The Dragon Mistress 3

by R. A. Steffan

  * * *

  I woke once to find that a second form had joined us on the bed, Eldris’ solid body bracketing mine on the other side. He was snoring softly, his breathing congested by his earlier tears. The room was windowless, lit by a tallow lamp. I couldn’t have said what time of day it was, but my body didn’t seem to care as I slipped back into sleep.

  The next time I blinked my eyes open, I was alone in the bed, but a familiar dark-haired woman sat next to me in a chair.

  “Kathrael,” I breathed, drinking in my bond-sister’s familiar features.

  She smiled, part of the expression lost behind the bronze half-mask she wore to cover the scarring on the left side of her face. Her fingers brushed over my forehead affectionately before she straightened and reached for a cup sitting on the table next to the bed.

  “Hello, Frella,” she said softly. Then, her demeanor grew brisk. “I’ve been informed that I’m to make sure you drink and eat something before I let you say anything else. So you’d best get to it.”

  My stomach roared into life, demanding nourishment. I sat up and reached for the cup, only to flinch in pain as the shoulder I’d landed on yesterday protested the movement. Gingerly, I dropped my arm and took the cup with my other hand instead. The watered wine was a familiar reminder of every time I’d been laid up sick in bed over the years, and the spiced porridge was a taste straight out of my childhood. I sensed my brother’s hand in its preparation.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked between spoonfuls. “And… what time is it?” I sincerely hoped I was safe in not asking what day it was.

  Kathrael leaned back in her chair, radiating the aura of serenity that had surrounded her for most of the years I’d known her. “I sent Favian out to rest for a bit, and then I sent Ithric after him to sit on him and make certain he didn’t come back for a few hours.”

  A little huff of breath escaped me. “Not literally, I hope?”

  Kathrael’s mouth curved into another soft smile. She lifted a shoulder and let it drop in a careless half-shrug. “I wouldn’t dare speculate. Anyway, it’s midday—just slightly past noon. You arrived yesterday morning, I gather. Your companions are outside with the dragons. And Lyndarra is…”

  Distantly, I made out the sound of sandals slapping lightly against stone, growing nearer with every step.

  “… about to barge in here and jump on you, I suspect,” Kathrael finished wryly.

  I put aside my half-finished bowl of food as a defensive measure. Moments later, a tiny, dark-haired blur appeared through the doorway and launched herself onto the bed.

  “Frella!” piped a sweet, familiar voice. In a heartbeat, I had an armful of squirming eleven-year-old. I squeezed back fiercely, my eyes sliding shut.

  “Careful, Darra,” Kathrael chided. “You know she’s got injuries.”

  “It’s all right,” I said a bit breathlessly. “We’re good as long as you don’t poke me with your lion claws, squirt.”

  “I would never!” Darra said indignantly, still clinging.

  The presence of Kathrael and Ithric’s shape-shifting daughter was a tiny ray of light through the darkness suffocating my soul, and I buried my nose in her sweet-smelling hair. Eventually, she wriggled free.

  “What happened to your face?” she asked guilelessly. “And can I go see the dragons later?”

  I lay back in the bed and tucked her against me, letting her rest her head on my unhurt shoulder. My gaze slid to Kathrael. Some mothers might have immediately tried to shut down the string of invasive questions. She only raised the eyebrow that wasn’t hidden behind her painted mask, apparently more than content to let her daughter be the one to pry away my protective armor.

  I sighed.

  “I got in a fight and someone hit me,” I told them both. “Also, I fell off a dragon because I’m an idiot and didn’t have a saddle.” Or a soul-bond. “I’ll see about taking you out to meet the dragons later, pipsqueak—but right now everyone’s kind of tired and upset.”

  Darra nodded against my shoulder, and I brushed her hair away from her face idly.

  “Give Frella a kiss to help her feel better, sweetheart,” Kathrael said. “Then go and see your fathers for a bit so Frella and I can talk in private.”

  The child gave a put-upon sigh, but complied. Small lips pressed lightly against the bruising on my temple. “I’m sorry someone hit you,” she said in a mournful tone, before reluctantly peeling herself away from me and leaving.

