Ouros?
He did not answer her.
Ven craned her neck, twisted painfully in her saddle to stare at the cliff edge that should be waiting behind her, but there was no cliff to see. Whatever beach the horse had taken her too, this was not her home, the dragon was not here, not chained to the rocks a stone’s throw from what she called her own.
Hours in the saddle. Hours clinging in vain to the harsh hair on the horse’s head, hoping she would reach him and the path to salvation Ouros had promised her. Hours, or was it days? She couldn’t even say anymore.
And none of it mattered.
Her breath stuttered through her chest, pained and piercing.
If nothing else, she would feel the water before she died.
Days spent in the high heat of the midday desert sun, only small mouthfuls of water and food to sustain her, the majority of which she’d returned to the sands the night prior.
She would not make it any further.
That Fewlis had made the journey with her on his back was a miracle.
She would feel the water closing around her before she died.
Even if she never saw the dragon it was meant to cage.
Her limbs trembled, and she dismounted from the horse with no grace, a small grunt of discomfort all Fewlis could manage in response to her neglect.
He pulled away when she fell to her knees at his side.
That was fine. He should go.
A wave washed forward, the force of it unbalancing her, pushing her back from her knees, sending her sprawling into the sand. The fabric of her clothing did nothing to protect her from the cold of the water, the way it sucked at her as the tide withdrew and she slipped along the groudn, trying to follow it out to sea. Her pocket ripped, the pocket she’d not remembered slipping Ouros’ scale into upon mounting the horse, that pocket that had carried her weapon and her salvation from the moment she fled the prince and fell upon the sands. The cloth ripped, and her eyes widened when the plate slipped from the black folds of her clothing, threatened to escape in the current.
Ven surged forward, her fingers reaching for the shard, uncaring of the wave that came to combat her, that crashed over her face and torso, filled her nose and mouth with liquid life and liquid death as she closed her hands around the scale, and blood spilled from where it sliced again across her palm.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ouros was staring at the surface of the water, watching the sun play along the tide, waiting.
His heartbeat was racing, his arms and legs were tense in the sand. If he hadn’t been holding his breath, steam would have been spilling from his lips and nostrils in an unending stream.
She was close.
He could feel her, feel his scale carried by her, drawing near.
Not near to him.
She’d travelled in the wrong direction, the direction fastest to reaching the sea, which was not his shoreline, but all the water was nearer him than when she was moving away.
One drop of her blood to touch the ocean, and he was free.
In his belly, rage and hope and despair swirled like the winds of a storm brewing on the horizon.
A tsunami of emotion that would rise in his wake from the sea.
Reshape the shoreline, lay waste to the landscape.
His scale found its way into the surf.
The world paused, waited with the same held breath he took.
Chapter Twenty-Five
She heard the roar that came from beneath the surface of the water, that filled her ears as surely as the tide filled her lungs, stung her eyes with salt.
The cry was carried through the waves, the fish who swam the surf, the green kelp that tangled around Ven’s ankles where she drowned beneath the water, and the dragon was free.
Her lips parted on a gasp, choking as she tried to reach fresh air.
A riptide pulled against her hips and chest, pulled her deeper beneath the waves, in the darker waters where the sun barely touched.
Ven stared towards the surface.
She’d been right not to fear the dragon’s wrath.
It wasn’t the dragon who was going to kill her.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ouros stood in the shadows of the small hut, unchanged over all the years since first he stepped inside of it at Amece’s bequest.
Then he had not known to be wary.
Now he knew better.
The human legs he’d commanded his form to assume were awkward and ungainly. The shape no longer something he was used to after so many years unable to shift his form. Yet he’d managed the change, managed to carry the girl from the sea shore and to the bed that stood against the wall furthest him. The light of the fire he’d blown a spark onto cast her face in shadows, but still he stared at her, would not let his gaze drift away.
His storm raged outside.
The piles that had been driven through his wings, used to pin him to the sand bed at the bottom of the ocean, had broken first.
Her blood had washed into the water, half a continent away from him, but all it had taken was one drop and his chains were broken.
The gauntlets that had tried to fuse with the scales of his wrists over the years had opened.
He’d torn his skin peeling the metal away, uncaring of the pain of it because he was free.
He was free!
His wings stretched wide. His legs uncramped from so long being forced to lie on the ground. They shook when he stood, but they held.
To stand again. Autumn Winds, but to stand freely again. It hadn’t mattered, in that moment, that he was still beneath the waves. He had stretched his arms wide, twisted his spine to loosen muscles too long confined, and roared.
It took one beat of his wings, one push of his legs, and he shot from the bottom of the ocean towards the surface, towards the light shining overhead.
The midday sun.
Ouros broke the calm of the waves, and the water rose in a wall before him, crushing towards the land, escaping him as he escaped the sea.
