It was climbing stutteringly to its feet, though the confines of the tunnel prevented it from standing fully—Gwen would have thought it ridiculous or pathetic, a dragon crawling on its belly through a tunnel barely large enough to fit its body, if she’d heard it described to her. But as its head swung toward her and it lunged into effortless motion, flowing sinuously along the cavern far quicker than she could move, all hints of the ridiculous vanished.
Gwen threw herself to the side, down one of the excavated tunnels. Though she could see the light of her torch glinting off bronze around the corner back the way she came, it didn’t reach far enough to illuminate the darkness ahead of her.
From behind her came a sound that would almost certainly haunt her dreams for the rest of her life: an awful, keening, bubbling roar, like that of a beast with blood in its throat. She had only an instant to realize what the sound betokened, and saw a brieftableau blossoming into illumination before her—she threw herself down behind a cart loaded with stone as a gout of flame filled the tunnel.
She held her breath as long as she could, and when she finally gasped for air, it scorched her lungs, her eyes watering with smoke and the acrid stench of the thing. Her armor was warmer to the touch now than her skin, the air as dry and hot as that of an oven, hotter than the air above her father’s forge. She might have passed out if she hadn’t spent so many hours laboring in those conditions. Tears streamed from her eyes, and she blinked furiously, blinded by the sudden darkness as the flames died away. She focused on trying not to sob, on staying as quiet as she could.
The creature was still waking up. Gwen didn’t have much time before it was fully alert—and she had only one idea.
She waited, listening to the awful scrape of the scales lining its belly dragging along the stone, each one screeching like a blade on ceramic. The thing snuffled and grunted as it searched for her blindly in the dark, seeking the stench of burning flesh. Gwen closed her eyes, though it made no difference to what she could see. She listened, waiting.
The scrape of scales on stone was nearly beside her now, and her mind constructed an image of the beast creeping past the cart at her back. She moved slowly, silently, easing out of concealment—she imagined the head was there, just before her, weaving back and forth as it sought her in the pitch blackness.
A faint glow blossomed to her right, and a wave of dread slid down Gwen’s spine to rest like lead in her belly. She turned and saw twin orbs of sullen red emerge from the darkness, a low, rumbling growl cutting through the quiet. The glow brightened and becametwo trickles of molten flame that spilled forth, dripping from the beast’s flared nostrils inches from where she stood before the tip of its snout. The flames slid onto the floor of the cave, creating puddles of fire that illuminated the dragon’s head as it turned, the light pooling in its one good eye as it fixed on Gwen.
Gwen knew that this was her last chance, that the dragon’s fire had given her exactly what she needed, enough light to find her target. She raised her sword, shifted her weight, and struck—
Except she didn’t. She hadn’t moved. She was still standing there, motionless, helpless, so close to the dragon she could have put a hand on its scaled lip if she could move. Its arms were curled on either side of her, the wings folded so she was very nearly encased by the creature. She could not so much as tear her gaze from the seething gold of its one furious eye, now fully awake. It held her, even as the pupil scanned side to side, trying to see past the slit in her visor.
Unbidden, old Bertin’s story swept through her mind, his tales of being frozen by the dragon’s gaze. She remembered the traditional target of practicing knights everywhere: a suspended ring called a dragonseye. The fact that the knights of old, centuries ago, who had died fighting this creature, had taken out the monster’s right eye before succumbing.
She should have known not to look into its eye.
Despair swept through Gwen, but she found she could not so much as tremble, her paralysis was so complete. Her own eyes began to water from lack of blinking, and even her ribs refused to shift, her lungs becoming as still as stone.
The dragon’s eye narrowed a touch, and from its throat came a hideous, growling rumble. The frequency was so low and the soundso raspy that it rippled, a shuddering sound that hit Gwen’s ears like some terrible, mocking chuckle of laughter.
She knew, in that moment, that she was going to die.
But through the despair, rising like a breath of soft, cool air in the parched heat of the tunnels, came a single thought:Isobelle.
If Gwen was going to die, she would do it thinking of Isobelle’s laugh, not the mockery of this monster. She would die picturing her blond hair and blue eyes and her particular way of wrinkling her nose when Gwen said something unexpected. She would die thinking of the look on Isobelle’s face when she came to Gwen’s tent after her defeat of Sir Ralph—the sudden lifting of all her reservations, the joy and yearning and release in those glorious eyes.
Gwen dragged in a breath, chasing away the spots swimming in her vision. She thought of Isobelle’s arms around her neck, of waking in the blackberry thicket with Isobelle’s head on her lap, of the way Isobelle’s fists had uncurled and softened as Gwen held them in hers.
Gwen found she could shift her weight, moving onto the balls of her feet, clawing her way back toward some kind of agency.
She could imagine Isobelle so vividly it was like having her there, standing at Gwen’s side. Gwen could picture her, hands on her hips, eyes wide with alarm.What are you doing?she would cry.Go on—MOVE!
Gwen felt a groan rise up inside her, a sound that burst into an agonized cry by the time it reached her lips and wrenched her body into movement. The dragon blinked once in surprise, and that was all the reprieve Gwen needed to lunge forward, stepping up onto its clawed foot and launching herself upward to swing her sword ina glittering arc toward the only vulnerable part of the dragon she could reach.
The wing membrane tore with a long, satisfying rip like that of a canvas tent, spattering the stone with a fine mist of blood from the delicate capillaries branching out from the creature’s elongated arm. The dragon let out a scream of fury and pain so loud Gwen lost all sense, coming back to herself lying flat on her back. The beast had flung her aside, knocking her helmet loose—Gwen gulped in a breath of air, dizzy. A sluglike wave of liquid flame dribbled from the dragon’s mouth, illuminating the scene in time for Gwen to see its foot come down on her helmet, flattening it as if it were no more substantial than a costume piece of paper and paste.
Roaring again, the dragon crouched, its muscles bunching—Gwen realized what it was going to do an instant before it launched itself into the ceiling of the tunnel and erupted through the stone like a whale breaching the surface of the ocean.
Gwen caught the briefest glimpse of the sky overhead as the dragon burst up through the edge of the mountainside in a shower of house-sized boulders, saw the creature silhouetted for an instant against the pearly white of the waxing moon as it spread its wings—one whole, one torn—before the rocks and stones came showering down again, bringing the darkness with them.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Like she’d ridden straight out of legend
Isobelle’s horse burst out of the edge of the forest in time for her to see the side of the mountain explode, a massive shadow launching itself into the sky. Her horse squealed, rearing so abruptly that it fell, knocking the breath out of Isobelle as she tumbled from the saddle. Isobelle scrambled back to her feet as its hoofbeats disappeared back through the forest.
Then Achilles was behind her, whickering and prancing, pawing at the stones and sending up clouds of dirt and dust. Instead of running away from the destruction, he had runtowardit, his warhorse breeding holding true.
Isobelle stared at him, at his empty saddle. “Where’s Gwen?” she cried, her voice hoarse. “Achilles, where...”
The horse ignored her, half rearing and driving his hooves against a splintered beam from the mine entrance. For one long moment Isobelle stood motionless as the terrible truth wrapped itself around her heart andsqueezed.
