The Dragon Mistress

by R. A. Steffan

  Ahead of me, the sounds of cracking twigs and scuffling steps halted abruptly. As I grew nearer, though, I could make out the sound of ragged breathing—that gut-twisting sound someone makes when they would probably be sobbing if they could get enough air into their lungs to do so.

  The trail opened out into a small clearing. The sun wasn’t nearly high enough yet to penetrate the mountainous terrain directly, but it was light enough now to see detail in my surroundings. Nyx had made it about a dozen steps into the glade and collapsed to his knees, his spine bowed under some invisible weight. He clutched handfuls of the tufted grass beneath him, the slender blades twisting and tearing in his grip.

  An ache rose in my throat, for all that I had no idea what was going on. Seeing him like this pricked the sense of protectiveness that Nyx seemed to engender in me. Even before this latest mystery, he came across as so… broken. And yet so beautiful, as well. I wanted to fix him. To glue his shattered pieces together and make him whole.

  Dangerous, my inner voice counseled.

  I thought of Aristede with his silver tongue and cold, steely eyes… of Rayth, his body pinning mine to the ground as his hard cock pressed against my hip. I was surrounding myself with dangerous men. Eldris was the only straightforward one of the lot. Part of me wished he was here—Nyx had seemed oddly unafraid of him. But part of me knew that of all of us, I was best equipped to deal with… whatever this was.

  “I’m alone, Nyx,” I said, still poised at the edge of the woods. “I told the others to keep Rayth back at the cave.”

  Cautiously, I crossed to where Nyx still knelt hunched on the ground, unmoving except for his heaving chest. When he didn’t bolt at my approach, I sank to sit cross-legged in front of him, leaving a bit of space between us. My sore muscles protested the movement, but I ignored them—waiting silently to see what Nyx would do next.

  He didn’t change position. Didn’t meet my eyes. Above us, the sky shifted from turquoise to cerulean, the color more brilliant than I could ever remember seeing. I had no idea how long we sat there until some of the tension started to drain from Nyx’s posture and he shifted onto his rump, drawing his knees up to his chin and hiding behind the barrier they formed.

  “His name’s not Rayth,” he whispered eventually.

  I remained silent, waiting, and was rewarded when he peeked up at me to gauge my reaction. It was the first time I’d gotten a clear, close-up view of his extraordinary eyes in daylight. They were brown, yes, but with tiny streaks the color of molten copper running through them. The most striking thing, though, was that irregular ring of mossy green surrounding his irises. I’d never seen eyes like them.

  I would have been quite content to stare into them, trying to memorize the pattern of color, but his dark lashes swept down, shielding them as his gaze dropped once more.

  “How do you know each other?” I asked quietly. The answering silence was long enough that I began to wonder if he would reply at all.

  “I… was his steward.” Nyx’s voice was hoarse, as though he’d been screaming. “I was sixteen. He was in the cavalry, and I was training to be, someday.” He paused, swallowing with an audible click of the throat. “There… was a battle and… I… ran away.”

  I digested that. Continental armies were quite different than the loosely organized warrior class of the northern Eburosi tribes I’d grown up in, I knew. But even back home in Draebard, an apprentice warrior who fled the battleground would bring shame on himself and his family.

  Rayth’s face hadn’t shown contempt, though. Every line of his expression had conveyed intent the to kill without thought. There was more to the story, and I waited to see if it would emerge.

  “The fight… was… going badly. He and his comrades were nearly surrounded, and several of them had already been unhorsed. He screamed for fresh weapons…” Nyx’s gaze drifted up, but it was far away, seeing something from the past, rather than me and the glade around us.

  That muffled sound of large wings catching the air came from somewhere above—the same noise I’d heard earlier in the dark. I jerked my head up, scanning the skies curiously, but there was nothing in my field of vision.

  Nyx appeared not to have noticed. “I grabbed whatever steel I could carry and started forward, but… everything went gray and fuzzy at the edges. I couldn’t breathe. I wasn’t on the battlefield anymore. I was—” He cut himself off and shook his head, trying to clear it.

