Unleash the Storm (12 page)

With Piper still pressed against his chest, Ash stepped over to their pack and slung it over his shoulder. Then he slid onto the back of the middle dragon, pulling Piper up with him. Zwi ran up and grabbed Piper’s leg, climbing up her pants and onto her back, clinging to the ropes still binding her arms against her chest.

The dragon spread its wings and jumped into the air, the other two following with snarling roars. Held tightly in Ash’s arms, Piper pressed her cheek to his shoulder and watched the draconians shrink as the dragons ascended. The figures below finally clambered to their feet but showed no signs of preparing a pursuit. They just stared up at Ash as the three dragons wheeled away into the night.

P
iper kept her eyes closed
, fighting increasing dizziness as the dragon flew them through the cool night. After only about twenty minutes—not nearly long enough to put a safe distance between them and the draconians—their mount switched to a glide and the swoop in her belly confirmed they were dropping quickly. A minute later, the dragon touched down, trotting a few steps before stopping.

Ash’s arm loosened around her and she opened her eyes. The eerie blue glow in his eyes, in the markings on his skin, and between his scales had faded away. Wherever they were, Periskios’s light couldn’t reach them, and she couldn’t see him in the pitch darkness.

“Ash?” she mumbled, swaying from lightheadedness.

He swung his leg over the dragon and slid to the ground, then helped her down after him. As soon as her feet touched the leafy turf, her legs shook weakly. The ground seemed to rock and shift under her. Zwi climbed down Piper’s back, her small weight almost tipping Piper over.

Ash wrapped his arm around her waist. A tiny light appeared, glowing in the palm of his hand. It lit his face from below, casting harsh shadows over his features. He tossed it into the air, where it floated just above them, illuminating the three dragons waiting near Ash. Beyond them, the black shapes of trees surrounded them; they’d landed in a forest.

He slid his fingers under the rope binding her hands and with a spark of magic, it snapped. He touched the deep cuts on the backs of her upper arms. She flinched at the nauseating pain. Tingling magic flowed into her. Sharp aches shot through her wounds, followed by a wave of heat. Then the spots went numb.

“I closed the wounds,” Ash said, his voice hoarse. “It will scar; I’m sorry. I’m not a good healer.”

She gave him a wavering smile. “As long as I’m not bleeding anymore.”

He slid the pack off his shoulder, dropping it on the ground. She had just a moment’s warning as he swayed, then he went down. She grabbed him but she was almost as feeble as he was and ended up falling beside him.

“Ash,” she gasped, scrambling onto her knees. “Are you okay?”

He lay on his back, one arm across his eyes. His light hovered above them, just enough illumination to make out his features.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I don’t know what he did to me.”

“Who?” She swallowed hard, remembering the bizarre blue glow in his eyes. She’d seen the same blue glow emanating from another pair of eyes. “The dragon?”

He nodded. She wasn’t sure if it was just the weak light, but he looked paler than snow. She laid a hand against his forehead, above his arm. His skin was still hot, but not as feverish as before.

She swallowed again. “He said … the dragon said you were resisting.”

“Could you hear him? I wasn’t sure if his voice was just inside my head.”

“I couldn’t hear him until after he’d caught you. I don’t know what he was saying to you.”

He let out a shuddering breath. She gripped his arm, offering wordless support; she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him so shaken up. The three strange dragonets, somehow transformed by the blue fire, watched them curiously.

“I don’t remember very well,” he whispered. “He said my magic had called him, that my dragon fire was powerful. Then he said … he said I was the child of dragons and I owed him my magic. He commanded me to submit to his will.”

She remembered Ash shouting “no” at the dragon in their first encounter—his first refusal to submit? “What happened when he pinned you to the ground?”

Ash shivered under her hand. “He … he somehow poured his magic into me and pulled mine away at the same time. The whole time he tried to dominate my mind with his telepathy, to force me to submit and stop resisting him. I don’t know what would have happened if I had. He wanted to control me, but I don’t understand why.”

Piper pressed her lips together as she pushed through another wave of weak dizziness. She’d lost too much blood. It was drying on her arms, making her skin feel cold and tight.

