my bed and get some rest,” I say. “I will sleep on your pallet.”
“But what if you need me? What if Golmarr tries to kill you again?”
“I will scream if I need you, so have a knife ready. I know you can hit him from the bed.” I glance at Golmarr’s chest. “But don’t aim for the left side of his chest.” Enzio grins and walks away. The bed groans beneath his weight. With his back to us, he pulls the covers up to his shoulder.
Golmarr’s eyes meet mine and he nods at my shoulder. “May I?”
“Yes.”
He tugs the sleeve of my shirt and the laces at my throat expand and loosen as the tunic’s neckline is stretched down, revealing my collarbone and shoulder. He stares at my exposed skin and blinks once, twice, then swallows hard. I peer at the faint scar in the soft flesh below my collarbone, the remnant of his attack.
“The first scales I got were in the exact place your scar is,” he whispers. “I am so sorry.” He lifts his hand and gently traces the healed wound with his fingertips. His every exhaled breath cools my skin and makes it harder for me to inhale. “If you want nothing to do with me after that”—he nods at the scar—“and this”—he nods at his scales—“then I will help you defeat the dragons, and then leave your life and never come back. You simply have to ask, and I will do it.”
For a long moment, I stare at him and try to catch my breath. And then I reach for his face with both my hands and do what I should have done the very first time I saw him in Treyose’s library—press my lips to his. He stops breathing and his eyes go wide. For a long moment, he doesn’t move or breathe. And then he starts trembling. His hands frame my face, the tips of his fingers in my hair, and he kisses me with the same overwhelming desire that courses through me. His breathing quickens, and his hands shake against my face. I slide my hand to the back of his head and pull his lips harder against mine.
“Now do you want me to go find somewhere else to sleep?” Enzio blurts. “Because I will. I absolutely will. I’d be happy to, even. I would gladly sleep on the rushes in the common room if you’re going to keep kissing like that!”
Golmarr laughs into my mouth and pulls away. “No, Enzio. We are going to sleep now. I promise.” He gives me a firm look and pulls his tunic back on. There is not even a trace of hatred in his eyes. “For the sake of Enzio, try and keep your hands off me,” he whispers sternly, but a small smile lights up his face.
“You don’t hate me right now. I can see the difference in your eyes,” I say. “Why?”
Golmarr’s brow furrows as he studies me. “I’m not entirely sure. But I think after what we’ve just been through, the intensity of my love for you is stronger than the hatred. They are both always there, but right now, my love for you is overpowering everything else. The hatred has no negative emotions to feed on.”
I smile and scoot Enzio’s—now my—pallet beside Golmarr’s. Without asking, I lie down and twine my fingers through his. He freezes, but before he can pull his hand away, I say, “You have proven twice tonight that you can touch me without hurting me. I promise not to bite, I promise to keep my hands to myself, and I promise not to kiss you again tonight.” One of his eyebrows slowly rises, but a moment later he closes his fingers around mine. I pull my blanket up, and, warm and content, I am asleep within moments.
* * *
I see black rocks and water peeking out from the cracks between my toes. Sunshine burns warm against my back, and I close my eyes, absorbing the heat into my skin. This feels like home, this place of salty breezes and crashing waves, almost the same way Golmarr feels like home.
Look! someone says, the word deep inside my head. It feels wrong there, that single word, as if my mind is being probed against my will.
I take a deep breath of the
balmy air and lift my gaze from my feet, expecting to see the two-headed dragon. Instead, a woman stands before me, the woman from my dream, with hair as white and soft as goose down. If I reach my arm forward, I will be touching the billowing fabric of her long-sleeve white dress. Her mouth is moving, but no sound comes from it. She is repeating the same thing over and over again, and by reading the movement of her silent lips I know what she is saying.
Find me quickly. Find me quickly. Find me quickly! Find me quickly! Quickly! Quickly! Quickly! Quickly!
