Eighteen

Cathal was always leading her places, Sophia thought—down corridors and out into forests. Of course, the castle was his, or his family’s, but still it would have bordered on embarrassing to be following him yet again, had excitement not overwhelmed most other feelings. She barely remembered to pick her cloak up before they left the castle itself.

Putting it on was the first time she freed her wrist from Cathal’s hand, and she did so with reluctance, still feeling his touch on her skin as they walked out the door and reminded of it with every step. The path through the snow was narrow. Two could walk abreast, but it was close. Her arm brushed against his side frequently, and his against hers, and each moment of contact was its own thrill.

There were many sources of excitement, she was discovering, and many forms of curiosity. She was glad of the chance to gratify one. It didn’t stop her from feeling another.

Then too, their destination was the forest again. The path wasn’t the same, but seeing the line of trees coming closer stirred memories, and those memories stirred her body, so that she was almost glad of the chilly air around her and of the exercise, so that she could excuse her voice when she spoke. “Is this always where you change?”

“No,” he said, looking down at her. His voice was slightly hoarse too, Sophia noticed, and she doubted that was exertion. A tingling flush swept over her skin. She made herself concentrate on the words, not on his voice or eyes or lips. They were interesting enough in their own right. “I often jump from the tower and transform on the way down. You couldn’t follow that way.”

She shook her head. Even the thought was dizzying. “It must be exciting, at least for one who can do it and survive.”

Cathal laughed, eyes glinting leaf-green with the afternoon sunlight. “My brother still thinks I’m out of my wits. And Moiread—the younger of my sisters—waits longer than I do before she changes. Almost hits the ground at times. Daft girl,” he added affectionately, and then a thought made him frown.

“Oh…she’s the one fighting now, is she not?”

“She is. Not as reckless with men’s lives, I don’t think.” He sighed. “We didn’t talk of war much until it happened. Not the practical side. And I wasn’t here often.”

“But she’d been to war before?” Sophia asked, turning to questions when she could think of nothing comforting to say.

“Raids, at least. Skirmishes. Not like me.”

“But then, perhaps she’ll know the countryside better.”

“That could be,” Cathal said and turned back toward the path.

They were approaching a clearing now, smaller than the one where they’d gathered herbs and kissed, but still of decent size. The trees that ringed it were larger than the others she’d seen, and there was less snow on their trunks than those of their fellows. The snow on the ground was shallower too, and Sophia could actually spot patches of dirt and brown grass. As they got closer, those patches shaped themselves into patterns: too smudged at the edges to be very clear, but definitely the marks of something large.

“Stand there,” Cathal said and left her side to walk into the middle of the grove. “I’ll not hurt you. You’ve my word on that. I’ll ask yours now, that you won’t scream or run.”

“I swear it,” Sophia said, raising a hand and not quite holding her breath.

She did her best to keep looking at Cathal while he changed. Only a handful of people in any generation likely saw the transformation, if that many. She would probably never have the chance to do so again in her life, and she wanted to etch every detail into her brain. Sophia clasped her hands and watched, intending not even to blink if she could help it, and not to look away no matter how grisly the process.

Watching was harder than she’d expected, and without a drop of blood or a glimpse of bone. Cathal shifting wasn’t revolting, it was simply…difficult to watch. Part of the hardship was speed, for his form changed very quickly. The rest was that the human eye didn’t want to follow what happened. She remembered the things beyond in the beginning of her nightmare. The change of form was a lesser version, a little more comprehensible and not exactly painful to look at.

Realizing the implication there made Sophia wrap her arms around herself for protection, or perhaps only to reassure herself that she was still solid flesh.

What she did see was a blurred series of images. The closest thing in the mortal world that Sophia could think of was the way air shimmered on a hot day. Cathal stood in front of her, handsome and human. The air waved and fractured. His outline bent at the edges, not to accommodate any concrete change of bodily form but reflecting light outward in rays, like a mirror.

A gust of wind blew suddenly past her. The air had been still, with only the faintest of breezes, but this was strong enough to send her cloak billowing out behind her and her skirt with it, to snatch pins from her hair and bring tears to her eyes. And it was hot. Sophia felt for those few moments as if she’d just stepped into the kitchens.

The hair on her arms and the back of her neck stood up. For only a second, there was a low humming in her ears.

Then Cathal wasn’t standing in front of her any longer—not the way she knew him. The air stopped shimmering, and she could look at him again, but her mind, even hers, even as prepared as she had been, stuttered and produced only impressions.

Scales: dark green, almost the color of the evergreens around them. Shiny. Claws: the size of her hand. Tail: spiked and pointed at the end. Wings: wide, bat-like. Head: horns, squarish muzzle, huge eyes without pupils, the same lighter green as Cathal’s eyes in human form. Huge: three or four times the size of the largest warhorse Sophia had seen.

Dragon. The word felt strange at first, not quite connected properly to the creature in front of her. She’d never truly thought to see one, she realized, and certainly not up close and living. The pages of bestiaries had done very little justice. Dragon, she thought again, and this time it seemed to make more sense. Cathal.

Unmoving, he watched her, and she thought he was waiting to see what she did next, if she would keep her word. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to her that she might not.

Stepping toward him did raise a touch of unease, the same kind of gut-and-spine wariness that one felt when looking down over a high precipice—even if the ground was stable and the edge a way off—and just as easy to ignore. She was not her body; she was its mistress, and not vice versa.

