Aftermath
I’m drifting in and out of consciousness, half-aware of Yvan’s arms around me, my head lolling over his shoulder, the terrible pain in my leg muted into a throbbing ache that grows and then recedes, over and over, like the rhythmic sweep of the ocean’s tide. I can taste blood in my mouth, smell it on Yvan’s taut neck.
And then I’m dipped down, and the air around me grows damp, the voices more distinct as I’m laid out on a cold, stone-hard floor. Everyone is fuzzy, some of them grouped around me. The dragon being carried in by Diana and Jarod briefly comes into focus, her scales scraping against the stone floor of the cave as she’s lowered down, her hide giving off a dusty, wood-smoke smell. The warmth from her body rushes toward me, loosening my muscles. The pain spikes. I cry out as flashing spots of light block out my vision.
Yvan’s voice. Yelling out orders as I writhe in pain. My clothes being pushed up and over. Hands tight on my leg. Other hands around my arms. Grasping me firmly as I struggle against them.
“Ren.” Trystan’s voice, coming from right behind me. I moan again. “You’ve got to try and stay still, Ren.”
I scream out like a wild animal as the pain of a thousand knives stabs at my leg. I buck against the hands grasped tight around my thigh, the pain seeming to go on forever and ever.
Finally, the pain begins to fade and the room comes into focus, like I’m surfacing from deep water, gasping and choking.
Yvan is staring at me, his face full of an intense relief, his arms still tight around my leg, the pain now tamped down to a small ache. My head throbbing, the room begins to spin, my vision blurring. I slump back against Trystan.
“You fixed my leg,” I weakly marvel.
Yvan smiles, a desperate relief evident in his eyes. He moves up to sit beside me as Trystan places something soft under my head. I sink back into it.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” Yvan says gently. He takes hold of my tunic at the waist and rips open the side seams with one quick jerk.
Even in my haze, this strikes me as odd. “What are you doing?”
He pauses. “Do you trust me?” His eyes are steady on mine.
I nod, my head feeling weightless as if it could just float right into the sky.
Yvan slides his hands through the ripped seam and finds his way with deft fingers. He slides one hand behind my back and the other to the center of my chest.
I draw in a small, languid breath. “You’re so warm...”
“Shhh,” he says, his deep voice soothing. “Close your eyes.”
I obey as his hand moves up my breastbone with slow, deliberate care. Warmth radiates out from his fingers and flows through me, coursing from his hands into my entire body. The light-headedness fades as the warmth grows, my breath strengthening in my lungs, the long, stinging slashes on my back muting to tingling ribbons.
I open my eyes and meet his gaze, my vision clear again, the pain gone. He’s so close to me, his ministrations like a lover’s caress.
Perhaps sensing the shift, Yvan’s touch becomes tentative and featherlight. He slides his hands away and pulls back. As I blink up at him, Yvan’s serious expression wavers and becomes momentarily boyish and unsure. He glances at my leg then quickly away.
I sit up, surprised that the room isn’t spinning. My skirts are pushed up to the top of my thigh, only a faint, pink scar where the gaping wound was. I stare at my leg, amazed, the blood on the cave floor and Yvan’s hands and forearms proof that I’ve not dreamed this.
Yvan goes next to Rhys, who’s slumped against a wall. His tunic is being cut off with a small knife by Cael. Rhys’s upper torso is crisscrossed with bloody gashes, one ivory sleeve soaked with blood, the arm beneath hanging at an odd angle.
Ariel is bent over the unconscious dragon, lining up her torn wing. Wynter’s hands rest gently on the beast’s side. Naga’s chest rises and falls in weak breaths, smoke periodically sputtering out of her nostrils and spiraling white toward the cave’s ceiling. Andras kneels down beside the dragon and begins to straighten out her bent leg.
Ariel leaps up and grabs roughly at his shoulder. “Get away from her!” she snarls at him. “She’s not a horse! You have to line up the greater tarsal bone with the lesser tarsal bone or it will fuse all wrong!”
