“I should kill you,” I growled, thinking of the time I had lost,buried away because of him. The misery. The aloneness so deep and intense it nearly broke me to the point of no return—very nearly had me kill Tamsyn.
“Go ahead.” He smiled amiably. “Try.”
And it was too much.
I surged forward, eager to tear him apart.
He moved, ready to meet me, but Tamsyn was suddenly between us, pressing a hand to each of our chests. “Stop! Stop it! There’s been enough blood today, you idiots. No more!” Her voice cracked, and I knew she meant it. She could bear no more. “You may hate each other, but you are brothers,dragons. We should be allies and not at one another’s throats. I will not allow you to kill each other.” Her fire-gold eyes sparked with command, and she stomped her foot once in finality. “I’m not having it, understand?”
After a long moment, I stepped back. She was right.
I didn’t trust Vetr, but that did not mean I should kill him—that did not mean I should take him from the other dragons who needed him to lead them into the future.
Vetr followed suit, stepping back, breaking our gazes to look down at her. It was a long, slow look that I didn’t like. “You’re certain this is what you want, Little—?” He stopped at her sharp look and corrected himself. “Tamsyn.”
He meantme.
He was asking her if she was certain that she wanted me. A low growl started in my throat.
Tamsyn moved to my side and placed a reassuring hand on my arm. “It’s always been Fell for me.”
“Of course you choose him,” he sneered. “You think he can—”
“No,” she snapped, cutting him off. “I chooseme.” She patted a hand to her chest. “Me! And that means, for the first time in myentirelife”—she paused, almost gasping for breath—“I get to choose and gowhereI want and be withwhoI want. I’m finally free. And isn’t that what we are all fighting for?”
My breath seized in my chest, looking at her, caught up in herbeauty, in her words, in the honor of being chosen. Of being her choice.
Vetr nodded once, briskly. “And what of you, brother?” Eyes so like my own stared back at me. Deep and probing. “You think to live in the human world as you are? That both of you can do that? Live freely and happily out there withthem?” He gestured toward the Borg with a motion of disgust.
I reached for Tamsyn’s hand, lacing my fingers with hers, not bothering to remind him that he had never given me the choice, theoption, of the pride. He’d cast me into a hole. “As long as we’re together, yes.”
Vetr smiled widely. “Such romantics. I hope you’re right and not the fools I fear you are.”
“We’re alike,” Tamsyn said. “And we want the same things. But that does not mean we reject our dragons either.”
He smirked, and again I wondered if I looked like that when I made such a face—and if I did, someone needed to punch me. “Oh? You think you can have both … beboththings?”
“We already are,” I said.
He grunted out a sound that indicated his disagreement. Instead of arguing, though, he lifted his chest on an inhale. “Well. Good luck with that.” With a whip of his cloak, he was gone.
They were all gone, turning and disappearing into the trees in a cloud of mist.
I faced Tamsyn, cupping her cheeks. “Together.”
“Together,” she repeated.
34
TAMSYN
NONE OF THE SURVIVORS REMEMBERED ANYTHING.
In the absence of their memories, they readily accepted the story we concocted of raiders attacking and slaying Stig. A few even claimed to have memory of the attack and Stig’s valiant fight for his life, proving just how suggestible a fractured mind could be. We left the cage of dragon bone behind, gathered up the wounded, and loaded them into the wagon. We would send a convoy to collect the dead.
Mounted on a horse, I looked back over my shoulder, staring at the lonely cage with its bones almost as white as the snow flurrying around us. The cage that rendered me weak and powerless now sat in so much blood and gore and death. I hoped never to see it again. I hoped never to have to transform and kill again. My gaze caught and held on Stig’s lifeless eyes staring up from the snow.
For the first time in a long while, I felt free enough to hope, and it was a wondrous thing.
