25. Tamsyn

25

Tamsyn

I WOKE SLOWLY, SWIMMING TO THE SURFACE, EMERGING from a deep, milky fog, so like the fog I perpetually found myself folded within these days.

I shifted, and a piece of hay jabbed me in the side. Grimacing, I readjusted, seeking escape from the needle prick, wondering where I was.

As much as the hay poked and prodded at me, it smelled sweet. Faintly herbal. Slightly tangy. It did not reek of mold or, worse, manure. There was that, at least. As far as beds went, it could be worse. So much worse.

And then I remembered just how much worse it actually was.

As my world came into focus, I lifted my hand, held it up in front of me, bracing myself with a sucked-in breath, needing to see what horror awaited me this day, needing to know, fearing, hoping...

The familiar fingers were there, the nails as short and jagged as ever, but I stared at them like they were something new, a marvel, slender digits flexing in front of my face, my movements experimental, shaky and juddery as a new colt gaining its legs.

I am me again.

My arm. My hand. My fingers. No clawlike appendages. No talons. No scaled flesh.

No dragon here.

My hands roamed over my body, assessing, reassuring. I was myself again. In the truest sense. Naked in the hay with a wool blanket twisted around me, exposing far more than it shielded from the raw morning air.

I blew out a breath of relief that immediately steamed when it hit the cold.

"Yes. You're you."

Apparently I had spoken the words aloud, put the thought out into the world, let it materialize and take shape like something real, something I could touch and hold in my hand.

My gaze snapped to Thora. "You." Apparently I hadn't dreamed her up.

The events of yesterday flooded back over me. Arkin. Me... bursting from my skin. Fire like saliva in my mouth. Fell. His bellow of rage filling my ears, trailing me like smoke up into the sky. My wild, directionless flight before I landed, before Thora collected me—something broken and in need of repair. She'd led me back to her home with a casual manner, as though she came across dragons all the time in the course of her day.

When I didn't fit through the door to her house, she guided me to her barn, where I bedded down alongside the rest of the livestock. Two milking cows, a horse, and a mule. They all eyed me with understandable distrust. In the soft light of morning, their gazes still reflected that distrust, although the mule looked a little less wild-eyed as it munched on a bucket of feed.

Thora angled her head thoughtfully as she peered at me within the pile of hay. "But perhaps I should say it is the other you . Because the dragon is you, too," she said so absolutely, so matter-of-fact that it sparked the panic inside me. The panic not so very different from what I had felt while careening wildly thousands of feet above the ground.

No no no no no no no.

"I am not a dragon." Fear sharpened my tongue. "I would know!"

She gave me a pitying look.

"I am not a dragon." My fear slid into something softer-edged. A desperate plea. I was a human. I couldn't be anything else. Despite all the evidence to the contrary. I repeated it as though the conviction alone could make it true: "I am not a dragon."

She looked at me almost amused now. "I think you know you are."

I shook my head. "I can't be. They don't exist anymore."

She nodded, but the motion was so indulgent it was insulting. Like she was trying to appease a small child who was one breath away from a tantrum. "Well, apparently not all are gone. You know what they say..."

They? They who?

I shook my head, wishing she would stop. I didn't want her to make sense, to be right. I didn't want her to persuade me. To say something that would make me believe the unbelievable. I wanted a reason not to believe.

"Magic," she continued, "cannot be destroyed. It might hide, but it is always there. It never goes away. It lives in the bones, in the soul of this world. What you are, this..." She gestured to me. "It was always in you, rooted deep."

Always in you. Like a tooth waiting to emerge, patient for its turn, for its day to break free.

I shook my suddenly throbbing head. The dragon had always been inside me? Hiding? A secret all my life kept even from me? None of this was right. I pressed fingers to my temples, my denial sharp, my confusion as wild and deep as the bramble in the woods surrounding us.

I had always assumed being the whipping girl was the thing that set me apart from others. But maybe it was more than that.