A wave breaks close to shore and slams into the back of my legs, jolting my attention away from the woman. My cares seem to melt away as water rolls up the black beach, spreading across the pebbles. In the sunlight, they shimmer with an inner glow, as if lit from within, and for a moment I know I have seen them before. But then the sun loses some of its warmth. The pebbles return to their depthless black, and I shiver. I crouch down for a closer look at the rocks, trying to remember where I have seen them.
Look! the voice in my head demands, grating on my thoughts. I do not want to look when I am on the brink of remembering where I have seen the black rocks. Sorrowlynn, look!
I force my attention from the ground and glare at her.
The woman is rolling up her sleeve, her fingers fast and nimble. Curious, I stand. When the sleeve is up above her elbow, she holds her arm beneath my nose.
Her skin is a deep, rich brown, firm and healthy, almost like that of a child despite her white hair. Just below her elbow, something shimmers. I lean closer and see delicate pearly ovals that reflect sunlight. My heart jumps into my throat as my eyes meet hers. I know why the pebbles look so familiar—they remind me of Golmarr’s scales, and the dragon tears from Enzio’s purse.
“Scales?” I ask, but no sound leaves my mouth.
Find me quickly, she mouths, pushing her sleeve back down. And then her eyes—pale blue like the winter sky—shift a fraction, staring at something behind me. They grow round and she lunges forward. I look over my shoulder just as the woman shoves me. A man is standing on the beach, and blackness swarms around him like a living, moving cloak of bugs, and I am falling into him. I pass through the blackness and it scatters in the air. I keep falling, falling, until I am certain I have been shoved from the edge of a very high cliff and am about to hit the bottom when I collide with a body. I feel my arms slip inside of her arms, feel my legs lock into hers, feel my head absorb her brain as it is fitted to a skull it has known forever.
The smell of wood smoke and frying meat are floating on the chill air. My nose is icy cold—my fingers and toes, too. The only warm thing on me is my back, where it was warmed by the sun in my dream. I try to move, but something is wedged behind me. Turning my head, I open my bleary eyes to a barely lit chamber and Golmarr’s sleeping face. The front of his body is pressed to the back of mine, his arm wrapped tightly around my waist. I lean away, but he sighs and tightens his hold, pressing his face into the warmth of my neck.
“Golmarr,” I whisper.
His black lashes flutter, and his eyes open. When they focus on mine, a wide, lazy smile stretches across his face. “Good morning,” he says, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. His hand freezes and he clears his throat. Quickly, he rolls away, but I grab his shoulder and hold him still so he cannot put a single thread’s width more distance between us.
“Will you stop doing that?” I whisper, glaring.
“Doing what?” he asks, studying me like I might bite him. Or kiss him again. With that thought, I look at his lips and then squeeze my eyes shut. I need to focus, and it is hard to do being this close to him.
“Stop cringing away every time I touch you! Why do you do that? Is it because you hate me so much you can’t stand my touch?”
He shakes his head and grimaces. “No, that’s not why I pull away. I already told you why I can’t touch you.”
I tighten my grip on his shoulder. “Refresh my memory,” I say. It is not a request.
“I do it for three reasons. At first, when you came to Treyose’s library, you were his wife. I am not the type of man who will ever steal another’s wife. Second, I do it because I am too scared of losing control around you.” Anger flares in his eyes, but he keeps his voice quiet and asks, “What if the hatred I inherited from the glass dragon overpowers me again and I try to kill you?” He stops talking, waiting for me to answer his question, but I have no answer.
I blink and shift my gaze to his throat. “What is the last reason?”
He puts his finger under my chin and tilts my head up so I am looking at him again. “How can I pursue you when I am growing scales? It is incredibly unfair for me to ask anything of you when I know one day I will be a monster. How could you love me when I am so flawed?”
Without taking my eyes from his, I slide my hand beneath the laces of his tunic and touch the scales growing on his chest. Golmarr shudders.
“Sorrowlynn,” he whispers, gently pushing me away.
“What?”
