PROLOGUE
ASHILD
The Crags
Seventy-seven years after the Hormung
THE SKY WAS RED.
Red as blood as she flew through its vastness. Her dark wings churned the ruddy air into great whooshing gusts, and it felt like a taunt that it should look so much like blood and make her think of food, of mouthwatering meat thick and running with juices, giving beneath her fangs … of the very thing she desperately craved when she would only return home empty-handed again. For the second day in a row. Nothing to eat. Nothing to feed their clawing stomachs.
Nothing.
The mist was thin as water. Not nearly opaque enough. Normally she would never have left the shelter of the den with so little cover and never until nightfall, but they were so very hungry. The hunger was too much. Louder than the voice in her head that urged caution. It demanded relief, so she’d risked it. Risked exposing herself to enemy eyes.
Sometimes risk could not be avoided. Ashild could only plunge ahead and hold her breath, flying and moving as fast as the wind, and hope. Hope that all would end well.
She touched down, the rock cool beneath her feet. She folded her leathery wings close to her body and descended through the winding tunnel. Deep, deep, deep into the earth’s cavity—into theendless, whispering dark. Her eyes flared, pupils widening, acclimating to the sudden absence of light.
Down she went into the bowels of the mountain where the sweet damp air fell like frost on her contracting skin. A frigid kiss. An icy hand. A biting breath.
She moved, fluid and quick as a ribbon unfurling to the floor. Eager to see, to touch, to hold, to inhale the flesh that smelled so like her own for all its differences.
Thatwas what kept her going when everything else screamed for her to quit. To stop, to join the dead, her brethren, her mate, the legion of dragons lost.
The tunnel narrowed, almost too small for her body, but she managed it, scraping through, easier than before, now that she was thinner—skin and starved sinew loose as a fluttering sail over her bones. She pushed through until she emerged in the den, her feet sinking into the soft pelt of moss.
Home.
A little face greeted her. He toddled over and her heart lifted, buoyant as a bubble of air in her chest. His smile made it all worthwhile. Every risk. Every meal she skipped so that her stomach was the only one growling with hunger.
The sight of that joyous smile gave her the strength to push on even after all she’d lost: her pride, her mate, a future where dragons lived and prospered and came and went freely. Even with the battering, persistent ache of her lost bond with Sigurd … she hadthis.
The boy reached Ashild, throwing his little arms around her, his head not even reaching her knees. She bent, nuzzling his shiny black locks, so similar in color to her own onyx-hued hide.
Even as large as she was, even as little as he was, she recognized that he was no small or slight child to bend with the wind. A mother’s love swelled in her heart. Human children were nowhere near as sturdy and robust or, in her opinion, as beautiful as this one.
She’d seen human children before. From afar. Fragile as shells on a shore. It had been years ago, too many decades to count, when it was safe for her to go wherever she wanted—to lift her face to thesun’s rays, to fly over their villages, to be seen and to see all that the world had to offer in its vastness because nothing could touch her. Nothing could bring her down. The days when her bond with Sigurd had been strong—whenshehad been strong instead of this weakened version of herself.
She looked at the basket where she kept their food. Only two pears and a few lonely berries remained. The child before her might appear human, but he possessed the appetite of a hatchling. It took constant work to hunt, to find and pilfer enough food. The basket required continuous refilling.
She glanced down at her empty claws with a fierce pang in her heart.Tomorrow. She could not fail again. Tomorrow she would hunt once more and this time she would find food. Something more substantial than fruit. She would bring meat. Nuts.
Or …
Or perhaps it was time.
She swallowed thickly. Time to do the very thing she had vowed never to do. Perhaps it had come to that.
Perhaps it was time to move on to one of the remaining prides buried deep in the Crags. She knew there were at least two other groups, their numbers waning, but still they clung like the final leaves on a winter branch. Still, they survived. Hopefully there were more groups, so well hidden that she did not know of their existence.
In the beginning of her self-imposed exile, there had been plenty of food for her to forage and hunt, but game was running thin, leaving only the hard-edged snow-swept landscape to stare back at her. She’d hunted the area surrounding them dry, and she could not afford to fly out any farther. She was already gone too much. Already risking so much.
The little warm body pressing against her brought solace, motivating her to survive, to exist. His eyes were so like his father’s—a silvery gray that mirrored the mist encircling the summits of the Crags. At the memory of Sigurd, her heart clenched. He was gone. Lost now for two years, shortly after she gave birth, and stillthe grief was a raw and bleeding wound, a gaping hole where their bond had once been.
One morning he’d left to hunt. She could still feel the warm chuff of his breath as he nuzzled her cheek good-bye. Still see the luster of his frost-colored eyes looking down at her. The iridescent wink of his shining skin as he turned and vanished from their den.
That had been her last sight of him. Like vanishing fog, he never came back.
