Yes. That rang true. With him burning in my palm, the certainty of it penetrated my awareness. Too little too late.
I stared down at the slashing lines of the X on my palm that sparked and pulsed. “Are you sure?” I whispered, my voice so small, tremulous as the most brittle of leaves.
I wanted Vetr to be wrong. Hope was like that. Cruelandkind. Feeding you lies so you could cling to a semblance of peace. It was like a person dying of thirst, guzzling seawater, achieving momentary relief but actually only hastening death in the end.
“You saw them … you saw these other dragons”—I struggled to say the word—“killFell?”
We didn’t have a body, after all. Vetr was lucky to have made it back with his life. Perhaps Fell was still out there somewhere, broken but not dead.
I entertained all manner of possible scenarios as I stood in his den, hope clawing and fighting for life in my heart. Perhaps those other dragons still held him captive. Not a great prospect, but better than dead.
“I did. Yes.” His ice-gray eyes were all pity and remorse, sweeping over me and leaving me bare, skinless, all bones and hollowness. A ghost myself then.
“Miracle you made it back,” Brenna muttered with a woeful shake of her head as she tended to him, pushing a lock of errant hair from her dark brow.
“It was not without cost.” He adjusted slightly and pain washed over his face again.
It was gradually that I realized his words,thosewords, caused a shift in the air. A palpable stir in the press of bodies.
“What cost?” someone asked.
I bit back the hot reply that rose on my tongue. Fell. Fell was the cost, but he did not mean Fell, and they all knew it.
“I gave them the minn to the west of the Great Falls.” Vetr’s announcement struck like lightning into our midst. Everyone stilled.
Brenna cleared her throat after some moments. “That minn has the greatest reserve of jewels in all of the Crags. Why would you—”
“For peace,” he bit out. “I negotiated a truce, so that we might stop fighting our own kind, so that they would stop raiding into the south and putting us all at risk.” He gave a rattling sigh. “And for my life.”
Everyone started talking all at once.
A truce with them?
The skelm cannot be trusted!
That was our prize minn!
Kaldr is vicious! A monster! We cannot expect peace from him!
Pain corded Vetr’s throat, or he might have spoken, might have explained or defended what he had done. As it was, Brenna’s voice lifted above the din.
“Enough! Vetr is our alpha. We would have nothing if not for him. He brought us all together. He’s the heart of this pride, and I will follow him.” Her green eyes glinted like sunlit moss, flitting to each and every face with challenge until they looked away. “If he negotiated a truce with Kaldr so that he could return to us, then so be it.”
Expressions eased. Eyes softened. Heads nodded. Voices relaxed into rumbles of agreement that swept through the room.
I glanced around in confusion, not at all comforted by any of this.
So they had their alpha. And a truce with their enemy. It only cost them some jewel-laden minn. What about Fell?
I was not good with any of this.
The insides of my ears felt thick, my hearing muffled, the words of everyone around me less distinct as their faces grew distorted, features blurring. Unlike everyone else, I could feel no relief, no sense of peace.
“I’m sorry. I could not save him,” Vetr whispered, catching my gaze, seeing me, seeing my pain even as he suffered his own. With a glance to my fisted hand, he added, “He’s gone. What you’re feeling is just an echo of the bond.”
“An echo.” I frowned, digesting that, one of many lessons of dragonkind that I would learn.
I’d felt only an echo of Fell then. And now.