Maybe it was this.

"Magic cannot be destroyed," she repeated.

And that seemed counter to everything I knew. The whole purpose of the Threshing had been to destroy dragons. Humankind had thought it possible. Kings and queens had sent their armies to see it done.

It had been done .

We had been told that magic—or magical creatures—were responsible for all ills. All evils. Every plague or injustice suffered could be laid at the feet of dragons.

If I was one of them, did that make me evil, then? Did I need to be wiped from existence? I was not a bad—

I started and stopped, cringing at the phrase that hovered on the tip of my tongue.

I was not a bad person.

But was I even a person?

"Come." Thora held out a hand for me to take. "Let's warm you up inside the house. I have some clothes you can wear, and I'll fetch you something to eat. You'll feel better once you have a proper meal."

If only she were right. If only that would fix everything.

"YOU CAN'T STAY HERE."

Thora delivered this over oats and milk sprinkled with sweet cinnamon, as though I were a child and she wanted to ply me with something tasty while she snuck in a bit of foul-tasting medicine.

It did not make the words go down any easier.

As I sat at her table, wearing a borrowed dress of warm wool laced at the front, the nearby fire popping and crackling in the hearth, the words dropped like a rock in the air between us, heavy with a hard thunk .

She said it again... either for emphasis or because my continued silence begged her to repeat herself. "You can't stay here."

I didn't meet her gaze. My spoon quickened, stirring fiercely through the oats, expending some of my restless energy.

You can't stay here.

I moistened my lips. I wanted to ask why. Why had she brought me here at all if it was only to now eject me? And yet I could not summon the question, too reluctant to reveal how vulnerable I felt.

Sitting at her table, wrapping an arm around my bowl and pulling it close to the edge as though it might be taken away just as everything else had, I felt so small. On the verge of tears. This time the tears would be real, though. This time they would fall like rain from my eyes.

"I don't know everything about your kind. I thought you were all gone. I know you are looking to me for answers, but there's much I don't know." She breathed then, a deep sigh that was like a cold wind against shutters, clawing to get inside... or out. "You... here... I cannot help but think it might have something to do with Vala."

"Vala?" Where had I heard that name before?

Her eyes glinted. "Yes. Vala, my grandmother's sister. She always had too much magic for her own good. She was born with too much power and not enough cunning or caution. She was a vain and stupid girl. Fancied herself in love with King Alrek. Even worse... she thought he loved her."

"King Alrek?" I looked up then. Alrek was Hamlin's grandfather. I would know. I had been thoroughly educated on the royal lineage. "That was a long time ago."

Thora chuckled then, shaking her head as she recounted the story. "Yes. He was young and handsome, and, well... a king. My idiot great-aunt thought he would make her his queen. This was before he was married, of course. He asked Vala to cast a spell for him, the final nail in the coffin for dragons."

I listened, riveted, feeling like a small girl sitting at the feet of one of the visiting bards. I was certain that was where I'd heard mention of this Vala, in one of those stories that had floated like a mesmerizing melody in the Great Hall.

Thora gave a sad little sigh and shook her head. "My grandmother told her not to do it. Not to cast such a spell. Putting something like that into the world... it comes back on you." Thora's voice faded away, and she shivered, her lovely face suddenly grim, a hint of her age peeking out in the lines and hollows, in the weary wisdom of her eyes, reminding me that, for as much as she appeared a maiden, this woman was older than me, at least twice my age... at least as old as the king and queen. Perhaps even older. Who knew exactly how many years she had walked this earth? Were witches like dragons, blessed with unnaturally long life? "She was asking for trouble."

"What happened?" I recalled some of the details now. In the aftermath of the Hormung, Vala had been appointed to cast a spell. If the remaining dragons could not breed and multiply... well. The dragon problem would solve itself. Time would see to that.

So how could I be here like this? How could I be explained?

