Damsel, page 20
But before Elodie could whisper to her father, she heard the worst possible noise: leather scraping against rock.
“DEV ADERRUT?”
Oh god. The dragon!
It lunged into the sailors’ cave so rapidly its movement was a blur of dark scales and a trail of flame. It snatched Gaumiot before he could even scream. Metal screeched as Gaumiot’s armor was torn apart, accompanied by the sickening sound of flesh ripping and bone breaking, wet and soft and hard and rigid at the same time.
Elodie jerked back into the far wall of her overhead tunnel in horror. Gaumiot had spent hours regaling Floria with tales of his adventures on the waters. He’d tended to Lady Bayford during her early bouts of seasickness.
And now he was gone.
“Run, Lieutenant Ravella!” Father shouted toward the cave from which they’d come.
The royal envoy had led them here?
But there was no time for Elodie to dwell on that fact. Below her, Lord Bayford and the other five sailors drew their swords. They were a half dozen humans against a ferocious, ancient monster that had survived much worse than this small expedition. Elodie wanted to draw her knees to her chest and bury her face and stuff her ears full of wax until it was over.
But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from her father. The sailors protected him, pushing him behind them as they let out a wild battle cry and charged, slashing at different parts of the dragon. One went for its right wing. Another for its chest. One to its tail, and another, Anto, directly at its head.
He was the next to die. The dragon spewed a jet of fire as Anto raised his sword. The blade melted instantaneously onto his charring skin, and he shrieked as his red-hot armor fused onto his torso and legs, all while flames devoured his hair and face.
No! Oh god, Anto…
The dragon’s tail whipped against the sailors closest to it, flinging them into the cave wall. Their armor hit with the awful clang of steel on stone, and their bodies crumpled as they fell to the ground.
“This is for Elodie!” the sailor at the dragon’s chest cried. He raised his sword to run through the beast’s heart. But the dragon swung its head down, mouth open, fangs bared. It crunched through the sailor’s bones as if they were mere twigs. Then it spat him out, its reptilian tongue flickering, as if it could not bear the taste of anything but royal blood.
Elodie heaved, only barely holding back her vomit.
Father brandished his sword and took a tentative step forward.
No, stay back! Elodie wanted to cry out. But she dared not draw the dragon’s attention to where she hid.
In all the commotion, Jordú, the last sailor, had somehow managed to scramble up onto the dragon’s back. He stabbed at it, and the dragon cried out as dark violet blood began to seep from the wound. Jordú flung himself flat against its spine and began to lap at the blood as if it were the fountain of youth.
“Ignoramus!” The dragon snarled. It bucked its reptilian body, and Jordú bounced into the air. The dragon shifted so that the top of one of its serrated wings was waiting to catch him.
The wing impaled Jordú, its sharp point piercing straight through the back of his skull and out through the mouth that had so greedily drunk the dragon’s blood only seconds ago. It shook him off its back, the body smacking into the cave floor like a rag doll.
Elodie could only stare, numb with shock at the carnage.
And Father was the only one left.
The dragon readied to strike. But then it stopped midpounce, already arced above him, and sniffed.
“Erru nilas. Dakh novsif. Nykovenirra zi veru manirru se fe nyta.”
“Wh-what did you say?” Father stood immobile in his shock that the dragon could speak.
“She’s of your blood. How fascinating. I’ve never met the kind of monster who would sell his own young.”
“I—I had good reason!” Father’s sword arm dropped as he tried to explain. “It was for my people. I thought…”
Anger and dismay curdled Elodie’s stomach. She bit back tears and began to back slowly out of her tunnel.
“Dakarr re. Audirru onne vokha dikorrai. Tell her. She hears every word you speak.”
“She’s near?”
“I can smell her. Watching us. Watching you.”
Elodie froze. Fear dribbled down her spine like a snail’s trail.
“She’s still alive?” Father cried. “Elodie? Elodie!”
She didn’t respond. How could he have done this to her? Why was he even here?
“Elly, my love, I didn’t know! They offered a fortune, enough to save our people a hundred times over. And I thought the dragon was only a legend, a…a metaphor! Aurea is shrouded in secrecy. I did not know until the ceremony that the dragon was real, I swear!”
Elodie squeezed her eyes closed and didn’t wipe away the tear that escaped. Deep down, she’d always known her father was a bit of a fool, but she’d willfully ignored it, as one does for those they love best.
It had always been her mother, and then Elodie herself, who had to deal with Father’s bad decisions. That’s why her mother always rode out with him to visit the tenants; it was to fix any problems or mix-ups he’d caused. Elodie remembered how Father chatted jovially with husbands, bringing them smiles and lots of words and reassuring pats on the back. But it was Mother who led the wives into the kitchens where they actually resolved the real issues the families faced: weevils spoiling the flour, coyotes eating the chickens, too many mouths to feed and never enough food or water. Elodie’s mother, who knew every soul in the duchy and what resources they possessed, would thoughtfully arrange for a barter of mending the neighbor’s clothes for fertilized eggs, or suggest that the youngest two children volunteer at a different tenant’s mill in exchange for grain.
