Chapter 26

Remis hadn’t ever been one to consider fate before. Sure, he’d thrown the word around in a general sense, but he’d never actually believed that fate was real. Now that he was here with Meira, he was starting to wonder if there was actually something to it. Kindred had said that together—a mage, a witch, and a dragon—they could be more. He’d always dreamed of more. And now it was so close, the possibility of it actually felt tangible.

At his side, Meira was scowling as she dragged him along. She stomped over fallen decorations from the night before and led him through the village square and back down the now empty streets. Her hand circled his wrist, her long fingers firmly wrapped around him. Quietly, he pulled his hand back, letting her fingers interlace with his. And she let him. As though this was the most natural thing in the world.

What might it be like in her mind? Assuming what Kindred said was indeed possible. He could be connected to her, to her dragon, in ways that only stories allowed before. If fate was real then Meira was his.

All it would take is for you to bond to that same pair as they have with each other.

“How did you bond with your dragon?” he asked as they neared the edge of the village.

Meira stopped. She turned, her eyes finally catching on their hands and how Remis’ thumb stroked against hers. Air hissed through her teeth and she yanked her hand back, clutching it to her chest as though he’d burned her.

“Don’t listen to a thing that old bat said. No scale rider has ever bonded to both a dragon and a mage. That’s not real. And even if it could be, I certainly will not be the first to entertain it.”

“How many scale riders are witches?” Remis whispered, eyes scanning her face and those large green doe eyes. The splattering of freckles, so small they weren’t noticeable until one drew close enough, ran over the bridge of her nose and lightly across her cheekbones. They were darker now as she stood with her face in the sun. Wind blew her mousey brown curls over her shoulder, the width of her wild hair framing her face and begging for him to sink his fingers into it.

He could, he thought, weave the strands between his fingers and tug them at just the right angle so that her perfectly full mouth would be angled toward him. He’d see that glimmer of something in her eyes if he did, that something that lived in the torn place between hate and love.

“They can’t know,” she whispered back.

What must it be like to hide your true nature from the entire world? From the people you might consider family as a scale rider would? Witches were uncommon because witches were killed just for being.

Now one stood right in front of him, the most beautiful creature he’d ever laid eyes on, and she held herself back from all the power she could have only so she could exist in a place that despised her.

Anger tasted like ash on his tongue. All the hate he’d been taught burned away under her stare. They were alike more than he’d considered before. They were both surviving. Wishing and wanting, yes, but mostly surviving.

“Just think about it.” He tried not to feel too hopeful but she’d leaned in when he’d spoken. Every moment with her, his control dwindled further. Desperate and needy, he lifted his hand and let a finger trace over her jaw and then her full lips. Every sliver of skin he touched was like expensive silk. Her eyes drifted closed for only a couple of heartbeats. Then on a breath, her lips parted, those long lashes of hers brushed against her brow bone and she looked up at him. Meira sighed and turned toward the forest, leaving him wanting.

Together they started out of the village and back into the Deadwoods. Another breeze blew her cloak away from her and showed off the perfect curves of her body in all that damn leather. Remis bit his knuckle when he imagined getting on his knees before such a woman. He wasn’t sure that he loved her in the way she suggested they might one day but he was sure as hell attracted to her. In another world, she could have been someone he’d take home to bed and be done with. Or maybe there was something to this and one taste of her would be enough for him to never want anyone else.

As Yordway became hidden behind the curve of the path and the swell of trees and brush, Meira slowed, holding an arm out in front of him. She pulled a slip of ribbon from her wrist, gathered her hair, and tied it back. All the while her attention roved over the woods.

“We’re not alone,” she said softly, her hand falling to her sword.

Remis’ hand went to his belt, his ears straining to catch the sound of movement, while he watched for the shift of shadows under the bright midday sun. He saw nothing. Only heard the rustle of the wind and the call of a bird further away. Still, goosebumps rose across his flesh and the hair on the back of his neck lifted.

Her sword sang as she pulled it from her belt and turned herself around. The fabric of her cloak whipped against his side but he moved with her. Two people stood between them and the town. Two horribly familiar people.

The Maine twins, Corman Mavis.

Remis was sure his luck couldn’t get any worse.

“Well, look who we found, Mavis,” Corman sang. He smiled in time with his twin.

“Just the man we’ve been looking for,” Mavis sang back.

Great.

“You know these people?” Meira snapped but didn’t lower her sword.

Remis shrugged. The Maine family twins were the brats of their biggest competitor on the market. He’d met them a time or two at functions that his father had demanded he appear at, though he’d often found them unsettling when they constantly mirrored the other. They were both as ghostly pale as their wraith-like mother with her bland gray eyes but had the sharpness of their father’s features and the same curling red hair. Both currently had a blistering crimson sunburn across their cheeks and forehead. They’d never been known as people who spent a lot of time outdoors and it could be that their excessively fair features were exactly why. He almost pitied them. Almost. It was hard to find it within himself when they stood here in the taunting way of theirs.

“I know of them,” he said, answering Meira.

“Got yourself,” Mavis started.

“An escort?” Corman finished.

Meira’s face twisted. She looked as appalled as he’d been the first time they’d ever spoken to him like that. The twins both had their hands on their own weapons and dried leaves crunched under their boots as they began to separate and circle him and Meira.

He didn’t like that. Not a bit.

He gripped the hilt of his sword.

“Less of an escort,” Remis smiled brightly with that ever-charming mask he wore, “more of a kidnapper.” Meira chafed at that but was following Mavis with the point of her sword giving Remis her back. He let himself do the same, found comfort in her warmth as it aligned with his. “Is there something we can help you with?”