How could I exist?

"She could not do precisely what he asked, which was to kill all dragons, but she did the next best thing. The only thing she could think of. She cast a spell that ended all hatchlings. Dragons could no longer spawn. Once the remaining dragons died or were killed off... well, King Alrek got his wish." She shrugged. "And what did Vala get for her effort? For her loyalty? The king decreed her a traitor and fed her to the fire. A hundred years ago. She had the notable distinction of being the first witch cast into flame. We've all been running and hiding ever since." Thora lifted her mug of tea in salute, her lips twisting bitterly. "So there you have it. My family's proud legacy for you."

I could only stare in horror. King Alrek had done that? He had romanced and seduced this Vala? Inveigled and entreated her to cast a spell for him, and then he let her burn? No. Not let . He had commanded it. Decreed it with all his imperial power. I had not known that part of the story. It had been left out of my history lessons.

What else did I not know? What else had been omitted?

I stared into my congealing oats like the answer hid there, thinking about the things I did know. I set aside my tender feelings for the king and queen, my parents, and opened the long-bolted door inside me, allowing in thoughts I had always blocked.

Would loving parents take a baby, praise her with love, rear her gently, call her daughter, and then turn her over to be whipped for the transgressions of others?

And then, later, would they force her to trade vows with a man deemed unworthy for their true daughters?

Was that not perhaps in keeping with their history, with the heartless legacy of King Alrek?

My stomach lurched. I felt sick. The memory of my father's warm hand on my shoulder. His kind words of praise when I did something well. His laughter when I performed a silly skit with my sisters. It all felt like a lie now.

Could I have been wrong about him? Wrong about everything? My life? My mother? My sisters? It was a sobering thought. One I had never permitted myself.

Thora ran a hand over her face. "I don't know which is more treacherous. Humans or love. In the end, both will fail you." Thora glanced around her cozy cottage. "I'll take solitude." Her eyes went cloudy, and I studied her face. In profile, she was an etching in sadness. Aloneness. Loneliness. I could be a friend to her. A companion to break the long stretch of her lonely days in this unrelenting wood.

And yet she did not want that. She didn't want me here. I was a problem. I would only bring her trouble, and she had enough of that breathing down her neck simply by being who she was. The life she had carved out for herself here, hewn from a cursed forest, was a place of refuge.

This was the curse of witchkind, I realized. They could live. Suppress their nature and blend in when forced to do so. Or embrace what they were and find safety in seclusion. But never solace. Never freedom. Not really. It was a sentence. A punishment to live out their days in a cage of isolation. Too many of them in a group would attract notice, would draw witch hunters and those who would burn them alive. So this was what she had. Herself. Only herself. A small life.

I saw my own future in her. Life in a cage of isolation—or death.

An existence so different from the one I'd thought I might have with Fell a day ago. My grim fate yawned ahead, posts in a fence, one after another, days falling in succession, in sameness, in tedium.

Steam wafted from her mug, and for a moment I was back amid trees dappled in morning light, watching as smoke lifted off Arkin's charred remains, like fog curling off a dark body of water.

Except here there was no stink of death, no scorched flesh... no villain put down. Just a sweet herbal aroma of mint and juniper tea.

Thora lifted her mug for another sip, and the movement broke my reverie.

"These woods have their shadows," she murmured. "Places where the light cannot reach. You must watch for that. Be careful."

Could she be any more vague? "What do you mean?"

"Magic is a complicated thing. Sometimes it is... dark."

All magic felt dark to me. Thus far, I had seen no good come from it.

She went on, "You and I are not the only things out here." She bit her lip in consideration, as though not sure she should share more. "I do not know how you would fare against her."

Her.

"Her?" I asked.

Thora nodded. "The huldra. These are her woods, too. She has never bothered with me, and I have never bothered her. We stick to our corners. Give each other space. But you... I don't know." She shook her head. "I don't know how she would react when confronting a dragon."

