33. Tamsyn

33

Tamsyn

I WATCHED, GAPING, AS FELL TOOK STIG DOWN IN A CLOUD OF snow.

They rolled across the ground in a violent tangle of limbs, punches landing, fists connecting, smacking into flesh and bone. Grunts. Curses. Tearing skin.

They showed no signs of weakening, no signs of letting up. They were two feral wolves. Tireless. Determined. In it until the end. They wouldn't stop until one of them was dead.

Snow flew around them in a spray of white. Mixed in with the pristine flurry were flecks of crimson. Blood. One of them was bleeding. Perhaps both. Neither cared. Neither halted.

"Stop it!" I screamed, advancing on them and then leaping out of the way when they rolled in my direction in a great knot of flailing limbs.

I watched, unblinking, my eyes aching. Every cell in me vibrated with hot fury at these two... idiots.

I bent and grabbed a fistful of snow and threw it at them ineffectually. "Stop it! Stop it!"

Somehow Fell managed to twist around and position himself on top of Stig. He hauled back and slammed his fist into Stig's face.

I jerked at the crunch of bone on bone. "Fell! No!"

Fell looked at me sharply, his expression almost wounded, betrayed. Whether because I told him to stop hitting Stig... or because he'd caught Stig kissing me, I did not know. Maybe he thought I was a willing participant. I didn't know that either, and at the moment it was the least of my concerns.

Stig took advantage of Fell's momentary distraction and escaped from underneath him, bounding to his feet and managing to deliver his knee directly into Fell's face.

Blood sprayed, staining the snow. Fell went down. Stig followed after him, and it started all over again. The smack of skin on skin. The grind of bone against bone.

The taste of copper filled my mouth, flowing over my teeth, and I realized I was bleeding. I'd bitten my own lip.

I reached a shaking hand up, touched my mouth gingerly, and then pulled back my fingers. There. On my skin. Streaks of blood. My blood.

Purple-hued blood.

Dragon blood.

I stared at it, flexing my fingers, the moment stretching into forever, even though it could not have lasted long.

Then I called out again, not quite thinking this through, just following some instinct, some desperate urge to get these two to stop killing each other.

"Stig!" I held up my hand, wiggling my bloody fingers in the air. "Stig!!"

The moment I gained his attention, he stilled, taking a few more punches from Fell, grunting from the force of those blows even as he trained his gaze on me. Looking only at my hand. At my fingertips. At the purple blood stained there.

Fell finally stopped pummeling Stig, looking over at me. He went still.

For the longest time, none of us moved. None of us spoke. I felt their shock, their confusion. Their wild eyes pinned on me. On my fingers. On my blood.

A burn started within me, building, twisting up through my center in a writhing lick of flame.

Stig finally rose to his feet, staggering toward me. "Tamsyn... what is that?"

"I think you know what it is," I whispered. "I already told you. You didn't believe me."

" I don't know. Tell me," Fell's deep voice demanded thickly as he took several faltering steps toward me, swiping at his bloody nose with the back of his hand.

My gaze clashed with his. I had not meant to tell Fell. But now I had. Now he would know. They both would. Neither of them had quite grasped it yet. But they would.

Fell would, and then he would look at me with such hatred, with murder in his eyes.

I swallowed miserably against the scalding sob that was rising, threatening to burst from my mouth.

"Tamsyn." He said my name tightly. "Tell. Me."

My skin snapped. Too hot. It hissed like oil in a searing pan.

Steam wafted from my nose.

Stig's gaze followed the tendrils of vapor. The color bled from his face. He was as pale as a ghost as he stared at me. "Tamsyn... what's wrong with you?"

I glanced down at my arms. My flesh winked back at me, glistening fire gold. There was no mistaking it. The situation was too much. I was overwhelmed. The dragon stirred inside me. My dragon. It was starting to come out. I couldn't stop it.

My shoulders twisted in a helpless shrug. "This is what I am." I held my arms wide while inside I was crying, pleading, shouting: Please don't hate me. Please. Please. Still love me.

Stig shook his head in hard denial. "No." And then: "No!"

He was saying no, but he understood. He knew. He saw the truth with his own eyes.

He believed.

I sucked in a deep breath, drawing the smoke into my mouth. "It's me. I'm the dragon." I looked to Fell, regretting that he was here, too, but since he was, I had to try to explain. "It was me. I was the one in the woods that day. I was the one who killed Arkin." I shook my head sorrowfully. "He was trying to kill me... and I just snapped and—and turned."

A blade hissed through the air, unsheathed from its scabbard. I braced myself, dropping my gaze to Fell's hands... knowing what I would see, knowing what I would find.

He would kill me now.

The smolder continued to build in my chest. I tasted the heat in my mouth, smelled the smoke in my nose. Even as I willed it away, even as I struggled to suppress it and commanded it to fade, my body was ready to defend, to attack, to smite.

Except Fell's hands were empty.

