by Ava Sinclair
He blocks my path as I approach. I feel the heat coming off his bare chest. It reminds me he is not human.
“What do you need, Drakoryan?”
He stares down at me. “You,” he says.
Chapter 6
ERDORIN
I could tell she doesn’t want to let me in, but a village healer doesn’t turn anyone away.
Thera is silent as she walks around me to open her cottage door. It is dark and cold within, but I know if I offer to help build a fire, she’ll refuse.
The rattle of kindling. A spark. A crackle. The glow in the hearth illuminates her silhouette as it fills the room with light.
It’s a small cottage, and although the last to be built for the woman who insisted others’ be constructed first, it already looks settled. What herbs she’s managed to find in our valley hang in dried bunches from the ceiling beams. Shelves are lined with items she stuffed into a sack before fleeing Darly— bottles and vials and small stoneware crocks. A tattered handwritten book lies open on a simple table, filled with notes on remedies. Beside it is a mortar and pestle with some kind of ground powder in the bottom. A small cauldron hangs over the fire, awaiting whatever medicinal brew she will next concoct.
There is a single bed with a mattress of straw and a simple blanket.
A clucking sound comes from the corner. Several hens sit in crates, fluffing their feathers to trap the warm air filling the cottage. Small piles of corn sit in front of them. Thera is sharing her rations with them.
“You need a healing?” Her words direct my attention back to her.
“Yes.” This is a lie—a small lie, but a lie nonetheless. Had I done nothing, the cut I made on my own arm would have healed by morning. I needed an excuse to get Thera alone. Gyrvig and I have stayed behind to protect the village while our brothers council with the other lords at Castle Fra’hir over what to do about the growing unrest. It seems a good time to try and deal with the healer on my own. I take a seat and wordlessly rest my arm on the table.
Across the room, Thera removes her cloak and hangs it on a peg by the fire. I realize when she turns that this is something she reflexively does as part of her evening routine. I can also tell she wishes she’d left it on. Is this because she notes how my eyes drink her in? Our kind has always taken maidens. Thera is no maiden. She has a woman’s body with full breasts, a narrow waist, and sweetly flared hips. I shift to hide how my cock rises beneath my skirt.
Her skin is fair, her eyes as dark as her hair. Her woman’s softness does not extend to those eyes. They are like shields, guarding something deep within.
The healer walks over and lights a candle on the table. The flame casts a glow on my wound. She peers at it, then looks up at me curiously. She turns, goes to the shelf and takes down a small crock.
“Why do you speak against us?” I ask when she turns back.
“Why did you cut yourself?”
Her retort takes me by surprise, and I realize she’s focused on the knife at my waist. I did not thoroughly wipe the blade. There is blood on it. I’m suddenly angry, not with her, but with myself.
She walks over to the table and dips two fingers in the crock she’s holding. “Drakoryans.” She speaks as if to herself. “All you do is lie.”
Her words should inflame me further, yet all I can think on is her touch as she spreads the salve in the open gash of the wound. She’s tending me despite the fact that I purposefully inflicted my injury.
“You hate us.” I make the statement in hopes of drawing a reaction—an affirmation, a denial, anything I can latch onto. Thera does not answer. She just continues to dress my wound in silence. I try not to be distracted by the feel of her touch on my skin, by her nearness. As she leans forward, I glimpse the tops of her breasts straining against the bodice. She looks up as she presses a leaf over the wound, and I quickly avert my gaze.
“I’ve very little linen for binding.” She heads to a small chest and withdraws a thin strip of fabric, glancing at it almost sadly. I feel guilty now for making her use meager supplies on an injury that did not need to be treated.
“The linen won’t be necessary.”
Thera presses the linen to her chest for a moment before turning to put it back in the box.
“What do you take in payment?” I ask. “Gold coin?”
“What use are gold coins here?” She shuts the chest. “There were dried apples in my rations this week. I tended to a boy today whose mother said they got none. If you could see that Delia of Stonecross gets her portion, that will be payment enough.”
