“Perhaps he stole the swords and went north to one of the other villages. He could do what you thought I would and pawn them off for a bit of coin. That could be all this is, instead of some plot for revenge.”
“That seems unlikely,” he said.
“Well, he’s not out here, so we should get back. We can’t protect the village if we spend the night in the forest.”
For a moment, I thought he might argue. Rivelin was a very stubborn elf, I’d discovered. It made sense with everything else I’d learned about him. He had decided on his role in life and he refused to waver from it. In his mind, if he bent he might break. If I wanted to reach him, I had to do so in terms he would understand.
“We need to get started on the next trial for the Midsummer Games,” I said. “If we don’t win this one, Viggo’s lead will be impossible to erase. And Isveig is far more of a threat than Gregor.”
He looked up. “You’re right.”
Just as he stood to go, a screech echoed through the skies above. A thunderous boom soon followed, like the heavy beating of a war drum. The trees quaked in response, their rustling branches raining leaves all around us.
My heart jolted in my chest. “Whatisthat, Rivelin?”
“A dragon,” he murmured with a hint of confusion in his voice. “But I don’t know why they’d be here. They only leave their cave to hunt at night, and they rarely venture far from the mountains.”
Still, the dragons—or at least one of them—were very much here. The trees above seemed to spread wide, like the pages of a book fanning open. A red-scaled dragon swooped low and landed on the ground just before me. Hot air blasted into my face.
Sulphur and spice and saltwater. Hints of leather and dust.
The scent of the dragon consumed me, choking the breath from my lungs. I stumbled forward and fell to one knee before the creature. Its leathery snout inched toward me and sniffed. Even though it was bound, my hair whipped my face and neck, stinging my skin.
“Aska,” Rivelin murmured from somewhere nearby. “Stay back. This is Daella. She will not harm you.”
I glanced up sharply. The dragon was so close now I could see the varying shades of red on its scales and the reflection of my own face in its bulbous orange eyes, along with the sharp points of every tusk along its wings and the wicked teeth that were larger than my head. I could smell the smoke and fire and the overwhelming power that seemed to pulse from its skin. A tremor went through me.
I swallowed and managed to find my voice to say, “Aska? That’s its name?”
“Her name, yes,” Rivelin said, though he sounded more tense than I’d ever heard him, almost as if he wasn’t convinced these dragons were as harmless as he’d told me. “The others are Eldi, Reykur, and Hita.”
How odd. Those were orcish names.
“And why is she here?” I whispered.
A pause. “I do not know.”
That was not particularly reassuring, nor did I breathe even when the dragon relaxed onto her haunches and neatly folded her leathery wings against her back. She blinked at me, then sniffed again, cocking her head.
The dragon clearly smelled something. Was it me and my orcish blood, or…I glanced down at my pack. It still sat open on the forest floor, where I’d tossed the almost empty sack of Mabel’s mushroom pasties. Even all these hours later, the savory scent of them hung around us like a cloud.
I cocked my head and extracted the final one. “Is this why you’re here? You’d like some of Mabel’s treats?”
Aska eagerly thumped her tail, spraying dust and fallen leaves into my face.
“Well, fates be damned,” Rivelin said.
I started to place the food on the ground in front of the dragon, but Aska shoved her snout into my hand before I could manage. I tensed and slowly opened my palm. Tail still thumping, Aska gently took the pastie from my hand and swallowed it in a single gulp. I could only watch, dumbfounded. All these years,thiswas what I’d been afraid of? She was no more terrifying than Skoll.
Aska nudged my hand again, a deep rumble coming from her throat.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was our last one.”
She closed her eyes and sighed as she leaned her muzzle against my palm. I stroked her snout, a strange sensation kindling in my heart. It was that tug—that impossible-to-resist urge to bond myself to this dragon, to use her magic as mine. I’d felt this urge all my life, but it had been so easy to force it down when Isveig had eradicated all the dragons.
All but four, it turned out.
And if I was not careful, I knew I’d give in to this desire. I couldn’t ignore it forever. No one ever did.