I'd heard a blade sing... but he held nothing in his hands, merely clenched them into fists as he stared at me with those wide, frost-gray eyes.

Everything slowed then.

My eyes dragged over to Stig.

Stig, my dear friend, whom I trusted. Stig, whom I had chosen to tell because I loved him and he loved me.

But it was Stig who held the sword.

Stig who lifted his weapon in the air, the blade pointed directly at my heart. My heart that was breaking.

I had been wrong. Wrong about him. And now I would die for it.

He charged.

And I did it. Again. Like before.

My body burst in a flash of blinding light, as white and pure as the snow surrounding us. My clothes fell away, disintegrating. The only thing weighing on my skin was the necklace Fell gave me, the heavy jewels warm and electric against my flesh. They made me feel... stronger, more powerful.

Without deliberation, without willing it, my limbs dragged into place, lengthening and loosening, readying for flight. The ridges broke out over my nose, contracting and quivering with my thick, ragged breaths.

My back strained, pulled, and my wings cracked free, unfurling, snapping wide behind me, lifting me inches off the ground. I stretched out my arms, the skin flickering like firelight.

But I didn't fly away. I couldn't move. This I could seem to con trol. I willed myself to face Stig and that sword of his aimed directly at me.

Perhaps it would be for the best.

Arms and wings wide at my sides, I hovered in the air, my great size a target no one could miss.

Lifting my chin, I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, waiting. Waiting for the end and hoping it wouldn't hurt.

THE END NEVER CAME.

The air was perfectly still. No wind. No whisper of fog shifting and settling like the creaking of an old building.

I opened my eyes slowly. The world was still there. I was still there.

I was still alive.

Fell's voice rose from the silence, from the whiteness, from the noiseless fear. It found me, wrapped around me, merging and colliding with the bitter taste of panic on my tongue, mingling with char and ash.

"Go! Tamsyn, go!"

I flinched, jerking at the sudden volume of his strident voice.

Was he talking to me? Of course he was. Fell was saying my name, but that didn't make sense. None of this made sense... none of it would right itself in my mind.

I looked around and finally found him, found those changeable eyes of his. Found only more confusion there. More lack of understanding. His panicked expression urged me to flee. No. There was more than urgency in that desperate, hot-eyed stare, in the heated steel. There was pleading. There was prayer. There was a physical push, a tangible force shoving at me, compelling me to go.

Go go go go go.

I shook my head. Why was he helping me? Why wasn't he lifting his sword against me?

I thought he would kill me. I thought the moment he knew the truth, he would look at me with only hate and regret in his heart. I thought. I thought. I thought.

His sword was in his hand, but he wasn't wielding it against me. No. He had used it to block Stig from striking me down. He had just stopped Stig from attacking me.

Fell hadn't tried to killed me.

Fell didn't want me dead.

It was so much to take in, to absorb. An impossible, implausible thing to swallow down my fire-swollen throat.

It was the opposite of everything I had believed, everything I'd expected. The world was no longer solid beneath my feet. The fog no longer wet on my skin. The winter no longer a frigid kiss to my lips.

Everything was this. Not as it should be.

What else could I be wrong about?

You were wrong about Stig.

Stig's betrayal stung, pressing its sharp edge into me, dragging through my flesh, tearing me open, leaving me raw and bleeding and exposed.

"What are you doing, Dryhten?" Stig panted as he struggled to release his sword from where it was blocked and locked in place by Fell's sword.

The twin steel blades finally slid free with a hiss and Stig staggered back. The two men regained their fighting stances and squared off.

Fell's voice came, as resolute and hard as the snow-packed ground: "I won't let you kill her."

"Her?" Stig waved his sword at me and then spat blood into the snow, an obscenity on the flawless white. " That is a dragon."

Fell shook his head once. "It's Tamsyn." Then to me, again: "Get out of here!"

I shook my head once. I wasn't leaving him. Not with Stig intent on murder.

The two warriors began fighting in earnest then, and this wasn't like before. This wasn't a brawl with flying fists and bloodied lips over some petty jealousy. This was life and death. And I watched, my heart in my throat, smoke puffing from my mouth and nose in billows as I tried to decide if I should intervene. If I could...

I hovered above the ground, just a few inches, my wings working, churning the air, my dragon knowing how to function without any direction or instruction.

As intent as the two men were on killing each other, their eyes would flick to me, as if checking, proving to themselves that I was real. That this was not all some terrible dream, a waking nightmare.

Stig had not given up on killing me. More than once, he circled and took a wild stab in my direction. I either dodged out of the way or Fell was there, his sword blocking Stig again and again. The fight continued that way until the first spray of blood.

Stig howled as Fell's sword cut deep into his flesh with an unmistakable wet, grinding squelch.

I gasped, watching as Stig's hand went to his shoulder, clutching the wound. It was deep. He staggered and almost lost his footing but caught himself, propping his back against a tree with wheezing pants. Blood pumped through his fingers, thick as syrup, dark as wine, fast as the flow of a river.

