Chapter 27

Rhi

"What the hell was that?"I gasp. "An earthquake? An avalanche?"

The assassin looks over his shoulder at the distant mountains, in the direction from which that noise came.

"I don't think so."

I stare off in that direction too and suddenly I'm overwhelmed by that feeling of déjà vu. This is like my dream. Just like my dream. I was running through the mountains, under the falling snow towards the beast in need.

A violent shudder races down my spine.

Fate. Destiny. It's calling me. Leading me a certain way.

But do I want to go that way? What will I find if I do? What kind of burden may be laid upon my shoulders?

"What's up, little rabbit?" Renzo asks, observing me.

And I realize I'm too damn curious not to go. I need to find out where this dream ends. If it was just a dream – the similarities to our here and now purely coincidental – or whether it was a glimpse of the future? Like the ones I used to have as a kid. Like the ones my mom endured.

"Which way do you think that came from?" I ask him.

He swivels the rings on his fingers. Then tilts his head to the south. "That way."

Yes, that's what I thought too.

I start walking, another groan, the earth trembling, causing me to pick up my pace. It's not the sound of sliding snow, or the ground splitting. It's the sound of an animal. A fuck-off big animal by the sounds of things. A beast for sure.

"Little rabbit, that doesn't sound friendly." Renzo pants from beside me. "I think we should be running in the opposite direction."

"No," I tell him, "it's like my dream. We have to go this way."

We skid down a hill, passing the skeletons of mountain goats as we do, the dark sockets of their eyes staring up at us as we pass.

I don't want to think about what killed these. I don't want to think about that at all. Because if I do, I'll stop running altogether.

"Little rabbit," Renzo says, glancing at the gnawed bones, "I'm all for a bit of fun. But this–"

"Are you scared?" I challenge him, as another of those monstrous groans tells us we're drawing closer. I swing my gaze around, trying to work out where that sound is coming from.

"Of what?" he asks.

"I don't know. Being mauled, being eaten, dying!"

"Nah," he says without the merest hint of bravado, overtaking me and running between an outcrop of rocks. I follow him, squeezing through the narrow gap, the stone scraping at my body and when I emerge through I find myself in a crevice, somewhere the snow has been unable to penetrate, Renzo stopped right in front of me.

"What?" I say, trying to push my way past him. "What is it?"

He blocks me from passing. "Stay back, little rabbit," he hisses.

"What is it," I say with irritation, pushing at him harder. Despite my attempts, I fail to move his solid body at all.

"Little rabbit, it's a dragon."

I gasp and for one whole minute I stand there, clutching Pip to my chest utterly flabbergasted. Then the beast roars, the blast of sound so fearsome, my hair is swept back from my face and I close my eyes.

"I think we should go, little rabbit. I'm not sure we're welcome here."

"Renzo Barone," I say, zapping him with my magic. "Let me pass. Let me pass right now or–"

He steps aside and I move forward, catching sight of the dragon for the first time.

It's gigantic. Twice the size of any of the dragons that attacked the academy, and, unlike those other dragons – all a sluggish green color – this one is beautiful, its scales a glistening rusty gold.

It lies curled up, its wings tucked in, although its head is raised and staring right at me. Its eyes are not beady like that glass dragon hanging in the council building. These shine black and beautiful. It stares right into my eyes as if challenging me to look away, as if judging my mettle and my worth, and my magic tingles in my fingertips.

I remain completely still, somehow sure this is the right thing to do.

"Let's go," Renzo hisses.

Carefully, I shake my head and after a minute the dragon turns its head away, lapping its tongue over its chest. It's then I see it is injured. A gaping wound on its chest and another on its side, one leg twisted. I also see the metal collar it wears around its neck, the scales chafed away. There are other cuffs too – one encircling each of the beast's ankles.

This is no free dragon. It's a captive one. But if so, where is its owner and what is it doing here, high up in the mountains?

"It's hurt," I tell Renzo.

"She," he tells me.

"She?" I say, "how can you tell?"

"Just can," he says, moving closer to me. "I have a feeling, little rabbit, that an injured dragon is even more deadly than a normal one. And this one is fucking big."

"I need to heal her," I say, laying Pip gently on one of the rocks on the ground. "That's what my dream was about. I'm meant to heal her."

"You ever healed a dragon before?" Renzo asks.

