“Come with me,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
Eighteen
Cathal was always leading her places, Sophia thought—down corridors and out into forests. Of course, the castlewashis, or his family’s, but still it would have bordered on embarrassing to be following him yet again, had excitement not overwhelmed most other feelings. She barely remembered to pick her cloak up before they left the castle itself.
Putting it on was the first time she freed her wrist from Cathal’s hand, and she did so with reluctance, still feeling his touch on her skin as they walked out the door and reminded of it with every step. The path through the snow was narrow. Two could walk abreast, but it was close. Her arm brushed against his side frequently, and his against hers, and each moment of contact was its own thrill.
There were many sources of excitement, she was discovering, and many forms of curiosity. She was glad of the chance to gratify one. It didn’t stop her from feeling another.
Then too, their destination was the forest again. The path wasn’t the same, but seeing the line of trees coming closer stirred memories, and those memories stirred her body, so that she was almost glad of the chilly air around her and of the exercise, so that she could excuse her voice when she spoke. “Is this always where you change?”
“No,” he said, looking down at her. His voice was slightly hoarse too, Sophia noticed, and she doubted that was exertion. A tingling flush swept over her skin. She made herself concentrate on the words, not on his voice or eyes or lips. They were interesting enough in their own right. “I often jump from the tower and transform on the way down. You couldn’t follow that way.”
She shook her head. Even the thought was dizzying. “It must be exciting, at least for one who can do it and survive.”
Cathal laughed, eyes glinting leaf-green with the afternoon sunlight. “My brother still thinks I’m out of my wits. And Moiread—the younger of my sisters—waits longer than I do before she changes. Almost hits the ground at times. Daft girl,” he added affectionately, and then a thought made him frown.
“Oh…she’s the one fighting now, is she not?”
“She is. Not as reckless with men’s lives, I don’t think.” He sighed. “We didn’t talk of war much until it happened. Not the practical side. And I wasn’t here often.”
“But she’d been to war before?” Sophia asked, turning to questions when she could think of nothing comforting to say.
“Raids, at least. Skirmishes. Not like me.”
“But then, perhaps she’ll know the countryside better.”
“That could be,” Cathal said and turned back toward the path.
They were approaching a clearing now, smaller than the one where they’d gathered herbs and kissed, but still of decent size. The trees that ringed it were larger than the others she’d seen, and there was less snow on their trunks than those of their fellows. The snow on the ground was shallower too, and Sophia could actually spot patches of dirt and brown grass. As they got closer, those patches shaped themselves into patterns: too smudged at the edges to be very clear, but definitely the marks of something large.
“Stand there,” Cathal said and left her side to walk into the middle of the grove. “I’ll not hurt you. You’ve my word on that. I’ll ask yours now, that you won’t scream or run.”
“I swear it,” Sophia said, raising a hand and not quite holding her breath.
She did her best to keep looking at Cathal while he changed. Only a handful of people in any generation likely saw the transformation, if that many. She would probably never have the chance to do so again in her life, and she wanted to etch every detail into her brain. Sophia clasped her hands and watched, intending not even to blink if she could help it, and not to look away no matter how grisly the process.
Watching was harder than she’d expected, and without a drop of blood or a glimpse of bone. Cathal shifting wasn’t revolting, it was simply…difficult to watch. Part of the hardship was speed, for his form changed very quickly. The rest was that the human eye didn’t want to follow what happened. She remembered thethings beyondin the beginning of her nightmare. The change of form was a lesser version, a little more comprehensible and not exactly painful to look at.
Realizing the implication there made Sophia wrap her arms around herself for protection, or perhaps only to reassure herself that she was still solid flesh.
What she did see was a blurred series of images. The closest thing in the mortal world that Sophia could think of was the way air shimmered on a hot day. Cathal stood in front of her, handsome and human. The air waved and fractured. His outline bent at the edges, not to accommodate any concrete change of bodily form but reflecting light outward in rays, like a mirror.
A gust of wind blew suddenly past her. The air had been still, with only the faintest of breezes, but this was strong enough to send her cloak billowing out behind her and her skirt with it, to snatch pins from her hair and bring tears to her eyes. And it washot. Sophia felt for those few moments as if she’d just stepped into the kitchens.
The hair on her arms and the back of her neck stood up. For only a second, there was a low humming in her ears.
Then Cathal wasn’t standing in front of her any longer—not the way she knew him. The air stopped shimmering, and she could look at him again, but her mind, even hers, even as prepared as she had been, stuttered and produced only impressions.
Scales: dark green, almost the color of the evergreens around them. Shiny. Claws: the size of her hand. Tail: spiked and pointed at the end. Wings: wide, bat-like. Head: horns, squarish muzzle, huge eyes without pupils, the same lighter green as Cathal’s eyes in human form. Huge: three or four times the size of the largest warhorse Sophia had seen.
Dragon. The word felt strange at first, not quite connected properly to the creature in front of her. She’d never truly thought to see one, she realized, and certainly not up close and living. The pages of bestiaries had done very little justice.Dragon, she thought again, and this time it seemed to make more sense.Cathal.
Unmoving, he watched her, and she thought he was waiting to see what she did next, if she would keep her word. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to her that she might not.
Stepping toward him did raise a touch of unease, the same kind of gut-and-spine wariness that one felt when looking down over a high precipice—even if the ground was stable and the edge a way off—and just as easy to ignore. She was not her body; she was its mistress, and not vice versa.
“Are all of you this large?” she asked.
