Still, when I stumbled my way onto the beach, I’d torn it right back open, the darn thing gushing blood like a fountain, and I simply hadn’t had the strength in me to do anything about it.
Fortunately, I had been able to shift back, to stop the continuing blood loss. Wings couldn’t bleed if they didn’t exist, could they?
Still, I thought to myself, if it couldn’t bleed, my back sure felt oddly sticky and hot.
And then I’d known no more, only dreams of finding Roland.
Now, waking up, was... well, we were alive, so that was good.
My back felt like it was on fire, and I was lying on my stomach, something wonderfully, blissfully cool laid across my shoulder blades.
When I gasped and pushed up off my belly, it almost fell off, and the muscles of my back twisted in agony at the motion, making me want to curl up in a ball, even though some tiny part of me knew full well that would make it hurt even more.
Instead, a hand came down on my shoulder, squeezing firmly, pressing me back down, and covering me once more with the soothing, cool object.
“It’s okay, Aderyn. We’re safe.” Roland’s beautiful voice rolled over me, and my body went slack. Just his presence was safety to my overtaxed mind.
“Destovians,” I murmured.
“We’re back in Llangard,” he promised. “The Destovians aren’t here. I promise. You got us back.”
For a moment, that was reassuring. We got home. I, somehow, got us home. I didn’t remember getting us home. I remembered getting us just barely near the shore, my vision slowly going black and coming in flashes, stuttering pictures that shifted suddenly and frighteningly.
I remembered a spray of sand, and a tearing pain in my wing, and... nothing.
Sand.
I tensed again, as I realized the problem with Roland’s reassurance. There was sand beneath me.
We were not home. We had barely reached the shoreline before I had passed out. So unless Roland had carried me... who knew how far, all the way to Atheldinas, and then taken me out to lay on the beach nearby, we were not actually home. It seemed rather unlikely that he would do such a thing, rather than putting me in a bed.
That meant that no matter how much Roland wanted to think otherwise, we were not safe. We were not home, in the welcoming arms of Bet and Tris, and the palace guard, ready to repel foreign invaders who wanted to take Roland away from me.
From . . . Llangard.
Yes, that.
So I took a few deep breaths, steadying myself, preparing for the pain, and this time slowly, with control, pushed up.
Roland hovered, his hands out, like I would fall and he needed to catch me. Like he always had. Even when I’d startedlearning how to fly, he’d been right there next to Bowen and Hafgan, holding his hands out as though he could catch me if I fell out of the sky. Even though me as a dragon, even as a preteen, could have entirely crushed him.
“You probably shouldn’t move too much,” he said, and even though his voice was shot through with sharp pain of his own, he didn’t for a second fail to be concerned about me.
That was Roland.
Always concerned about other people before himself, me most of all.
Usually, though, he seemed so strong. Now? He... well, it wasn’t that he wasn’t strong. He was something to behold, shirtless and gorgeous, with muscles I could never seem to cultivate on my weak human body. I was skinny as a dragon, and skinny as a human, and I couldn’t change it. Rhys had once apologetically told me that it was probably because Vidar had starved me for so long, and I was simply no longer capable of changing it.
That was a little on the side of embarrassing, but I was still too grateful to be outside a cage to overthink it all that much.
But Roland? His shoulders were broad and muscled, his chest wide and full, each muscle defined and frankly, I imagined, a little intimidating for anyone who couldn’t turn into a dragon. He was turning into a very impressive man, even more than he’d been intellectually impressive already as a child.
Sometimes it made me feel small, how Roland seemed perfect in every way. But then he would put his arm around me and accept me as I was, without question, and... nothing seemed worth worrying about anymore.
How had I ever thought I could leave him behind?
No. Even if Roland needed my blood to live, I would have to give it. Far better that, than living without him.