Andras pulls his hands away from Naga’s leg and lifts them, palms up, in surrender as Ariel glares at him murderously.
Wynter gently places her hand on Ariel’s arm. After a moment Ariel’s manic look recedes. She sits back down, focusing in on Naga’s wing, and sets back to work with nimble fingers, cursing to herself as she works.
“Where’s Diana? And Jarod?” I ask, my eyes darting around the cave and quickly lighting on the Lupine twins’ clothing, piled up against one wall.
“They’re out in wolf form,” Trystan assures me. “Standing guard.”
Alive. All of us, miraculously still alive.
Rafe is slumped down near Rhys, holding on to his own arm, a strained expression on his face, as if he’s gritting his teeth.
I pull down my skirts and cautiously rise with Trystan’s support, holding tight on to his arm as I wiggle the toes of my left leg, scared to put weight on it. Screwing up my courage, I bear down on the leg, amazed to find it flush with more energy and strength than the other.
“Rafe,” I call out. “Are you okay?”
Rafe smiles, his head slumped to one side. “Oh, I’ve been better.” He looks to my healed leg with obvious relief, then glances over at Yvan who’s laying his fingers over Rhys’s gashes one by one. “But I suspect Yvan here could reattach our heads if he had to, so I’m feeling hopeful.”
Yvan’s eyes flash at Rafe.
We all know you’re Fire Fae, I want to tell Yvan. Stop the charade.
“Can you heal Naga?” I ask Yvan bluntly.
Yvan hesitates, his jaw tensing as he holds on to Rhys’s wounded arm. “No,” he finally says, guarded. “Not when she’s in this form. And she isn’t able to shift to human form.”
Rafe’s eyes widen, along with my own. “She’s a shifter?” Rafe asks with surprise.
Yvan gives a tight shake of his head. “The Gardnerians use geomancy to bind their ability to shift.”
I stare at him, amazed. “Are you saying that all of our military dragons...are wyvern-shifters?”
Yvan meets my stare head-on. “They were.”
I try to wrap my mind around this—there’s a human form bound somewhere inside Naga, unable to get out.
Tierney leans against the cave wall, stoic and unhurt. She’s looking at Yvan, her jaw set forward, her gaze full of concern and solidarity.
Two Fae. The both of them. Water and Fire.
Cael stands and begins to grab up his weapons and secure them one by one.
An Elfin bow and arrows. Knives.
In case they come for us.
The terrible reality of our situation seeps in. “We’ve destroyed a Gardnerian military base,” I state flatly, not quite believing the words.
Everyone turns to look at me, the gravity of what we’ve done, and the extreme danger we’ve placed ourselves in, stark in everyone’s eyes.
Tierney is the first to speak, her voice soft, her eyes gone hard. “Good.”
“We cannot all stay together here,” Cael puts in, his gaze narrowed at us all. “Ariel Haven can care for the dragon. As soon as Yvan is done, the rest of us need to separate. And quickly.”
* * *
I rush back toward the North Tower, the sack over my shoulder containing the white wand.
Emerging from the wilds, I step onto the large, sloping field that lies before the tower, the irregular, frozen ground rough against my boot heels. I pause, overcome by the immensity of the black dome of sky reeling overhead. It’s ribboned with silvery clouds, sharp as talons.
Something moves in the sky to the northeast. Flapping.
Legs buckling, I’m seized by a sudden, crippling terror.
Dragon. Another dragon.
I stumble back into the shadowy woods. Shuddering with fear, I frantically search the northeastern sky.
A cloud. One of the ribbony clouds. The dragon shape has dispersed and split into three separate slashes against the black dome of the sky.
I brace myself against a large stone, struggling to breathe as it all washes over me—the dragon attack, the beast’s terrible claws, the wild pain, the mountain falling apart.
We’ll be caught. They’ll find us and arrest us all. And then...
“Elloren.”
I flinch at the sound of Yvan’s voice and the feel of his hand on my shoulder.
He’s so warm. I can feel the heat straight through the layers of my cloak, my tunic and my camisole. His warmth steadies me.