“You can’t…just…touch me like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because the simplest touch of your fingers against my skin is intoxicating. I can’t think clearly when you touch me like that—I can barely think at all! And then the lines between why I can never ask you to love me and how much I want to be with you start to blur and bleed into each other.” He lies down and closes his eyes.
Propping my head up with my hand, I say, “Maybe the lines need to blur until they become one.”
He looks at me. “You need to know something else.” His face darkens. “When I killed the glass dragon, I started seeing glimpses of the future. Before I killed the beast, I thought nothing was more important than us ending up together forever. But then I saw what happens because of it.”
My body freezes. “What happens if we end up together?”
“Sorrowlynn, I love you more than life itself. I would die for you more than one thousand times over, in every way imaginable. I know because I have seen it. You are my world, and you will be until the day I die.” He sweeps the hair away from my cheek and tucks it behind my ear. “But the world is bigger than the two of us. What we have—this love—it is beautiful, and wonderful, and I cherish it above anything I have ever known, but there is so much more we have to think about.”
His words send ice through me. The muscles in my shoulders tighten, and I find it hard to breathe. “I don’t understand what you are saying.”
He squeezes his eyes shut and presses the heels of his hands over them. “The night before the battle with the mercenaries and the glass dragon, I gave Ingvar a letter and begged him to take care of you if anything happened to me. The next day, I had the dragon’s hatred thrust on me. From that moment on, I saw glimpses of Ingvar stepping in to save your life, in more than a hundred ways, and every time he ended up dead. I tried to do things to keep you safe and remove from him the burden of protecting you so he wouldn’t die.” He lowers his hands. “That is why I made a bargain with Treyose to bring you to me in Trevon in exchange for me agreeing to be his wizard and backing his claim to the Trevonan throne. But it still didn’t work. Ingvar died despite my best efforts to remove him from the situation.”
I swallow against the lump that has formed in my throat and force myself not to blink at the water pooling in my eyes.
“Two things changed, though,” Golmarr continues. “One: He lived several months longer than the first vision I saw of his death. In the very first vision, Lord Damar heard of your survival and rushed to Anthar to force you to return to Faodara. He poisoned Ingvar when he was trying to kill you. And two: I sent a letter to Ingvar telling him what I kept seeing. He was able to tell his wife and children how much he loved them before he died.”
“Why not just tell him to stop protecting me?”
“He did stop. He sent you to the citadel and asked Yerengul and Enzio to
protect you,” Golmarr whispers. “But he still died.”
Ingvar, unarmed and vulnerable, put himself between me and Lord Damar’s poison needle. “He knew there was a good chance he was going to die, and yet he chose to protect me?”
“Yes.”
I blink, forcing the tears from my eyes. “Why?”
“Because you are worth dying for. You are the key to everything. You have Zhun’s knowledge. Together, we have the opportunity to change the world or die trying. But if we don’t try, the dragons are going to destroy the world.”
My body seems to fill with stone. “I don’t want this,” I whisper.
“I don’t, either. I just want you, and I want to be happy. But what if that means the dragons destroy the world? Could you live with that when you have the power to stop it?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and the tears keep streaming down my cheeks.
“I couldn’t live with that, Sorrowlynn, not when we have a chance to change everything.”
“So you’re saying you are giving up on us?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
Curling into a ball, I pull my blanket up to my chin. “We need to go to the black island.”
“What?” he asks, rolling onto his side so he can see me better.
“We need to go there.”
“No one who goes there comes back.” He tentatively wipes the tears from my cheeks, but his touch makes more fall. I move his hand away and use the corner of the blanket to soak up the tears.
“We need to go. A woman with scales on her arm is waiting for us. She says we need to find her quickly.”
“We can’t go there. What if it is a trap?” he whispers, eyes pleading. “What if we are being lured there by one or more of the dragons? We will either be trapped on a boat, or stuck on an island with nowhere to go when they attack. A dragon could simply smash our boat while we sailed, or trap us on the island’s shore and then eat us. I don’t want to put you in that much danger.”
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