Stillnow.
It was his ghost alive in me. It wasn’t really him. It wasn’t really … real.
I’d struggled to accept that disappointing truth.
As the days slid into weeks, into months, into a year, the slim thread of hope I clung to that Vetr was mistaken thinned and frayed until it dissolved altogether.
Fell could not be alive all this time later. I knew that now.
I submerged a cloth into the basin of water on my washstand and then gingerly wiped it down the side of my face, studying myself in the looking glass hanging above the bowl, considering the girl I hardly recognized now. Not even a girl. A woman. A woman I didn’t know anymore. I winced. And that was not right either. Not a girl. Not a woman. Not human.
My gaze flicked to the damage Nayden had wrought upon me, inspecting the charred flesh dispassionately. Fire was less dangerous to me than it was to others—dragon or human. Enough fire could still destroy me, but as a fire-breather I possessed a higher tolerance. It would take more than a mere brush with fire to wound me. It would take prolonged exposure to come close to ending me.
Angling my face, I could see that the skin was already healing, was less charred. Only slightly pink now, fresh as a newborn’s, the healthy waxy pink closely resembling my natural skin. Natural? I winced. Myhumanskin tone, then. I supposed that was what I meant.
I was no longer certain what could be considered natural in this world, andnormalwas not a word I liked to think about at all. It felt …wrong. Words likenormalandnaturalonly restricted, encouraging insecurities and self-loathing.
I went ahead and stripped off my shoes and dirty clothes until I stood in my shift. Then I cleaned the rest of myself: neck, arms, chest, legs … wiping away the day’s grime the best I could. If a full bath was desired, there was a hot spring nearby. You couldn’t be guaranteed privacy there, but it was soothing after a hard day spent training.
My gaze skimmed the jewel-studded wall as I idly held the cool cloth to my throat. The pattern of gems was etched upon my memory by now, but that did not stop me from scanning each and every bright stone, looking futilely for a black opal like the one Fell had worn around his neck.
Ever since I’d arrived here, I’d searched for a glimpse of one within the surfeit on display within the pride, and not just here in my den, but everywhere—at least in the common areas. There were private dens, of course, where the others slept, but no one invited me into their sanctuaries. Even a year later, I was not close enough to anyone for that.
I knew the necklace was gone, lost with Fell, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to see one like it again—just to remember, to be reminded of it. The black opal had been special. Half the size of my palm and deep black, threaded with red and green and blue.
I finished washing up and then patted myself dry with a towel in the glow of the gemstones. It was outrageous to think how many humans would kill for even one of them. How many of them in facthad. Just one of these rubies or emeralds or diamonds or sapphires would be motivation enough to slit a throat.
During the Threshing—and even after—whole troops of soldiers had entered the Crags to claim what they could of the dragon hoard. As a human, I had never considered that dragons amassed treasure for any reason other than greed. That was the belief perpetuated by humans. That was what history chronicled. That was what I had been taught.
Never had it occurred to humans, tome, that the reason, the truth, could be something so fundamental, so very necessary, as that dragonsneededgems to live. That they mined for the preciousstones deep in the mountains in order to sustain themselves. As vital as air. Water for the parched. Food for the starved. Blood for the body.
I understood it now because I felt the same bone-deep need, too, ever since I’d turned during the crossing and woken up to what I was.
My fingers reached for the necklace at my throat. The raspberryred jewels on the heavy chain that Fell had given me in the Borg … to make up for the necklace I’d lost to bandits.
The stones whispered against my skin, seeping into me, fusing with my flesh, burrowing into my bones, feeding my soul, and I didn’t know if it was simply because they were jewels and I was me and that was what happened with dragons. Or was it something more? Something deeper, something more exceptional because they came from Fell?
My gaze returned to my reflection, admiring the gems at my throat, appreciating their warmth, reveling in the pulse of energy they emitted, when the fur covering the threshold of my den flipped open.
Without preamble, Vetr strode inside.
No announcement. No calling out for permission.
I gasped and spun around, dropping my hands from the necklace humming against my clavicle as though caught doing something I was not supposed to do.
Leather or pelt curtains were what amounted to doors around here, and yet I’d never felt vulnerable before. I’d always had my privacy. No one had intruded into my space before.
Until now.
3
TAMSYN
IT OCCURRED TO ME THAT NO ONE HAD INVADED MY DENbefore because no one was interested enough in me. No one cared. I stirred only apathy—at best—among members of the pride. I would forever be the one who had lived among humans, who had thought she was a human for twenty-one years, who had swallowed all the lies about dragonkind while making room for more.
They’d been brought up together. They were family. Brethren.
Iwas the outsider.