It’s a cloud. Nothing but a cloud. I force down my panicked breathing.
“Are you all right?” he asks, the angular lines of his face thrown into sharp relief by the moonlight.
“The cloud,” I force out, peering into the night sky. “It moved.” I swallow, fighting back the memories. “I...I thought it was a dragon.”
Yvan nods and looks up at the sky, his expression darkening. He lets his hand fall from my arm, leaving a void for the cold to rush back in. He looks tired. And worn.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, the wind stinging at my face. “We’re supposed to separate.”
“I wanted to thank you,” he says.
I shake my head tightly in protest. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“No, I do.”
“For what?” I ask, incredulous. “For almost getting us all killed?”
Yvan shakes his head in surprise and disbelief. “Naga’s alive because of you. I needed help. I couldn’t do it alone. Before you came here...before I met you...” He seems to be having trouble finding the right words. “Naga...she was...”
“Your friend. I know.” I finish for him softly, feeling suddenly defeated, and as tired as he looks. I fix my eyes on his. “I know you can talk to her, Yvan.”
He grows quiet, his expression turning carefully neutral.
I study him in the moonlight, the vivid hue of his eyes muted to silvery gray. I remember how his eyes glowed a fearsome green. His inhuman strength. His strange language. His terrible hiss.
“What are you, Yvan?”
The line of his jaw hardens.
Perhaps it’s the exhaustion, or the lingering fear that makes his stubborn silence feel so piercingly unkind.
“I don’t understand,” I press. “After everything that’s happened...why can’t you tell me what you really are?”
His face tenses with frustration, but he doesn’t say anything, and I’m inexplicably hurt by his silence. Tears sting at my eyes.
“But the dragon knows what you are,” I force out. “And so does Wynter, doesn’t she?”
“Elloren...”
I bite my lip, horrified that I’m so close to bursting into tears. I struggle, to no avail, and pathetically start to cry right there in front of him.
He just stands there, staring at me with those intense eyes of his, and I’m suddenly terribly aware of how my skin must shimmer in the darkness—highlighting how irreconcilably different we are.
A cloud shifts, and the panic rears its head again. I struggle to fight it back, trembling. “I could have died...”
“You didn’t.”
“But I could have. We all could have.”
Again, he retreats into silence.
“They might catch us,” I insist, my voice growing shrill. He doesn’t respond, and his continued silence sends a flare of hysteria through me. “They might find us...and arrest us...and kill us...”
His face grows hard, his eyes flinty. When he speaks, his tone is as hard as his eyes. “Yes, Elloren. They might.”
I’m oddly steadied by his terribly blunt reply. He’s faced this fear and moved past it. It’s possible to move past it.
And then his hand is on my arm again, his gaze searing, but his touch gentle and warm.
“Go on,” I relent as I wipe roughly at my tears with the back of my hand. I gesture toward the twinkling lights of the University city with my chin. “Go get some sleep. You look exhausted. Your dragon will be fine. Ariel may be a bit...unstable...but she knows what she’s doing when it comes to caring for any winged animal.”
He nods tightly, his face incredibly tense as if he’s desperate to say something, but just can’t. Unexpectedly, he steps toward me, eyes burning. “Elloren,” he breathes as he brings his hand up to cup the side of my face, his long fingers sliding back through my hair.
I gasp. His hand is so hot on the cold skin of my cheek, his fingers threading back through my hair. His touch...it feels so good.
He leans in, his face close to mine as if he’s about to kiss me, and for a moment it seems like everything is about to right itself.
I tilt my head up, my heartbeat erratic, suddenly wanting nothing more than to feel his lips on mine.
He steps back sharply and pulls his hand away from my face as if he’s been burned.
I’m so shocked, I don’t know what to do.
He looks furious with himself.
“Good night, Elloren,” he finally says, his voice strained.
And then he turns and strides quickly away, leaving me to the ice-cold night, too hurt and dazed to react. I watch his darkened form recede, then disappear, swallowed up by the University.