The Dragon's Storm

by Andi Lawrencovna

  It wasn’t a knife. It didn’t have the shape of a knife.

  She would have noticed that.

  Her heart didn’t seem to take comfort from the thought, speeding the closer he came to withdrawing whatever he was reaching for.

  The phai struck forward.

  Ven fell back against her bedroll.

  He had one hand pressed against her throat, his face inches from hers. The yellow of his iris was blown wide, wiping out any hint of white that she might have seen in normal eyes. His pupils had narrowed into thin black slits. “Do you know, little witch, what they say about a dragon’s scale?”

  His head twisted to the side, and she followed his gaze, turned to see the teal scale she’d thought lost caught in his hand, the surprise he’d pulled from his shirt, black marks dotting its surface from where he’d touched it. “They say that it is stronger than hardened steel, sharper than the sharpest edge you can work upon a blade, and that it carries with it a piece of the beast from whence it came, a shred of their power worked into the very armor grown to protect them.”

  She kept her gaze on the scale, bit her tongue so she did not scream when his tongue flicked out and slithered against the shell of her ear.

  “No witch can do what you did at the citadel. I believe you, when you say you have no power to do it. But you had the scale of a dragon. And a dragon has power plenty to reshape the sands into whatever he wants.”

  He brought the scale close to her cheek, pressed its edge against her flesh until a line of fire traced her skin and she turned her head where he demanded to escape a deeper cut.

  “Where is he? Where is the great beast?”

  “He is beneath the seas where he has been locked for centuries.”

  “But you’ve seen him, witch. You know him. You have felt his power and channeled—”

  The phai sat back on his knees, raised the scale before him, stared at the edge that was stained darker but not by whatever venom passed from his skin onto the plate. His tongue stretched out, whether forked or not, she couldn’t say, and he tasted the teal.

  His eyes closed, and his head tipped back. Along his throat, if she didn’t know any better, she would have said his skin rippled, puffing out in diamond patterns of gold and black shards.

  Ven kept her movements slow. She stretched until her fingers managed to dig into the sands at either side of her bedroll, grip handfuls of the grains outside his notice.

  He was a soldier. He had his swords with him and she had no defense against the same. The power she’d felt swirling through her when she called the dragon in her room was nonexistent. She had no means to fight him, if and when she needed to fight.

  She wasn’t going to die out here in the sands.

  But that was it, wasn’t it?

  He didn’t want to kill her. He could have done that anytime.

  He wanted the dragon’s power.

  Emery wanted her, because she could control it, use it.

  “I can taste your blood, little djinn. I can taste it along the scale with that of the dragon it came from.” His yellow gaze opened, and she held his stare, ignored the undulating of his torso, the attempt to mesmerize like his father had tried in the citadel.

  Not this time.

  “You can use his power. You can channel it. You will yield to—”

  He was sitting over her hips, and she didn’t have the strength to thrust him off her, but her hands were free, and she threw the sand she’d grabbed into his eyes, ignored the sting of the raining bits that fell onto her face when he drew back and tried to brush his skin free.

  Bare skin.

  Bare hands.

  No gloves between them, to hide the blackened nails that protruded like claws from his fingers, the diamond pattern she’d thought imagined on his throat rewritten in truer detail across the backs of his hands.

  No time.

  No time to consider what all it meant.

  Time only to scramble forward and grab at the dragon scale he held while he was distracted, pull the shard free, his palm cut in the act, her blood mingling with the same.

  He hissed, and she slashed down, not knowing what she aimed at, only slashing.

  He roared.

  Not him.

  Ouros.

  Run!

  She scrambled from her crouch while the prince thrashed on the ground, his hands covering his face, blackness seeping between his fingers, illuminated by the red of the fire’s light.

  Ven ran for her horse, pulled herself into the saddle, held onto its neck when the steed bolted, the smell of the blood on her skin enraging the animal, or maybe it was her own terror working its way into the mount’s subconscious.

  The night was dark, no moon to light the way, no stars to guide her.

  It didn’t matter. All that mattered was escape.

  Chapter Twenty

  He could smell it, the acrid tang of the serpent’s venom, its poisoned blood clinging to the scale he’d given her, burning it even as she’d taken it back, stolen it away from the creature who had commandeered it.

  It wasn’t possible.

  The serpents were long dead.

  They were as much myth and legend as he was said to be.

  They had been myth and legend when he still walked freely over the land!

  The snake goddess.

  Selish.

  The mother of murderers and mayhem. A goddess of death and destruction who brought only sorrow where she was worshipped.

  There had been sects, when he was young, before he was caged.

  At one time he’d thought to wipe them all out, but there had been so few worshipers of the goddess, it had seemed a cruel fate for simple misplaced faith.

  Selish had not been seen for years, had performed no miracles or responded to acolytes in centuries.

  But he smelled the viper’s venom, felt it eating away at him, at the piece of him the male had carried.

