At the onset, a year ago, I’d thought it meant he could be alive, and hope had bloomed in my chest like sunlight breaking through the dark, through the pall his death cast over me—finding me where I had fallen, knocked off my feet at the news, forgotten, frozen at the first sight of Vetr returning alone from his and Fell’s regrettable flight to the cave of their birth, to the site of their mother’s death.Frozenas I had stared at Vetr … so bloody and broken that I didn’t immediately recognize him.Frozenexcept for my wildly scanning eyes, aching in my face, searching for a glimpse of Fell beyond Vetr, around Vetr—anywhere.
But there had been no Fell.
Just a blur of strangers, their faces all anxious over Vetr’s wellbeing, over Vetr’s survival.Vetr.
Vetr’s gasping words—They … got … him—twisted through me.
I felt out of my body in that moment.They. Got. Him.
Vetr had returned without Fell because Fell was no more.
Gone.
Dead.
All these thoughts sluggishly toiled through me like marbles rolling in endless circles, around and around and around, searching for an end, a home, a place to stop and rest.
I’d slumped on the cold stone floor that day. The large gathering space was a buzz of activity, reminiscent of the Great Hall back home in Penterra. Except it was a cave. A web of caves. A labyrinth. And at the center of that space, with its tables and chairs and benches with tasseled pillows, was me—limp and silent and unmoving as a corpse. I bit the inside of my cheek. The taste of copper flooded my mouth as the blood gushed. I tasted it even as I did notfeelthe painful sinking pressure of my teeth.
The warmth from the crackling firepit—with its stone chute that led up to a faraway rock ceiling, smoke escaping out through one of the openings carved for ventilation—reached me, licking at my face, but I felt cold. So cold. A cold that started at the very marrow of me, the heat in me uncharacteristically absent.
Roused from my stupor of grief and shock, I blinked as though stirred from a dream, a nightmare … a spell—a living curse, except there was no witch to blame for casting this affliction upon me. My limbs unfroze. I straightened and lifted myself from my spot, standing, stumbling blindly through the caves that was home to the pride.
Then, I hadn’t known very much about dragons or the pride. I hadn’t known how many they numbered—not the names that went with the faces and bodies I pushed through. The only face or name I knew was Vetr’s. Because his face was the same as Fell’s. Because he was Fell’s brother and he’d found us, brought us here. Because he would have the answers I needed.
So I had to reach him, find him wherever they had taken him upon his return, bearing wounds and tragedy.
No one helped me. No one pointed me in his direction. No one even seemed to see me until I was there, at the opening of his den, pushing past those crowding anxiously at his door, barging into his chamber while Brenna tended to the injuries he’d sustained fighting off the dragons who’d killed Fell and tried to kill him, too.Killed Fell.
The thought ricocheted through me, battering and striking everything in its path, leaving me so raw and hurting I could not summon an ounce of self-preservation among these who were more animal than human, more magic than not, in whose company I should have exercised more caution.
My gaze crawled over him, his body wrecked and ravaged. I felt a surge of bile in my throat. I would later learn that injuries inflicted by a dragon were harder to heal from than harm done by other means. Dragon talons—like weapons made from dragon bones—were far more dangerous. Deadly even, if the blow wasserious enough. One look at Brenna, and I knew Vetr’s injuries were potentially fatal. Perhaps I should have respected that and left him alone, but I had to know what happened.
So as Vetr writhed and twisted beneath the healer’s hands, I demanded, “What about Fell? What happened to him?”
Brenna held a bottle to Vetr’s lips, and he chugged verdaberry wine—another thing I would learn about later—something that possessed both healing and inebriating properties.
“Get her out of here!” a voice exclaimed loudly from the crowd. Others seconded this, and rough hands grabbed me, pulling me from the room. There were more hateful words tossed, barbs to the flesh.
We should never have allowed the two of them in. They’re not like us.
He had to go … had to see for himself! It’s his own fault!
Good riddance. He deserves what he got.
I ignored the ugly words, struggling and yanking my arms free, brandishing my hand with its X forever carved on my skin. “I can still feel him! I feel him here! He can’t be dead!”
No one cared. An arm wrapped around my waist and lifted me, ready to carry me bodily from the den.
“Leave her!”
The voice landed like a cracking whip on the air, and I was released at once.
I staggered forward, feeling as wild and desperate as the man on the bed appeared to be. My gaze collided with his—all vibrating pupils surrounded by frost and ice.
Vetr struggled into a sitting position, his attention fastening on my hand. I was struck by the sheer size of him even in his weakened state. The slab of his muscled chest was smeared with purple blood. What little blood-free skin there was flashed in and out, contracting to a pearlescent silver in one breath and returning to human skin in the next.
“It’s the bond,” he gritted out with a rough shake of his head, as though he hated to confirm the truth of this. “I’m … sorry.”
