Dragon Unleashed

by Grace Draven

  Halani rested her forehead on her knees and stared at her lap. “Why would they take Mama in the first place? She’s a child herself in all but body.” She turned her head to look at him and saw softness in his dark gaze. It disappeared in an instant.

  “I don’t know. I can only guess that someone in Domora knows what a live mother-bond is as well as its value. If they’ve discovered the connection between Asil and your uncle, they’ll use her as bait to try and flush him out and take the mother-bond.” He met her gaze, his a measuring one. “I know you want to find your mother right away. I do too, but if Hamod has the mother-bond, I can find him faster, and he may know or have an idea where she is.”

  If her uncle was here right now, Halani would wrap her fingers around his throat and squeeze. He’d taken Asil with him as a way of punishing Halani for her rebellion and then lost her in Domora. “If we find him, why don’t we just use him as bait to flush out those holding Mama?”

  Malachus’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “I’d have no issue with that at all. It’s a good idea, though I’m surprised by your suggestion.”

  “He and I have never gotten along very well. I’m the product of his sister’s abduction and rape. He’s told me more than once he almost smothered me when I was born and would have done so had Mama not begged him for mercy.”

  “Gods, Halani, what kind of bastard says that to a child? Especially one who’s a member of his family?” Malachus’s eyes, black and cool as polished onyx until now, shot angry sparks.

  She shoved around the coals in their fire with the stick she held. “A man burdened by the guilt of not saving his beloved sister in time or preventing her capture by slavers in the first place. My existence reminds him of her torture and his failure.”

  More silence settled between them for a few moments until Malachus spoke again, and this time his voice wasn’t so flat or distant. “You look very much like your uncle. Enough so that people could mistake you for his daughter. Does he know this?”

  Her chuckle sounded humorless to her ears. “It’s one reason I’m still alive, I think. Whoever my father was, I took nothing from him in appearance. In that the gods were kind. But despite our conflicts and the fact that I could cheerfully blacken both of his eyes at the moment, I owe Hamod a great deal. I was raised among people who loved me despite my origins and gave my mother a safe haven in which to heal and reclaim the innocence she’d lost. Not all things work out for the better, but sometimes they work out for the acceptable, and for that I’m grateful.”

  Malachus didn’t reply and after a time rose from his place beside her. “I’ll be right back. Batraza’s wandered farther afield than I like.” He disappeared into the blackness where the trees grew thick and the mare had traveled during her grazing.

  He returned with Batraza in tow and stopped in his tracks. “You’ve taken your hair down,” he said, stating the obvious in a voice gone raspy.

  Halani stared at him, comb in one hand, a skein of her hair in the other, and butterflies beating themselves against her rib cage. “I always comb it out before I plait it for bed.”

  The mare nickered a greeting at Halani before pulling on her lead rope. Malachus let it go, and she ambled to a patch of grass she hadn’t yet nibbled down.

  Malachus returned to his spot by the fire. Firelight danced across his body, creating shadows that cavorted over his shoulders and chest, flickering across his face. Halani found him breathtaking.

  Bitter anger purled off him to beat against her in a steady, chilling tide. His closed expression didn’t invite overtures from her, and the hard downturn of his mouth warned he’d either ignore anything she said or verbally strip off a piece of her flesh if she tried.

  She resumed her grooming, using the comb she’d brought to battle the knots in her curls. She hummed under her breath as she worked the long length, and soon she felt his stare on her, forbidding, heavy, intense. He watched her with half-closed eyes, his face a study in conflicting emotions—yearning mixed with fury.

  Ringlets sprang back from the comb’s stretch, defying her efforts to tame them until she finally gathered the mass together and swiftly plaited it. Desperate to break the roiling silence between them, she held up the comb to Malachus. “I can comb and braid yours for you if you’d like. I have an extra hair tie.”

