Touch of Ice (Dawn of Dragons Book 1)

by Mary Auclair

  Tallie had fallen into silence a long time ago, her head tucked under her mother’s chin.

  Endora wanted to wipe away her worries but she couldn’t. The toxicity of the pregnancy had settled in in the few hours since they had been kidnapped from the Darragon castle. The fever was only the first symptom, but judging by the speed with which it was growing worse, the others were sure to follow. Soon the fever would lead to a headache, then blindness, followed by deafness, and finally Endora would fall into a deep coma from which she would not wake up.

  It was a mercy, but a mercy she couldn’t afford. At least not until Tallie was safe.

  Then, all she asked was to see Aldric again, to tell him everything she’d never told him. Hold him like she should have all along. To give him a child who would make his life a safe haven of love and warmth.

  The sturdy pony walked slowly, apparently accustomed to the slippery feel of snow beneath its hooves, negotiating the descent down the slope in careful turns, ignoring Endora’s directions and taking the best option to the bottom of the mountains where its home probably was.

  I could sleep. I’ll close my eyes, just for a few minutes.

  Tired, she was so tired. The pain, so overwhelming when she fought off the sleep, faded to the background as she allowed fatigue to penetrate her body, render her limbs weak, and numb her face. Endora’s eyelids were heavy and she blinked slowly, allowing the wall of darkness to shield her from the world for just a few seconds.

  The world faded to a dull landscape of gray as her eyes remained closed, opening for fewer seconds each time. Until they stayed closed. Darkness enclosed her in a hot, numbing embrace, and Endora let the world fade behind a curtain of smooth, forgiving oblivion.

  Seconds slipped into minutes and she lolled, carried by a cocoon of warmth and amnesia.

  Then the black warmth was sliced by a sharp animal scream. Endora’s eyes snapped open, recoiling in pain at the bright white light reflecting off the snow. She grabbed Tallie’s body, pressing the child to her, afraid they were falling down the slope of the mountain. Her mind struggled against the void, but she couldn’t focus.

  Tallie was screaming distorted words, words that didn’t penetrate her brain completely. Endora stared through the haze of fever as the pony bucked, its hooves battering the snow. The horse was a hair’s breadth away from slipping into panic and she shook her head, trying to force the world into focus.

  Then she was there.

  A thin, tall, gray-clad figure, standing between the skeletons of two tree trunks. Her eyes were lit with a flame that had taken root in the deep, dark rot at the core of her hate-filled soul. On her forehead, the mark of the Knat-Kanassis shone over pale skin, and her mouth was stretched in a sneer, exposing her teeth like an animal’s.

  Mistress Hael had tracked them through the wilderness like a demon from the old Earth’s folklore, and now she wanted retribution.

  Endora gripped the reins of the pony but in her panic, she pulled too hard and the animal bucked, sending them toppling over in the snow. In a flurry of hooves and snow, the horse battered the ground around Endora and Tallie as she tried to pull her daughter to safety, away from the lethal strength of the animal.

  Hael took advantage of Endora’s momentary incapacity, and with the ruthlessness of a murderess, her blade slashed, dangerously close to the lethal hooves. It barely nicked the animal’s skin, but the poison on the metal surface worked fast, and soon the pony was struggling with jerky, quick movements. Hael stepped back, waiting for the death that was soon to come.

  The horse’s legs began to shake and Endora knew that soon, the animal’s large body would prove as much an obstacle as it was a shield. Grabbing Tallie by the shoulders, she pushed her daughter behind her back, trapping her against a large boulder.

  Her eyes scanned the untarnished whiteness of the snow, finding nothing to defend herself with. Then she saw a branch, poking through the surface like a hand. Endora bent and grabbed it, lifting the primitive weapon in front of her.

  The horse’s movements had become erratic, the strong body jerking up and down, the animal somehow knowing instinctively that to lie down in the snow meant death. Its strength was fading fast, and the pony spent more and more time on its knees in the deep snow. Its large, soft brown eyes latched on to Endora’s and her heart squeezed for the poor creature, its life lost in a battle that was not its own.