And to the south, a drop of blood calling him.
What had taken her a day and a half to span on horseback, took him minutes on the currents of the air.
He saw nothing but a swathe of black sinking beneath the waves, and he should have let her drown. He should not have cared that her fingers still held to his scale as she was pulled down into the deep where her grandmother had cursed him to suffer.
But he did.
And he’d promised not to hurt her.
So he dove beneath the wake, and raised her from the ocean’s embrace, held within his own, and returned her to her home.
The walls of the house shook with each crash of thunder in the sky, the pelting of the rain striking the dry wooden beams, the old timber roof overhead.
She had not woken in his arms.
The storm had come in response; even knowing she still breathed, the storm had come.
Funny, he thought he would have enjoyed the feel of the rain on his skin, so different than the constant rush of the sea.
He’d been wrong.
Heat from the fire heated the wet until he stood dry in the tiny confines of the room.
How long had it been since he’d felt the same?
Warmth.
Havence had been warm in his arms when he’d lifted her in hands changed form so as not to scratch her too thin flesh.
Human arms and legs and torso, pressed against her body.
She’d been a solid weight that he’d carried to her home. No scent of the sea upon her, not of the deep sea, at least, despite the water’s attempt to claim her.
Still she slept.
He laid her down and stripped her of the sodden garments she’d clothed herself in. Her body shook with chill. Ouros knew the signs of human mortality. And if he let his skin dry by the kiss of heat from the flame, not so for the girl who he’d wrapped in blankets and bundled safely in her bed.
No harm from me.
So he watched he
r sleep, and the storm flooded the sands outside.
His eyes opened slowly at her first hint of stirring beneath the sheets.
For all her power, she was untrained, and he truly doubted he had much to fear from her, this woman who had nearly stolen his magic and sent him on the final journey unknowingly.
He straightened where he stood against the lintel.
The winds had died down as his own volatile emotions calmed at being free on land and not constrained to the sea any longer. Likely the storm would find a new outlet the moment she opened her mouth to condemn him for the rains, but he didn’t think on it further.
His fire had fallen to embers during the night.
The muted light from the sun barely breached the heavy clouds overhead so that the room remained in mostly darkness.
He watched her blink, untangle her arm from the sheets around her to touch the heavy wall to her side, her fingers tracing over the whorls in the grain from long habit.
Ouros blinked.
Her gaze turned to his, body stiffening when he caught her stare.
What had her grandmother said? That even in a human’s form, he could be nothing else but a dragon.
Eyes that burned with the fire that roiled at the center of the world from which he was birthed. The countenance of one long used to throwing his weight against that of the earth he called home.
His shoulders itched where the few remaining scales of his transformation grew dry in the heat of the room.
He did not move to scratch at the discomfort, did not adjust the crossing of his arms over his chest, nor his stance that could not fail to bely his readiness to attack if she made threat against him.
Her breath caught. The aborted rise of her breast beneath the blankets drew his gaze before he looked at her face, caught the grimace of her hurt ribs though the expression was quickly stuttered from view.
“Will you kill me now?”
Blessed Storms…
It was all he could do to keep his mouth from falling open in awe at the sound of her voice so clear before him. Deep in the sea where she’d called to him that first night, her words had been diluted by the leagues of water between them. Her mind did not hold the same sultry note that her speech held.
He had nothing to compare it to; there was nothing in the sea that sounded as deep and welcome as the husky timbre of her words.
How greatly he wished to respond, and how long it had been since last he heard the sound of his own voice.
He almost feared to relearn the tone, and have it stolen from him again. “I swore your safety. I hold to my word.”
She nodded slowly, followed the motion with careful movements that had her rising from the mattress, blankets clutched before her as she stood. She seemed to hesitate, uncertain what to do, though he awaited her movements, uncertain himself though he would not admit the same.
Her steps came haltingly towards him, but she approached despite the fear he smelled leaking from her pours.
Fear and awe.
He knew which emotion held sway as she stopped with less than an arm’s length between them.
She should fear him more than she did.
He found himself glad she did not.
The blanket dropped down her shoulder. She moved to reach over its drape, her hand rising between them, reaching to touch the ridge of his collarbone, pausing a scant breath above the line of his scales – flesh.
She shook her head, drew back, lips parted with her rapid breathing, breathing he matched without thought when their eyes caught and held.
“Thank you for saving me from the sea.”
He nodded.
She swallowed.
They stood that way, the silence a living thing between them, disturbed only by the sound of the storm raging against the tiny hut, the wind howling through a crack in the old timber walls, too long without the taste of rain to sustain them. One strike of lightning, and the world would be engulfed in red and gold.
But there was no lightning.
The fierceness of the storm was waning.
She must not have heard it, likely would not have recognized the abating of the winds having never seen a storm before in her life, but Ouros knew, could feel it.
