I assessed Gudru. I couldn’t help it. She was lovely: an earth dragon with hair that shone like polished mahogany and a face that was all long-lashed, luminescent eyes and full, bee-stung lips. Why didn’t Vetr bond with her? Especially in an environment where pairing off was encouraged, even expected. I looked up the long length of the table, silently judging him. He’d just lectured me on furthering dragonkind. Did he not think to take his own counsel? Should he not accept either Gudru or Estrid as a mate? Get to work himself on the business of adding to the pride’s population?
As though sensing my stare, Vetr looked down the table at me, his frost-colored gaze colliding with mine. I blinked and quickly averted my eyes.
Kerstin tossed the wild bounty of her gold-streaked chestnut curls over her shoulders. She never seemed able to tame the mass into any semblance of order. It was a wild snarl in desperate need of a brush. Whenever she sparred in the arena, it was a definite disadvantage. Many an opponent had grabbed handfuls of her mane to subdue or get the better of her. I’d heard it suggested more than once that she cut it closer to her scalp. Not that she listened. Kerstin was charming and vibrant and only ever did what she wanted—even if that meant she was being constantly scolded by one of the skeppars or Vetr.
The girl continued talking, undeterred by my steady silence. “I feel humiliated for them. Truly.” She paused to take a bite from a honeyed confection of cake stuffed with berries and nuts that I had never tasted the like before arriving here. She spoke around a mouthful, crumbs flying. “The way they treat each other when he has no interest in bonding with either one of them …” She looked at me searchingly. “You know?”
I nodded slowly because she seemed to want some kind of acknowledgment.
Then, suddenly, she pressed her sticky hands flat on the table and called out with a complete lack of decorum, “Move on! He doesn’t want either of you. Pick someone else.”
Gudru and Estrid heard her. Everyone heard her. They probably heard her in the Borg. There were gasps. Titters. Whispers. A few chuckles.
Gudru’s deep brown eyes turned hard as flint. She glared at Kerstin … and me. As though I were somehow complicit in this unfolding drama. Fault by association.
Estrid made a rude gesture that I recognized.Fuck offtranslated fairly universally.
Kerstin huffed out a bit of laughter, and I felt a reluctant smile emerge as I took a bite of warm crusty bread infused with herbs and slathered with fresh butter.
“Kerstin?” a voice called out, tight with disapproval. “Is anything amiss?” The words were polite, but there was a layer of steel in them. My gaze flicked to the owner of that voice: Brenna, a skeppar and the only verga dragon among us.
The skeppars were the oldest members of the pride—not to be confused with beingold. Brenna was only a few years my senior, but she possessed the worldliness of someone far more veteran, and I supposed that was because shewasa veteran, while I was a mere novice.
There was a chain of command in place, and orders wereusually conveyed through Vetr’s skeppars: Anders, Brenna, or Aksel. Brenna was perhaps the most formidable of the three. Her green eyes narrowed shrewdly. Clearly, she had not missed any of the exchange.
Kerstin’s pale skin flushed pink. She sat up straighter beside me, adopting a wide-eyed, wholly innocent expression. “Everything is fine, Brenna.” She angled her now almost empty plate in demonstration. “Dinner was delicious tonight.”
As a verga, Brenna masterminded all things to do with plants and herbs. From food preparation in the kitchens, to managing the gardens and crops, to creating herbal remedies and tinctures for the ill and injured. Her talents were vast. Several of my duties fell within her purview.
Multiple times a week, I helped in the garden, and more than once I had been called in to help in the infirmary when there was a need for extra hands—like last spring when both Brynhild and Vestar were gored by a sounder of battle boars and quite nearly beyond saving.
Once tamed by the spells of witchkind, battle boars had been used in the Threshing. Soldiers from all kingdoms had ridden into the Hormung upon the massive, tusked beasts. Since the end of the Threshing and witches fell out of favor, battle boars had been released from their spells. Feral once again, they took refuge in the boglands and the Crags, much like their dragon counterparts. They were particularly vicious, especially during rutting season.
Brenna gave a brisk nod. Seemingly appeased that Kerstin was finished with her outburst, she returned her attention to her mate, Nils, seated beside her.
Kerstin relaxed beside me and reached for more of the fragrant bread, dropping a roll on each of our plates.
Gudru and Estrid no longer looked in our direction.
I stuffed the savory bread into my mouth, ready to leave but knowing I could not. Vetr and his skeppars were always the first toleave. No one left before them, and they did not yet appear ready to depart, their plates still brimming with food.
Thankfully I did not have kitchen duty tonight. As soon as dinner ended, I could retire to my den. I sighed and looked around. My gaze collided with Nayden’s scowl. I glared back at him, determined not to cower. He ate with his face close to his plate, pushing roasted mutton and vegetables into his mouth using a hunk of bread as a shovel—but all the while his fiery gaze remained fixed on me.
“That boy.” Kerstin tsked—as though he was so much younger. “He’s not been right since you showed up.”
“Is that so?” I asked while still holding his stare. “Maybe I should leave, then?”
I did not plan to say such a thing, but the words tumbled loose. The encounter with Vetr had left me feeling fractured and unsteady … and a bit desperate. I shouldn’t have said the words to Kerstin, but too late. They were out, hanging on the air, waiting for someone to snatch them up, and Kerstin did.
I felt her eyes on the side of my face. “Why would you want to do that? There’s nowhere for us to go.” She sounded bewildered, but also something else. Curious maybe? As though if any other possibilities existed, she wanted me to share them with her at once. “You belong here. This is our home. It’s what the Old Ones wanted … why they brought us here, to Vetr … to build a life.”
The Old Ones, in this instance, truly meantold.
Following Vala’s curse, when dragons began giving birth to humans rather than hatchlings, some of them didn’t kill or abandon their human babies. Gradually, a new generation of dragonkind took shape.
In those early years, Vetr lived independently, a wild child fending for himself in the Crags with occasional help from Old Ones sympathetic to his struggles. Not only did he survive, he thrived.
As he matured, more and more of the Old Ones began leaving their human offspring with him—at least those who couldnot bring themselves to murder their infants outright. Vetr grew a pride.Thispride.
