Chapter Forty-Five
“Mother!”
Ven pulled against her captors’ grips, tried to race to where her mother was chained to a post outside the front steps of the Citadel.
The rain had turned to snow before her escort reached the city.
She hadn’t known the word, or knew it only from myth, but the white flakes that fell from the sky were cold and heavy and where the rain weighed her down, the snow froze against her skin, and there was no piece of dry clothing between the soldiers and herself to find warmth.
The white was mounded around Shara’s feet on the ground.
No shoes, those had been taken from her at some point in her beating, and now her toes were bright red when Ven looked down to her mother’s ankles.
She fought to break free until one of the guards backhanded her and she fell to her knees.
They had bound her arms behind her back. The position forced her shoulders back cruelly, her hands wrapped in rope at her elbows, forearms banded together so she had no chance of wiggling free of her bindings.
She couldn’t push herself from her the ground when she fell.
Shara made no sound of notice and Ven prayed she wasn’t too late.
What could she do now to save her mother?
She was as doomed as the older woman.
The heavy doors to the Citadel screeched open. Soldiers, more than she’d known there could ever be, filed from the archway, marched in clanking armor, spears raised before them, until they surrounded Ven and her mother’s post.
No windows were open to let in the wind. The houses on the streets of Alaluat were boarded against the weather like the storm carried sand and not the promise of water, frozen or wet.
No one would bear witness to whatever the khan decided to do to her.
No one would have cared anyways.
A soldier pulled at her shoulder, sat her upright so that she could watch the king’s approach, his son at his side, both men shifting uneasily in the snow though they kept coming.
The phai’s face was scarred. From ear to cheek, the red line that bisected his visage was swollen and discolored, likely infected though the stitches that held it closed looked clean enough. His skin was not fever flushed. He wouldn’t die from the injury.
Ven couldn’t console herself with the thought that at least he would be gone from the world with her.
“The bitch freed the beast. We should kill her now before it comes seeking its revenge.”
Better to kill her now, than risk her pulling the dragon’s magic and using it against the prince. She knew the words Emery kept between his lips, saw the aborted rise of his hand towards the scar she was proud to have caused against his cheek.
Did his father know that the son had been the one to free her?
Had it been the father all along, working with the son’s hands to find out what Ven could and couldn’t do?
She stiffened her shoulders, wouldn’t react to the boy’s threats.
Ouros wouldn’t come for her.
He’d given his word not to hurt her too.
But the moment Emery or his father moved against the dragon, there would be blood, and Ven wasn’t forgiving enough to hope for peace when the man before her wanted her dead.
“She can control him, just like her ancestor. That’s why we’ve held the line for so long.”
The calm certainty of the khan’s words was more terrifying than the son’s promises.
“You were supposed to befriend her, Emery. But your impatience got the better of you.” The serpent-eyed lord of the Khanastani crouched before Ven, slapped her face when she tried to pull away from his touch, held her chin despite her attempt to draw back. “She is the only one who can speak with the beast, and you have turned her against us with your hubris. Look in her eyes,” Quloe tipped her face towards the prince standing at his back.
She had no place to turn where she was not looking into the gaze of someone intent on killing her or condemning her.
Better to hate then.
Let the prince see that his father’s claims bore truth.
She met Emery’s gaze and knew that if his father had not been the shield in front of her, the prince would have attacked.
“She released the dragon.”
“Yes. And now she will chain him for us, just like her grandmother.”
“You can go to hell.”
The king smiled, fangs she’d not noticed upon their first fateful meeting snapping forward in his gums, the curved daggers glistening in his opened mouth, their venom dripping in slow drops against his lips where black spots had formed at the touch of the poison. “You can be assured that if you deny me, girl, I will make whatever hell you end up in look like a paradise compared to what I do to you.”
He rose, arm upraised to stop his son’s attack when the prince moved forward at the khan’s retreat. “Bring the mother. She might prove useful as leverage.”
They untied her arms, at least, when they threw her in the cell this time. Not the stone surrounded cell of her last incarceration. No. This time there was no privacy afforded to her, no quiet reprieve from the others sentenced to the dungeons, their screams and pleas turned to mocking shouts and vicious threats when she was marched into the room and the bars around her locked tight.
They’d thrown Shara on the floor with her.
Together for whatever fate they’d endure.
When she tried to go to her mother, a soldier took a long pole from the wall and shoved it through the bars to poke at her, a game to keep her back, see how long she kept trying to creep forward before the bruises added up and she sank to her haunches trying to catch her breath.
Four walls made of evenly spaced bars. The metal stung her back when she leaned against it, whatever it was made from burning against her skin. Drifts of sand covered the flagstone floor, but the carpeting of gold was not enough to keep the cold from leaching into her bones. At least there were no windows through which the snow of Ouros’ storm could fly. Small comfort, for there was no water or food offered to her either.