"Well, no," I admit. "It's not exactly something we've been taught at the academy. But I'm pretty good at healing humans now," I say, thinking of Winnie. "How different can it be?" Renzo stares at me. "Until the attack on the academy, I'd never even seen a dragon before. I thought they were extinct."

"That's what people said. But people talk shit," he says.

I take a step forward and immediately the dragon snaps her head around to glare at me warily.

"Little rabbit," Renzo warns.

"If she wanted to kill us, she'd have done it already."

"You don't know that. She might like to play with her food."

I ignore him, staring back into those raven eyes. "I'm not going to hurt you," I tell her, watching as her ears swivel on the sides of her head. "I'm going to help you." The dragon turns its head again and licks at the wound. "Yes," I say, "yes, I can heal that."

The dragon makes a moaning noise that rattles through her body, much quieter than before, then rests her head down on the ground, gazing at me with those eyes. I can tell the creature is in pain. I can read it in her features.

I've nursed sick and injured chickens before plus a squirrel that got caught up in the chicken wire. This dragon may be hundreds of times bigger than those creatures but I think I need to treat her like any other wild animal.

I lift my hand out in front of me and wait. Cautiously, the dragon lifts her head.

"Little rabbit," Renzo hisses beside me.

"Trust me," I say with probably a lot more confidence than I truly feel, "this is going to be fine."

He harrumphs in irritation and the dragon's gaze flicks to him before returning to me. She brings her face closer to my outstretched hand until her nostrils are mere millimeters away. My hand looks like a mere pimple against her vast size and I should feel afraid. I should be quaking in my boots. But I'm not. Fate has brought me here. If fate's brought me here to be eaten by a giant dragon, burned to a crisp, then so be it.

The dragon growls very very softly and I'm contemplating that one of those options might be my fate after all, when the creature inhales, sucking in my scent and making my hair rustle around my face.

Then she lays her head back down on the rocky ground and I release my breath, Renzo swearing behind me.

I take a step towards the dragon, then another and another. She watches me move closer, but she doesn't appear to mind and soon I'm standing right beside her with a much better view of the wounds. It's not as deep or as fatal as the wound I healed on Winnie. It's not as deadly as the one Tristan took to his body, the memory of it making me wince – but it is weeping, and closer now I can see a great tear in one of her wings. She can't fly, with her broken leg she can't walk. And that wound will slowly turn septic and eventually kill her.

"She's beautiful," Renzo says, coming to stand beside me again.

And she is. Even in her injured state she is truly magnificent.

"I'm going to touch you now," I tell her, raising my hand towards her.

"Careful," Renzo advises.

I edge my hand closer. The dragon's eyes stare fixedly on my hand. I move it closer still and then closer some more until I'm hovering my hand right above her scales. Then with a steadying breath, I touch her.

Immediately she's snapping up her head again and growling but I hold my ground, refusing to move and fixing on her with a determined gaze.

"I'm going to help you." Her scales are cool to the touch and I don't know if that's the way this giant lizard should be, or whether her injuries have caused her temperature to drop. The scales themselves are not rough as I expected, but to my surprise they're like the softest of leather.

I close my eyes and allow my magic to seep slowly into her body, soothing, numbing magic that has the dragon sighing in relief, her taut body relaxing under my touch. Her body feels different to bodies I've healed before, different from Pip's, and it's not just the sheer size of the creature. It's something more. There's magic in her body, and it seems to respond to mine, to recognize mine. It's familiar, similar, moving to my command.

"She's big, little rabbit. Healing her is going to take a big chunk of your magic."

I shake my head. I don't think it will. I search out the wound on her body first and get to work knitting together the scales, mending the ripped tissues and blood vessels. Her magic responds, following mine and doing the same.

"It's working," Renzo says.

I move on to her leg. Her thigh bone is snapped clean in half. I wonder what happened to her. Did she crash into the mountain? Was she wounded in that battle?

I concentrate on fixing the bone. Despite the size of that wound, the bone is much harder to mend. I need to line it up, ensure it's straight and bone proves harder to encourage to grow. Soon, my eyes are screwed tight and there's sweat on my brow despite the coolness of the air.

"Easy," Renzo whispers, his hand resting on my shoulder, his presence, his magic giving me the renewed strength I need to continue. I don't know how much longer I work, but eventually I'm satisfied and fall back, panting, Renzo catching me in his arms.

The dragon stares at me and opens out her torn wing, fluttering it.

"Yeah, yeah, give her a break," Renzo growls, and the dragon folds in its wing and drops her head to rest on her front legs.

