They were too long to be daggers, too short to be swords, and bent slightly in the middle, with hooked hilts, each made of a single piece of metal. I’d never seen anything like them, or if I had, it’d been in a museum.
But Caspian just whipped them out and started wrapping strips of fabric around the metal hilts, like this was a thing he did every day. Like it was a thing he’d been doing for thousands of years.
Apparently Davin was thinking the same thing as me, because he sat down across from Caspian and asked, “How old are those?”
Caspian made a face, like he was trying to remember, then shrugged. “I think I had them made fifty years ago or so.” Then he offered up a wry smile at Davin’s apparent surprise. “Worried I was about to carry Bronze Age relics into a real battle? I had these forged of steel. The latest technology is too good to be ignored, and the ones I used as a child have long since been destroyed anyway. They were also longer. A bit less curved. Nowadays, I can afford to have whatever sword I want forged, exactly how I like it.”
I motioned to what he was doing with his hands, wrapping long strips of cloth around and around the hilts of the weapons. “Why do that? Don’t they make swords that are easier to carry now?”
“They do,” he agreed. “Have for many centuries. But these are each a single piece of steel. No seams to break at. Sturdier.”
Sturdier.
I blinked at the idea of a sword needing to be sturdy. They...broke? I really was a child when it came to fighting. “I don’t, um...I mean, there’s this spear, but I kind of feel like The Mórrigan didn’t give it to me for fighting. Not...like this.”
“And I am certain you understand her intent far better than I ever could.” He paused in his wrapping and met my eye. “ButFlynn. You’re a dragon. You’re not going to be fighting with a sword, or a spear, or an axe, or any other human weapon.”
Dragon.
Right.
Was I supposed to...shift and bite him? That sounded super gross.
Caspian turned to look at Davin, who was still watching the wrapping of the swords. Knives? I had no idea what the hell to call them.
Did Davin want a weapon, though? Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Why hadn’t we discussed it? But no. That wasn’t Davin at all, I realized with utter certainty. That was why I hadn’t thought of it: it wasn’t relevant.
I’d seen Davin in a fight before. My Davin was a brawler. He hit people with his bare hands, and as a vampire, so those bare hands packed a hell of a punch. No, he was just interested in the weapons, not in having weapons of his own.
Maybe he was being that version of Davin who was super interested in history that popped up every now and then.
But when he looked up at Caspian, he asked, with utter sincerity, “What are you gonna do when they shoot at you?”
CHAPTER 28
Caspian hadn’t been kidding about there being a storm, I realized when we went out on deck. Not only did it make sense we couldn’t have flown in this weather—even if showing up at a heavily defended location in a plane was a good idea—but I thought maybe he’d been right that they wouldn’t notice us approaching in the boat.
Everything was gray, and it was hard to tell the shades apart enough to differentiate ocean from stone shoreline from castle from sky. It was just a smear of different grays that all ran together. Part of me wanted to shift, in hopes it would be easy to tell things apa?—
My vision sharpened then, and for just a second, I panicked, afraid Ihadshifted and was going to capsize the boat with everyone on it. But the deck hadn’t budged beneath me, and when I looked down at my feet, they were just...well, my feet.
Feet that I could see much more clearly. I wasn’t sure that was actually better, though. The island itself was forbidding, with not a speck of life apparent. Not even kelp on the rocks, unless kelp in the North Sea was way different from any kelp I’d ever seen before.
I wondered what it said about Davin and Caspian, that they were just walking right into this disaster, eyes open, when they didn’t have to at all. I didn’t have a choice, but they did. Twist was always in for a good fight, but Davin preferred a quiet life, and while I wasn’t as certain of Caspian, he’d never professed any bloodlust in my experience. Even if he had apparently had his own custom swords made.
Was that weird?
I mean, obviously it was, but if you grew up learning how to fight with a sword and then had the money to commission your own, it made sense to do that, right? Maybe.
He hadn’t seemed especially concerned about being shot, and that kind of made sense. Vampires could heal bullet wounds easily, and they didn’t have nearly as many vulnerable spots as humans. Being shot in the lungs didn’t mean much when you didn’t need to breathe.
Davin, though . . .
Nope. I couldn’t focus on that. I would panic, and that wouldn’t help anyone, including Davin.
Getting ashore was the first hurdle, and involved a whole lot more freezing water than I had ever wanted to experience in my life. This, then, was why people said the ocean was terrible, when I had only previously experienced the Pacific at its softest right outside my shop. Sure, the waves were high enough to surf, but they were also not nearly this cold. And I didn’t even like surfing, much to Grady’s eternal disappointment.
I lay on the rocks at the base of the castle, on the edge of the little inflatable boat we’d used to get ashore, breathing hard and staring at the sky, which was when I realized we weren’t done getting wet.
