Dragonbound

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  “I didn’t know. About your mother. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “How do you know?” Not that I want him to think I go around torturing people’s mothers. Or anyone, really.

  “You probably weren’t even born yet. And it didn’t happen here.”

  “Still. That’s horrible.”

  “Just promise me something. Don’t let me die with this ring on. And if something happens, if I . . .” He presses his forehead to the wall for a second, then looks back up at me, his eyes meeting mine. “If I go insane, if I start to lose it, promise you’ll kill me.”

  “What?”

  “Just promise me. Because I’d rather be executed today than live knowing what I might do if I end up like her.”

  “Okay.” My voice shakes, and it doesn’t sound much like a promise.

  “Okay, what?”

  I feel sick as I say the words. “If you go crazy, I’ll—I’ll kill you. And I won’t let you die with that ring on.” Two promises I know I can’t keep.

  But Amelrik nods, seeming satisfied, and I just hope it doesn’t come to that.

  13

  JUST BECAUSE I WAS SUPPOSED TO DIE TODAY DOESN’T MEAN IT’S OKAY TO GET ME KILLED

  I take Amelrik up to the wall that surrounds the city. We don’t even have to leave the barracks to get there, and then it’s just a matter of creeping a little ways over to the spot closest to the river. They haven’t stopped the search for him yet, but I’m supposed to be at the altar in half an hour. I should be putting on my dress right now—no, I should already have it on—and we don’t have time to wait.

  From up here, I can see the forest stretching off to the east. There are mountains in the distance. Some of them are farther away than others, obscured by more and more layers of mist. I take a deep breath, savoring the view, because who knows if I’ll ever see it again.

  Plus, looking out at the mountains is way less scary than looking down at the river rushing below us—kind of really far below us, actually—like Amelrik’s doing.

  “You must be used to this.”

  He frowns. “Used to what? Jumping to my death?”

  “Yeah. Well, no, but you must get to see everything from up high all the time. This must be nothing to a dragon. Just another ho-hum breathtaking view from above.”

  “Right. Ho-hum.” He gazes out over the trees and sighs, and the longing in his voice is unmistakable.

  He probably wishes he was flying right now, and here I am, rubbing it in. I wonder what he looks like, in dragon form, and what it would be like to fly. Maybe if I had wings, leaving the safety of the barracks would be easier. If I could just take off, go wherever I wanted, and then zoom right back as soon as anything bad happened . . .

  The thought of that kind of freedom makes my stomach drop. It’s exciting and terrifying all at the same time. But the idea of leaving the barracks at all—wings or no wings—is overwhelming, and when I look down at the river, my vision blurs and I feel like I’m going to throw up. A wave of dizziness hits me. I lose track of which way is up, and my legs start to buckle.

  Amelrik grabs my arm to steady me.

  “Let go,” I snap, trying to jerk away out of instinct.

  He keeps his hold on me. “Are you afraid of heights?”

  “I come up here all the time. I just . . .” I just can’t handle the thought of leaving. It’s not even like I want to stay here. Two dragons infiltrated Celeste’s party only a week ago, and now one escaped from prison. And, okay, I’m the one that busted him out, but still. Any illusions of safety the barracks held are broken. Torrin will never love me the way I want him to, Celeste is missing, and my father can’t get rid of me fast enough. If I stay, I’ll have to marry Lord Varrens. I’ll have to let him climb on top of me and do whatever he wants to me, and I’ll have to bear his children. If I don’t leave the barracks right now, that’ll be my life. Forever.

  I’d rather face whatever unknown dangers wait beyond the city walls. Or at least I tell myself that, and logically, I know it’s true. But my body doesn’t respond to logic, and my chest gets tight.

  I’m going to suffocate. I can’t get enough air.

  And Torrin thinks this is a choice. That I could just decide to be normal and leave if I really wanted to.

  “Hey,” Amelrik says. “You’re still on the wall. It’s okay.”

