A tingle sparked and warmed at the center of my palm. Frowning, I pressed my hand deeper into my furs to quell the sensation.
13
TAMSYN
BRENNA HAD NOT EXAGGERATED. A BROKEN RIB WASslow to heal. She unwrapped my torso each evening so that I could bathe at the basin stand, then rewrapped me after I dried off, keeping all of me tight and supported, but if I breathed too hard or coughed or choked or laughed—it did happen occasionally, especially at the antics of baby Mirja—I would feel the reminder of Stig’s cruelty.
“You will bear scars,” she announced one evening as she applied a salve to my back with gently patting fingers. It was after my bath. Vetr was off somewhere. He always made himself scarce at this point in the evening.
I resisted telling her I already did have scars. Invisible wounds rooted deep.Thesewere just the first ones visible, the first ones I would wear on the outside.
Brenna was kind enough to provide a mirror, and I twisted around to glimpse what I could. I didn’t look for long, though. The puckered, raised flesh crisscrossing what had once been smooth skin was an angry, ugly thing. I didn’t want to look.
Brenna had stitched the wounds as tightly as possible, but it didn’t matter. The closely woven stitches, the verdaberry medicine, the power of svefn—none of it had spared my body from mutilation.
“It’s fine,” I finally said. “A small thing.”
“It is notfine.” She shook her head with a disgusted tsk. “Such savages,” she muttered, and I knew she was talking about humans. I couldn’t help feeling a tugging smile at the irony in that.
“I am fairly certain that is what they say about us, too.”
I felt the gust of her breath on the back of my neck. “Well. You would be the one to know, I suppose.”
The sharp words were not uttered with malice, nor were they meant to be snide. Nonetheless, I felt the sting of knowing that no matter how much time passed, there would always bethatabout me, thatthing, thatotherness, which would set me apart.
I’d felt that awareness keenly when Vetr and the others questioned me the day after I woke from my svefn.
Vetr, Brenna, Anders, Aksel, Harald, and Arran had all crowded into the infirmary. It had been an interrogation. They didn’t call it that, but that’s what it felt like. They called it a debriefing.
Following every rekon, the skeppars and those who participated in the rekon gathered and discussed everything learned, sharing any suggestions for moving forward. Usually, such discussions were held in the privacy of the command den, but Vetr insisted I was not yet ready to move from my bed. So I remained in the infirmary, feeling awkward tucked beneath my furs as they all looked down, firing questions at me about my time among humans, my time in the Terror’s camp.
Reliving my experience was not especially a preferred conversation, but I understood why they needed to know.
I faced their relentless inquiries and went over everything with them: my time with Jorgen, Ari, and Frode. Penterra beginning conscription, growing its army, sending more and more soldiers north with the intention of foraying into the Crags. The Terror’s marriage to the king’s daughter making him only more powerful, more of a tyrant, able to rule with impunity. The stranglehold in which Stig held the people of Penterra. I told them all that and more.
More as in Stig, Lord of the Borderlands, knew dragons existed—he alone knew thatIwas one—and he was determined to discover if there were more of us.
“I don’t understand. How is it he knows? How is he so certain?” Anders demanded.
He was the one asking, but it was Vetr’s stare I felt, thatsilvery gaze stripping past my exterior and invading where I could not hide, could not deflect or lie.
“I … He …” I struggled with the truth, with my mistake. It sat like poison on my tongue, and I fought to spit it out into the air. “I told him.”
“You told him?” Brenna looked at me as though I had just confessed to slapping a baby—herbaby. It was that unthinkable.Unforgivable.
A shuddering breath escaped me. I was certain this would change their opinion of me. Vetr would not think me so courageous now.
I got the rest out past my lips, the final truth that must meet the light of day. “I showed him. I manifested into my dragon in front of him.”
Silence.
In the distance, beyond the cave, Mirja could be heard laughing, the sound so pure, bright as the tinkling of bells against the ugly shadow I had just released into the room.
It was like Stig was here now, his dark energy spilling over everything, filling every nook and cranny of the infirmary.
“We let her in here.” The growled words came from Anders, part question, part statement of fact. His lips peeled back to reveal his emerging teeth, glinting fangs too big for his human mouth. His hand dropped to the hilt of the dagger on his belt. “Among us?”
Harald covered his mate’s hand as though staying him. The two shared a long look. Harald’s iridescent black eyes urged restraint. I did not know what I had done to earn Harald’s consideration in this moment of shameful, damning confession—perhaps it had been forged while we were together on rekon—but I was grateful for it.