  His dark gaze went from her face to the comb and back before he gave a wordless nod. The air in her lungs thinned, and her heartbeat drummed a little harder. He hadn’t bitten her head off or refused her offer. She motioned for him to turn his back to her and scooted closer until she knelt behind him, her knees pressed to his hips as she captured his hair in her hand. She indulged in her admiration of his mane by sliding her fingers along the strands before running the comb through its length.

  “You have beautiful hair. I wish mine was so easy to manage.” He surprised her when he lifted her braid from where it had fallen across his shoulder when she’d leaned forward to capture some of his locks that eluded her grasp. “As I said before, this is your glory. Maybe I should call you Halani of the Curls instead of Halani of the Lightning.”

  Was that a teasing note she heard in his voice? They had been friends and then lovers, both relationships now wrecked by what he saw as her perfidy and betrayal. Anger still burned through him, and until now, she despaired of ever seeing a real smile from him or hearing a civil word. Did she yearn for something so badly she imagined it?

  “Are you finally going to tell me why you call me that?”

  He didn’t let go of her hair, curving the braid’s end into a loop before releasing it, only to repeat the action. “Because I first saw your face in the lightning. Not the bolt I called down on the fen road but another before I came to the Goban market. It showed me a winsome woman with gray eyes who was somehow connected to the draga bone I sought. And it was so.”

  She combed his hair back from his face, weaving it into a tight, simple braid similar to hers, and tied the end with her remaining hair tie. “Done,” she proclaimed, mulling over his words, both strange and poetic.

  He released her braid and turned to face her. The restrained hairstyle gave his already harsh face an even colder quality, emphasizing the hollows of his cheeks and long nose. “Am I handsome?” He asked the question with a lofty solemnity that belied the glimmer in his eyes.

  Breathtaking, she thought but said instead, “To make the maidens swoon. I’m very good at braids.”

  “You haven’t swooned yet.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “I’m not a maiden, as you’ve discovered.”

  “Then next time I’ll request you braid my hair in such a way that you will swoon.” A shadow passed over his face as soon as the words left his lips, and the brief spark of humor died. Halani mourned its loss and mourned even more his obvious withdrawal from her, both physically and emotionally.

  To lessen the awkwardness between them, she rummaged through their supplies, retrieved a blanket, and wrapped herself in it. She lay on her back and stared at the stars, denying to herself that she listened to his breathing and counted every inhalation and exhalation.

  “Comfortable?”

  Halani glanced at him. He’d brought a pipe with him and was busy filling the bowl with aromatic leaf. “Yes, thank you.” She stared at him a moment longer. Light worshipped him; sunlight, candlelight, campfire light. Even lightning blessed him with a bludgeoning touch. The free traders, seeing him survive such a strike and come away with nothing more than a burn hole in his shirt, were suitably awed by the stunt, certain they beheld the power of a weather mage at hand. Halani disagreed, though she kept it to herself.

  Lightning has always loved the draga. His words echoed in her mind. He searched for a mother-bond to lift a curse, and his grief and anger over the corruption of the Sun Maiden story had seemed strangely personal. He healed at an extraordinary rate. The fact that he hadn’t died outright from his wo
unds was cause for wonder. And he smoked. Literally. Plumes of it wisping off his skin and hair as if a fire burned unseen inside him. She stared at him, no longer seeing just a dark-haired man with a harsh visage but the shadow of a creature much bigger, much older, infinitely more powerful than a normal man.

  “You’re staring, Halani.” Malachus lowered his pipe. “If you want to share the pipe, just say so.”

  She grimaced, relieved that he had misread her intense scrutiny. “I’ve never developed a taste for it. You’re welcome to it.” She closed her eyes, seeking sleep even as her tired mind chased thoughts like starlings: Asil’s abduction, Hamod’s disappearance, Malachus’s secrets as well as his fury.

  Sleep remained elusive, and the prickly feel of being watched made her open her eyes to find Malachus watching her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything is wrong,” he snapped. “It’s partially why we’re here,” he said. “But that isn’t why I’m staring.” He looked away to stir the fading embers in the fire pit she’d made earlier. “I was just remembering a temple I once visited during my travels, before I sailed to these shores,” he said in softer tones. “A temple to a goddess of spring. The entrance doors were carved with the reliefs of twin priestesses with flowers in their hair and ivy encircling their arms and bodies. The statue of the goddess herself was an impressive thing. A deity who looked as if she’d beat you with a tree if you annoyed her.”