  Kathrael rose with a dancer’s grace and closed the door behind the little girl. She returned and sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at me with knowing eyes. “All right. Now tell me what happened. I know that look far too well, little sister.”

  Tightness lodged in my gullet. “I lost someone,” I whispered. “I loved him, and I’m responsible for his death.”

  She nodded her understanding, no judgment in her expression. “And now you can’t feel anything but the heaviness of it, pulling you down until it feels like it will crush you.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, pausing to swallow against the thickness in my throat. “He deserves more from me than this, Kath. I stole him away from his brothers… from other people who love him just as much as I do. And I can’t even grieve him properly.”

  Kathrael’s chest rose and fell. “That kind of loss leaves a hole in the world shaped like the person who’s gone. It’s not an event… it’s more a lack of something that everything inside you insists should still be there. It’s an emptiness that can’t be filled.”

  This subject was something Kathrael knew intimately, and in more ways than any one person should ever have to. Maybe that was why she didn’t start spouting platitudes about how it hadn’t really been my fault, or how things would get easier as time passed. Right now, I appreciated her understanding more than I could say.

  “There’s something else.” The words burst from me before I’d consciously thought about saying them, and I hated myself a little more for the selfishness of what I was about to ask. “I was captured by some people who wanted information from me. Well… and one person who just wanted to punish me, I think.”

  “What did they do to you?” Kathrael asked evenly.

  I took a slow breath and let it out. More things had been done to Kathrael’s body during her lifetime than I cared to dwell on. As a slave, she’d been whipped as punishment. As a child prostitute, she’d been used sexually by men who cared nothing for her, in exchange for money. As a young woman, her face and left eye had been irreparably damaged by the angry wife of a client wielding a vial of vitriol.

  Kathrael knew scars, and not just the physical kind.

  I sat up and awkwardly hitched my loose tunic over my head one-handed, baring my upper body. “They whipped me and… cut me,” I said without inflection. “Can you tell me if the whip marks are going to scar? I haven’t had access to a mirror to see them, and I don’t trust the others to tell me the truth.”

  Warm hands grasped me to angle me toward the lamplight. I shivered as Kathrael ran a palm lightly over my back, reading the half-healed marks by touch as well as sight. Except for the places where I had fresh bruises from hitting the ground after the white dragon tossed me onto the dirt, they didn’t hurt anymore, particularly. They mostly just itched.

  “Hmm,” Kathrael mused. “There are a couple of places that may leave flat scars where the skin was broken, but I don’t think the nature of the injury will be obvious, if that helps.”

  I nodded.

  She turned me around to face the other way, her good eye taking in the ugly pattern of scabs over my breastbone. “You already know this one is going to scar, of course. What is it supposed to be?” Her brow furrowed. “It looks very… intentional.”

  “They call it a triskelion. It’s the personal mark of a prince in Utrea. Well—he’s the king now, I suppose. When the others rescued me, he took advantage of the chaos to kill his own father so he could ascend to the throne.” My jaw worked. “I want that mark gone. I don�
�t really care how that happens.”

  Again, she didn’t fuss over me, or rage about what had been done to me, as Favian or Ithric might have done. She just tilted her head, taking in the shape from every angle.

  “Have you thought about incorporating it into a different design, so that the original pattern would be hidden in something larger or more complex?” she asked. “One of the novices here used to do tattoos and other body art before she joined the temple, if memory serves.”

  “Sephira mentioned something of the sort,” I said. “I don’t think I want a tattoo there. It wouldn’t really hide the scars. At least, I’d still know the triskelion was there, underneath the ink. I wonder if she’d be willing to cover it with additional scars, though.”

  Kathrael nodded thoughtfully. “She might. Though I wouldn’t mention this to any of the men if you decide to go that route. Your companions seem rather… protective of you. And you know how Favian and Ithric can be about this sort of thing.”

  Oh, did I.