I rise from my chair. “She got no dried apples because there were none. They are only in the soldiers’ rations.” I pause. “I had the woman Sybil bring them to you. I bade her not to tell.”
Thera doesn’t immediately reply. She approaches me, her gaze on the floor. When she looks up at me, the appreciation I’d hoped to see in her eyes is not there. Instead, I see anger, and her tone is as icy as the wind outside.
“Do not grant me any favors, any pleasantries, any kindnesses. I need them not, dragon man, nor do I want them.”
“Why do you hate us so?” I ask again.
She ignores my question. “Apples. If you can manage it, take apples to Delia and her family. Do this, and your debt to me will be paid.”
I feel my frustration rising. She glares at me as if I’m little more than a dog. Her animosity is palpable.
“You’re inciting the villagers against us.” I decide it’s time to bluntly ask what I’d hoped to ply with conversation.
“Incite? By speaking the truth? If truth incites, perhaps it is because it forces these people to acknowledge the deceitfulness and cruelty they are too willing to forget.”
“It is dangerous, what you do.”
She cocks her head. “Is that a threat, dragon man? What will you do? Show yourself as a beast to scare me? Burn my house?” She smirks. “Trust me when I say the Drakoryans can hurt me little more than they already have.”
Thera walks to the door. She puts her hand on the handle.
“You’re a widow,” I say and watch as her hand squeezes the handle. I approach her. “I’ve heard some say it.” I am hesitant to ask the next question but ask it anyway. “Do you blame us for your mate’s death?”
When she looks up at me, her eyes glitter with tears of rage. She opens the door roughly, and the order she gives me is spoken through gritted teeth.
“Get out.”
I do as she says, regretting how I handled the healer. I’ve done nothing to quell her anger. I have only made it worse.
Chapter 7
JAREO
“Is it any wonder the villagers grow suspicious?” Imryth of House Fra’hir speaks quietly, but his question demands our attention.
I’ve just given the council an account of how the recruits refused to either serve or give up their arms without negotiation. The middle-born Lord of Fra’hir is the first to offer his opinion.
“Why did they tell them we were bringing them here?” he asks. “Because of the enemy. And yet they have not even glimpsed it. We tell them to live in fear of something they have not seen, to prepare to battle it. We urge them to be allies even as we act as rulers. Meanwhile, the weather grows fiercer by the day. To them, the ShadowFell is a thing imagined. But hunger? That is something known. We’ve made some of them feel it before.”
“Why do the ShadowFell wait?” Zyvis, a lord from House Za’vol sits with his two brothers, Jayx and Turin. “Could it be possible that they’ve abandoned their cause?”
“They’ve abandoned nothing.” Olin the Wise, Oracle of House Fra’hir, has been standing quietly in the doorway. We fall silent as he moves to the center of the room. Castle oracles command great respect. Not only are they sacred keepers of our history; they can channel the Wyrd, the witches who live in the Mystic Mountain.
Olin’s expression is grave as he faces us. “The ShadowFell’s desire for violence is as powerful as ever. Now it is tempered with restr
aint from an even darker source. They ally themselves with an ancient power yet undiscerned by the witches. The strategy will be different this time.” His creased brow creases even more. “They seek to sew discord, to weaken us before they attack.” The oracle’s tone grows firm. “We must heal the fracture between the villagers and the Drakoryans.”
He looks at me and my brothers. “I have seen someone in my dreams, someone who feeds this unrest, who tends it so that it thrives. A woman. You know her?”
I feel a chill run through me. I nod. “The healer.”
“Thera.” The oracle says her name, even though I have not spoken it. “She thinks her path is just when in fact, it is fraught with danger. She, too, is susceptible to an enemy hidden.”
“Must you speak in riddles, Olin?” Imryth snaps. “These are matters of life and death!”