"Fuck," Stig growled, and peeled away his fingers to inspect the damage. And that was when I saw that the damage was to more than just his shoulder. The wound ran wide and long from his shoulder down into his chest. Men had died from less.

And despite everything—despite how quickly he'd given up on me and tried to kill me—my heart twisted and squeezed like a fist with knuckles gone taut and white and bloodless. I didn't want him to die. Even after everything, I didn't want that.

Fell made a move toward him, no doubt to finish him off.

I couldn't let that happen.

I knew Stig had tried to kill me. That he still would see me dead if he could. But I couldn't do the same to him.

I couldn't forget all that we once had and were to each other, and simply let him die, bleed out here in the snow like some animal with no name. Maybe it was too late. But this, I could not allow. I had to try.

I lifted myself higher, flew above Fell, and came back down on the ground between them, snow crunching beneath my great weight as I blocked Fell from finishing Stig.

I held Fell's gaze, wishing for the words to make him understand. He stared at me with those frosty eyes of his, and I recognized that he understood. He didn't need to hear me say it. He didn't need to hear me ask. He knew me, I realized with a start.

He shook his head. "Damn fool. He wouldn't return the favor for you," he said as Stig scurried away, crashing through the trees, running off through the woods like a rat through a cellar.

True words, but it didn't matter. I couldn't watch him kill Stig. He was likely dead anyway. A wound like that...

I lowered my head with a sad shake. Stig would not make it to see tomorrow.

Fell approached, lifting a hand slowly, gingerly toward me.

I wished I could communicate. Instead, I just dipped my head farther in invitation, allowing him to touch me if he wanted. A last touch. The last moment I would have with him.

Suddenly I regretted all the time lost. Time we could have spent together, no yawning gulf separating us. No denial. No space at all. Just us. The two of us together before I became this creature that the world demanded he kill.

His hand flattened against my nose, his palm hot against my flickering dragon skin, the X sparking like fire. I blew out warm air from my nostrils, letting him feel my breath.

"Beautiful," he murmured. "Always."

My heart swelled. I wanted to weep. If tears had been possible, I would. Because he knew. We both did. There was finality in his voice. Good-bye in those words.

He dropped his hand and sent a look back in the direction Stig had disappeared. "You know he is going to tell. He might die, but not before he tells everyone. You have to go. Far from here, and never come back."

Never. Come. Back. Each word fell like a blow, a nail hammering, vibrating into bone. Never see Fell again. The meaning was the same.

Anguish washed over me in an endless current. I nodded in agreement. I would have to go. Brave it alone out there. I would have to leave Fell and everyone, everything, I had ever known behind. Fear gripped me, nearly crippling me, doubling me over. I wanted to drop where I stood and curl up into a ball. I wanted the world in all its awfulness, its terror, its endless breadth to go away—to disappear around me like the fading clang of a bell.

I would finally have my time in the Crags. I would dive headlong into the mystery of those summits. I was getting what I wanted, but it felt hollow now.

After so many weeks of feeling their lure, I would venture there. Except this wasn't the way I had imagined it. This wasn't the way I wanted it.

Fell uttered a stinging curse, still staring at me.

I couldn't speak. I couldn't cry. But he must have read my grief.

There were so many things I wanted to say. Questions I wanted to ask that formed and took shape, crystallizing in my mind.

What explanations could he provide? How would he stop Stig and his army from turning their wrath on him? Was he any safer here than I was?

He had just killed Stig. Well, not technically. But that would be the outcome. Stig would die from his wounds. The lord regent would never let Fell live after that. He would plan the most miserable death imaginable for him.

He dragged a hand through his dark locks. "Fuck. I can't let you go."

Hope stirred inside me.

Fell settled cold gray eyes upon me and my hope began to fade. Grim resolve glowed there, along with something else. Something like... anger. Barely checked fury. "You owe me an explanation, and you're not going anywhere without me until I get it."

I heard only one thing. Without me . Not going without me.

"Understand me?" he growled.

A sigh shuddered through my great body. I understood.

With a single nod, I lowered myself on the ground and extended my front arm, flattening my clawed hand on the crunching snow, hoping he realized what I was offering.

He looked from my arm to my face.

I nodded once, encouragingly. Let's do this together. Whatever it was.

Come with me, Fell.

He hesitated only a moment, and then, as though he'd heard my thoughts, he launched himself atop me, securing himself between my wings, clamping his hands around the base of each one. I felt his strong thighs squeezing my back, his heels digging into my sides.

Hopefully he would hang on. Hopefully his strong warrior body would not fail him. Hopefully I would fly in a way that wasn't too wild and reckless.

Hope.

Hope.

Hope.

That was all I had right now.

I waited a moment longer, making sure he had time to secure himself... making sure he was sure, making sure I was sure.

Making sure this wasn't a completely insane idea, but that assurance never came.

And still, I lifted off and sprang into the air, letting hope guide me.