  Obviously worshippers in Winosia took their nature deities very seriously.

  “The twins, though, were beautiful to behold,” he said with a supplicant’s awe. “A balm to the spirit, a pleasure to the eye.” His gaze returned to her, black and starless. “You remind me of them.”

  Held in thrall by that look and afraid she might ruin the moment, Halani didn’t dare blink. “Spring is my favorite season,” she said softly.

  “I doubt that comes as a surprise to anyone.” His tense shoulders relaxed, and while he didn’t smile, she heard the ghost of a teasing note in his voice. “Maybe I should call you Halani of the Spring.”

  Halani wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t sound nearly as grand as Halani of the Lightning.”

  “True,” he said, “but it’s spring, not lightning, that has always given men hope.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Unlike Halani, Malachus remained awake. Troubled men rarely found sleep, and he was a troubled man. Or draga.

  He had spent the last century and a half journeying through the lands of men, learning ways and beliefs outside those he’d been raised with among the brotherhood. His naivete when he first ventured from the monastery’s sanctuary so long ago had faded quickly enough, and while experience and maturity had brought him wisdom, humanity still flummoxed him at every turn. This time a woman in a trader caravan had managed to twist him into knots more tangled than the rigging on a shipwreck.

  Condemn us if you will, but know why we do it, not why you think we do it.

  Her earlier words echoed in his mind like a chant, no matter how much he tried to ignore them. It was easy to condemn and judge when the reasons for a crime seemed not only clear-cut but petty. Halani’s response to his accusations and fury had caught him off guard. She hadn’t justified the grave robbing. Nor had she denied it. She had simply explained why they did it and left it to him to accept or excoriate. His fury drove him to choose the second. Now, when possessed of cooler emotions, he was torn.

  He’d never approve of their raiding. He’d seen the destruction grave robbers left behind once they gutted a gravesite, had watched as gentle monks fell to their knees in anguish or held the scattered bones of skeletons to their chests and wept at the violation of their holy dead. Those thieves had stolen goods, dignity, and Malachus’s birthright. Even now, the mother-bond remained elusive, an ever-present pull in his soul but still just beyond his reach. He’d been too young at the time to take his revenge. By the time he was old enough, those thieves were dead.

  Even were he not plagued by the memory of the necropolis’s looting, he’d still find the practice repugnant. And dangerous. He wanted to beat Kursak bloody for taking Halani with him on this latest raid. The horror of seeing her yanked off her feet and dragged into the water burned a nightmarish image in his mind, one he’d never forget.

  No doubt she believed her sins doubled when she told him her uncle had the mother-bond. Her confession had rammed a fist into his gut even when he’d anticipated what she would say. She had taken his heart and given him her body, then turned and planted a knife in him. His cooler reason only now began to prevail. Despite their intimacy, her first loyalty wasn’t to him but to her family, and he hadn’t been forthright with her about his quest, playing coy with the curse explanation. Could he truly condemn her for her deception?

  But he would never rob a grave.

  Spoken like a man who’s never known the joy of starvation.

  He had not, but her grim statement made it plain she had. Had such a horror turned an otherwise generous people into something more feral, less reverent? Made those who survived starvation determined not to suffer it again, no matter what it took?

  Those questions kept him awake the remainder of the night, and as the stars faded with morning’s approach, so did his anger. In the end, even if Malachus considered himself righteous in his condemnation (and that was no longer so), his disapproval was his to bear, not Halani’s, not the other free traders’. He wasn’t one of them and wouldn’t face their hardships.

  She gave him a wary look when he woke her at dawn with the offering of a cup of hot tea and a half smile. “Everything all right?” she asked. “Did I miss something while I slept?”

  “Only my soul-searching,” he replied.

