Maybe I could control my blood this time.
Maybe I could do the thing that had remained the most challenging to me this past year. I choked back a sob. Who was I fooling?
His voice scraped against my skin. “Your blood will flow like a river.”
And I knew he was right.
His eyes glinted with delight. He remembered.
That day in the woods with Fell, I had shown Stig my purple blood to prove I was a dragon. Of course he would remember that. He was counting on my blood to once again be the final evidence, the proof he needed to redeem himself in front of his entire regiment.
He moved away from the tree, from me, calling to his soldiers: “Keep your weapons at the ready. Archers, too! She could turn at any moment. Be prepared!”
My mind raced, fast as the molten blood pumping in my veins. The dragon blood. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, willing myself to calm, to ease, to resist the dragon buried within me. Duringtraining, they’d said the easiest way to control your blood was to control your dragon, to carefully curb all dragon tendencies to keep your blood as red as any human’s.
I strained my eyes, glancing wildly around me, seeing what I could in my limited range of sight.
I had to escape. Despair washed over me. Suddenly the lives of three soldiers seemed a paltry sacrifice. It was what Vetr had been trying to instill in me all along.
Save yourself.
Save the species.
Leave no witnesses.
I understood that finally—more than ever. I had not saved myself and now all dragonkind was in peril.
I must not turn. No matter what befell me.
Either my blood stayed hidden in my veins, safely tucked beneath my skin, or it did not spill at all. I did not think the latter much of a possibility.
Stig released a loud practice crack, and I flinched violently.
I considered accepting my death—doing something drastic, saying something to compel a soldier to charge me, to invite the thrust of dragon bone deep within me.
Even if I could think of something to provoke such an attack, I would then be dead. I would be gone, but my body would still remain. What was to stop Stig from carving me up? From searching for the evidence in my corpse—evidence he would find.
Think, think, think.
I could see it all so plainly, playing out before me as clear as a sunny day.
The discovery of me, my truth, would lead to an invasion into the Crags. Armies from Penterra and Veturland and Acton beyond the Dark Channel would march into those frozen mountains, deep into the mist, into the ancient caves and winding tunnels to find my brethren. They would leave no hollow or den unexplored. The pride would be found. Dragons would be flushed out. It would be the Threshing all over again, except this time it would be the end.Dragons would be done. There would be no miraculous salvation, no evolutionary trick the result of a witch’s spell.
It would be complete annihilation. An era of darkness, an inescapable shadow.
And any human suspected of being a dragon? It would be like the witch hunts all over again. Anyone under the slightest cloud of suspicion would be put to the sword.
I blinked, and the vision vanished like a bubble bursting, but no less felt, no less true. Such would come to pass. I knew this … unless I stopped it.
A breeze stirred my hair across my cheek like skimming fingertips, barely there, so soft, and I realized that my thick braid had fallen from its coronet around my head to trail down my back in a sloppy rope. The three days of hard travel had not been conducive to normal grooming. In a typical morning, I brushed out my hair, rebraided it, and pinned it up. But nothing had been typical since I’d left the pride.
My hair was still braided now, but only loosely. Seized with sudden inspiration, I turned my head side to side, tossing it, loosening the thick mass even more, doing everything in my power to free the strands enough to obscure my back. Could it work? Could it be enough?Please, please, please.
Crack.
I heard the piske first before my body communicated the pain to my mind. It could have only been a fraction of a moment, but time had a way of stopping, holding its breath in instances like this, when life hung in the balance, caught between the anticipation of pain and pain itself.
And then it found me. The wait was over.
