"You fought off two of them," he said at last, the run having nowhere near the effect on him as it was now having on her. He was barely breathing quicker than normal.
She said, "Yes," and kept running. She had no idea how she would explain how she'd done that, nor did she know how she would explain the still burning clearing. Even now, the sulfuric smoke began to haze across the path, even thicker than it had been on her last pass along it. Had the flames spread? Avalee hoped not, for they would then block their path. What if they had to detour deep into the forest? What if the flames followed them even there?
The dragon ran silently at her side, perhaps wondering at the smoke. He would see the source soon enough. She pressed on grimly, ignoring the pain of each breath, of each pounding footfall, remembering the vessel and its swift approach. It would have landed by now, or sent a skiff to land. They would be followed, and as they were, they were vulnerable.
"What happened to the path?" the dragon said, and then the clearing came into sight, brightly lit despite the onset of night. The flames were still burning, now licking at the branches of the surrounding forest, just as Avalee had feared. "Avalee." The dragon stopped her and pulled her short of the flames. The fear in his voice was tangible, "What happened to the clearing? It is a . . . this should not be possible."
"It burns, Dragon. Come, we must go around; they are following." The tingle had returned as they approached the ravaged clearing and with it her strength, perhaps a false return, soon to fade once they left the special place behind, but for now she would take advantage of it. Her breath was steady and strong once more, her wounds and bruises fading under the thrum of energy that raced through her.
He heard the new tone in her voice, the odd vibration that infused it, and turned her abruptly to face him, ignoring her words to peer into her face.
"It burns, as do your eyes!" he exclaimed. "As does your blood. I can sense the fire within you."
She looked over her shoulder into the growing darkness of the path behind them, ignoring his unspoken demand for an explanation, and then gave him a stern look and shrugged out of his grip.
"Come," she said and began to break and climb her way through the forest just beyond reach of the flames. It was even more of an oven than it had been the first two times she'd come this way. The ever-burning fire was indeed spreading, and as she pushed through, she could see the flames expanding; several trees were now aflame, and others were beginning to smoke. Would the entire forest burn? She fought off a sob at the thought. She had already destroyed this precious place, would she destroy it all?
She heard the dragon following, even over the crackle of the fires, and when she reached the other side, she stopped on the path and waited for him to join her before turning away from him and the fire and resuming the run. He said no more as he followed, sensing, finally, that now was not the time to discuss it. Perhaps he was distracted by the courser path they now followed, the obvious destruction now surrounding them—branches broken, entire trees uprooted and flung aside, others crushed beneath them. She imagined he would soon guess the nature of the beast who had done this. She wondered if he had not already.
They reached the cliff's edge and stopped there, and Avalee bent over, hands on her knees again, trying to catch her breath. The energy had fled yet again, leaving her drained, perhaps more so than she had been before it last boosted her.
She sensed the dragon beside her even before his hand touched her back, even before he began to gently stroke it, hoping to calm her.
"Avalee, you are weak and must rest."
"Yes," she managed between gulping breaths that did little to satisfy her starving lungs.
"Something has happened to you."
She didn't bother to answer that, but she did reply, "They are still following. We must leave, find somewhere safe." She took a deep breath, tried to hold it before releasing it, and then took another. Slowly her frantic breathing steadied, and she was able to straighten to face the dragon. "They found you here; the path is clear. We must leave."
He nodded, concern still shining in his flaming eyes. "We will go, and then we will talk."
"Can you change?" she asked him.
He nodded. "Yes, but I cannot stay a dragon if we leave the island, not and hide us. Though perhaps. . ." He trailed off and looked into the distance. "Perhaps if we rested, we could cross the desert."
"The desert leading to my village?" She asked in surprise. "You would take me home?"
The dragon reached for and caught her hands in his, holding them firmly but carefully. "I would have you safe from this."
"You would return here, then." She looked at him sternly, hearing the unspoken promise. "Without me."
