Kerstin tugged on my arm. “Come on, Tamsyn. She is their thrall,anda witch.” This last she added as though it was the most grievous offense of all. Perhaps even worse than being a human. “There is nothing to do for her. It’s just the way it is.”
A thrall. Vetr never availed the pride of one, and he certainly could have. In my mind it was another thing that set the pride apart from the skelm.
Thrall.I thought about what it really meant. Servant. Slave. Someone who was used and manipulated. Someone who musttake, who must endure and absorb pain. Thrall.Whipping girl.Not so very different, I realized, and flinched slightly at the thought. She was used and abused and kept for the whims of others. Even her magic was not her own.
My life had been similar to that when I lived in the palace. I was just better dressed and allowed to sit at the table and eat dinner with my captors.
It’s just the way it is.But it should not be that way. Just because it was done, just because it was accepted did not make it right.
“Let’s help her,” I heard myself whispering in a rush, a fire lighting in my belly.
“Help her?” Kerstin’s bronze gaze glowed in the gloom. “That’s senseless. She’s a witch. Witches aren’t friends to dragons.”
I shook my head slightly, a flash of Thora’s face filling my mind. I remembered her kindness to me.Shehad been a friend to me when I had been alone and frightened. She could have left me, cast me out, but she had helped me instead.
Humans. Dragons. Witches. Why did we have to be at such odds? Hadn’t there been enough killing? Enough destruction? Why couldn’t we all just …be?
I leveled my gaze on Kerstin. “I’mgoing to help her.”
And once I said the words, I knew them to be true. I meant it. I didn’t know how I would manage it, but I would somehow do it.
She looked back and forth from me to the hapless figure several times. “And what do you expect to happen? Even if you creep down there and they don’t catch you—which they will—do you think that she will thank you and embrace you afterward? No. You are a dragon. That is all she will see. An enemy. The minute you turn your back, the minute she can, she will end you.”
“Witches can’t cast death spells,” I countered. There was a great deal I didn’t know about witchkind, but I knew that much.
She angled her head. “True, but they can figure out other ways to cause havoc and destruction. She could turn you into a goat or something.” She made a sound that might have been a laugh before it fizzled out into something faintly sob-like. “Please, Tamsyn. Let’s get out of here.”
My chest lifted on a great exhale, the hot gust fogging in the night air. “I’m doing this. You can help me or not. I’ll understand if you can’t … but I’m doing this.”
Kerstin looked down at where the girl huddled among the group of dragons.Not a girl, I reminded myself. A witch. I would do well to remember that. Kerstin was not wrong on that account. Once she was freed, I would have to give her a wide berth and send her on her way. There was trying to help her and then there was stupidity. I wouldn’t be stupid.
“What are we even doing, Tamsyn?” Frustration lifted her voice, and I waved her to be quiet. She continued in a hoarse pitch. “I thought we were trying to find Fell.”
“And how can I do that if I can’t evenfeelhim anymore?” I gave my head a fierce shake, locking my jaw tight with determination.
I couldn’t save Fell, but maybe I could save this girl.
I’d lost so much. Fell, the husband I was just coming to need and crave with every breath. The home and family I thought I would always have.Stig—his betrayal and the loss of him was a puckered-up scar, the warped tissue still giving off twinges now and then. To make matters even worse, Alise was now his wife—a wound that cut deep, that I would feel for all my days.
I abruptly killed such painful thoughts. They served no purpose. None of it could be undone now.
Butthiswitch and what was happening to her? It could be undone.
Icould undo it.
Whatever I was, whatever I had become … it was not someone who could stand by and do nothing while someone else suffered—be it human, dragon, or witch.
As though she had a front-row seat to all my inner thoughts, Kerstin looked across the distance at the captive witch once again. “You know saving her is not the same as saving Fell.”Meaning it’s not right or honorable or worth doing?
I inhaled a shuddering breath. “She is stillsomeone. Someone who doesn’t deserve what’s happening to her.”
Kerstin shook her head. “You shouldn’t do this.”
“I have to try.”
“Then you do it alone,” she rejoined. “I’m sorry.” Her grim tone did not strike me as apologetic. Her bias was rooted too deeply for that.
With a final long look that felt like a blade scraping across my skin, she turned away into the settling dusk, keeping low to the ground in case anyone from below might look up at the ridge.
