The hour is late. I’ve slept so little, tense and guarded against possible attack, the sounds of battle so close, encroaching thunder at our door. Exhaustion consumes me now, pulling me under like a riptide.
My final thoughts are of Tage, out there somewhere. Alive. Dead. Or in some state in between.
I know all about the places in between life and death. Shallow little dips where both light and dark can’t penetrate.
My lips move, my whisper barely audible, and yet the words lift from me, swirling on the air like sparking embers.
“Please be well. Please come back.”
I hear it then, in the darkness of my mind, a reply as thin and faint as a gossamer spider’s web.
I’m coming.
No more than a wish. An entreaty. A trick of my imagination, conjured from want and longing and desperation.
What else could it be?
30
In the Care of Dragons
Blinking, I emerge groggily from the cling of darknesswith a yawning stretch, wincing at the discomfort and kinks in my body, nebulously aware of the very hard and unforgiving surface beneath me—along with my other hurts. An aching head. Stinging cheek. Sore ribs. Clawing stomach.
Reality eludes me.
I’m not in Isstad anymore. Not in my familiar woods. Not in my room. Not in my bed. Not home with my father. Not in Maretta’s or Linnea’s homes.
Then it all comes back. Crashes over me. Sorrow engulfs me as I remember.
They are all gone.
Everyone in the village...gone. Ashes.
My chest lifts and expels a ragged breath that is instantly snatched up by a cool draft speckled with infinitesimal motes of rock and debris.
I am no longer home. No longer in the place that equally sheltered me and kept me prisoner for so many years. That place no longer exists.
And yetIstill exist.
I’m still here, strange and unfair as that might be. I’m no better than any of those who died in Isstad. Faces flash across my mindlike little bursts of distant lightning. They deserve to be alive every bit as much as I do. Maybe more.
I recall the spoiled child I had been in that other life, the terrible words I had hurled at my father like poisoned darts before I ran from home and into the woods.
I adjust my arms and grimace at the immediate pull against my raw and chafed wrists. I don’t bother trying to free myself anymore. My previous attempts had only managed to tighten the bonds around my skin and bones. My wrists burn like fire, as though a blade had scraped up and down every inch of exposed flesh.
I sit up slowly, feeling like a very tired, very old woman as I move my aching and cracking joints into position. My vision is slow to acclimate to the murkiness.
The fire smolders low. Feeble light seeps in from the vents...so it takes a moment before I identify the large shape in front of me and grasp that it’s not a shadow but a flesh and blood body.
Cyphus.
I cringe. He’s come to heap more abuses upon me in the morning.
A familiar voice tumbles over the air, and I know instantly. It is not Cyphus.
“Arden?”
My heart jumps to my throat. I can only croak out, “Tage.”