  I nod, trying to calm down enough to breathe properly again.

  “Though this is kind of a stupid escape plan if you’re afraid of heights.”

  “It’s not that. And shut up—this plan is saving your life.”

  “Not if you freak out to death before you take this ring off.”

  “I’m not going to freak out to death. That’s not even a thing.” Or at least I’m not going to let it be a thing for me. “It’s just that something really bad happened the last time I left the barracks.” There. I said it.

  Instantly, I wish I could take it back, even though it’s not like I even told him that much. But I’m so tired of everybody knowing that about me. Judging me for it. Is it so bad if I want to keep just one person in the dark?

  Amelrik gives me a questioning look, but I don’t elaborate, and he doesn’t push it.

  Probably because he doesn’t actually care that much, but it’s still a relief not to have to explain myself.

  My chest isn’t tight anymore, and I can breathe okay again. Amelrik’s still got his hand on my arm. I glance down at it, then up at him. He realizes I don’t need his help anymore—er, not that I ever actually needed it—and quickly lets go, taking a step away from me, as if to emphasize the fact that he didn’t enjoy having to touch me.

  He tests out his right leg, the one with the limp, putting more weight on it, then stretching it out. He peers down at the water again. “You know, just because I was supposed to die today doesn’t mean it’s okay to get me killed.”

  “It’s fine. Celeste and her friends used to jump in from here.”

  “Used to?”

  “Well, until Mother found out, and then she nearly flayed them alive. But no one ever got hurt. Of course, that was in the summer . . .” When the water was a lot calmer.

  Amelrik eyes me with suspicion. “It’s spring.”

  “And what? I should have waited a couple months to rescue you?” I can’t control what season it is. Or how fast the water’s moving . . . Maybe this is a bad idea.

  “We should jump together.” He reaches for me.

  “What?! No!” Panic flares in my chest, and I pull away, as if he was actually about to drag me down. Away from the barracks. Before I was ready.

  But I’ll never be ready.

  “Then you have to jump first,” Amelrik says. “Because if I go, and you chicken out—”

  A shout from the courtyard interrupts him. “It’s the dragon! And he’s got the St. George girl!”

  The St. George girl? Really? I glance down to see who it was and recognize Liza, one of the scullery maids who serves in the barracks. I see her, like, almost every day. She knows my name.

  Amelrik says something in a guttural language I don’t know—though it’s not hard to guess that it’s some kind of expletive—and grabs my arm. “Hold your breath!”

  “No, wait! I’m not ready to—”

  But it’s too late.

  He leaps off the wall, toward the river, dragging me with him.

  14

  DO I LOOK LIKE A WILD ANIMAL TO YOU?

  The first thing I know about the water is that it’s cold. So cold it seeps into every part of me, making my bones ache.

  The second thing is that it’s moving way too fast, and this was a terrible, horrible idea.

  The river drags us along with it, pulling Amelrik away, so he no longer has hold of me. Water rushes over my head, getting in my mouth, and then it sucks me under. I haven’t been swimming in years, and even if I had, this is way beyond my skill level.

  I fight against the
water, but it’s so much stronger than I am. The cold slows me down, too, making it hard to keep moving. I struggle to the surface—or maybe the river pushes me up—just long enough to gulp in new air, and then I’m under again.

  This time, the water holds me down. I can’t get back to the top, and won’t everyone feel stupid if I actually die the first step I take after leaving the barracks? But my lungs scream for air, and now I’m not just fighting the water, but against myself, because every instinct I have is telling me to breathe.

  I don’t know how much more I can take, and then I feel an arm around me. It’s warm, despite how cold the water is, but that thought barely registers. All I care about is that someone pulls me to the surface. As soon as the air hits my face, I gasp for breath.

  The world makes a lot more sense now that I’m actually breathing, and I realize Amelrik’s the one with his arm around me, dragging me sideways through the turbulent water.

  We don’t so much get to shore as we do crash into it, and then we crawl onto dry land.

