22. Tamsyn

22

Tamsyn

I WAS CHAOS. A MONSTER. THE KIND THAT HAUNTED CHILDHOOD dreams. The kind recounted to small children to terrify them into obedience. Char and ash filled my mouth. I could taste only that as I careened through the damp sky, writhing, twisting on the rushing wind, trying to rid myself of this body, cast it from me like a fisherman's net.

It didn't work. Nothing worked. It stuck.

My body was not my own. The great slapping beat of wings on the air matched the hammering of my heart. Wings. I possessed wings. Or they possessed me. Those appendages worked with no thought or deliberation, but through instinct. Why? Why I should have this instinct and never know of it... never suspect...?

There was a deafening roar beneath the howling air. The sound came from me. The noise climbed up my simmering throat. Blasted from my fanged mouth. My ceaseless scream.

I was the monster.

And this was no dream.

I DIDN'T KNOW how long I flew. Flew. I was flying. I am a dragon. That legendary pestilence that had plagued civilization since the earliest record of time. Until humankind rose up in a great swell, a tsunami determined to engulf them all, no longer willing to be the victim of winged demons.

Now you're one of them. A winged demon.

For nearly five hundred years the Threshing had raged, burned over the land like a bushfire, destroying all in its path. Armies fought, soldiers fell, villages were razed to rubble... so that dragons would no longer exist.

For a hundred years the skies had been free of them. There had been no sightings save the singular time Balor the Butcher found the outlier who had taken Fell. The Crags had been plundered. Pillagers mined the tunnels and caves, searching for the dragons' treasure troves. Never had a dragon been spotted in all that time. Not a glimpse. Not a roar. Not a whisper.

Humankind had succeeded. This was believed. Accepted as truth. Dragons were gone. Reduced to a chapter in history. Ultimately, they would become a page... and then a footnote. Someday not even that. That was the fate of all magical things that ceased to exist. They faded from fact to rumor to myth.

So why was I here? Like this? How?

How how how how how how how how?

The answer took shape, formed into something solid, into rock. Grew into words that hardened into a single irrefutable truth. History was wrong.

Everything we knew. Everything we had been taught. All. Wrong.

I was wrong, trapped in this body, a cage from which I could not break, could not escape.

I vibrated, denial bubbling through me, pushing at the bars. I could not be that thing of lore and nightmare—ghost stories told to children so that they would behave and be home before dark.

Dragon. My horror mounted, the word a poison spreading, overtaking everything.

Dragon. Me. Killer. All one and the same.

I was a killer. I'd taken a life. Granted, Arkin had been on the verge of taking my life, but I'd been the one to do the killing in the end. And with such terrifying and brutal ease. I'd smote him like I was blowing out a candle.

I didn't know how long I spiraled through the air with these agonizing thoughts.

My hands were not hands. They were weapons: amber-hued fingers tipped with sharp talons, which clawed the wind as though seeking purchase. Talons. Not my only weapon, though. I worked my smoke-steeped mouth, tongue lifting, testing the roof, the sides of my cheeks, running over the tips of incisors sharp enough to nick my tongue. More deadly gifts at my disposal.

My lungs pulsed and crackled with embers as I looked up and out, as though the answer was there, salvation in the clouds. I tore through the drifting vapor, catching glimpses of mountain peaks far away, just the summits, rising like jagged pyramids of marbled black and white. The Crags . More awesome and terrifying than the bards ever conveyed. So big—even just these crests—that they could be seen from miles and miles away. My heart reacted, jumping, banging against my rib cage like an overexcited puppy, eager to reach its favorite person.

And that was its own brand of terror. The Crags should mean nothing to me. I should feel nothing at this sight of them.

I wrenched my gaze away and dropped down below the clouds, determined to look upon them no more.

I assessed the ground so very far below. Trees like dots. Lakes like mirrors. The swollen Vinda River a curling ribbon. Streams like blue veins in the earth. So much vibrant green. Panic swelled in me. How was I even doing this? How was I not crashing to the ground? Falling and slamming to earth and breaking into a million pieces?