  “I don’t know what happened after that,” he continued, the words flowing faster now. “The next thing I remember, I was hiding under a fallen tree in the woods, and the battle was over. We’d been leagues away from Safaad, near the borderlands. I ran away, and didn’t stop running until I was in the mountains. I lived there for more than a year. Closer to two, I guess. It wasn’t this area, but it wasn’t all that different, really. I only came down to the nearest villages when I needed to steal something I couldn’t get otherwise.”

  I was silent, running his words through my head. If Nyx had abandoned Rayth and his comrades without the weapons they needed when they were overmatched in battle, it was likely that people had died as a result. And with someone like Rayth—bitter and wine-soaked, pent up behind that dry, acerbic exterior—I could easily imagine that resulting in the scene we’d just fled.

  “I can’t go back to that cave,” Nyx said. “I’m sorry I ever agreed to come here.”

  My hands itched to reach out to him. Maybe I should have felt contempt for Nyx after his confession of boyhood cowardice, but the damaged man in front of me looked like someone who had already suffered at great length for his shortcomings. Besides, even now, something inside me whispered that there was more to his tale than a single moment of faintheartedness during battle.

  “I’m sorry I dragged you here,” I told him, trying to keep any trace of judgment from my tone. “But I don’t want you to go.”

  His eyes flew to mine as though I’d surprised him. He drew breath to say something, but the noise from above came again. “What was that?” he asked instead, scrambling to his feet.

  I followed suit, scanning the skies. My eyes skittered over a gray shape, unable to make sense of it at first. It was… too large. A hand grasped my upper arm convulsively, dragging me back a few steps as the great, winged creature circling the clearing spiraled downward. The air buffeted around us as it flapped to slow its descent. Hind legs hit the ground with a solid thump, followed by forelegs, and a scaled head craned forward to regard us from atop a graceful, swanlike neck.

  My breath caught in my lungs, Nyx’s fingers gouging bruises into my upper arm as he tried to drag me backwards into the woods. I shook him off, staring at the animal before us.

  “Oh, my gods,” I whispered, staring into gimlet eyes the color of aquamarine.

  Nyx was breathing with ragged gasps behind me.

  “I… I can’t…” he croaked. He tried to grab me again, but I tore his hand away, moving out of reach. “Frella… for the love of all that’s holy, run!”

  I didn’t run, though the sound of retreating footsteps disappearing into the woods told me that he had. I didn’t want to run. Running would mean taking my eyes off the impossible creature before me.

  It was roughly the size of a small horse, but far longer from nose to tail. It had large, membranous wings, four legs, and a graceful head like a cross between a stag and a snake. Scales covered most of its body aside from the wing membranes. They were mostly of a dull, nondescript grayish color, except for parts of its head and the back of its neck, where they were a shiny, pearlescent white. The white areas looked newer, less worn, like maybe the scales were in the process of shedding and being replaced, like a bird’s feathers.

  But the eyes. They were large. Almond-shaped. A shade of shimmering, depthless blue-green that put the finest cut gemstones to shame. And they were looking straight at me. Straight… into me.

  The impossible dragon tilted its elegant head, regarding me curiously. My body had petrified into immobili
ty. I did not move a muscle as it walked toward me, step by step. Its gait was something between a reptilian glide and a great, hunting cat.

  Was I being hunted? Was I mad not to have followed Nyx’s example and run for my life? I might well be one well-aimed gout of flame away from a messy, agonizing death. But if that were the case, would running now make any difference?

  The smell of sulfur and wood smoke wafted to my nostrils as the dragon scented the air around me, its breath like the sound of bellows. I stared into those bottomless blue-green eyes, feeling that if I could just see deep enough, I would find the answers to all my questions.

  The dragon snuffled around my head and shoulders, warm air currents tickling my skin. Curiously, it nudged at the tangled mass of hair hanging down my back, nosing into it.

  The gemstones, I realized.