  Had smelled the same sour scent before, felt it weakening him.

  Rot that had slowly faded over the years of being washed clean by the salt of the ocean.

  Ouros turned his head to his clipped wings. He’d never noticed it before. Never realized what the poison crippling him had been made of, not until now, not until it was all he could focus on, when his mind was cleared from his earliest years of rage to settle into eternity.

  The snake goddess had never been a threat before.

  A threat, yes, but he had never known any animosity towards her, had never struck against her nor she him. They were each other’s enemies, true enough, but ancient enough as species to know that fighting very rarely solved the problems of the ancients. They’d stayed to their own kinds. They’d kept to their own followers.

  The humans had flocked to Ouros because Ouros walked among them where the goddess was a silent presence out of sight.

  Not out of sight any longer, so it seemed.

  Acolytes grown strong on the poison milk of their goddess’s venom.

  And he beneath the sea, the one forgotten to time.

  The burning eased. The sting of the poison on his absent scale lingered, but the pain of it was fading.

  He could feel her again.

  Not Selish, the snake slithering through the grasses.

  He could feel the girl, her blood an offering to bind them together.

  His eyes burned, blood not from the woman splashing over his scale.

  It was not a mortal wound.

  The one she struck would survive it, not enough blood to be an ending.

  Would she survive it though? Without him there? Without his power flowing beneath her fingertips?

  Deep beneath the waters, coiled as he was into himself, waiting, poised, unable to move, he made his choice.

  The first time she had drawn his magic from him unknowingly, taken what he had without asking. This time, he made the offering freely, sent what strength he could to the blood-djinn, fed his senses to her, augmenting her own.

  Only once before had
he performed the act.

  To an ancestor who had betrayed it.

  Why risk it again, damnit!

  But his consciousness slowly fled in the weakness that followed the sharing.

  Let her escape.

  Let her put distance between herself and her attacker.

  Let the snake be too wounded to follow and his witch unwise enough to come to him in her need.

  He slowed the flood of his power to her as he fell into slumber. He would recover from the act, without her assistance this time, having kept enough of himself intact not to risk his own life with the deed.

  The last thought he had before the waves closed around him, was whether she would realize what he had done? Would she care?

  Would she show mercy?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The horse stumbled, lost its footing on the sand dune, and tumbled down the steppe.

  Ven screamed.

  There was nothing else she could do but throw herself from her mount and pray that the resulting slide over the sand did not kill her, and that the avalanche of gold that collapsed atop her in her passing didn’t manage to bury her alive.

  She laid where she’d fallen, staring up at the night sky overhead.

  Her mount was bleating further down the dune, the sound nauseating in meaning. Likely it had broken a leg in its fall. She could not tend it here in the middle of the desert, had no water to offer it to survive on until she could return with supplies, if she managed to return with supplies, fight her way free of the sands herself without aid.

  The breath she forced into her lungs hurt.

  Her horse was not the only one injured in the fall and tumble.

  Ven rolled to her side, managed to rise on shaking legs, an arm wrapped across her chest though it did little to aid against the broken ribs she suspected within.

  Her steps were halting as she made her way down the slope towards the beast.

  His wide black eyes were wild with panic.

  Poor animal.

  It knew what death looked like, could feel the darkness approaching on swift wings, and all he had for comfort was a disgraced witch without the power to even offer him a quick end from the pain.

  Chills racked her, not the chill of the sand at night.

  Ven slipped to her knees, wrapped her arms around the animal’s neck, stroked his massive head, hummed sweet nothings into the air between them.

  Its struggles stilled slowly, the calm of shock settling in.

  She reached one hand to the pocket at her side, the scale she’d sequestered there in her flight from the mad prince.

  It thrummed to her touch, pulsed like a beacon.

  It had not done that before.

  She raised the ridged cup before her face, stared at the delicate whorls of deeper colors along its surface, edges that gave it texture, not smooth like she’d thought it was.

  Ven used a nail to trace over the fine lines on its facade, followed the curving slope of the scale and the markings on it to the edge.

  So very fine and delicate for something so strong, so deadly—

  The horse’s breath shuddered out.

  Ven shook her head, blinked.

  The details faded until she stared at just a teal scale, until even the colors faded, and the plate became a darker piece of the night she held before her.

  Just a tool.

  She drew the sharpened edge of her makeshift blade across the steed’s throat.

  He twitched in her arms, his giant body nearly overpowering her though she held him through his twists, shook as his great heart finally stilled and she laid him on the ground, scrambled away to upheave the contents of her stomach onto the earth.

  A mercy, that it was too dark to see the red glint in the dark wet staining her hands, the edge of the scale.

  So much blood on its sea colored plate.

  She wanted to toss it into the sands and forget its place, lay down her head and join the horse in its rest.

  Escaping one death only to yield to another.

  Fight, Havence. Do not let him win.