Fell. He had been there. He had seen what I'd done to his man. I'd looked back and glimpsed him standing over Arkin's body, those frost eyes blazing ice, looking up after me. He saw me. Well, he saw the dragon. He could not know I was the dragon. He would not leap to such a conclusion. Perhaps he would think me dead, killed by the dragon? Whatever the case, he was rid of me.

A sob worked its way up from my contracting and expanding lungs. They burned. Smoldered in my chest. The heat brought me no pain. Fire did not hurt me.

My gift. My curse.

I tore through the air without grace or direction or purpose. I'd fled in fear. The impulse to go, to run— no . To fly. It was an immediate response, reflexive, but there was nowhere to go. No place to flee, no refuge on the entirety of this planet safe for the likes of me. And yet I could not stay airborne forever. I gazed around wildly, looking for a place to land below.

Somehow I descended. I willed it and my body obeyed, muscles reacting and working, so that was something. I could command my movements. Perhaps there was hope that I could command myself to turn into a human again.

I lowered down, my legs lifting and tucking in close. My wings beat and churned the air into wind, generating great gusts. My body snagged on leaves, popped and cracked thick branches like they were twigs. I came down clumsily, the soles of my feet making contact a split second before my bent knees crashed to the ground. Grass and leaves crunched beneath my weight. I crumpled and folded in on myself, tail curving around my body as though seeking to shelter me.

A familiar sting pricked my eyes. It was the only thing familiar about any of this. A sob pushed up from inside my chest, but only more chuffing sounds escaped my mouth. Nothing intelligible. No words. Nothing human.

I leaned forward on my bent knees and stretched my arms before me, choking out wild, desperate sounds, clawing the ground, dirt and grit sliding beneath my talons. I looked down at those arms. At my skin... my scaled skin winking fire. Proof of what I was.

I dragged trembling fingers down my cheeks, my nails—talons—scoring my skin as though I could tear the flesh from my bones and find myself buried somewhere beneath, like a person trapped inside a cocoon.

The pressure I exerted should have done that. It should have drawn blood, but this skin was tough as armor. I would have to go deeper to inflict damage. Deeper to find me.

Turn. Go back.

I concentrated on the wish, willing it to happen, for me to change. Nothing. No transformation. I was still this creature with the taste of hellfire in my mouth and smoke in my nose.

Lifting my gaze, I looked around and marveled at the world. Everything was brighter. The greens greener. The browns lush and sparkling in a way I had never thought possible. Colors I had never seen before, never knew existed, seared my vision.

My ears perked up at the sound of burbling water running over smooth rock. I grabbed fistfuls of earth and crawled, dragging myself over ground toward the body of water, smelling it as much as I heard it. Muskiness and loam and sulfur filled my nostrils as I followed the scent.

The grass thinned away to rough rocks and pebbles that didn't hurt at all even as my weight crunched against the sharpness. My long amber-hued fingers worked sinuously, seizing and pulling me along to the water's edge. At the first cold lap, my skin contracted, greedily tasting the wetness.

My hands sank into the shallow depths, into sludge and shale. I leaned over the water, smooth as glass, and peered down, taking my first solid look at my reflection. The wide ridged nose. The teeth big and deadly like daggers in my mouth. My eyes had changed, too. Were more feline... the pupils dark, elongated slits along the sides of my face now.

Not my face. A dragon's face.

I lashed out and swiped the water with an angry snarl, spraying droplets, ending my reflection. I only wished it was as simple to end this ... what I'd become, this impossible thing I could not be. I inched back, away from the water, as the ripples settled and the surface returned to glass. Collapsing on my side, I curled into a tight ball full of ragged, animal breaths. Smolder baked in my chest. I wrapped my arms around my knees, willing myself smaller, willing myself to return to me again.

I turned and rolled my face into the ground, tasting grit on my lips. Closing my eyes, I tried to form words, to speak my thoughts. Instead I could only mouth my pain and fear and longing voicelessly into the ether. Unintelligible sounds chuffed from my mouth.