His brows rose at her obvious displeasure. Surprised at it, as he should be, but his suggestion of leaving her behind after all she'd done to save him had once more awoken the odd flames that now waited so readily for kindling. He was hers.
All at once, he saw the claim in her eyes as a swirl of flame filled each one. He had seen it before, in a mirror—rage, possessiveness. She was different, like him, and the pieces began to click together in his mind. She had destroyed the clearing, had broken through the path. Not this small figure before him, but one massive and strong, and angry. Avalee had somehow become a dragon and rampaged. She had come for him and broken him free of the spell that had bound him, fought off the three trolls who had jumped him until he recovered. She’d fought the three and defeated one on her own, and another with his aid.
"You were a dragon," he said and held her hands tightly to hold her close to him, to keep her from turning away from him again. "Do not deny it."
She faced him though and nodded, just once. Her chin lifted defiantly, and his face broke into an unexpected grin. Her hands were released, but only because the dragon had taken her into his arms and pulled her close, holding her tightly to him.
"Good," he said, and then Avalee felt a light tug on her hair that pulled her head back and brought her face up to his. And for the second time, he was kissing her. Urgently, and deeply.
She couldn't think, but she could feel the flames building within her, her mind focusing on one word, and one word only, "Mine," spoken into his mouth and mingling with his breath, almost a growl.
He heard it anyway and tightened his arms around her all the more. And then he withdrew from the kiss, just slightly brushing her lips once more, tenderly, and answered, his voice low and husky, "Forever."
She nodded back at him in satisfaction. He would not dare leave her behind now, and on a deeper level, she knew he would never want to. He was hers now. They had struck the bargain, and a dragon's word held the force of nature behind it. A dragon's bargain was unbreakable.
~~~
Chapter 25
Their eyes smoldered at each other, their bodies touching, though completely still as the promise, the bargain, settled into them both. Not one, but two dragons had made this deal, and the force of it, the impact, was rushing through them, infusing their very bones. An oath unbreakable and permanent. Avalee had made her choice, and the dragon had made his.
Perhaps that is why they failed to hear the approach of those who followed. The reason they were caught unaware of the nearing danger until the bonds of air wrapped around them as fast as thought and held them. Avalee gasped at the sensation and tried to look, but found she couldn't. By the look in her dragon's eyes, she knew he could not either.
"We should have left," she whispered to him, and she saw the answer in his eyes.
"Ah, this is not what I expected to find at the end of my daring rescue. A young fool giving herself to the beast that enslaves her." The voice was that of a woman, familiar, but harsh, and Avalee had trouble placing it.
"What?" the woman continued. "Have you nothing to say for yourself? You are pathetic."
Avalee felt a rumble in the dragon's chest at the insult the woman had flung at her, and she said, "Release us or—"
"Or what," the woman said. "
Will you send your pet after me? Sure, perhaps the beast might break free, but trapped as you are in its arms, you would be crushed. Think again."
Avalee closed her eyes and tried to think, and then the dragon spoke.
"Do you hate me so much that you would punish her? I am the one you should punish. Free Avalee and face me yourself."
Avalee wondered why the dragon felt he deserved punishment from the likes of her.
The woman laughed. "Here I am, finally in a position to come against you, and you speak of mercy? You buried mercy when you held me in your cave. You buried it when you stole ten years of my youth and then abandoned me in the wood to make my way when you tired of my company. Then you had the nerve to bring this one into my town—my very home—and stand there pretending guardianship as she sat afraid to speak of you in your presence. You thought I wouldn't know you? You thought I wouldn't mind that my captor had come expecting my behavior, my compliance after what he had done. Ripping me from my people and abandoning me in this strange land to find my way on the streets."
Avalee recognized the voice now, even through the bitterly hysterical edge. She opened her eyes to find the dragon watching her. He didn't seem to be listening to the raging woman, only watching for Avalee's reaction to it.
"She is Janessa, isn't she?" she whispered under her breath, so that only he could hear.
