That was the kind of place I could call home. Yes. The best place for us. At least until we learned otherwise.
Not that anyone who resided in the Borg could ever know the truth about us. No, the secret of dragons must remain just that. A secret.
Our secret forever.
I chewed on a piece of dried meat taken from one of the packsFell had retrieved from the Veturland warriors, trying not to think about what kind of meat I was eating. “How long should it take to reach there?”
“It should take us most of the day on foot to reach the gates from here. If we start out now.”
I nodded. What would only take minutes in the sky would take several hours on foot.
And yet it was necessary. There were lookouts positioned all along the northernmost edge of the Borg—that would not have changed. We could not risk being sighted in the sky. This was as far as our dragons could go.
His shoulder nudged mine. “Are you nervous?”
“After everything we’ve been through?” I shook my head. “No.” And I meant it. But not so much because of what we had been through. But because he was with me. We were together, and everything, anything, seemed possible now.
“Good. By the end of this day, we shall both be settled comfortably in our bed again.”
Our bed.
I startled, thinking of that, remembering sharing a bed with him and all the nights we wasted, keeping a yawning space between us. It couldn’t have been helped. I knew that now. I didn’t blame myself—precisely. I had been working with the knowledge that I possessed at the time. Knowledge that I was a dragon, and he was not.
I wanted to believe that I could return to the Borg and that bed we had shared—this time with no yawning chasm between us—and that everything would be all right. We could have a good life together.
Finished with our food, we set out again, talking as we moved through the thick woods. It was so thick in parts that Fell used his confiscated sword to whack violently through the brush.
We had not traveled very far when Fell stopped suddenly, his head cocking, angling in a way that registered as more animal thanman. It was in his eyes, too. The sharpening, narrowing, unblinking way he cast his gaze about, a net ready to ensnare.
I glanced at him curiously. “What is it?”
He held up a hand, motioning for me to quiet.
I waited.
I waited and listened, hearing nothing beyond the settling snow on creaking branches and the whistling of air.
“The wind?” I suggested, a hopeful lilt to my voice.
He moved his head in one slow sideways motion as he readjusted his grip on his sword and held it before him. “That is no wind.”
I knew he was right. I had not wanted to believe it, though—not wanted to think we had come all this way, that we could be so close and still not make it.
Just because it was daylight, and we were this close to the Borg, did not mean we were safe from predators. It did not mean we, as predators, were safe.
Even predators had predators.
And magic did not always like other magic.
We held still, listening intently. His arm shifted, his hand sliding down my forearm to clasp my fingers in his. He gave me an encouraging squeeze.
“Do you hear that?” Even as he asked the question, he turned his face to look up to the sky, searching furiously.
Listening, I followed his gaze and looked up with dread, expecting to see dragons launching themselves through the trees at us like deadly arrows. “I don’t see anything.”
Because there was nothing there. Simply blue sky with billowing tufts for clouds that I knew felt like a barely there kiss on my skin.
A twig snapped.