"I don't need a rest," I insist, reaching out to touch her again.

"You do," Renzo says, taking a hold of my wrist and dragging me back to where we've left Pip and our bags. He pulls out the water bottle and one of the dried bits of meat, and insists I drink and eat. I flop down on the floor and start to chug down water.

The dragon watches me and then something catches her attention. Pip. She shuffles forward, leaning her head towards my pig, her eyes alert and … am I seeing that right? … hungry!

I jump to my feet and lift my hands.

"He's not on the menu," I warn her. I don't care how big this dragon is, how beautiful she may be, if she tries to torch Pip, then I am going to blast her with every ounce of power I possess.

Pip lifts his head feebly and blinks his eyes, jolting slightly when he finds a giant dragon bearing down on him. He grunts and then to my surprise, lifts his snout towards the dragon. The dragon responds, lowering her head closer.

My magic sparks on my fingers and my heart leaps clean out of my chest and into my throat.

"Pip!" I hiss.

This isn't a friendly pup. It's not a smart-assed chicken. It's a dragon. Beside her, Pip looks like a speck of dust.

He doesn't seem to hear me, or maybe he's just being his obstinate self and ignoring me altogether, because he lifts his head higher still and presses his snout against the dragon's nose. The dragon focuses her eyes and Pip does the same.

"Are they communicating?" Renzo asks.

Either that or kissing. Or perhaps the dragon is determining if Pip's tasty enough to eat. I take a step towards them, ready to intervene. But I've no need, Pip lowers his head and the dragon curls up again.

What the hell was that? I shake my head, wondering if I'm still caught in that dream. If I'm not really awake at all. But then Renzo nudges me to eat up as if nothing just happened at all, as if my pet pig didn't just get flirty with a dragon the size of a castle.

When Renzo's satisfied that I've eaten and drunk enough, he flops down on the ground beside me.

"You gonna fix her wing next?"

I peer over at the tattered thing. I know it's going to be even more challenging to fix it than it was her leg. In fact, I'm not confident I have the skill (or the patience).

"I'm going to give it my best shot," I tell him, taking another gulp of water.

"And then what? Are we gonna keep her?"

I spit out the water I'm drinking. "Keep her?" Not in a million years had that idea occurred to me. Keep a dragon? The dude is more insane than I realized.

"You already have a pig as a pet," he points out. "That isn't exactly conventional, is it?"

"Yes," I screw the cap back on the bottle. "But Pip is small and portable and not that much trouble – usually. This dragon is not, given she'd even consent to come with us."

"She would. She's tame and probably trained. She belonged to someone."

"Someone who kept her chained up!" I say, with a frown. "Someone who didn't look after her properly. Someone who was whipping her," I say, pointing to the lacerations on her sides I'm sure were caused by a whip and not the accident that caused her other injuries.

Renzo's eyes travel over those whip lacerations.

"So you're going to let her go?"

"I haven't really thought that far ahead," I say, rubbing at my head. "But I don't think it's a case of ‘letting her'. She should be free."

Renzo shakes his head, a grin hovering on his lips. "And they say I'm mad."

"What's mad about that?" I say defensively.

"A dragon roaming free! I mean, don't get me wrong, little rabbit, I love it. But you always seemed the sensible type to me."

I doubt a sensible woman would have gotten frisky with a known psychopath only hours before. Nope, I lost my senses long ago. I am probably as mentally deranged as he is.

"I'm going to let her go."

"She'll probably just fly back to her owner. That's what abused things do – humans and creatures. It's hard to break free." I turn my head from the dragon to the assassin. How does he know that? Is he talking about himself? Or someone else in his life?

Sometimes it's so easy to forget that this man has a taste for blood. When he talks to me like this, he can seem like anyone else – even if his thoughts are a little rambling.

Was he born with a taste for blood? Would he have been that way no matter what? Or did something happen to make him that way?

I think of the man I killed in the woods. Of the choices I've made. If I hadn't had my aunt looking out for me – loving me – would I be a different person altogether?

I stand up, brushing the dirt off the seat of my pants and, with a deep inhale, walk back towards the dragon. As I approach, she stretches out her wing again, as if reminding me that I haven't fixed it yet. The first rays of morning light are filtering down into this crevice and it catches on the fragile fabric of her wing, lighting it up in a rainbow of glittering colors, so beautiful, it catches my breath.