"Yes," he answered in the same way.
The woman continued to shout, though not quite loud enough for Avalee and the dragon not to hear the snap and thump of other feet joining them beside the cliff. “More trolls,” the dragon said. Many more, by the sound of them. The Lady Aramere wanted the dragon dead, and now likely wanted Avalee dead as well, but Avalee was not about to be separated from her dragon. And she would not be a victim: not now, not ever.
"Enough," she shouted, and the flame of energy burst into action within her, filling her with strength that she now attempted and succeeded at pushing out from herself, out and away from the both of them. The bonds of air evaporated into nothing more than an out-of-place breeze on a still day. Avalee faced the woman and observed the trolls that had gathered just behind her. They each took a step or more back. Now facing an obviously free dragon, they ignored Avalee entirely, though their mistress watched her closely, noting the odd nature of her eyes.
Avalee continued to step aside, giving both herself and the dragon the room they would need to put an end to the trolls who were now edging towards the side the dragon was taking, trying to cut him off.
Avalee stopped and said, "Lady Aramere, you say you come to rescue me, but I have no need of rescue. You may take these, creatures," Avalee said this last with a scowl, "and leave us. I will allow it, this time."
"You, you would allow it?" The woman gasped in anger. "You scrawny little child would allow me to leave? Allow?" She broke into laughter, hard and bitter, and then stopped abruptly, her face darkening. "Perhaps I will allow you to walk free after I destroy this beast once and for all. Watch, and perhaps you will learn something."
And then Lady Aramere made the gravest mistake of her life, she turned her back on Avalee and began to weave her hands in a new spell, and the dragon cried out as he was once again caught and squeezed, this time with a chill, icy air added to the mix. Avalee watch in horror as crystals began to form and grow around him, and some even pierced into him.
And the rage took her. Flame rushed over her skin, hot and irrepressible. She felt herself ripping apart, bones lengthening, snapping, and reforming. Skin stretching and splitting, revealing scales beneath it, her hands sprouting claws, her feet breaking apart the sturdy boots that tried and failed to contain her growing talons. The fire in her veins reached a frenzied pace as it rushed through her body, changing her, molding her into the new beast she had become, the beast she had embraced for the good of her dragon—then and now. She was no mere girl, as Lady Aramere had smirked, she was a dragon. And she was angry.
Now her full height, reared up on hind legs not made to hold such weight alone, Avalee roared, and the forest quaked as she allowed herself to fall forward, slamming her forepaws into the barren rocks of the cliff. The trolls, who had stopped to watch the torture of her dragon, now fell to their knees as the ground shook and cracked beneath them.
Lady Aramere turned her face towards Avalee, somehow having kept her balance when the earth had jumped beneath her, and her eyes widened in shock and fear, only now realizing the danger she had placed herself in and the significance of Avalee’s fiery eyes. With one hand held outstretched towards her victim, the Lady slowly pulled the other around towards Avalee, obviously struggling to do so, and Avalee saw the wisp and swirl of ice and snow breaking away from the dragon and following the woman's hand as it shifted towards her, not all of it, but a portion. The woman would take on Avalee as well, it seemed, but Avalee already felt the roiling of flame and sulfur within her.
And, she knew what that meant. Still, her flame was not yet ready, and it became a slow race between Lady Aramere's ice and Avalee's fire. Avalee no longer looked in the direction of her dragon, though she could hear him cry out as, even now, the woman tightened her chill web of magic about him. The churn within Avalee's breast was becoming painful, a steadily building pressure that begged for release, but she held it back. When she released the flames, she wanted them to remove the threat, all of it—woman, trolls—gone. She wanted them gone. Everything she saw became tinted with red and orange from the flames that now escaped unbidden from around her ferocious maw, and still she held them back. Waiting, willing them hotter, fiercer, and yet Lady Aramere had not waited idle for Avalee's attack.