  He didn’t have to urge her to hurry her morning ablutions. The worried lines creasing her brow told him they couldn’t get to Domora fast enough to suit her and calm her fears for Asil.

  They were on the road in short order, and this time Malachus rode pillion while Halani held the reins. She sat stiffly in front of him at first, guarded and quiet. His hands rested lightly across her midriff, though he longed to nudge her back against him and hold her close. Not yet. Not until they cleared away the lingering hostilities and hurt.

  “You were right,” he said. “I denounced in haste and judged without knowledge. And I purposefully insulted you. I don’t expect you to forgive it, but you should know I’m sorry and wish I could take it back.”

  Her faint gasp and the jerk of her body told him he’d shocked her. Halani drew on the reins, and Batraza halted. Halani stared straight ahead. Her voice was soft, though the grip she held on the reins had turned her knuckles white.

  “I don’t understand. What’s brought about such a change of heart?”

  He tapped Batraza’s sides with his heels to get her moving again. “A night of sleepless self-reflection and some of what you said when we argued.” He touched her chin, coaxing her to turn her head so he could see part of her face and the expression she wore. “I’ve never known starvation, but you have. How old were you?”

  “Eight,” she said with a sigh. “We lost a third of our number during the Great Blight. I never forgot it. None of us did.” She studied him. “Knowing that shouldn’t change how you feel about barrow raiding.”

  “Nothing’s changed my mind. I still think it’s a detestable act deserving of harsh punishment. But I no longer believe all those who do it are strictly motivated by greed.”

  “Most are,” she said. “I wish I could tell you differently, that only a few rob graves because of an appetite for possessions and riches, but I’d be lying. And I’d be lying if I told you I hadn’t felt a rush of pleasure at hearing the chime of gold or silver under dirt and grass as I walked a barrow’s perimeter.” She placed one of her hands over his where it rested against her. “I’ve stolen from the dead, Malachus, but I swear I’ve never desecrated the bodies, never destroyed their rest
ing places, never rejoiced in lifting bones and folding back shrouds. My uncle always feared that doing so would call up a revenant to take revenge. For me, it was guilt. I’d already invaded a sacred place. To ransack it seemed a worse sort of offense.”

  Malachus hadn’t intended to tell her about the necropolis and its destruction, fearing she might interpret the revelation as an attempt to justify his earlier censure. At her last words, he changed his mind. “It is the worst offense,” he said. “The one the living remember most clearly.”

  When he finished telling the tale, she leaned back against him of her own accord. “No wonder you were so angry when you discovered what we were up to. I’m sorry. So very sorry. For that. For keeping silent about my uncle having the mother-bond, for making your task of retrieving it so much harder. I wish I’d done things differently.”

  This time it was he who stopped Batraza. His arms tightened around Halani. He leaned forward, even as she turned more fully toward him, and cupped her cheek. The kiss they shared sent multiple bolts of lightning through Malachus’s body, only these weren’t of Pernu’s making, but Halani’s. She moaned into his mouth, her grip on his wrist tightening as he deepened the kiss. Batraza’s impatient snort and the shift of her stance broke them apart.

  “We will forgive and learn from each other,” Malachus said against her temple, relishing the feel of her soft hair against his lips. “We’ll be in Domora before nightfall. With any luck, we’ll find the rest of your caravan shortly after. I don’t know where we’ll sleep or if we’ll even have beds, but if we do, will you share mine once more?”

  “Yes,” she said with a fervency that was almost a prayer.

  * * *

  * * *

  Domora was a sprawling place of soaring edifices made of polished granite that gleamed in the sun. Malachus was reminded of the quiet garden ponds tended by the monks with whom he’d lived, their surfaces covered by water lilies whose delicate blossoms bloomed under early morning light in shades of gold and pink, ivory and pale yellow. Domora’s greatest structures, including the palace at its center, possessed those same soft hues. They contrasted with the more ramshackle buildings that spread out from the center to the city walls, becoming dingier and more run-down the farther they stood from the palace.