  Kathrael frowned at the mark again. “You know, the two spirals on the top edges might almost be the basis for the head and wings of a dragon. The one on the bottom could be the hind leg joint… and then you’d have to add a line for the front leg.”

  I craned down to look, trying to flip the image right side up in my head. “Huh. You know—I can kind of see that, now that you say it.”

  The aptness of the idea settled into my skin by degrees as I thought about it. How much more appropriate to have a permanent reminder carved into my skin of what actually I’d failed to do, rather than whatever insane retribution Lesimba had seemed to think I deserved for my imagined sins against her husband.

  “Well,” Kathrael said briskly, “there’s plenty of time to decide. It’s not like the scars are going anywhere. I’m proof of that.”

  A knock sounded on the door.

  “Frella?” Favian’s voice was muffled by the heavy wood, but still as recognizable to me as my own.

  “Hmm. That didn’t take long,” I muttered, grabbing for my clothing. “I thought Ithric was supposed to be sitting on him?”

  “Just a minute,” Kathrael called, and I struggled back into my tunic with a sigh. When I was sure my scars were covered, I nodded to her to let my brother and whoever was with him inside.

  The door opened to reveal Favian, Ithric, and Eldris gathered in the hallway.

  “Darra said you were awake, kitten,” Ithric said. “And I was getting tired of arguing with Favian about how long he was supposed to stay away, so we came to say hello.”

  Chapter 20: Interlude

  Frella

  THE PROSPECT OF facing all four of the people gathered in the room right now was daunting, but I couldn’t deny the little lurch my heart gave at seeing Ithric again. The lion-shifter hadn’t changed much in the months since I’d seen him last. His russet hair was still swept back from his face in a complicated series of braids. He still held his powerful body with feline grace.

  Fatherhood still suited him.

  I let him wrap me in a careful embrace and press a kiss to my hair.

  “You brought dragons with you, kitten,” he said once he’d pulled back. “Fresh game was in short enough supply around here already, you know.”

  I tried to rally to the gentle teasing. “If so, it’s only because your lion is a glutton and hunts everything in sight. How’ve you been, Ithric? Keeping my brother and Darra in line while I’ve been gone, I hope?”

  My heart wasn’t in it, and I’m sure that much was obvious to everyone in the room. Ithric only offered me one of his sly half-smiles, though. “That’s a job for more than one person, I’m afraid. I do my best, though.”

  Eldris had been hanging back near the door. I made myself meet his eyes, and raised my good arm toward him, hand outstretched. He slipped past the others like a shadow to sit on the bed next to me, taking my hand in one of his and running his thumb over my knuckles. His face still held deep lines that made it look as though he’d aged twenty years in the space of a day, and the ache in my throat returned.

  Thanks to my inability to bond with the white dragon, I’d stolen a piece of his heart away. If I’d just done what I was supposed to do, we could have been safely away from the valley long before Oblisii’s troops arrived with their dragon harpoons. Aristede would still be alive. My guilt was so sharp that I could barely stand to look at the pain in Eldris’ expression.

  “Forgive me—we’ve not been introduced,” Kathrael said solemnly, as she took in the way Eldris intertwined our fingers together.

  I blinked free of my unhappy reverie, translating between Utrean and Eburosi. “Eldris, this is my bond-sister Kathrael. Kathrael… this is Eldris of Kulawi. Eldris, I gather you’ve already met my brother Favian, and my bond-brother, Ithric.”

  “She speaks of the three of you often,” Eldris rumbled in low tones, and I blushed a bit as I passed on the words. Something quietly desperate stole across his expression for an instant. “And of your ghost, as well. Vesh? Is he here?”

  My heart broke anew. He was thinking of Aristede. Of course he was. He was wondering if Aristede’s spirit might linger, as Vesh’s had.

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Kathrael said kindly, once I translated the question. “Since he passed through the veil, Vesh only comes to us in dreams. The dead no longer speak to me these days—not in the waking world, at least. And even when they did hover nearby, it was only the spirits of those who’d been close to me in life.”

  Favian spoke from where he was leaning against the wall near the doorway. “The man you lost. You were close to him, weren’t you?”