Even now, the first piercing bite of ice stabbed into Avalee's front, right claw, took hold and began to encase it just as the ice had nearly completely encased the dragon. Crystals crawled from the claw through the joint and into what was now her leg, but formerly her forearm. And even as it seemed mere inches from reaching and stifling the raging inferno she'd built within her breast, Avalee decided enough was enough and opened her mouth and throat wide, leaning her head forward almost parallel to the ground, directly at the woman. The flames rushed out without any encouraging on Avalee's part. Liquid fire covered everything it touched in bright flames that swirled and danced around foe, tree, even rock. The Lady Aramere screamed, briefly, and then crumbled into ash, even as the stone below her bubbled and melted, consuming what was left as Avalee slowly swept her still gushing flames along the row of trolls, their bulk and fear working against them despite the time Avalee was taking to aim her fire in their direction. It only took a drop to ignite first one and then another, but Avalee unleashed much more than that.
The heat from the flames melted the bonds of ice that had encased her arm, as well as those holding her dragon. But she was hardly aware of him sprinting out of her range, shedding his clothes as he began his own transformation. She burst forth, the roar deafening as the last of the trolls was blown away in a shower of embers that set the bordering woods aflame. Smoke and ash billowed up twenty paces into the sky to rain down upon the scene of destruction and down upon Avalee. Still she roared her anger, her hurt, and her horror. The small part of her who felt and thought as a human was aghast, crying at what she'd done. But the dragon she had become was dominant, and she could not stop her rampage.
Yet, her flame had a limit, and the stream of fire eventually slowed to a trickle and then a puff of black smoke around her face. Her eyes burned from the tears she could not cry, her mind closed off from the reality of what she'd done, and her draconic mind focused on the one thing that truly mattered to it. It focused on her dragon. She whipped her head around in the direction he'd run, and saw him. He was, like her, a dragon, green to her red, and she watched as he approached her—wary, yet ignoring the licking flames as he stepped past where the trolls had thought to surround him.
Yet now that she saw him safe, well and truly safe, Avalee turned and rushed, as well as she could with her bulky body, and met him half way on ground that formed
and melded to her claws, creating a lasting impression that would forever mar its surface. Close now, she leaned her long neck out towards him, and he stopped and did the same, the two entwining around each other. His smooth scales sliding across hers and soothing her, and he rumbled deep in his throat, almost cooing to her, willing her to calm, even as he withdrew and, never once pulling his eyes from hers, beckoned for her to follow him along the cliff’s edge, beyond the melting rock and scattering ashes of troll and wood. There was nothing left of Lady Aramere to scatter.
Avalee, the dragon, followed. She would follow no matter where he led. He was hers, and she would not allow him out of her sight, not just yet. Slowly, as they walked, Avalee began to come back to herself, and the fire within her began to fade. Then the possessive pull she felt for her dragon began to lessen, and she slowed to a stop. He sensed this and turned back, his neck once more twining with hers.
"Avalee, calm, you have done well. But you must come further from the flames. You must not change back yet. You are too close; you would be consumed. Come." The dragon coaxed her into motion and led her further, even as the cliff’s edge narrowed before them. Still, he led her further until less than a pace separated her from the edges of both wood and fall. Led her until neither could go any further, and then he snaked his head around towards her and said, "Now, you are safe. Change, and I will carry you away from here. And we will rest."
She nodded and allowed the growing calm to envelop her as she looked into her dragon's eyes, swirling still with flame, yet soft. She saw the love in them, and felt the same in her own breast as she gazed back at him. She tried to lean towards him, to touch noses, to rub her rough cheek against his, but already she was falling away, shrinking back into herself—scales, claws, dissolving, absorbing back into her human flesh. It hurt as much as growing into the dragon had hurt, and she cried out, at first a roar and then a scream, utterly human, until she collapsed where she'd stood, her entire body filling the space where moments before only her claw had rested. Human. Woman. But not alone.
Avalee and the Dragon Page 16