  “What the hell was that?!” I’m shaking. From the cold, from almost drowning, from the fact that that stupid leap was the biggest step I’ve taken in years. Both literally and figuratively. And it wasn’t even my choice.

  Amelrik’s on his hands and knees. His face is pale, except for the blood dripping from a gash on his forehead. He coughs up some water and glares at me. “You’re welcome.”

  “You had no right to do that!” I want to hit him, but instead I draw my knees up and wrap my arms around them.

  He flops down on the ground, breathing hard, still trying to catch his breath. He looks pained each time his chest moves. “Why? Because that’s twice I’ve saved your life now?”

  “You jumped! And you dragged me down with you! Who told you to do that?!”

  “And I was supposed to leave you on the wall? I don’t think so.”

  “I was going to do it. I was going to jump on my own.” I want so badly for that to be true, even though I’m not sure I believe it. And now here I am, outside of the barracks for the first time in years. The sky’s way too big. The trees are too tall. The whole world looms over me, heavy and encroaching, like it’s just waiting for its chance to crush me.

  Amelrik sits up, watching me like I’m crazy. Blood from his forehead runs across his face. He wipes it from his eyes with the back of his hand. “We need to get going. The river gave us a head start, but they’ll be coming for us.”

  I nod, knowing he’s right, but I don’t move.

  He gets to his feet, his movements stiff, and I wonder what it cost him to fight against the river like that. To save me when he could have easily let me drown.

  “Thanks,” I whisper, staring at my knees when I say it.

  “Don’t. I didn’t do it for you.” But he doesn’t look at me when he says that, either. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  My arms and legs don’t want to move. It’s more than just the cold from the river. This is it. Amelrik might have made the leap for me when he dragged me off the wall with him, but now I have to get up and take that first real step. I have to leave everything I know behind and head off into the unknown with a dragon.

  He never asked me to trust him, but what choice do I have?

  Amelrik holds out a hand to help me up, since I’m taking so long.

  I think about refusing, to prove I can do this on my own, but in the end I decide I have to pick my battles, and this isn’t one of them. His skin is warm, even though mine’s freezing. Part of me doesn’t want to let go of him—because he’s warm, because even though he’s a dragon, he’s someone, and I don’t know if I can do this alone—but the last thing I’m going to do right now is cling to him. He saved my life because he needs my help. It’s the same reason I saved his, and it doesn’t mean either of us actually cares about the other.

  I let go of him and take that first step.

  By sunset, I’m miserable.

  Like, totally and completely.

  And I can definitely say that this has been the longest day of my life, and not just because I didn’t sleep last night.

  We travel all day, though at least we’re not going too fast. I kind of thought Amelrik would be the type to outpace me the whole way, but he’s limping too much for that. His limp gets more pronounced as the day wears on. Jumping in the river probably didn’t help. Neither did not eating, and I, for one, am starving. And exhausted. And I accidentally stuck my hand in tree sap earlier, and it won’t come off. Now it has a thin layer of dirt stuck to it, and that’s not coming off, either.

  “This is it,” I tell Amelrik, stopping in a tiny clearing that looks like as good a place as any to spend the night. And if we don’t rest soon—or, like, right now—he’s going to have to drag me, because I don’t think I can keep this up. “Right here. The perfect camping spot.”

  “What makes it perfect?”

  “It’s where I’m standing, and I’m too tired to go another step.”

  I think for a second that he’s going to argue, but then he just looks relieved to have an excuse to stop for the night.

  We didn’t bring any supplies—there wasn’t anything to bring, since I was stuck in my room—so there’s no camp to set up. Our idea of making camp is pretty much just slumping to the ground. Which is cold, by the way. Not nearly as cold as the river was, but it’s not what I’d call comfortable, either. I sit with my back against a tree, even though I’m pretty sure it means a spider is going to crawl into my hair or something. And while that will totally creep me out if it happens, I’m an adventurer now. And worrying about spiders getting in my hair doesn’t sound like something a badass adventurer would do.