“Silence, Drakoryan!” The oracle glares, and Imryth obeys. “I only reveal what has been revealed to me. Sometimes it is a hazy picture.”
“So, what do we do about this woman?” I ask.
Olin takes a deep breath. “A solution has not yet been revealed. For now, keep her under your eye.”
His vagueness frustrates me, but with oracles it is expected, and it avails one naught to press matters. Another lord starts to speak, then stops when the doors to the council hall open. What we see has us Drakoryans glancing at one another in puzzlement.
Council meetings are reserved for men, and we fall into stunned silence as Drakoryan Brides, heads held high, walk down the aisle towards the front of the room where the Lords of Fra’hir are standing. Their mate, Lady Lyla, leads the way. Behind her is Lady Isla of Za’vol, whose mates took her as a War Bride after finding her clinging to life in the village of Branlock where everyone else had been slaughtered or taken by the ShadowFell.
The women are also silent as they file in and fan out to stand in front of where we sit. Some of the lords frown to see their mates. But as this is the hall of Castle Fra’hir, the lords of this house will address the matter.
“Lady Lyla.” Lord Drorgros approaches the mate he shares with his brothers. His admonishment is gentle but firm. “This is a council of lords, and no place for females.”
His lady replies in a tone as unwavering as his own. “Tell me, my Lord Drorgros. When the enemy strikes, will it make exception for our gender? Or will it kill male and female alike?” The other brides nod solemnly. “You cannot protect us from the truth, nor can you hide it. The soldiers of the serving class go to train with the villagers. They come home and tell the wives who work in our castles. We know there is strife in the village. And hunger. And fear. We want to do our part to ease their woes.”
“Go on, my lady.”
“Our request is simple. Their homes across the mountains were destroyed before many could retrieve many essential belongings. As women, we know what they need—cloth, needles, thread, crockery for cooking, lanterns and candles, wool and looms. Why give the villagers grain when we can bake bread for them in castle ovens? Isla said the healers need herbs. They likely need other things, too.”
“They need linen.” Erdorin speaks up.
“Yes! Linen for bandages, silk for sewing up wounds,” Isla of Za’vol chimes in. “There are ways we can make their lives easier, even if we cannot give them more food.”
“And we would come to the villages and distribute it.” Lady Syrene of House Jo’lyn speaks up, but at her statement the lords object.
“No. It is too dangerous!” The objection is joined by a rising chorus of agreement, which quiets when Drorgros raises his hands.
“Let them speak!” he cries, and when the room is quiet, Lyla resumes.
“Danger?” Lyla laughs. “Were it not for the Drakoryan Brides who rode to the villages and convinced their people to evacuate, they’d have perished. That, too, was dangerous, yet we did what we had to do, and will do so again for the villagers. We are their daughters, their sisters. You took us from them, but one never completely takes a maiden from her people. We do not ask to return; however, we would see them. We would give back to our people and promote the Drakoryan rule as good for all.”
“And what’s to say they will not resent you more when you return to the castles?” Lord Imryth asks.
Lyla considers his question. “It is one thing to make them understand that we now live a different life. It is another to live it and ignore them. Let us be your ambassadors. Let us soften the spines of their anger with goodwill.”
While Lord Drorgros of Fra’hir can grant the women the right to be heard at council, he cannot grant them what they ask without agreement of the council. He thanks the brides and they file back out of the room to await our decision.
Oh, if only this were something the king would concern himself with. It would make our life easier to hear his voice. But this does not rise to the level of royal intervention, and so we lords are left to debate the matter, which is no small task. The older lords are more resistant to change. We’ve lost the tradition of claiming mates from Altar Rock, they say. Are we to lose the right to exercise our authority to keep our women safe as well?
“We have gone from being a mystery to these villagers to laying bare our secrets. We have lords living among them for protection. Now our ladies seek to mingle…” The words of an objecting lord trail away, but the unspoken fear is evident. Some worry that the line between rulers and ruled will become blurred.
