Aevrin knelt beside her and pressed a hand to her neck.
“I’m taking your pulse. If you can hear me… if you’re alive…”
Her skin jumped slightly beneath his fingers, a heart pulse. She lived. He let out a breath of relief and sat back on his bootheels to think for a moment.
She was badly wounded. He couldn’t figure out the extent of her injuries beneath her bloody clothes. She was lucky no animals had gotten to her. Was she one of the rustlers? She might have been gored by a bull…
No. He only had to look at her dress to know otherwise: a shiny blue fabric he didn’t know the name of, stitched all over with little flowers, the skirt tight around her generous thighs. Nobody went into the wilds dressed like that. Saints, nobody in the small town of Dawn Ridge dressed like that at all.
Someone had done this to her. Whether she was innocent or one of the rustler’s women, it didn’t matter: she was hurt.That meant he had to help.
“Please,” the woman whispered, her voice soft and sweet and strained all at once. It startled him out of his thoughts. Aevrin stared down at her. Her amber eyes were open, barely, and focused on him. “Help…”
“I aim to, miss.”
Her eyes flickered shut again. He drew a deep breath.
“I’ll be right back. You just hold on, alright?” Aevrin stripped off his heavy leather jacket. He settled it over the woman for warmth. She wasn’t dressed for the mountain nights, not in that thin, clinging gown.
He raced back up the gorge, and tied the packs to Kazeic’s back, abandoning the cooking pot and the unwashed canister of mis-flavored cider in favor of speed. The dragon narrowed his eyes and grumbled, but didn’t move from where he’d spread out beside the fire, heavy jaw resting on his foreclaws. When Aevrin grabbed one of the sticks and scattered the embers with it, Kazeic huffed and finally lumbered to his feet.
“You have to carry her,” Aevrin told the dragon, digging the stick into the dirt like a cane as a smokebug whisked passed him in search of a new fire.
Kazeic’s answer was to hiss and start lumbering down the path back home, away from the woman. Dragons didn’t like to carryanyonethey weren’t bonded to, but surely in an emergency… “Please?” Aevrin called. Kazeic only snorted, not even looking over his shoulder. Aevrin sighed hard, tossed the stick in the direction of the dragon, and returned to the woman. There was no forcing Kazeic.
Sometimes he thought they ought to bring some horses over from the east, just to prove a point. Not that horses did as well on the rocky, overgrown terrain as a dragon could, and they weren’t fireproof, which was a significant problem in these parts. But the reptile was damned spoiled.
The woman remained motionless in the pool of light from the torch. He hesitated in front of her, then knelt.
“I’m gonna carry you out of here. It’s not far. But this might hurt some.”
He carefully gathered her into his arms and slowly straightened. She was heavy, and too cold, with skin softer than he’d ever felt.
The torch wouldn’t start a fire. Only gravel and crumbling dirt surrounded where the woman lay. He’d need the light to make his way up the ridge back to the worn path, so he left it where he’d shoved it in the rocky ground.
It was harder climbing up the ridge with the woman in his arms than it had been without. The gravel crunched and slipped underfoot. He stepped into the deepening shadows, each boot carefully placed on the crumbling slope as he waited for his eyes to adjust. The trail back towards the road was wide enough for Kazeic, but the cowherd still had to go more slowly than he wanted. He couldn't see his own feet.
Aevrin thought he could hear Kazeic ahead of him. And then he could see the Dragon’s bulky shape, slinking back home in his uneven gait. Aevrin was about to wonder if the trail went on forever, if he’d taken the wrong way or if he’d spend the rest of his life putting one foot in front of the other, when suddenly the rocky ground opened up to the old dirt cart-road at the base of the mountain. He was still miles from the ranch, and further than that from any other kind of help, but here the moon reached the ground instead of being stifled by the trees. The distant cattle burns glowed red along the horizon.
He watched Kazeic hunch down, then launch straight up intothe sky, wings beating slowly.
“Get help, will you?” Aevrin called up to him. The beast grumbled and tilted towards the ranch. “That’d better be a yes,” Aevrin called.
She was still going to be breathing when he got her to the healer in town, damnit. Aevrin wouldn’t accept any other outcome.
Cassia
Cassiablinkedawakeona canvas cot in a small, unfamiliar room. The floors beneath her were stone, the walls paneled with wood. By the window, a shelf of green healing plants overflowed their pots. Nutrient vines wound around her arms and her mouth felt dryer than a desert. She breathed in the scent of smoke and rainfall. That, and… Cassia blinked again. Polished leather?
Her whole body hurt. Then memory slammed into her and reminded her what her brother Rylan had done… and what he had not. Suddenly her heart hurt worse than the rest of her, an ache so sharp she feared it’d split her in two.
A tall man slouched in the chair at her side. His clothes were leather, and his bare, muscular brown arms lay crossed over his chest. His boots stuck out in front of him. A wide-brimmed hat lay over his face, instead of on top of his head, to block the window light from his eyes. There was a triangular scarftied around his neck, the kind these westerners wore over their noses and mouths to keep out smoke.
A moment of utter fear pulsed through her, not at the healer-like setting or the vine tendrils piercing into her skin, but at the sight of the man. There was an axe strapped to one of his hips, leather gauntlets on his belt. What if he was related to it all? If he was one of Zey’s cutthroats, come to punish her brother by…
Her breath was sharp, shallow, as panic spiraled through her. Cassia fisted the rough blanket covering her body and dragged her mind back down. She was alive. And this man wasn’t Zey.
There had been a man on the mountain afterwards, though. After she’d given up all hope. She just barely remembered his low voice. And the way he’d carried her. How her whole body felt like it was on fire, but she’d been floating in the safety of a stranger’s arms. She’d been certain of death, until he’d come. There was nothing left to be afraid of then. Nothing left but hope.