The soldiers who had carted her to the city had stolen her supplies, enjoyed the skin of water she’d had, the excess liberally shared among them while she was denied a drop.
Of the meat…well, she’d refused to tell them where the deer had come from, and they’d taken equal pleasure in trying to beat the information from her, and ensuring she knew she would have no taste of the spoils she refused to share the details to.
If the city wasted its water supply with such abandon while those of the poorest classes thirsted, she could only imagine what would happen if they found Ouros’ forests and the bounty it might provide.
After a time, the soldiers guarding her grew bored with their games. They stopped poking her with a stick and retreated to a table far enough away that her “foul-djinn” smell didn’t sting their noses.
That was fine with her, as it allowed her to move to her mother’s side, cradle Shara’s head in her lap, brush back the matted hair from the old forehead.
Ven was afraid to look beneath the tattered clothing the woman wore.
What injuries would she find hidden there? What had her mother suffered in Ven’s flight from the city? In her attack on the prince who had returned and had no outlet but to take his vengeance against her kin?
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Mother. I tried. I didn’t mean to,” she still didn’t understand all that she had done.
No one had said aught about the dragon’s head or the actual dragon that she had released.
Later.
That would come later with whatever else the khan had planned.
She stroked her mother’s cheek, raised her thumb to her mouth to wet the pad, wipe away a dried trail of blood at her mother’s ear.
Blood spilled because of Ven.
Her finger tingled.
Havence bent her head over her mother’s. All the times as a child that Shara had held Ven through the night when she couldn’t
sleep, dreams of her father crying out alone in the middle of the sea, trapped on an island and trying to return to them.
Shara hummed nonsense tunes, melodies that rolled with the rhythm of the waves, soothed Ven back to sleep.
Skinned knees. The pricks from the cacti.
Shara would hold Ven close and hum, brush her hands back and forth over the injuries, teach Ven about the different herbs, this one to seal the skin torn open by a thorn, another to draw out the heat from a wound burning hotly.
Calm the fever, stop the disease.
Comfort and care to restore the body.
Vessels and cells and all touched by blood, born in the blood, healed in the blood.
“You never realized, did you?”
Ven blinked, met her mother’s stare gazing up at her.
The bruises that had discolored the woman’s ochre flesh weren’t as pronounced anymore, or maybe that was just a figment of the poor lighting in the cells. Shara seemed aware, her mind clear despite whatever trials she’d faced in Ven’s absence.
A relief, to be sure, since Havence hadn’t been sure her mother would open her eyes again.
She smiled gratefully, her mother’s question forgotten to her gratitude at the woman’s recovery.
“Hava,” Shara sighed, shifted, and Ven moved to support her when she tried to sit up.
“Go slowly, Mother. You’ve been through much.” Likely even more than Ven wanted to know, than she would ask to know.
Shara waved Ven away, folded her legs beneath her far more slowly than Ven liked to see, but she did it and did it without aid.
Her mother took her hands, turned her bandaged fingers over and back, staring at the red stained pieces of fabric that hadn’t been changed or washed or redressed since Ven’s inadvertent capture. It had been Shara’s instruction to always keeps wounds as clean as possible.
Havence knew her cheeks were red with heat at her mother’s downturned lips.
“The soldiers locked my wrists behind my back—”
A sharp tsk, and Ven closed her mouth, unsure how to react to her mother’s admonishment. Shaara found the end of the bindings, peeled the dirtied material free and began unwinding it from Havence’s hand.
“There was a mudslide. The path…it was not easy to traverse.”
“The path?”
Shara must know. She must know where Havence had been, who she had freed, what that meant of the dragon.
Ven flinched when her mother ran her nails over her palm, but the pain she expected didn’t come, and she looked down at her flesh that had been cut and sliced and shredded by stones and by the dragon’s scale enough times that it should certainly be a scarred mess, but there was nothing.
She frowned, raised her hand to her face, thinking it was the darkness that stole her sight from her in the cell while Shara unwrapped her other hand.
“That’s not possible. It’s only been two days.”
And though she’d always healed quickly, this wasn’t possible.
Shara smoothed her hand over a pink line that had sliced along Ven’s thumb, a rigid outcropping that helped catch her fall, but not without a price. The skin was tender to the touch, but as she watched, the pink faded from it, pale, but whole.
“I knew you were more than an herbalist. I always knew you could heal.”
“Mother—”
“Did you speak with him, Ven? He didn’t kill you, so you must have spoken with him.” She looked up, met Havence’s gaze. “The dragon. I never knew his name. My mother wouldn’t tell me, lost to the annals of history, she said. But you know it. He told you what to call him, when he drew you to the sea.”
“The phai wanted to kill me. He threatened to kill me. Said that his father wanted us both dead.”
“So you released the beast instead.”
Ven shook her head, pulled her hands away from her mother, clenched them in front of her chest.
Between the dragon or the khan, Ven had made the only choice she could. Better the dragon and his magic be free than extinction beneath the king’s rule.