“Well, he picked the wrong draconian,” she said. “You didn’t spend a lifetime fighting Samael to cave in to the first over-sized lizard that demanded your submission.”

His lips curved in a ghost of a smile. He kept his arm over his eyes, hiding them from Piper’s view—or hiding
her
from his view?

She eased down to lie beside him, flinching as her burns touched the leafy ground. She reached up and took his arm, gently pulling it away from his face. He turned his head and looked at her with exhausted eyes. No, not just exhausted. Fear lurked in his gaze, shadowing his gray irises.

That’s what he hadn’t wanted her to see. He was afraid.

She wrapped her arms around his, holding it against her chest. “So the dragon forced its magic into you?” she asked gently. “Was that all the blue fire?”

“I guess,” he mumbled. “I don’t remember much after the dragon got me on the ground. Just the heat … heat inside me. I thought I would burst into flame.”

“You had a terrible fever. I didn’t want to leave you on the shore … I hope I didn’t hurt your wing more when I moved you. I didn’t know what to do, and all our gear was up the mountain …”

The muscles in his arm bunched with tension. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. I would heal your burns, but I’m not—”

“It’s fine,” she soothed. “The draconians gave me some cream for the burns so they aren’t as bad anymore. They can wait until we get back to the others.” She lifted her head, looking around until she spotted Zwi curled up on Ash’s other side. “I’m more concerned about Zwi’s wings.”

His jaw tensed as he stared upward. “It’s bad. Far beyond my healing skills.”

“I’m sorry,” Piper whispered. “I made her go after the dragon with me. If we’d just waited—”

“I told Zwi to wait, but she still would have come to help me with or without you.”

Piper bit her lip. Her eyes darted to the three dragons waiting patiently in the trees. “What about them? Are they the dragonets of the other draconians?”

“No,” he mumbled, his voice going even quieter. “They’re wild dragonets.”

Her eyes narrowed but he kept staring at the sky, stubbornly evading her gaze. “But I thought only bonded dragonets can transform into larger dragons.”

“That’s what I thought too, but …”

“But what?”

He let out a sound of frustration and finally turned to look at her. Fear and uncertainty darkened his eyes and aged his face. “I don’t know, Piper. I don’t get it. I was still half in the fever sleep when I woke up. I could just—somehow I could sense them nearby. And I called them like I would have called Zwi.”

His eyes flicked down toward her arms, where the draconian’s sword had cut her, then back up to her face. “What happened?”

Apprehension slid through her at the memory of Eliada’s bizarre reaction and verdict that he needed to die.

“They tried to execute you. Because of what the dragon did to you, I think.” Her eyes darted toward the sky. Remembering Eliada’s cold determination, she didn’t doubt that the woman would be coming after Ash again. “They might try again. We need to get away from here, but … you and Zwi can’t fly, and Raum won’t come looking for us until the next eclipse at the earliest.”

He closed his eyes, exhaustion written across his face. Then he heaved a sigh and sluggishly sat up. She got up with him, wobbling on her feet as he turned toward the waiting dragons. He reached for the nearest one and rubbed its muzzle. It rumbled in a friendly way.

“They will carry us back to the camp,” he said.

“They—they will?”

He leaned down and opened their pack, digging in it. When he straightened, he held a coil of rope in his hands.

She eyed it warily. “What’s that for?”

He sighed again as he measured out a length. “I don’t know about you, but short of tying myself in place for the ride, I won’t make it the whole way back.”

A shudder ran through her as she realized she had to spend the next ten hours on a flying dragon when she was already exhausted, weak, and dizzy. Grimacing, she held her hands out for the other end of the rope.

“
O
kay
,” Lyre said, raking a hand through his hair. “Start again. From the beginning.”

Piper blew out a breath and rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. The others in the tent waited for her to speak.