The rains were calming to a downpour, a release, not a rage.
She blinked.
He stepped away.
His post at her door had seemed the safest place when he’d brought her to the cabin, a means of easy escape should he need it when she proved malevolent. He kept her in his peripheral vision as he moved to her side, around her, slowly exploring the cabin she called home that he’d not explored while she slept.
She turned to keep him in sight.
The sound of her gasp made him pause in his examination of the rough-hewn chair at the foot of the bed.
Her gaze was caught on the patch of sea glass in the wall, the rain pelting its blue and green colors.
It was as though she forgot he was there, so fascinated was she by the squall.
She crossed in front of him, her shawl slipping further down her arms as she walked past, uncaring, to press her free fingers to the window.
For all that the cabin was old, it still held the water out well enough. The only place he had found a leak had been near what had once served as the bath, or so Amece had told him when first they met. The tub was long gone. He almost missed having it there. His memories of the bath he had shared with Ven’s ancestor was one of joy, before damnation.
So lost was he to the past, that he didn’t see her attempt to flee in time.
She sprinted to the door whose post he had left.
The old wood parted from the wall before he crossed the room to stop her.
Ven stepped out into the rain, and when he thought she would run for her freedom, she stopped, walked hesitantly forward, her hand outstretched before her, drops of water decorating her skin where the wind blew the sprinkle against her.
She let the blanket drop from about her chest. The cloth fell to a puddle on the deck as she stepped off the porch and onto the muddied sands beyond its shelter.
Ouros watched her, standing a few feet to her back, not having realized that he followed until he felt the cold deluge against his bare skin.
He hated the feel of the sand between his toes. If he never had to feel the same again in the long years of life remaining to him, it would be too soon. But he watched her sink to her knees on the same, lift handfuls of the mud to her face, watch as the shower washed the dirt away, left streaks on her flesh that she laughed at.
Laughed.
There was no bitterness or regret to the sound she made.
In his chest, so cold for so many years, the fire that was a piece of his heart flared bright at the sound.
Careless. Joyful.
Nothing in the sea made a sound like that.
Ouros couldn’t find it in himself to be bitter over her joy.
There was something infectious about it that he desperately wanted to bundle for himself, keep with him always, find a way to hold close lest he be forced back to his prison alone.
She twisted on her knees, fingers clenching and unclenching, trying to hold the rain that ran off her skin. “This is you? This storm if because of you?”
This human, kneeling naked in his tempest, smiled up at him with…was it…thanks?
He frowned, the sensation different than in his natural form. The ridges of his brow not as distinct even as there was more forehead for ridges to form over without his horns to impede the expression. “You said I was condemned for the same.”
Neither admission nor denial.
Ven extended a hand, and Ouros took it before he thought to refrain.
He helped her up, and she stepped into his body, kept her grip on his fingers as she drew close, no fear in her now as there had been in the confines of her room.
“We were wrong.” The smile on her lips lost some of its joy, but still held only – “Gratitude. For the rains.” She dropped his h
and only to wrap her arms around his neck. “Thank you for bringing them back to us. For saving us.”
Summer Storms, but she was so small compared to him. She had to rise on her toes to encircle his neck with her arms. Her head, even raised as it was, barely came to beneath his chin, the wet strands of her hair tickled his jaw, the sensation nearly forgotten for his scales did not notice such small irritations like this new flesh did.
Ven turned her cheek against his chest, and Ouros did the unthinkable and returned her embrace.
How long had it been since he’d been this close to another creature not intent on attacking him?
Best not to think on it, lest the memory of the last time reemerge to haunt him.
He tipped his chin down, rubbed his jaw against the crown of her head.
What had she said?
For saving us?
Thunder crackled in the sky. She jumped in his arms, pulled away to look up at the dark clouds overhead, the docile storm growing violent.
Even still, she lost none of her wonder at the weather.
Ouros found it hard to maintain his anger when she held no fear.
“What do you mean by saving you?”
She released her hold around his neck to bring one hand to her face, brush away the drops of water running down her cheeks, across her eyes, making her blink far more quickly than she normally would.
Humans had no second eyelid like his kind. Their eyes were vulnerable to sand and rain and the salt of the sea unlike his own.
Her brows drew together, the frown he had been expecting since the start of their foray into the storm. “From the drought. We’ve had no rains since you were imprisoned. The last few vestiges of water stores beneath the sands are nearly gone. Without the storms, we would die. Could you not tell?” She hmphed, motioned with her hands towards the water-logged sands around them. “Everything is drying up. That we have any desert plants left are a miracle.”
He’d heard her say “desert” many times. Had seen the sands she travelled through with his own eyes, but the world he’d been cast from had been one full of life and vibrancy.
Surely not all of the green could have been lost?
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