  Before I could pause to wonder if it wanted them or was just curious about them, the dragon snorted and jerked away. Warm smoke swirled around me, and I coughed, waving a hand in an attempt to clear the air. The dragon had stiffened, staring fixedly at the trailhead Nyx and I had emerged from earlier.

  “Frella!” called a familiar voice, though not one I was used to hearing shouting at me.

  Aristede ran into the clearing and skidded to a halt, staring in shock at the scene. The dragon leapt back from me and gave an earsplitting shriek before taking to the air with a powerful beat of its wings. I stared, slack-jawed, as it disappeared into the sky and vanished beyond the tree line, another swirl of wind rustling the grass around us in its wake.

  “That was a dragon,” I said with unnatural calmness.

  “I don’t believe this,” Aristede said faintly.

  I turned to him, assuming that he was sharing my shock over the existence of dragons when they were all supposed to be dead. Whatever I might have said was interrupted by Eldris’ arrival. He was out of breath.

  “Was that—?” he asked.

  “It was,” Aristede said, confusing me. “The white male. It came right up to her.”

  “Huh?” I asked, blinking as I tried to retrieve my wits.

  “Did you catch Nyx?” Aristede continued, still addressing Eldris, who shook his head.

  “Nah, he got away. He was running like all of the ancestor-demons from the shadow realm were on his heels.”

  “What are you both talking about?” I asked in bewilderment.

  “Once we got Rayth calmed down and his arm bandaged, we followed your markings on the trail,” Eldris said. “We were almost to the clearing when we heard wings overhead.”

  “A few moments later, Nyx came barreling down the path, full-tilt,” Aristede continued dryly. “When he saw us, he charged into the underbrush and headed down a side trail. Eldris took off after him while I came to find you and make sure you were all right.”

  “You knew about the dragon,” I accused, still sounding way calmer than I really felt.

  They shared a glance. It was the same kind of glance I’d seen them share when Eldris first suggested bringing me into the mountains, and when we’d heard the wings overhead in the dark.

  “I still have four throwing knives, you realize,” I pointed out, by way of motivation for them to stop looking at each other meaningfully, and start making mouth sounds.

  “The male has shown no interest in approaching humans up until now,” Aristede said gently. “In fact, he’s been positively aggressive at times.”

  “That’s interesting, I suppose,” I said, “but it’s not an answer to my question. You know about the dragons.”

  “That was a statement, not a question,” Aristede pointed out.

  I ground my teeth.

  “Ari, mate, I’m not patching you up if she decides to put a knife someplace unfortunate,” Eldris said with a sigh. “We’ve known about the dragons for the last two years, Frella. We’ve been trying to tame them. Three of the females are starting to come around, but there’s another female we can’t even get near, and the male wants nothing to do with us.”

  “That’s…” I began, unsure how the sentence should end. Amazing? Unlikely? Surreal? “… insane.”

  “Come back to the cave with us,” Aristede said. “We’ll talk more.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Let’s go back to the cave.”

  We started to trudge along the trail, marked with my hastily scratched arrows. We’d gotten about halfway along its length when I suddenly stopped, a relevant fact finally percolating into my fuzzy, wool-wrapped thoughts.

  Nyx was gone.

  He’d said he was leaving, and the dragon came before I had a chance to try talking him out of it. Or even deciding if it was a good idea to try and talk him out of it. A familiar heaviness settled over my heart.

  Of course Nyx had left. Everyone left sooner or later. He had just chosen to do it sooner. It was best that way, right? Why should I even care that a coward who had run away and gotten people killed was gone? Running away was apparently what he did. At least no one had died this time.

  The tough words, silent though they were, did nothing to lift the sudden weight on my chest. I didn’t want to accept that I would never get to study those green-ringed eyes again, or try to uncover the untold story behind his too-quiet voice and the way he flinched from unexpected contact.

  Eldris paused and looked over his shoulder. “What’s wrong, Trouble?”

  I swallowed against the tightness of my throat. “Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “I’m right behind you.”