Ash lay beside her in a magically induced sleep while Shona and Seiya worked on his wing. Seiya supported the broken bone on her lap with a combination of her hands and magic while Shona performed the careful healing. Since the membrane hadn’t torn, it should be a clean, if slow, healing. In a corner of the tent, Mahala sat crossed-legged with Zwi in her lap, one of the dragonet’s wings in her hands and her brow etched with deep lines of concentration. Zwi’s wings hadn’t been as lucky.

On Piper’s other side, Lyre sat stiffly, drumming his fingers on his knee as his gaze snapped from Ash’s broken wing to Zwi to Piper’s burns, which she’d refused to let anyone heal until Ash and Zwi were taken care of. Raum crouched near the tent entrance, his stillness suggesting great tension; she suspected he would be pacing if the tent were large enough.

The flight back to the camp had been a nightmare of cold wind and nauseating exhaustion. Tied in place, she’d managed to sleep a little but it hadn’t been enough to counter the dizziness from her blood loss. They’d stopped several times to switch mounts, and the steadfast dragons had carried them without hesitation or complaint. The sky had lightened with twilight until the first sun eventually broke the horizon to cast warm light across the mountains.

The dragons had dropped them off at the other end of the valley from the camp, too wary of strangers to approach any closer. Ash had thanked each one before they’d transformed back into dragonets and flown away, heading home. The walk through the valley had almost finished her and Ash had been white as a sheet when Kiev had found them staggering through the trees.

Once they were in a tent where healing could begin for Ash and Zwi, Piper had managed a jumbled, emotional rendition of the events, but she wasn’t surprised they wanted to hear it again a little more coherently.

“We found the ancient city,” she began tiredly, keeping her emotions in check this time. “It was totally abandoned. In one of the dwellings, we found the remains of the draconians who’d died there centuries ago, and Ash burned their bones with dragon fire out of respect. I think that’s how the dragon found us.”

Lyre’s fingers stopped drumming and he clenched his hand into a fist as he looked again at her burns.

“It—he—was waiting outside when we came out.” She described the dragon’s approach, his first communication with Ash, and the resulting attack. Her voice trembled when she told them about confronting the dragon while he had Ash pinned under his deadly talons.

“‘Silver child,’” Lyre muttered. “Your scales aren’t silver. They’re greeny-blue.”

“I’m not silver, but the water dragons of the Overworld are. Remember the silver Lady of Seas from the legends? I don’t know how much truth there is to those stories, but I think there’s something there. How would a dragon from the Underworld know about Overworld dragons?”

“So Ash wouldn’t wake after that?” Raum said, pulling her focus back to the incident. “And he was feverish?”

She nodded.

“There are stories about the dragon taking a draconian’s magic,” Shona said, looking up from Ash’s wing, “but nothing about
giving
magic. I know they’re just legends, but …”

“I don’t think there was anything benevolent about it,” Piper replied darkly. “The dragon wanted to control him … to use him somehow. When he spoke to me, I could sense this great anger in his mind. Definitely not the gentle dragon king from your story.”

“There are other legends,” Shona said slowly. “Kirya told me so many but I only committed my favorites to memory. In many of the stories, it wasn’t one great dragon but a race of them—albeit with very small numbers—and the myths varied in regards to the dragons’ relationships with draconians. In some, they are powerful protectors. In others, they are deadly predators.”

“Do any of them offer any clues about what the dragon wanted with Ash?”

“It sounds to me,” Raum rumbled, “like this dragon intended to make Ash his dragonet.”

Piper inhaled sharply. Dragonets gained magic and certain abilities—like the power to change forms—when they bonded with a draconian, and the draconians gained influence and limited control over the dragonet. Ash had gained magic and abilities from the great dragon, and the dragon wanted to control him …

Her hands clenched. “Why though? What does the dragon get out of it?”

“Does it matter?” Seiya snapped, most of her attention on Ash’s wing in her lap. “We won’t get any answers from analyzing the bit of information we have. We already know what’s most important: that the dragon almost killed Ash. It wants to control him. It’s dangerous to him.”

“It may be dangerous to all of us,” Raum said. “I don’t like what that Eliada woman said about him.”