  On the other side of the animal, indifferent to the suffering she caused, stood Mistress Hael, her mouth twisted in a savage grimace and her hand out, holding her long, curved knife away from her body.

  Endora caught her stare and held it. In her hand, the branch seemed to weigh a ton. Hael’s eyes followed Endora’s and her grimace turned feral. This wasn’t an even fight, not by a long shot, and they both knew it. Mistress Hael moved, impatient now to claim her payment in blood.

  At the women’s movements, the horse neighed and tried to stand up but it was unable. The animal’s fear was in Endora’s favor, as the horse was for more scared of Hael than it was of her. It turned its head to Hael and snapped its teeth in the armed woman’s direction.

  Hael paused, stepping out of reach as her eyes went from the pony to Endora. With a vicious snarl, Hael slashed her poisonous blade down across the horse’s sensitive muzzle. The animal neighed in pain and horror, but soon the convulsions started and it lay on its side, foam forming at its mouth, its tongue lolling on the snow.

  Seconds later, the pony stilled.

  Behind Endora, Tallie started to cry, a soft, low and muffled sound. The sound of despair, of a person who knew the outcome of the fight before it happened. That sound, full of helplessness and fear, ricocheted against Endora’s ribs, fueling a new kind of anger, spreading it fast down her limbs and into her brain. The fog of the fever lifted, replaced by a cool resolve.

  “Now, you die, human.” Hael spit out the last word as if its taste burned her tongue. “I’m ready to endure Lord Misrael’s fury if that means I can watch you scream as I slit your abomination of a daughter’s throat before I push my knife into your heart.”

  “Bring it on, bitch,” Endora snarled through clenched teeth, her heavy branch at the ready. She might not have a fancy sword, but she knew how to defend herself against the occasional coyote. A good blow with the branch might just give her the advantage. “I’ll show you what a human can do.”

  Hael’s mouth opened and an incoherent howl filled the forest. Her face was frozen in a grimace as she leapt, the poisonous blade in front of her body. There was so much hatred, a fanatic kind of exalted violence that made the other woman’s eyes shine with insanity as she rushed forward, her knife held high. Endora fell backward, scrambling in the snow, crushing Tallie against the rock in an attempt to escape the murderous blade.

  A nick was all it would take, and then nothing would save them.

  With the rage of a mother who knew the battle was lost, Endora stabbed with the pointed, broken end of the branch, holding it with both hands as she stabbed it into Hael’s wrist.

  Bright red bloomed in the snow like a maleficent flower as Hael’s scream turned from hatred to pain. Endora brought the branch up, its cold wood stained red as Hael stepped back, her forearm covered with blood. The other woman glared at Endora through narrowed eyes, re-assessing her prey, but not giving in.

  With a deliberate slow movement, Hael moved her knife to her other hand, then reached inside the folds of her dress to pull out another blade. The time for games was over, and Hael wasn’t there to play fair.

  Then a white demon landed on the rocks behind Endora and Tallie and fire rained from the sky.

  Chapter 24

  Fire rained on Mistress Hael in a liquid kiss of death, erasing everything the woman had been to a blackened husk. Heat surrounded them, permeating even the rocks on the ground, and Endora was suddenly filled with fear.

  Too much. This was too much.

  Then, as suddenly as it began, the fire stopped.

  Endora and T
allie were pressed against the rock, the child held tight against her mother’s chest, preventing her from seeing the horror that Mistress Hael had become. A spiny, twisted skeleton, as black as her soul, only held together by the charred remnants of her tendons and muscles, still kneeling.

  She’s gone. We’re safe.

  Endora forced her eyes away from the hypnotic vision and a tall, silver-eyed man landed in front of her.

  “Lord Misrael,” Endora whispered, recognizing the aristocratic, slim face and golden blond hair.

  “Lady Darragon.” Lord Misrael inclined his head in an incongruously polite salute, then brushed a stray bit of ash from his leather riding coat. His silver eyes slid to the figure of Mistress Hael, and his lips pursed in disgust. “Such a tiresome woman. She knew my instructions. You were not to be harmed.” His eyes shone with malice. “At least, not by her.”

  “Aldric will find you. He will kill you.”