“Are all of you this large?” she asked.

In response, Cathal stared at her. Then his back rippled, puzzling Sophia briefly. When she realized that the movement was his attempt at a shrug, she realized a more important fact as well. “You’re not capable of speech in this form, are you?”

The great head swung back and forth.

She had to laugh. “One of us, perchance, could have thought to broach that subject beforehand, could we not? Oh well…I’m more attentive to detail in my experiments, I promise you.”

Laughter rumbled through Cathal’s chest. Sophia supposed it was laughter, at any rate, and devoutly hoped so. Taking another step forward, she clasped her hands behind her back and studied him, beginning to walk a circle in order to get a better look.

Her mind had immediately jumped to warhorses, the largest animals she’d seen at all close to her, for comparison. In truth, Cathal’s dragon form was shaped more like an outsize dog or cat, closer to the ground and built to spring. Predatory, of course: she’d seen the results of that after his hunt, and the claws, large as they were, looked very sharp. So did the teeth. The tail, currently still behind him, was long and articulated; she could see it snapping around like a whip, but with far greater force than a man’s arm could provide.

Circling, she examined his wings, now folded at his sides. Without scales, they still had thicker skin than a bat’s and a sheen of their own where the sun caught them. The geometry was difficult, especially in her mind, but she thought that, extended, they’d fill half the clearing. “You are,” Sophia said thoughtfully, emboldened by Cathal’s silence, “a terribly vast creature. And yet…lack of ambition isn’t the only check on your kind, is it? I would wager there are beings as powerful, or greater.”

He nodded, a motion like the swaying of the great pines in the wind.

“But then, there would have to be, of course,” she said, wrinkling her nose at her own lack of thought and going on. “But worldly beings, or as worldly as you are.”

Now she was coming back around, by the other side of his face. Around his eyes and his mouth, the scales lightened in color, becoming a gold-green like spring leaves, and they were smaller. They still looked both shiny and hard, though.

On impulse, she held out a hand, near the base of his head but not yet touching him. “May I?”

Cathal swung his head around to look at her: startled, maybe? Thoughtful? She couldn’t tell. Then he nodded again.

Feeling slightly embarrassed, Sophia closed the distance between them and laid her palm on his neck. The scales were smooth beneath her fingers, and very warm—well, that stood to reason. “Does it… Do you feel that?”

Again he made an attempt at shrugging and finished by shaking his head: not really.

She smiled. “It’s no wonder that you don’t wound easily.” One shape, of course, lent its qualities to the other, and Cathal’s dragon form looked as if nothing but a mounted charge would have left any impression.

Stepping back, she folded her arms again. “It begins to feel awkward,” she said, “when you can’t speak. If we were to do this often, we would likely need to make a series of signs.” Then she felt ridiculous—of course they wouldn’t do this often. Why would they? Sophia fought the urge to look away. “If you don’t wish to change back, of course… That is to say, I could find my way back to the castle by myself, most likely, or wait out here, as you prefer. You could, ah, cough once for the former option or twice for the latter, or—”

The world blurred again. The transformation seemed faster the other way around, though that might have only been because Sophia wasn’t trying to watch this time. She saw a shimmer; then she saw Cathal, running a hand through his tawny hair and half smiling, as if surprised by the last few minutes.

“Truly,” she said, laughing, “if either of us is to look so astounded, I would claim the right far sooner than you.”

“You do.” Cathal crossed the distance between them and put a hand under her chin, tilting it up so that he could look into her eyes. “You did.”

The pose and the touch were both most improper. Sophia made no objection. Her whole body hummed with feeling, and even drawing breath to answer made her aware of Cathal’s scent—metal, leather, and wine, woodsmoke and man—and of the way her breasts rose and fell with the action. Cathal didn’t watch them, though. His eyes stayed fixed on hers.

“And?” she asked, breathless, struggling to find words. “Is there any wonder in that?”

“You weren’t afraid.”

“Oh.” She was slow to grasp the sense of it, and when she did, it made her laugh—and she laughed more as he looked startled again. Not all of the humor was pleasant. “My lord MacAlasdair, you’re a Christian, a man, and a lord of men. This place is yours, and more than remote. What danger would your malice hold for me in that form that it wouldn’t in this?” She touched the sleeve of his tunic.

The touch or the thought, or both, held him frozen for a moment, eyes narrowed. The hand on her chin tightened, not unpleasantly, and then quickly dropped back to Cathal’s side. “Truly?”

Sophia shrugged. “Fire might be less pleasant from a dragon than from a mob, I suppose. Claws or teeth might hurt more than the edge of a blade. I cannot say I’ve heard much comparison, and I doubt I’d have much time to make it.” Reluctantly, she stepped back, away from his touch. “And I think we should be returning.”

“Yes. Duties.” He shook his head, like a dog shaking off water, and bent down to the edge of the spot where he’d lain as a dragon. Turning back to her, he held out his cupped hands, with three green scales in the midst. “Here.”

“Truly?” It was her turn to ask, but Sophia was reaching for them as soon as she saw them. She thought of experiments, of the plans she’d made before reaching Loch Arach and the possibilities that they might open for Fergus.

She stopped, looking at Cathal and waiting for his answer.

“There are always a few after we transform. Usually we bury them.” He shrugged quickly. “I’ve owed you these for a while.”