A chill ran up Piper’s back.
We must end his life now for the safety of all.
What did that mean? What did Eliada know about the great dragon? She slid her hand down to Ash’s arm, gripping it tightly.

“Who cares what that hag said?” Seiya growled. “They tried to
execute
him.”

“But we don’t know why,” Raum reminded her. “They seemed to think their reasons—”

“They tried to execute him. No matter how they try to justify it, we can’t trust anything they say. We shouldn’t have anything to do with them.”

“You don’t make that choice for all of us,” Raum replied with a hint of a growl. “Ash chose the limits of his loyalty years ago.”

Seiya looked up from Ash’s wing for the first time, her eyes slicing Raum like black knives.

“It’s long past time you dropped your petty grudge against him,” she said, her words vibrating with controlled fury. “You turned your back on your own family when Talia died. Ash didn’t betray anyone when he tried to escape with me. No one holds it against him but you.”

Raum stared at her stonily as a heavy, awkward quiet filled the tent.

“Seiya, this isn’t the time,” Mahala said. Her soft voice didn’t so much break the silence as whisk it away.

Seiya scowled and returned her focus to Ash’s wing. Piper’s gaze flashed between her and Raum. Raum had pushed Ash hard over the last few weeks, claiming necessity, but maybe there had been an element of penance behind it.

“Judging from Piper’s rendition, I am not certain these draconians bear us ill intent,” Mahala continued. “However, their determination to kill Ash makes them enemies of us all. We will not stand aside and let them slay one of our own. Will they kill us too if we try to protect him?”

“We must retreat.” Raum sounded tired, as though resigning himself to the inevitable. “If Piper is correct, the draconians will come for Ash. We will retreat to a safe location farther from their territory, then attempt to make contact.”

“Contact for what? So we can all be friends?” Seiya’s eyes slashed from Raum to Piper. “If you hadn’t taken the executioner’s blade for him, he would be dead. I will not forgive them.”

“Neither will I,” Piper said.

“Your choice,” Raum said with finality. “I will not condemn our only kin without any attempt to find peace between us. However, the safety of the children is most important. We will break down camp as soon as Ash and Piper are healed and travel back to a previous campsite.”

Raum stood, his head stooped under the canvas ceiling. He gave Piper and Seiya a cold look.

“There is one more reason to seek contact with these draconians. We need to know what they know of the great dragon … and what it means for Ash.”

He pushed the tent flap aside and strode out, calling for Kiev and Sivan—probably intending to do a quick fly around the valley to check for the pursuing draconians.

Even though she hadn’t seen them giving chase, Piper was certain that Eliada would come after them. She couldn’t get the woman’s eyes out of her head, the cold but regretful stare.
If the gods are merciful, he will die
. Ash hadn’t died; he was alive and regaining his strength. What did it mean that he had survived the fever?

A
s she tied
the tent canvas into a bundle, she tried not to look as dejected as she felt. The draconian women moved silently about the camp, speaking only to coordinate their packing efforts. The weight of disappointment was like a bitter tang in the air.

The first sun had already disappeared behind Periskios and the second would soon be eclipsed too, but its light was enough to illuminate the clearing. Their little camp looked sad and empty as they piled their gear beside the cold coals of the fire. Two wood structures waited for completion in the shadow of the cliff beside the waterfall. Who knew when they would be able to come back and finish them?

Raum, Kiev, and Sivan were scouting, checking for any signs of Eliada and her warriors—or the dragon. Ash was still inside the last remaining tent, resting from the strain of his healing. Zwi was with him, sleeping off her even more intensive healing.

Mahala had done all she could. When Ash had woken after his healing, she’d placed Zwi in his arms and, with a trembling voice and tears standing in her eyes, told him what Piper had feared since discovering the injured dragonet.

Zwi would probably never fly again.

Piper would never forget the way Ash had pulled his dragonet close and buried his face in her mane, his shoulders bowed with inexpressible grief. Then Zwi had begun to keen, her tiny voice rising in fear and denial that required no words. Mahala had taken Piper’s arm and guided her from the tent, leaving the pair alone in their shared pain. Piper had retreated to the edge of the camp for some privacy for her own tears, but Lyre had found her and held her while she cried from the pain and guilt. She shouldn’t have made Zwi help fight the dragon. She should have done something different, something else, something
more
.