Mavis and Corman laughed in unison. Spoke in unison. “Father told us you’d been sent off to procure some business. We’ve been sent to keep you from said business. By any means necessary.”

Corman stopped directly in front of him, cocked his head to the side, and grinned. Remis imagined Mavis looked much the same before Meira as he felt her tense behind him. Metal whispered as it was pulled from sheaths and then clanged together as Remis and Corman stood sword to sword. Meira growled.

“We don’t have to do this.” Remis’ smile was falling, but Corman’s was still growing.

“Yes we do,” Mavis answered though he hadn’t been talking to her. The oddness of the two sent a terrible cold chill down his spine.

“I’ll give you sixty seconds to make the right choice here,” Meira said loud enough for Corman to hear too. Damn it all, her voice had gone dark and dangerous, shooting through him so violently his knees threatened to go weak. He wished he could have seen her face when she continued, he knew it held all that fire that she liked to point his way. That fire that made him want to bend to her will. “But if you so much as touch him, I’ll run you both through with my sword and leave you for the dragonis.”

Her words were rough, a rumble of frustration and…fear? The sound of it filled his chest with a new sort of sensation. A light but warm caress that took the breath from his lungs.

“I’d listen to her,” he said. “She’s more dangerous than her pretty looks suggest.”

Corman only rolled his eyes and lunged. Remis met him with his own blade and batted away the strike. They fell into the familiar push and pull of swordplay, the one that both their parents had made sure they were fluent in. It was different having an opponent that might actually hurt him though, there was that lingering sense of worry at the back of his mind. Corman didn’t pull his strikes like Remis’ trainers had, and the first time Corman broke Remis’ guard and his blade cut across his bicep he almost didn’t believe it was real.

The sting of pain that followed jolted him into reality and renewed his anger. He surged forward pushing Corman back toward the treeline and off the beaten dirt path. Challenge shone in Corman’s eyes, and a grin still teased at his lips.

At his back, Remis could hear Mavis’ grunting as she took the wicked swing of Meira’s sword. Corman’s gaze wandered to his sister long enough for Remis to get his own strike. His blade glided across Corman’s ribcage, splitting open his shirt and revealing the pale flesh darkened by blood.

He realized as Corman jumped away and crimson started to soak the edges of the frayed fabric that to end this might mean he’d have to actually kill the man. Remis had learned the art of swinging his sword but he’d never considered he’d actually have to use it to end someone’s life. He wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t a killer. If anything, judging by how the thought made his stomach turn and bile burn at the back of his throat, he was a coward wearing the mask of a man with confidence. He didn’t want to kill Corman no matter how awful he might be.

Maybe Corman took pity on him or it could have been that he knew his sister was struggling against Meira but the man backed away and ran for his sister. Remis let him. He followed the man with the end of his sword but made no move to hurt him when he very well could have.

Then he and Meira were side by side. Her nostrils flared as she caught sight of his torn sleeve and the cut that ran across it. She snarled, bared her teeth at the twins, and in a flurry of movements he’d hardly been able to catch flung herself in front of him.

Meira was a storm that raged when she met Corman’s sword. The man gasped as he struggled to hold her back. She spun with lethal precision, knocking his blade from his hands, blocking Mavis’ next attempt, and finally shoving her blade straight through Corman’s stomach.

Eyes wide, he watched Meira, barely keeping a hold of his own weapon as his body was drenched in cold sweat. She stepped closer to Corman and shoved her weapon deeper as he groaned. Mavis was screaming too, holding her stomach as though she’d been the one hit.

“I said don’t touch him.” Meira pushed the words through her clenched jaw, those eyes darker and more furious than he’d seen from her before. With a wet squelch, she pulled the blade free.

Corman staggered back but managed to stay upright as blood poured out through the fingers he interlaced over the wound. All Remis could do was stand and stare. His stomach clenched and threatened to empty itself.

Another terrible scream ripped through Mavis. Her short red curls were plastered to her sweaty face as she ran her sword through Meira. Bloodied steel sparkled in the sun as it protruded from Meira’s side. Mavis stood frozen, not bothering to pull the sword from Meira’s back as the witch’s face turned to look at her. There was no pain written in Meira’s expression, only quiet outrage that she’d been struck. It was the witch who pulled herself from the blade.

The sword clattered to the ground. Mavis trembled. Took a step toward her brother, whose lips had turned red with blood as he groaned.

“Go. Now!” Meira shouted, springing Mavis into action.

The fight hadn’t been long but they’d all turned bloodied and bruised in the end. Remis didn’t even know if Corman would live through such a blow, even as his sister looped her brother’s arm over her shoulder and turned him toward the town. Corman leaned into her, his steps dragging and uncoordinated underneath him. Remis’ feet were planted in the dirt. Sweat soaked his shirt and into his waistcoat, but he watched as the twins disappeared as swiftly as they’d appeared.

Meira turned to look at him. All the anger that she’d held moments before was gone. Her lips were parted, her breath coming in ragged pants. “He hurt you,” she said quietly. Using her sword, she cut through the end of her cloak and walked to him. She smelled like sweat, spice, and iron as she carefully wrapped the cloth around his arm. Wincing, she tied a knot to hold the cloth over the cut across his bicep. She leaned into him and splayed her fingers out over his chest. His heart beat wildly under her touch.

“Meira, I—” He held her waist and she swayed with a quiet groan of pain. Blood stained his palm, slick, wet, and hot where Mavis had run her blade through her. “You’re hurt.”

“I’ll be fine.” Her lashes curled against her cheeks as her eyes fluttered closed. Her hands fell from his chest a second before the entirety of her weight began to crumble. Remis caught her against him, scooped her up into his arms just as her head lolled to the side, and turned just in time to watch a Bold Wing come crashing down through the treetops.