I flinched. Were we just going ahead and calling me that now? Was there no hesitation? No further conversation?

"Still don't think you're a dragon?" she asked, reading my reaction with narrowing eyes.

"Like you said, it's a complicated thing."

I didn't know how I'd turned into a dragon. I didn't know if it would happen again. I didn't know how I even turned back into a human. I had just gone to sleep in a barn and woken up my old self. I did know I had no control over any of it. It was not a weapon I could wield. Complicated seemed a far too gentle euphemism for all that.

She chuckled lightly. "That it is. And recognizing such already makes you smarter than a lot of witches I used to know."

Used to know. Was that because they were gone? Or because she had made herself... gone ?

I had the uncanny sensation that I was looking in a mirror, that I was seeing myself in this wretched woman who lived in miserable isolation and recounted people long gone from her life.

"I'm not a witch, though," I countered.

"No," she mused. "You're something else." She sniffed then and shook her head. "And they're not witches either. Not anymore. They're dead, so that makes them... nothing." This she uttered so matter-of-factly, as though she were long accustomed to the condition of her friends and family being dead.

I was something else . Yes. That was true.

The way heat swam beneath my skin still... even now, like a serpent beneath water, gliding, searching for the right moment to emerge, I was still that. I was not free from it. It was not gone. The dragon was still here. It went deep. Like the roots of a tree. A disease that coursed through bone and blood to the meat of me. Now that it had been unleashed, I could recognize it. Feel it throbbing inside me like the beat of music.

"You should proceed with caution out there. Head east. It's the quickest way out of the skog."

I didn't want to go east. I wanted to go north. Directly north, into the Crags. That mysterious and formidable place that called to me. Terrified me. Thrilled me. I could still recall those peaks breaking through the clouds.

Answers were north... where dragons once lived. They certainly wouldn't be found back in the City. That place dealt in many things, I now realized, except the truth. And there weren't any answers here with Thora, who didn't want me around. And they absolutely were not with Fell or his people. If I ever turned in front of them, they would kill me on sight. They would not stop and ask questions. Not that I could answer them when I was in dragon form anyway. I could expect no mercy from a people with a history steeped in dragon slaying.

Thora shrugged as though she knew I had plans counter to her advice. "But you will do what you must."

I nodded. Yes. I would.

My fate waited in the north.

My palm buzzed. That flicker of another life, of Fell... left behind, but not behind, not ever behind as long as I could feel this connection, this echo of him.

I knotted my hand into a fist, trying to crush it, to banish the sensation just as he was banished from me. Husband or not, married or not, we could never pick up where we left off. Never live as husband and wife. I would have to forget about him. That door had closed with a slam the moment I tasted fire. The moment I felt the wind on my face.

I glanced to Thora. She had done it. She had forgotten about everyone. The entire world ceased to exist for her. She was strong. She had carved out this life for herself here. Alone.

If that was what I had to do, I could do it, too.

"Come," she said, pushing up from the table. "I won't send you away empty-handed. Let's pack you a few things for your journey. I have a compass you can have. You'll find it useful. The forest can get dark. At times it's hard to tell north from south. And you'll need to dress warmly. Oh." She looked back at me as though seized with a sudden thought. "When you're out there, you may need these, too." She walked to a nearby shelf and removed something from it. As she offered them to me, I could see they were several strips of leather.

I turned them over in my hand, unable to imagine their use. "Why do I need—"

"I just have a feeling you may need them. They're sturdy."

A feeling she had. That was good enough for me. I supposed when a blood witch said she had a feeling about something, heed should be taken. She had not led me astray so far.

"I will keep them close," I promised. Hopefully I would know what to do with them, should I have need.

"Do that," she advised. "And, Tamsyn. You're stronger than you realize. Draw from that. Do not be afraid of your power."

Do not be afraid of your power.

But I was. I was afraid of it. Afraid of me.