  Or any kind of badass, really.

  My stomach growls. My head hurts from not eating and from exerting myself so much today. “So, I know you can probably still see well enough in the dark and everything, but don’t feel like you have to wait that long. Because I’m really hungry now.”

  “What?”

  “There’s no way you’re not starving, too.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know why you’d think I’d have any food. I’ve spent the past week in a dungeon.”

  “Right, right. I don’t expect you to have any food—I expect you to go get food. You know, hunting and stuff?”

  “What?”

  “Stop saying what.”

  “I will when you start making sense.”

  I pick at the sap stuck to my hand. “Neither of us brought anything to eat, and you’re a wild animal. Wild animals hunt for their food. So . . . get to it.”

  He makes a noise that’s half scoff, half laugh. “I’m a what?”

  “A wild animal.”

  “Do I look like a wild animal to you?” He gestures to himself, fully clothed and all that, which I have to admit is not very wild-animal-like.

  “Not right now. But you are a dragon, so go catch a sheep or something.”

  “A sheep. Here, in the woods. With what? My bare hands?”

  Okay, so maybe I didn’t think this through.

  “Just take this iron ring off my neck, and I’ll gladly go look for a sheep for you.”

  “That’s not happening. But you’ve still got more experience than me. You know, going on adventures. How do you usually eat?”

  “At the table. My ‘adventures’ don’t usually involve roughing it in the wilderness.”

  “Well, that’s just great.”

  “And I’m not a wild animal.”

  Now he tells me. I mean, I guess I sort of knew that—he is a prince, after all, as hard to imagine as that is—but I just assumed that he’d know what to do. “If we can’t eat tonight, can you at least make a fire? It’s getting cold.” At the barracks, it would still be warm out, even after dark. It’s only twilight now, though it’s fading fast, and I’m already feeling the chill. Goose bumps prickle along my arms.

  “No fire. It might give us away, if anyone’s still looking for us.”

  If? Of course people are loo
king for us. They think I got hauled off by a wanted criminal, right? They wouldn’t just give up. Not that I want anyone to find us, but I at least want them to care about finding us. About finding me.

  “Okay, so no food and no getting warm.”

  “It’s not cold.”

  “Easy for you to say.” I remember how warm his skin felt, even while in the freezing river. So maybe dragons don’t really get chilly or anything, even in human form.

  “Just go to sleep. We’ll find food in the morning. Or we’ll be dead, because we didn’t cover enough ground. Well, I’ll be dead. You’ll be dragged back home.”

  Where I’d have an awful lot of explaining to do. But I don’t think anyone’s going to find us. He’s just being paranoid, which I guess I would be too if getting found meant my death. It’s not like we could have gone any farther tonight, anyway. We’re both exhausted, and I can’t see in the dark. Picking my way through these woods was hard enough in daylight.

  Amelrik lies down on the ground. The dragon ring chokes him a little bit, and he has to shift around until he finds an okay position.

  I stay huddled next to my tree. It’s almost completely dark now, and no matter what he says, it is getting cold. I wonder how far I am from the barracks, from home—because even if there’s nothing for me there, that’s still what it is—and suddenly I feel so utterly alone. It hits me fast, sharp as a sword, and then I’m glad it’s so dark out, because tears spring to my eyes.

  I’ve never spent a night outside of the barracks. Even before my mother died and I refused to leave them. I’ve always been surrounded by people I know, by familiar rooms and hallways. There are no rooms here. There’s nothing even remotely familiar.

  Hot tears slide down my cheeks—at least they’re warm—and I wipe them away with the back of my hand and get a whiff of pine sap. I probably just smeared dirt across my face.

  I can’t take the silence, the feeling that I’m in a void. I hope my voice doesn’t give away that I’ve been crying. I also hope Amelrik’s not asleep already. “So, you’re really a prince?”