“What’s worse than believing him dead?” I whispered, afraid of the answer but determined to hear it.
He looked away, his gaze sweeping the den as though he was uncomfortable with the question. At last, he settled his attention back on me, and there was a determined twist to his lips. “I was trying to protect you. I still am. I think Fell would have wanted that.”
“You didn’t even know me when you decided this. And you didn’t know Fell!” Another ragged breath. “I wasn’t one of the pride. And I’m still not.” He flinched at that, as though I’d wounded him. “So what horrible thing are you trying to protect me from? Just say it.”
He took his time replying.
I flexed my fingers around Fell’s necklace—the thick chain digging into my tender skin—not about to let it go. Not ready to ever let it go.
“We aren’t easy to kill,” he finally said.
“I know that,” I snapped.
“Dragons don’t always …” He paused, clearly struggling for words in a way I had never seen him do. Not this warrior who always seemed to know himself and what to say and where he belonged in this world. I’d envied him that, but now when I looked at him, I only felt disappointment. Distrust.Betrayal.“Dragons don’t always dispense death to their enemies. Sometimes they decide to mete out other punishments.”
I considered that, turning his words over in my mind. Apparently, my education in all things dragon wasn’t as thorough as I thought. “So if they don’t kill their enemies … what do they do to them?”
“They subject them to … burials.”
I frowned and rubbed at the center of my forehead where a dull ache had started to form. “I don’t understand. You just said they don’t always kill—”
“They don’t. But they earth their enemies.”
I stared, uncomprehending.Earththeir enemies? What was he talking about?
He looked bleakly remorseful as he elaborated. “They put to earth—” He stopped hard and then clarified: “They bury their enemies alive. Because it’s worse than death.”
Because it’s worse than death.
It was like he was speaking a foreign language—his words puzzle pieces that I had to shift and rearrange before me until they all connected neatly together. I clung to his gaze, trying to make sense of it all. “But dragons”—I spoke through lips that had gone numb—“we… live for centuries.” If not gravely injured with dragon weaponry, of course.
“Yes. Precisely.” He nodded grimly. “Sometimes, instead of killing a captive, they bury them alive.”
What ghastly brutality was this?
I stared. Unspeaking. Speech was impossible. There were not words to describe such barbarism.
Fell was potentially alive. No. Notpotentially. He was alive. Buried alive.
Understanding struck me as hard and sharp as a whip. I felt him, especially now, since waking from my svefn. Stronger than ever since then.
The tether between us stretched and held fast, alive and pulsing and buzzing like a bee inside me. Vetr had simply convinced me to ignore it. Convinced me that it was something else. An echo. A ghost. Not really Fell. But it had been Fell. Fell reaching out to me from some tomb beneath the ground where he would be stuck for years. Decades. Centuries.
It was horrible. Too horrible to wrap my mind around. Unspeakable. As terrible as the torments that Stig inflicted upon people.
While Fell existed in whatever hole the skelm stuck him, I’d been here, becoming a dragon in all ways … and falling under his brother’s spell.
Suddenly I recalled Anders’s suggestion that they bury me in adeep, deep fucking hole, and the realization thatearthingwas a known practice among dragonkind crystallized in my mind with a new level of comprehension.
My legs gave out and Vetr swept me up, carrying me in his arms and sinking down onto his bed with me in his lap. I shook my head in protest. I felt sick. My stomach heaved. I covered my mouth, gagging, suddenly unable to hold it back.
Vetr rushed me over to the basin, where I retched, emptying the contents of my stomach. It would have been humiliating … if I cared anymore what he thought.
He smoothed circles over my back, and I wrenched away from his touch—the very same touch I had longed for and came to this den on a mission to find. Staggering, I wiped the back of my hand against my quivering lips.
He looked at me with pity. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you. It wouldn’t have helped him, and it would only make you more miserable.”
I dug inside myself, searching past the bile for my voice. “He’s buried … alive.”