"Yep, I'm going to deal with that wing next." Although seeing it in the light makes me nervous about it. It's so much more complex than I realized in the darkness and it's kind of surprising that a creature so menacing and so large could possess something so fragile. However, if I don't try, she can't fly, and even with her fixed leg, I suspect she'd be trapped down here.

I take the broken wing in my hand, spread it out and examine the tissue. It reminds me of a butterfly's wing or perhaps a moth's – if butterflies and moths were the size of small buildings. I debate how I'm going to handle this and in the end the only idea that comes to me is to use the same technique my aunt taught me to darn socks. And, yeah, we darned a lot of socks. Hopefully, fixing this wing won't be much different.

I close my eyes again and with my magic follow the pattern of the tissue, knitting new tissue and then finally binding it all together. It takes me more than an hour, the sun rising from behind the mountain and into the sky above us by the time I'm done. Then I tackle the broken bone and ligament in the wing. It's snapped or cracked in several places and the process of fixing it is just as hard as it was with the leg. I'm shaking with exhaustion by the time I tackle the last part, Renzo hovering around me clearly distressed.

My magic is waning in my fingertips and I'm utterly exhausted, but I keep going until that very last fine bone is mended. Then I collapse on the floor in a panting heap.

"You okay, little rabbit?" Renzo asks, handing me the water bottle once again. I take it from him but my arms are shaking too hard and I don't have the strength to lift it to my parched mouth. Renzo takes it back from me and pours water between my lips, most of it dribbling down my chin.

I swallow the liquid. "I'm fine."

He goes to inspect the mended wing, stroking his hand over the thin tissue. "You did a good job."

"You think it will work?"

As if the dragon thinks that question is directed at her, she stretches out her wings and flaps them through the air. I hold my breath, half expecting the thing to rip in half again, but it holds, the air beating around us.

The dragon makes that rumbling growl in the back of her throat, puffs of smoke issuing from her nostrils and then she lumbers up onto her feet. She tests her weight gingerly on the mended leg, and then finding it strong, leans her full body weight onto it, curling and stretching her razor-sharp talons. On her feet, the dragon seems even bigger, towering above me, Renzo and Pip, and the daylight has every one of her rusty-gold scales shining like polished shields.

She lifts her head, gazing up at the sky, smothered in thick winter clouds above us, and then peers back down at me.

She meets my eyes, roars and then shakes her head, the metal chain rattling, the sound echoing off the rocks.

And I know what she's asking.

I raise my trembling hand, but Renzo bats it away.

"I'll do it," he says, and the metal collar and the four metal cuffs spring open in unison and clatter to the ground.

The dragon looks at us both, stretches out her magnificent wings and this time beats them through the air with such force both Renzo and I are thrown backwards. I wait for her to lift up into the air and soar away. Instead she lowers her head to the ground and snorts.

"What's she doing?"

"I'm no dragon whisperer," Renzo says, "but I think she's inviting you to jump on board."

I stare at him in disbelief. "Seriously?"

"Either that or she's going to eat you."

I clamber up onto my feet and step closer.

"Are you sure?" I ask her, even though I have no idea if she even understands me.

The dragon snorts, and ripples her scales.

"You want to ride her?" Renzo asks.

I look over my shoulder at him, like, duh. Of course I want to freaking ride her.

Carefully, conscious that she may still be sore, I reach up above my head and take a grip of the top of her neck. I attempt to drag myself up, but I'm weak and I don't have the strength. Then I feel a pair of strong hands clasping around my waist and lifting me upward. With his help, I slide on top of the dragon's neck, swing my leg over and shuffle backwards onto her back. I wait for her to move. She doesn't. She remains in that position, this time eyeing Renzo.

"I think she wants you on board too."

"Fuck! You think?" he says, his face filling with boyish excitement.

"Either that or she's going to eat you," I say with a grin so wide my cheeks are hurting.

He jumps up onto the dragon with ease and I expect him to plant himself firmly in front of me, taking control. He doesn't, he shuffles himself behind me instead, settling down so his body is pressed right up against mine, his hands back on my waist. I'm not sure he needs to be quite that close, or hold me quite that firmly, but it sends my bond wild and so I don't complain about it.

The dragon lifts her head, peering upwards a second time, and then flaps her wings. Beneath us, her muscles ripple and flex and then we're lifting off the ground. At first she's working hard, her wings beating with force as she raises us vertically through the gap in the crevice, but as soon as we're into the open sky, she spreads her wings as wide as they will go and then we're soaring, flying over the snow-capped mountaintops.