  Lord Misrael chuckled, his brows rising on his bald forehead. Beyond the rocks, his dragon growled, the sound deep and strangely savage.

  “Do not intervene, Nemeris.” Lord Misrael shot a sharp glance at the dragon, his tone one Endora had never heard Aldric use with Rhyl. A tone of condescension and dismissal. As if, somehow, the dragon was less than him. “You will have your time to shine when you burn them in the town square of the capital.”

  Lord Misrael took a step toward Endora, ignoring the branch still in her hands—albeit lowered to the ground. She wasn’t even a threat to him. She was small and insignificant, a non-threat if there ever was one.

  Mere anger turned to blistering wrath in her veins, shedding the remnants of the fever from her mind.

  Lord Misrael took another step toward her, his intent to grab her as clear as the superior smirk on his face. The sun played on something shiny in Mistress Hael’s skeletal hands. Something sharp, still as deadly as before.

  Endora didn’t think.

  She threw herself on the ground, shattering the remains of Hael’s skeleton into a noxious cloud of black dust. Her hand closed on the handle of the blade dipped in Venenum Ardere; the poison of the gods. She rolled in the ash, not caring about the acrid taste of it in her mouth, the way it clung to her skin as if, somehow, the woman was still trying to hurt her even in death.

  “Don’t come any closer.” Endora raised the blade to Lord Misrael, her hand steady and her stare not wavering. “One nick with this blade, and you and your dragon are history.”

  Lord Misrael paused, his eyes gleaming with a sudden anger, the too-clean lines of his face twisting.

  “You are an abomination on the face of the world.” He spoke slowly, his hatred leaching from every pore of his body. “Surely even a creature such as you realizes there is no hope. Nemeris can wipe your existence clean from this world with a single breath of dragon fire.”

  “Yes.” Endora could feel the eyes of the beast on her back, the barely civilized mind behind it. “But then you wouldn’t prove your superiority to Aldric. All you would prove is that you’re a sniveling coward who stole a woman and her child away from her mate under the cover of night. Face it, Misrael, without the Knat-Kanassis behind you, you’re nothing but a small, angry boy.”

  Lord Misrael’s face contorted until it was barely recognizable. His silver eyes were slashed with vertical pupils and his bones moved under his skin, showing the beast within.

  Endora shifted her weight on her heels, as if she was about to tame a panicked horse, her blade at the ready.

  A deafening roar invaded the mountain air, pure and crisp, filled with a power that resonated to her very soul.

  “They’re here.” Endora’s eyes went up to the sky, to the rapidly growing shape of a white dragon. “Aldric and Rhyl found us.”

  Lord Misrael lifted his gaze, and the skin on his face pulled taut against his skull. Terror spread across the man’s face; terror, and the realization that he was going to die. His eyes of liquid metal turned to Endora’s, filled with a hatred that ran bone deep.

  Then his gaze shifted to his dragon, Nemeris, and in a blur of white and brown scales, the beast was airborne.

  “If I can’t have my victory, I can still destroy House Darragon.”

  The brown and white dragoness opened her mouth, the deep red glow of dragon fire showing in her throat. Endora froze, dropping her now useless blade to the ground before scuttling to Tallie.

  She held her daughter in a futile attempt at protection, closing her eyes against the brutal death that was coming.

  A woman’s scream pierced the pure mountain air, a child’s cry not far behind it.

  Aldric lurched, his mind taking control of Rhyl’s body, his will an all-encompassing force, dominating that of the animal. He braced himself for the impact as Rhyl’s larger body slammed into Nemeris.

  Dragon fire spilled in the air, wild and panicked as the dragoness was thrown to the ground.

  Rhyl’s mighty roar, full to the brim with violence as the dragoness violated his territory, filled the air. Talons slashed at Aldric and Rhyl as Nemeris got her dragon fire under control, scrambling to her feet, trying to avoid Rhyl’s deadly jaws.

  Aldric closed his eyes, allowing his connection to the beast to run its full course. He saw through the eyes of the dragon, the world a tapestry of colors no eyes, human or Delradon, could see.

  His jaw closed on the female dragon’s wing, breaking the bones with a sickening sound. Nemeris howled in pain, then embedded her talons into Rhyl’s thigh.

