Danhy squeals.
For anyone else this would be a mortal wound. At least on a human. There would be no coming back from this.
Viggo looks him over and then smooths a hand over his sweaty forehead, saying in a soothing voice, “I know it hurts—”
Arvos gasps, his eyes wild. “Give me something, Viggo! Make it stop. I can’t do this!”
I inch closer, the cold from the outside still radiating off their bodies the way heat emits from a fire.
I brush against Danhy, and her head whips around to glare at me. “Get out of here! This is your fault!”
I blink and step back.
No one disputes her outrageous charge. No one defends me. It serves as a reminder that they all perceive me as the enemy.
Resentment sparks in me like a flint on steel. I should go back to the kitchen, but I linger, curious, watching as they tend to Arvos.
“He’ll succumb to the svefn soon, I’m certain,” Viggo says, his expression grim beneath the blood spatter on his face.
Svefn?
I store this word away among the many other things I don’t fully understand in the pride. But I’m trying to. I’m trying to learn as much as I can about them and everything in this world, building my arsenal of knowledge. Maybe then, when the time comes, it will aid my escape.
I continue to listen, absorbing what I can and grasp that svefn is a type of pain-induced sleep, a healing slumber of sorts that a dragon falls into when gravely injured.
“How soon? When will it happen?” Danhy demands over the tortured cries, clearly distressed that Arvos’s pain continues. “This is too much for him.”
I lean forward, eager, like her, for his suffering to come to an end, for him to find some escape from the pain. Even if he is my enemy, no one should suffer like this.
Viggo shrugs. “Every dragon is different...with different thresholds of pain.”
“I would say he’s reached the limits of his threshold,” Tage mutters as Arvos lets out a long, keening moan that sends his spine arching up off the table.
The terrible sound beckons me. I feel drawn, connected to him as though by an invisible rope. I’m sure Ishouldn’tfeel this way. While Arvos didn’t treat me the worst among them, he’s never been kind to me. And yet his pain affects me, compels me forward.
Before I know what I’m doing, I reach out between Viggo and Tage, my fingers connecting with the taut, clammy skin of Arvos’s forearm, and I’m thinking, lips moving with whispery words, a scarcely audible entreaty:easy there, don’t hurt...don’t hurt...please, stop hurting.
His bowed body stills the moment I touch him.
I inch closer, sliding my hand more fully around him. My fingers prickle in the way it feels when my foot falls asleep and the blood rushes back in. His flesh warms slightly beneath my tingling palm. He lowers back onto the table, his body sagging like a depleted waterskin.
His moan fades, replaced by steady puffs of breath that grow softer with every passing moment.
“Arvos?” Danhy queries, hope in her voice. She darts a glance to Viggo. “Is this it...the svefn?” Looking back at Arvos, she frowns. “He’s awake, though. His eyes are still open.”
Viggo shakes his head uncertainly, but then his gaze lands onme, on my hand, touching Arvos. He follows the length of my arm up to my face.
With a flush, I guiltily withdraw my fingers from Arvos and glance away to find Tage staring at me intently.
Arvos begins thrashing again on the table, pained sobs wrenched from some deep well of agony inside him.
“The svefn hasn’t taken him yet,” Viggo grimly pronounces. “Cyphus, fetch my things.”
Cyphus obliges and hastens away.
Arvos continues to writhe in torment.
Tage looks back and forth between Arvos and me, commanding tersely, “Touch him again.”