The younger lords, however, begrudgingly give weight to the women’s request. A woman is quietly urging rebellion among the villagers, they say. Former village maidens bearing gifts will balance the bitter words of one healer.
With Drakoryans, majority rule decides such matters. More decide to allow the women than refuse them. Those who fear any danger are assured they can go with their mates as protection.
When all is said and done, we have argued long into the night. As my brothers and I emerge from the hall, however, our sensitive noses catch the faint scent of bread. Lyla of Fra’hir, sure of victory, has already started baking for the villagers.
Chapter 8
GYRVIG
“What have you there, lad?”
The boy looks to be a little younger than I was before my first shift, that unsettled spot when one is neither child nor man. He wears an oversized fur cloak belted at the waist with a leather thong. Where other village lads look in wonder at me and my brothers, this lad’s eyes show the wariness that comes with minding fretful whispers.
I can tell he doesn’t want to answer me. His hand strays to his belt where a dead animal hangs by one leg. “Rabbit. I snared it myself,” he finally says. There’s a hint of pride in his voice.
“First one?”
“Not my first snare. First rabbit, though. Caught it in the thicket, down by the stream.”
“You must be proud.” I nod at his catch. “Have you a blade to dress it?”
“No. I was for home to fetch one.”
“No need.” I pull the knife from a sheath at my side. “You can use mine.”
He eyes me skeptically. “Are you sure?”
“I’d not offer if I weren’t.”
He suddenly looks more child than man. He’s sheepish. “I’ve not dressed one before.”
“I have. I’ll show you. Come over here.”
The grass by the path is hard frozen and crackles under our feet. The trees above are bare, the branches reaching down like twisted bony hands that would grasp us if they could. I beckon the lad to a boulder and tell him to lay the rabbit on its back. I tell him how to slit the skin of the underbelly and pull it apart round the sides, how to tug the top of the skin up and the bottom down— like pulling off shirt and pants, he observes—how to work the legs out and separate the skin from the body entirely by cutting off the head and feet where the stripped skin remains attached. I show him how to cut the thin membrane of skin low on the rabbit’s belly so he doesn’t puncture the bowel, how to slice upward to lay the insides exposed, how to scoop them out. I tell him
which parts to discard and which can go into the cookpot, like the liver and heart.
“Your mother will thank you for dressing it here instead of in her house.” I grin down at him. He’s smiling now. “What’s your name, lad?”
“Matthias,” he answers.
“I’m Lord Gyrvig.”
“I know who you are.” He attaches the now skinned carcass back to his belt and bundles the edible organs in the skin, which he folds like a bag. “I hear folk talk about you and your brothers.”
“And what do they say?”
Matthias looks up at me. He flushes. “That you live in fine castles with servants. That you steal our maidens and take our food.
“It’s all true.” I can tell my honesty surprises him. “It has been so for hundreds and hundreds of years. We are your rulers.”
“They say you are monsters.” He speaks more boldly, then pauses, his next words quiet. “But you don’t seem like a monster.”
I chuckle. “That’s because I’m not. We Drakoryans were born half-dragon. We spend most of our time as men. It’s what we prefer. The next time you see us turn into dragons, it will be in defense of you and yours.”
“You promise?” he asks.
“I promise.” I reach down and undo the sheath at my waist. “Here, lad. For the knife. They’re both yours now.”
“No, I couldn’t.”
“I have others. You need one now that you’ve figured out how to snare a rabbit.”
“Thank you, my lord.” He grins broadly.
“Matthias!” Someone is calling the boy’s name. I look up to see the healer. She seems relieved to see the boy, but frowns to see I am with him. She glances at me for just a moment before walking over and putting her hands on his arms. “Where have you been? Your mother is worried sick.”
“I snared a rabbit! And Lord Gyrvig showed me how to dress it.” The lad stands a bit taller as he proudly puffs his chest. “He even gave me a knife of my own!”