  Chapter 14: Explanation

  “YOU HAVEN’T ASKED HOW badly you skewered Rayth with that throwing knife,” Aristede observed as we started across the windswept valley.

  I scowled, my mood not having improved as I trekked back on sore feet toward a man I was royally pissed at right now. “Not as badly as he intended to skewer Nyx with his crossbow bolt, or I assume you two wouldn’t be here playing nice with me.”

  Eldris snorted. “You don’t realize it yet, Frella, but you may have just become the most valuable person in Utrea,” he said, and I scowled harder. “Rayth’ll manage, though. The blade didn’t bite into the muscle too badly. Mostly, it slid under the skin. Ari wrapped it and put it in a sling. We left him with the last wineskin, and I expect the combination of those two things will have kept him from wandering off in our absence.”

  “I should’ve aimed lower,” I muttered. Heaving in a cleansing breath, I raised my voice back to its normal level. “What did he tell you about Nyx? I assume you asked while you were patching him up.”

  Aristede sighed, and shot me a sidelong glance. “That his real name is Leannyck, and he was Rayth’s steward in the cavalry several years ago. He lost his nerve in a battle during the Southern Uprising and ran off, leaving Rayth and his squad weaponless while surrounded by the enemy. Three of Rayth’s comrades died in the fight.”

  The twisted up knot in my chest and stomach grew more tangled, but I kept quiet. The two men’s stories agreed, and the desire for revenge was a powerful motivator for violence.

  We were approaching the cave now. I was surprised to see Rayth out front, awkwardly strapping supplies onto his horse, which stood saddled and ready.

  “Rayth, what are you doing?” Eldris asked, sounding tired.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” Rayth replied.

  “Your arm—” Eldris began.

  “Fuck my arm. You obviously didn’t catch him, so I’m going after him. Was he with her?” Rayth’s acid-filled gaze swept over me.

  “Now, just a damned minute!” I snapped, stepping forward only to be caught and held by the upper arm.

  Eldris tugged me back against his body. His voice whispered against the shell of my ear, so soft no one else could hear it. “Trust us, sweet thing.”

  I clamped my lips shut tightly, not sure if I could trust them in this or not.

  “He was,” Aristede was saying, “but he ran off. They were headed down the easternmost trailhead on the far side of the valley, and when he saw us, he darted onto one of the pa
ths on the north side. The ones that head back down toward the lowlands.”

  My brow furrowed. That didn’t sound right. The path we’d taken had been more toward the western edge of the valley, and I was quite certain that all of the side trails near where we’d found the dragon had been leading uphill, not down. Eldris gave my arm a warning squeeze, and I understood in a flash that Aristede was sending Rayth on a goose chase.

  I jerked my arm free of Eldris and stalked up to Rayth, ready to play my part. “Why don’t you just leave Nyx alone?” I poked him sharply in the chest, and he stared down at my finger as though surprised that I would dare do such a thing. “He’s got an hour’s head start on you anyway. You’ll never catch him.”

  “There’s another small point you should be aware of before you leave,” Aristede said smoothly.

  Rayth glanced at him in obvious irritation. “And that is?”

  “We found the white dragon cozied up to our girl, here. He was snufflin’ away at her hair when Aristede charged into the clearing—friendly as you please,” Eldris said.

  Rayth’s eyes flew back to me, surprise warring with something that almost looked like… outrage? I glared back.

  “You know we wouldn’t joke about something so serious, my friend,” Aristede said soothingly. “And you’re well aware of what it means. We really need to sit down and talk.”

  Rayth’s jaw worked. “You two sit down and talk to her, damn it. I’m going after the deserter. I’ve no desire to share a cave with this knife-wielding hellion at the moment, and I’m sure the feeling is mutual.”

  “It most definitely is,” I grated out. “Have fun playing hide-and-go-seek in the mountains.”

  Rayth turned his back on me without a word, gathering up his reins in his good hand and swinging into the saddle. It was a reasonably impressive feat with one arm in a sling. Once settled, he looked down at me.

  “What did the worthless deserter tell you?” Rayth asked, surprising me.