  She didn’t even flinch at the deep rasping voice that filled her thoughts, the dragon’s consciousness slowly unfurling within her mind. Called by the blood offered in sacrifice to you.

  No, not to me. I have no control over man or beast, that is not my magic.

  Blood magic.

  Her own power kept forever hidden, locked away without memory, released on the shard of scale he’d sent to tempt her to the seas.

  You must move, Havence. The male is not dead. You did not cut deep enough to kill him. He will hunt you for the injury you served.

  There is nowhere to run to that he will not find me, Ouros.

  Run to me.

  She laughed, the sound turning into a groan when her ribs protested the waste of air, the harsh expansion of her chest in light of her recent injuries to the same.

  You will hunt me just the same if I come to you. I was warned—

  So you’ve said before.

  And so you’ve not denied.

  When he failed to respond, she knew she was right. His mind was ever on his revenge, not that she could blame him.

  But to escape one execution to rush into the arms of another?

  You will die in the sands, Ven. Better to come to me than be caught by your people.

  Her people wouldn’t kill her outright. They needed an heir to her power before they cast her to the crows.

  She would die either way.

  Her people would die either way.

  When the waters ran dry or when the dragon rose to wreak his vengeance.

  At least she would be able to see the creature that had haunted her before he took her life.

  Was that a more merciful fate, in the end?

  I am too far from the sea, dragon. I will never reach you before I am found.

  She returned to the horse, the lone saddlebag that had not been removed from its back before the prince accosted her.

  A fate she’d known to be wary of, the disquiet that had plagued her the moment the man had “rescued” her from the cell.

  “You left me alone in the cell without your great wisdom. Why should I listen to your words now?”

  Of course he couldn’t hear her. She was afraid that if she spoke to him, mind to mind, he would see how very close she was to giving in to his desires to set him free.

  Ven bent forward, whispered a prayer over the horse’s head, closed the great dark eyes that stared sightlessly up at her.

  She pulled the half-empty cask of water from the pommel.

  The horse would be found first.

  Come morning, if the phai survived and mounted a search against her, the horse would be found first, and her trail followed from its corpse.

  Ven forced herself to move away, replaced the scale in her pocket, fought for breath as she slipped the rest of the way down the dune, towards the flat expanse of desert that waited in the valley below. This was not a valley she’d crossed before. It was not near to her home on the coast. She couldn’t say which direction she should be traveling, had simply fled and prayed to find a sanctuary before Emery found her.

  The phai Roaca and his ambitions, and she the fool to believe he wanted only her safety.

  Ven—

  She tightened her arm about her middle, winced from the pressure that both made her ribs ache and helped her breathe at the same time.

  All you need is to touch the waters. Come to the waters and I will come to you. I will be free to come to you. I will keep you safe from the male you fear.

  I fear you.

  He did not respond to her thought.

  She trudged forward.

  You travel in the wrong direction. I know you fear me, and there is no trust between us, but whatever safety you seek, it is not in the direction you go now.

  And what direction is that?

  Towards the city made of gold.

  She stopped, looked up as though she could see the citadel gleaming
in the distance.

  There was nothing but sand.

  Her knees gave out and when she fell this time, she could not help the small sob that escaped her lips.

  The wind blew through the valley. It kicked up the harsh sands into a whirlwind that swirled around her, tangled her hair before her eyes, scratched at her skin. Ven pulled her ripped jacket over her nose and mouth. Of course, the sand storms would pick up when she was at her weakest.

  They will hide your tracks from the humans who chase you.

  Yes, but humans were smart enough to know to look beneath the gold.

  The dragon shifted, and the sand he laid upon was not nearly as unforgiving as that which stung her eyes.

  Not sand. Not just sand.

  The silk of her shawl, lost a lifetime ago to the sea, or so it felt, was soft against her belly – his. Her hands dug through the shoal, retrieved the water-logged cloth, pressed it against her face. No, against his face, Ouros. Beneath the waves. Cool and safe in the shelter of the sea. A piece of her he carried with him, as she carried his scale with her.

  A current made the cloth wave beneath the waters, its white tale whipping over his snout.

  The veil obscured his face for a moment. Only the red of his eyes peered out from behind the pale. Such sad eyes. So lonely. How long he must have suffered in his prison deep beneath the waves.

  He blinked, the clear membrane that came down over his iris dimmed the fire in his stare, weakened the connection between them.

  Not a weakening, but a consideration.

  She felt the sigh he released as though it came from her own chest.

  Come to me, witchling, and I swear upon the storms you fear so much, that I will cause you no harm.

  Go to him…but she didn’t have to release him if she went…like the lie would make the decision she’d already made untrue.

  I will not make it with or without your promise of safety, Ouros.

  She would not make it another foot, not as she was now.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  You have to, Havence; I have nothing left I can give you.

  He felt her frown, even if he could not see it. The words were there in her mind, even if she didn’t’ direct them to him: give her what?