“The serpent will not stand for his release. She’s grown more powerful over the years. She’ll strike now that he walks the lands again.”
The serpent?
“What are you—”
“She will not stand for you. Not now. Not now that you know the power of your blood, the magic in your veins. I thought hiding it from you would keep you safe. I’m sorry, Ven.” She reached to cup Havence’s cheek, fingers cold against her skin. “I should have sent you with your father long ago, far from these lands and the beast that stalks them.”
She grabbed her mother’s hands, pulled them tight to her chest. “Ouros is not a monster. He’ll bring back the rains. He’ll save us all.”
It was a hopeful and hopeless prayer that she prayed, for understanding from the mother she’d left behind, forgiveness.
Do not blame the beast…
But she could not say more than she’d already asked for the same. The only decision left to make that which her mother decided.
Shara’s smile was weak, pained. “He’s not the one I speak of.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Ice formed sheets along the length of his wings, cracking with every stroke he took in the air.
The city was a distant spec below him, the mountains of sand surrounding it covering the land in a field of gold, the gold of a serpent’s scales poised to attack. No wonder the rains had stopped, and the lands dried to dust.
Even here, after days of storms chasing over the continent, not a hint of green pierced the desert soil.
Selish.
She’d called herself a snake goddess since the moment of her emergence on the land.
What was a god or goddess to a dragon?
He watched the sands around the great temple shift, roll away from the movement of the serpent’s head preparing to attack, scenting a predator nearby.
She’d grown large in his absence.
And for centuries he’d thought it was simple human arrogance and fear that had trapped him beneath the ocean’s waves.
Did the men and woman who had been terrified of him know what slept beneath their feet?
The khans who had fed the snake the hearts of non-believers…
The hearts of the men and women who came to Ouros with gifts because be brought the rains and they thrived with the wash of water and life his presence gave them.
It had been the only time he’d faced the serpent.
Her eyes had been golden and deadly but he’d held strong; he’d used claw and tooth and wing to take the snake into the air and prove who was strongest.
He should have killed Selish.
He’d let her go.
Her priests had stopped their slaughtering.
And then Amece had bound him beneath the waves.
A thousand years ago, and now the snake he’d thought was broken and weak was returned and deadlier than ever.
Her priests now called themselves kings and ruled his sand-enslaved world where once it had been filled with rolling hills and pastures to feed and succor the masses.
He wanted to roar.
To shake the dunes with his cry, watch Selish tear from the soil and try to strike him from the skies, let his fire consume her in the attempt.
But he couldn’t feel Ven.
Couldn’t find her beneath the crust of gold hiding her away.
The moment his feet touched the ground the serpent would attack.
How strong had the snake become while he moldered beneath the waves?
And could he dare risk Ven’s safety when his victory wasn’t certain?
Chapter Forty-Seven
“There are more monsters in the world than those confined to myth and legend, Havence. Religion has just as many to be wary of.”
What did that mean?
“I’ve lied to you, Hava. For generations untold, we have kept the lie alive about the dragon and our purpose.” Shara looked to the m
ark on Ven’s chest, her clothing covering the brand though it seemed to flare with heat under her mother’s stare. “We were never his jailors, love.”
“You were his guardians.”
Ven scrambled from her place on the floor, turned to glare through the bars at the golden eyes staring at her.
“We suspected, Shara Ilvanysto. We have suspected the same for years. Your mothers did well in hiding your powers from us.”
Ven’s hands clenched at her sides. “What are you talking about?”
The khan ignored Ven’s question, his gaze squarely on the older woman seated on the floor, hands twining around the bandages she’d stripped from Havence’s fingers. “You’ve always known, haven’t you? What we were? About the Goddess?”
Shara stilled, looked up, the snarl that crossed her lips feral, an expression Ven had never seen before, vicious and strong, unbeaten.
Everything she knew, everything she believed of her mother, said that Shara was subservient, she was a follower.
It was not a critique.
Ven knew the scars that her mother had suffered for even the smallest infractions against the khan.
Infractions…drummed up for the purpose of knocking down?
Shara snarled. “Not our goddess.” She spit on the floor, drilled her foot into the dirt.
A waste of water.
The greatest insult she could offer to the man before her.
To be called a water waster, at least in their small corner of the world, far from the city and the hidden pools beneath the citadel, was considered the greatest insult someone could offer another, greater even than being called djinn.
Ven caught her breath.
Quloe smiled, cold and cruel. “You played your part well. But he’s free now. He’s coming.” The king turned to Ven, and if her breath had stopped, so too now did her heart. “You don’t know. How very precious. The dragon you’ve been drawn to your entire life was relegated to his prison not to trap him, but to keep Her away.”
Her? Shara? What would Shara have wanted with Ouros?
“Me, little witch.”
Havence turned to the voice, frowned when she met the black stare gazing back at her. “I know you.”
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