  Blood flowed, shocking red against the pure white snow.

  Nemeris staggered away, shaking her head, her pale golden eyes fixed on Rhyl with a dark knowledge. The knowledge of death to come.

  “Kill them!” Lord Misrael screamed from his position in the dragon’s saddle. “Burn the woman and the child.”

  Nemeris turned her eyes to Endora and Tallie, a few hundred feet to Rhyl’s side. A deep red glowed in her half-open jaws, her last action to be that of murder.

  Rhyl struck, fast as a reptile. His jaw closed on the slender neck of the dragoness, and his talons dug deep into her belly. Nemeris screeched and thrashed, sending her Draekon to tumble on the rocks. Her wings and talons scratched and hit but her strength was already leaving her. Blood flowed like a macabre fountain as Rhyl pulled her neck open, severing her arteries, cutting off the flow of life.

  The dragoness fell limp on the snowy rocks, her wings broken, her life spilling out fast. Her golden eyes latched on to Aldric and Rhyl, then closed.

  Aldric pulled out of the bond, receding to the background, then finally into his own body as he opened his own silver eyes to the world.

  He stepped down, leaving Nemeris’s carcass to Rhyl, to the dragon’s deadly ceremony.

  Aldric walked up to Lord Misrael. The man tried to crawl away, not giving a single glance back to the dragoness who had given her life for him.

  “She’s dead,” Aldric said, standing over him. “You must feel it.”

  Lord Misrael finally sat upon the rocks, his broken leg in front of him. His eyes latched on to Nemeris’s unmoving form but his face betrayed no feelings. “She was weak. She should have never been mine.”

  “No. You were weak, and you betrayed her trust.”

  Lord Misrael swallowed, then looked away from Nemeris to glare at Aldric. “You might have secured Katanie from us, but we’ll be back. Sordied sangui, mors abomina.”

  Aldric stared at the broken man, his skin already gray, his eyes already dull. “Maybe. But you won’t be there to see it.”

  “Won’t you kill me?” Thin lips pulled down into a hateful grimace. “I know I would.”

  Aldric’s eyes went to Rhyl, who was burning the body of Nemeris with vengeful precision. “You’re already dead.”

  He turned, his mind already far away. Then he saw her. Endora stood alone on the scorched rocks, cradling her daughter. Her long brown hair moved with the wind, and her dark eyes latched on to him. She staggered, then her knees gave way. Tallie screamed s
omething as her mother fell to the ground.

  His heart lurched in his chest, and he ran.

  Endora’s body found its way between his arms as he cradled her head with his hands.

  “My Gods, you’re burning up.” He touched Endora’s face and neck. Heat was coming off of her in waves, and her usually lively brown eyes were dulled by the fever. “Hang on. Rhyl will fly you home. You’ll be all right.”

  “You’re a bad liar.” Endora smiled, and a hand layered with fire closed around his wrist. “You’ll have to take good care of Tallie and Henriette for me.”

  Behind him, Tallie’s soft sobs rippled across his spine, echoing the anguish of his own heart.

  “I’m not going to allow you to leave me.”

  “Just like a man, to think you can forbid me anything.” Endora’s smile turned dreamy, and for a moment her eyelids looked like they were about to close, but she fought it. “This one is not on you.”

  “I can’t live without you.” As he said the words, his hold on his anguish broke and despair flooded his mind, entered his lungs. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. Endora was the beginning and the end of his world.

  “I love you, Aldric Darragon.” A palm almost as hot as Rhyl’s scales touched his cheek.

  “And I love you.”

  Aldric closed his eyes and his lips found hers. As he kissed her, a warm breeze caressed his back, and a soft growl announced Rhyl’s presence. Endora’s lips went limp under his, and Aldric pulled back.

  She was gone, truly and definitively in the coma that claimed so many human women. Panic invaded Aldric’s mind.

  Then the dragon approached, nuzzling Endora’s limp hand. Rhyl’s eyes focused on Aldric’s, and even in the haze of his grief, he understood. The dragon wanted to show him something.

  Aldric flattened his palm on the dragon, his other arm wrapped around Endora.