  My brother was doing his priest thing; letting compassion pour through his tone. He’d learned that trick from our guardian, Senovo, and hearing it made a few chips crumble free from the walls surrounding my feelings.

  “Yeah,” I said heavily. “We both were.”

  Favian nodded gravely.

  “Where’s Nyx?” I asked, partly to steer the conversation away from our loss and partly because I really was worried about him.

  “He’s out with the dragons,” Eldris said. “Inside was getting to be a bit much for him, I think.”

  He was referring to all the strangers here in the temple, I was sure. Nyx had slowly been getting better around us, but in many ways he was still as skittish as an untried colt.

  “Sephira and I spoke at length with your other friend—Rayth,” Ithric said. “He outlined the situation in Utrea. I suggested that he speak to Andoc in addition to talking to the ruling council here in Rhyth. Traveling on dragonback, I gather the journey from the southern coast to Draebard would barely take from dawn until dusk.”

  “Good heavens,” Kathrael said in surprise. “That fast?”

  My chest tightened as I remembered the sensation of soaring on strong wings.

  “It’s like riding the wind,” I murmured.

  Her attention centered on me. “You should go with him, Frella. It would do you good to visit your home and see the rest of your family.”

  My heart throbbed painfully at the prospect, dread and longing intertwined. “I’ll think about it,” I hedged, though I already knew that if Rayth were going, I would be going, too.

  Assuming, of course, that Rayth would tolerate my presence for the journey.

  “I should wash up and talk to him,” I said, because the alternative was to stay here and have a conversation with Eldris that I desperately didn’t want to have. “I want to check on Nyx, too.”

  Eldris deserved better than this. He deserved an abject apology from me for getting Aristede killed. He deserved someone who could at least fucking grieve with him properly. I hated this—so very, very much.

  What were we even supposed to do now? Stay here in my homeland with the last three dragons in existence and hope that Utrea—or Alyrios, for that matter—didn’t decide to send troops to the island and try to start trouble? Maybe they wouldn’t bother. Maybe they’d hear that no male dragons survived, and d
ecide to let nature take its course.

  Gods. The male. If he really had turned around to head right back to his mountain home in Utrea, would he end up flying haplessly into another hail of dragon-harpoons along the way? I closed my eyes and gave my head a sharp shake to clear it—only for my shoulder to twinge in protest at the movement.

  “You need more rest,” Favian said. He was still standing near the door with his arms crossed, looking unhappy.

  And, yeah… that was another thing I was good at—worrying my brother.

  “I need to wash off several hundred leagues’ worth of travel grime,” I countered. And have a word with the novice who might be able to help me with the scar Lesimba had left me.

  “It might do you some good to get out and about for a bit,” Kathrael said.

  “All right,” I agreed with a sigh, and clued Eldris in on the plan.

  Eldris gave my hand a last squeeze and let it go, rising from the bed. “I’ll come along to the bathing room and haul buckets for you.”

  Quickly, I said, “Oh, there’s no need. I’ll just bathe in the hot springs. It’ll help loosen up my shoulder.”

  But Eldris wasn’t having it. “Then I’ll go with you to the hot springs.”

  I bit my lip, aware that I wasn’t getting out of talking with him. “Okay. We’ll… um… go right now, I guess.” I hauled myself onto stiff, shaky legs and wrapped my good arm first around Kathrael’s shoulders, then Ithric’s, and then Favian’s.

  “Frella,” my brother murmured into the embrace, “I’m worried about you. If you won’t talk to me, then at least talk to Senovo when you get to Draebard, all right?”

  And there was a prospect to fear. Senovo had always seen right through me, to a far greater extent than either Andoc or Carivel. Or even my own brother, sometimes. But all I said was, “Yeah. I will, big brother.”

  * * *

  Hot springs were common on the southern coast, but these particular ones were part of what made this area a sacred site. Unlike the lavish bath houses in the city of Rhyth, no effort had been made to tame them. They trickled down the side of the hill as they had since time immemorial, collecting first in a small basin with water hot enough to burn skin.