She swallowed hard before the grief could overwhelm her again. The eclipse would begin soon and Raum wanted to be ready to leave as soon as there was enough darkness to hide their movements. She picked up the canvas bundle she’d just rolled. Her muscles felt weak and quivery, and her entire body ached with exhaustion, but at least she was healed now. After doing everything she could for Zwi, Mahala had healed Piper’s burns and completed Ash’s rough healing of the wounds on her arms. The scars were ugly and the skin taut and uncomfortable, but she didn’t think there was any permanent damage to her motor skills.

As she walked over to the pile of gear and deposited her bundle, Ash’s voice murmured quietly inside the tent, deep tones rumbling too softly for her to make out any words. Lyre’s lighter tenor answered, just as quietly. She paused, squashing a prickle of hurt at them excluding her from their conversation, whatever it was about.

Ash said something, and Lyre’s voice rose to an audible level. “But Ash—”

He cut himself off, but not before Piper heard the hoarse catch in his voice, as though their conversation was causing him physical pain. Her heart hammered with sudden nerves. Ash replied to Lyre, words too low for her ears.

“This is your fault.”

The bitter declaration yanked Piper’s attention away from the tent. Jezel stood in front of her, holding several tent poles in one hand.

“This is your fault,” Jezel repeated, her words low but vicious. “You dragged Ash to that city, you made the other draconians hate us, and now we have to leave, and it’s your fault.”

Piper’s throat closed. She swallowed hard but still couldn’t speak. She agreed. How could she deny it?

“Shut up, Jezel.” Raisa appeared beside Piper, glowering furiously. “Just shut up. You don’t know anything. All you’ve done is whine and complain since we left Asphodel.”

“All she’s done is make things worse,” Jezel spat. “She’s just a pathetic haemon who wishes she was a daemon, and she’s so weak she ruins everything for everyone else.”

“Piper does everything she can to help. You don’t do anything for anyone. You’re just as selfish as Yaron was.”

Jezel gasped, paling. With a malevolent glare, she pivoted on one foot and marched off. As Raisa folded her arms, watching her half-sister go, the tent opened and Lyre walked out, his expression as bleak as Piper had ever seen it. He walked away without even glancing at her.

She blinked, pulling her attention from the incubus back to Raisa. “Um. Thank you. Who’s Yaron?”

“My father,” Raisa replied, very matter-of-fact. “He’s the dad of Coby’s baby too. He wasn’t like Ash and Raum; Samael made him go bad. He attacked Jezel once, and Raum almost killed him. He died right after Coby got pregnant.”

She hesitated before asking. “How did he die?”

“Poison. It looked like a Ra poison so Samael figured it was an assassination, but I’ve heard the others say the timing wasn’t quite right.” She shrugged.

“You … You’re not upset about his death?”

“No. Like I said, he went bad. He used to hit me for no reason. He just liked to hurt people.”

Piper pulled in a slow breath. “Do you know who Talia was?”

“Raum’s first daughter.”

“Oh,” Piper whispered, remembering Coby telling her about Raum’s slide into an emotionless, obedient zombie after Samael killed his first child to punish him.

The sun flared brightly and then the light across the valley dimmed as the second sun slid behind Periskios. As Piper looked up at the massive planet, a dark flash dropped from the sky. Kiev plunged toward the camp in a fast dive, flaring his wings at the last moment. He hit the ground and staggered.

“Raum!” he yelled, whirling around. “Is Raum back?”

Piper, Mahala, and Lyre all ran for him.

“He’s not back,” Mahala said. “He went to scout the far end of the valley. What’s wrong?”

Kiev’s gaze shot toward the darkening sky. “They’re here.”

Lyre swore. He spun around and jumped toward the tent. Ash stood in the opening, holding Zwi in one arm.

“Get inside.” Lyre roughly pushed him back in and tugged the flap closed. “And stay there! You need to stay out of sight.”