This isn't real. This isn't happening. This is a bad dream. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

For a moment, my mind went gray, thoughts unspooling, rolling out and away. I forgot everything. Forgot where I was. Forgot what I was, which was a relief. A great gust of breath eased from my body. If I could, I would never remember again. I would stay in the gray.

I was back home in the City, in the palace, in the comfort of my bed, cozily ensconced in plump pillows, swallowed up by deep bedding, the coverlet tucked up to my chin. Soft sounds stirred on the air around me. The trill of birds outside my window. Voices. Footsteps. A maid's distant song as she moved down the corridor. All of this as familiar to me as a well-trod path.

Safe. Comfortable. Again the royal whipping girl, secure in my role, content in my place... any secret longings for more, for something else, no longer a faint whisper in my heart, no longer an itch beneath my skin.

The gray was peace. Dappled light on grass. A morning breeze on the downy feathers of a bird. The clean wash of rain through a garden. If I breathed slowly and deeply enough, I could almost believe I was there. I could almost believe it was real.

It lasted only a moment. Then I remembered.

I was back in the present, in the sharp fangs of the woods.

And I remembered everything.

I WANTED TO hide and fold myself away like flower petals closing at the end of a day, preparing for the night. I wanted to stay stuck in night, hidden from the world, rather than remaining this creature. Rather than living in this monstrous form, capable of such damage and destruction. Only feared. Never loved. Alone.

I contemplated how I might do that.

How could I put an end to this wretched existence?

According to the bards, dragons lived a long time. They were not immortal, exactly, but close. They lived for centuries. It was impossible to wrap my head around that. Centuries. Close enough to immortality for a mortal, and I was still thinking very much like one of those. Like a human. Frail. Brittle as a winter's branch. Someone who had expected—hoped—to count birthdays well into the double digits. Never the triple digits.

Very little could kill them. Them? Us. Me.

That would never feel normal or right. Never slide off my mind and tongue with ease.

Typical weapons didn't destroy a dragon. Obviously not fire. At least it would not harm me. That particular element was at the core of me now. It bubbled through my veins like oil beneath the earth's skin.

My anguish was all edges and angles, sharp and pointed and digging. I lowered my head, panting, crying without tears for the girl I was, the girl lost. A dry sponge trying to wring out water. Not a drop fell. Dragons didn't cry. A fact I never expected to know. Now I did. Now I knew.

"Oh. Hello there."

My head snapped up at the voice, in this place where there should not be a voice. My gaze sharpened on the woman who stood a few feet away. Thora.

She blinked mildly, not appearing the slightest bit surprised or frightened, or any of the reactions one might show when coming face-to-face with a dragon.

She angled her head. "You look like you're having a bad day."

She spoke casually, unconcerned, like the sight of me was as normal and familiar as the shape of the back of her hand.

I opened my mouth, but her name did not emerge. Speech, human speech, eluded me still. I couldn't manage it. The words lodged themselves in my throat like great rocks that could not be budged, rolling marbles in my mouth that could not escape.

I hung my head, burying my face in my strange hands—hands that felt like they belonged to something else. Some thing .

Why was Thora not afraid and running away?

Fell had said she was a witch. Perhaps that was why she was not afraid of dragons. Had she known what I was when she first saw me? Was that what her puzzling words signified?

Witches and dragons. Both magical creatures. They existed on the same plane. We. We existed on the same plane. A magical plane.

Thora stepped closer, unafraid. Then, incredibly, she squatted down so that her face was close to mine. "It's you in there, isn't it?" Her words whispered over my skin, as comforting as a balm. She peered at me, seeing me. I didn't understand how, but she did.

I nodded.

"I thought so." She looked me over. "Do you know how to change back?"

Change back? Could I? Was that even a possibility?

I wanted to ask her about that, but, of course, I couldn't. I would have to change back to do that, in order to speak the question, and that was not happening. A twisted, mirthless bubble of laughter lodged in my chest alongside those inescapable words.

"Well." She stood back up, dusting her hands off on her skirts. "Come along, then. Can't stay here in the mud forever. Let's get you sorted out."

Sorted out.

I didn't know if that was possible. It seemed an insurmountable task. But with so few choices, I would follow her anywhere.