Hecould have done that. Helped me.
He had not. He hadn’t lifted a finger.
My gaze clashed with his, our noses almost touching. “Why didn’tyou?” I flung at him, simmering in my pain, in my rage. “You’re the alpha of the pride. The strongest among us, no? No love lost for these humans. What is a mere human, after all? What arethree?”
“You were at their mercy.Youshould have done it,” he snapped. “They’re servants of the Terror. You saw what they did.Youshould have helped yourself.”
“So … you were testing me?” The words felt thick in my mouth, the pain still like a knife grinding and twisting to the hilt in me, but this … this was something else, another kind of pain, another kind of assault.
“That’s right,” he growled.
I flinched and then grimaced at the bite in my back. He was right. I should never have reached the camp. I should have killed two soldiers and a boy barely out of the schoolroom who still longed for his mother. I should have never seen my sister. I would not have been whipped.Shewould not have been struck.
I forced my chin up. “Well, I got myself out of there. I saved myself like you wanted me to do. And you don’t need to worry. As far as the world knows, dragons are still extinct. I gave nothing away.”
“At what cost to you?” Cursing, he adjusted me in his arms, cradling me against his chest, and I resisted leaning my cheek against that solid wall, denying myself the comfort. I watched him peer over my shoulder where my back hung in strips. Air hissed from between his teeth. “Ahh. What did you do, Little Flame?”
Little Flame.He’d never called me that before. A flicker of something crossed over the hard lines of his face. A rare emotion from him. I was not sure how to identify it—what it even was. Anger. Pity. Aggravation. All that and more.
A heavy weariness came over me, pulling, drawing me down toward a deep nothingness. “You watched them take me into the camp,” I whispered accusingly, no longer able to hold my head upright. My cheek met the solidness of his chest, and I exhaled long and slow.
I heard his breath, the deep, sharp inhale. “You think that was easy for me? You think when they tied you to that tree I—”
“You watched that, too?” I cut in hoarsely, tears thick in my throat. Closing my eyes, I turned my face into him, burying it in his over tunic that smelled of leather and horseflesh and wind and fog and the crisp snow of the Crags.
Shame swept through me that he had observed me that way—as the whipping girl, reliving the role I had been forced to endure for the bulk of my life. He’d glimpsed the past I’d left and vowed never to revisit. He’d seen me at my most vulnerable, and I hated it.
Except … what did it matter anymore?
My heat faded, and I felt death inching close, breathing its ice first through my wounds, then chugging through the rest of me.
What didImatter?
As though he could read my mind, Vetr vowed, “I’ll get you home, Little Flame. You’re not dying. I won’t let you.”
“Arran,” he called.
I heard the crunch of footsteps, and then I was transferred into another’s arms, into Arran’s arms.
I weakly lifted my head to watch as Vetr stepped back several yards from us. He held my gaze, and there was something there in the frosted depths. It felt like a promise, an avowal ruthlessly penetrating to the center of me.
Then he broke eye contact, lifting his face and spreading his arms wide.
I inhaled, watching, knowing what was coming.
Air swirled around us and then exploded into thousands of particles of stardust where he once stood. When the light cleared, a familiar silvery dragon stood before us, his frosted gaze fixed on me.
Arran carried me forward and placed me in the cradle of Vetr’s two great taloned claws. He brought me in closer, hugging me to his chest, and I felt safe against his warm dragon hide, his heart beating a loud rhythm in my ear. A lethargy crept over me as he lifted off and launched us into the sky.
Cold wind roared around us like a storm, a squall that he cut through like a hot blade through butter.
Cradled in his grasp, I felt myself slipping, sliding, sinking into oblivion as the storm raged all around me.
12
TAMSYN
SLEEP WAS A BALM.
