‘Fuck you!’ I gasp angrily as I try to stand. ‘Do youwantto be poisoned? Hold still and let me—’
‘Human girl!’
I freeze.
‘Come here.’
I swear again, then kneel down by her head. Her amber eyes glow just as brightly in the sunlight as they do in the dark. She blinks as if tired. I reach down and wipe blood from the corner of her jaws.
‘If you don’t let me get that bullet out,’ I tell her with a shaking, voice, ‘then it will kill you.’
She sighs, and more blood speckles the sand.
‘It already has,’ Chumana replies softly.
My chest constricts as I let out an odd, unfamiliar noise. ‘Why . . . why are you giving up so easily?’
Chumana chuckles. ‘Do you call this giving up? Krasimir is injured and Goranov will bleed out before nightfall. He’s as good as dead.’
‘What if he’s not?’ I say. ‘Besides, there are hundreds more Bulgarians to kill.’ My breath catches in my throat. ‘I’ll find you another dragon, someone who can heal you with their Koinamens, the wyverns— Daria! I know you love her. You must be bonded, you must.’
‘Our bond is not strong enough for that, not yet,’ Chumana says. ‘It is the price I pay for having left her all those years ago.’
‘Then me!’ I say. I thrust up the sleeve of my jumper to the deep wound in my arm. ‘Take my blood, as much as you need. Go on, do it.’
‘We have needed each other, you and I,’ Chumana says quietly as she stares into my face. ‘To teach each other the importance of a second chance. I have seen you live out your own on this island, just like you said you would. I have watched you from afar, fighting for the rebels, even as you struggled to fulfil the part you thought you were supposed to play. You don’t know who you are without the labels other people give you. Identities that are rooted in the very system you are fighting to bring down. Daughter, student, criminal. Translator, rebel, Swallow.’
‘Chumana, please.’
‘Will you let me say my piece?’ she snaps. She runs her tongue across her bloody lips. ‘Like a dragon, you itch to shed your old skin. You are human, so you cannot, but youcantry metaphorical skins on for size, to see which fits you best.’
My breath comes faster as Chumana’s begins to labour and I force myself to stay silent, to cling to every word that comes from her mouth.
‘Who are you if not a Draconic translator?’ Her whole body heaves in a nonchalant shrug. ‘It is nothing more than a career, after all. The essence of who you are, who you have always been, remains the same. As for the rest of you . . . you have a whole lifetime to find out.’
‘And you?’ I ask her, my voice thick with tears. ‘You’ve shed your skin a hundred times over since the Massacre, trying to forgive yourself. Have you found out who you are?’
‘I have been dragonling and dragon, lover and murderer, criminal and commendable. But in the face of death, none of these really matter. No one is the sum of their mistakes ortheir achievements.’ She sighs. ‘I am Chumana.’
‘Snake Maiden,’ I whisper.
She breathes, her lips stretching into a smile as her eyes close. ‘Just Chumana. Like you are just Vivien.’
‘You’ve never called me by my name before today.’
‘I never thought it suited you,’ she growls. ‘Until Daria, in her studies of the British Latin maxim tradition, told me it meansalive. And that is how I wish you to stay.’
I lay my head on her snout and force myself not to cry.
‘When Krasimir and Goranov are dead and this war is over,’ she says, ‘you must stop trying tobesomeone. You will not find yourself until you do. There is no one singular title to define you,just Vivien. And you may feel broken to begin with, but as Britannia rebuilds itself, so will you.’
I nod. ‘Atlas has been trying on different selves, too. Seminarian. Boyfriend. Traitor. Earlier, I think he was going to tell me he loves me.’
‘And is the feeling mutual?’
‘Yes,’ I croak. ‘But what if, once I’ve rebuilt myself, I don’t feel the same? Translation took up such a huge part of me, too big a part. And now I think it’s gone. What if it’s the same with my love for Atlas? Or what if, after this war, he finds out he’s someone different, too?’
I blink the tears away and see the golden orbs staring at me intently.