After her mother died, Elodie took on that role. But she’d simply picked up where her mother left off, deliberately not questioning why Father wasn’t the one doing the work. It was just the way the work was divided—he was the one who could talk a fish into a tree, and she was the one who would physically coax it out to save its life.
But that had come back to haunt her now. Father might not have sold her to Prince Henry maliciously, but he hadn’t thought it through.
“Dakarr re kuirre. Tell her to come out.”
“Wherever you are, Elodie, don’t give up.”
“DAKARR RE KUIRRE!” The dragon snatched Father from the ground. He stabbed at it, jabbing up under a scale, and the dragon roared and shook him. His sword, tipped in violet blood, fell with a clatter to the ground.
Elodie clapped her hand over her mouth to stop from making a sound. She was furious at him. Beyond furious. But she didn’t want him hurt. She would never, ever want that.
With the dragon holding her father aloft, his face was close to the small holes in the tunnel where she was watching him from above. His red-rimmed eyes met hers.
Forgive me? they seemed to ask, glazed with tears.
She didn’t move for a moment.
Then she nodded. He may have been a foolish man, but he’d loved her as best he could. And she loved him, too, despite his flaws. It was his fault she was in these caves, desperately fighting for her life.
But now he was facing his own death, and she would not send him to his end without her love. She blew him a sad kiss, weighted with everything she could not say.
“The ship is still in the harbor, waiting for you!” Father shouted, making sure to yell downward, rather than up where she actually was. “Elodie, if you can hear me, run! There is another way in and out of these caves, we left ropes for you—”
“NY!” the dragon roared, filling the cave with smoke and flame.
Father! she screamed inside.
But on the outside, she was silent. He’d come into the dragon’s lair to rescue her, and she would not let his death mean nothing.
He shrieked as the dragon roasted him alive. The sharpness of his terror and pain pierced like a blade through Elodie’s heart, reverberating through her bones. She collapsed onto the tunnel floor, face and hands pressed to the pinprick holes through which she could see nothing but fire and smoke.
But the rock heated like magma and she jerked back, gasping at the burns already blistering on her skin. She couldn’t stay here. Father had sacrificed himself for her. She had to escape, and she had to go now.
I love you, Father.
Tears streaked down Elodie’s cheeks as she crawled as fast as she could on raw hands and knees through the tunnel toward where Father and the sailors had entered the caves.
It wasn’t far before her tunnel opened up taller, then ended abruptly, intersecting the long vertical chute down which the Inopheans had come. The ropes were still dangling there, and the familiarity of the rope—she’d climbed one aboard the ship only days before—gave Elodie the swell of confidence she needed.
She leapt across the chute and grabbed at the rope. Her feet slipped on the smooth, wet surface of the rock, but her fingers wrapped around the rough fibers of the rope and latched on, jerking her shoulders in their sockets but thankfully not out again.
It would have been easier if someone above could haul her up. But if that had ever been the plan, Elodie was alone now, since Father had yelled for Lieutenant Ravella to flee. Elodie had to climb using pure arm strength, since the walls of the chute were too slick to find purchase with her feet.
One torn-up hand over the other, then again and again. Never had she been so glad for all the time in her youth climbing trees.
“Kho zedrae!”
The dragon shot in from the other caves into the chamber below her. “Your father has vexed me, and my patience wears thin!” A thick cloud of sulfuric yellow smoke bloomed up the chute.
It burned Elodie’s eyes and throat. She coughed, the caustic gas filling her lungs, sharp like thousands of needles with every breath she wheezed.
But she would not quit. Not now. She could see the waning daylight above her. Hand over hand, hand over hand—
The dragon growled. Unable to squeeze up into the narrow shaft after her, it shot flames and its sticky, flammable brown residue onto the rope, lighting it all on fire.
Like a fuse, the flame consumed the rough fibers and raced up toward Elodie. She had only seconds before it reached her, before she wouldn’t be able to hold on, before she’d let go and fall into the waiting jaws of the dragon.
Who will save you? the peasant girl had asked.
“I will save myself!” Elodie cried.
She hauled herself the last two yards, faster than she’d ever climbed before. Just as the flames reached her section of rope, she lunged for the rock at the top of the chute. One of her hands slipped, and she screamed.
But her other fingers clenched around the ledge. She swung her first hand back up and clamped on to the lip of rock. She pulled herself up with the last of the strength in her shaking arms.
The flames devoured the remnant of the rope, and it plummeted down the dark chute. Perched above, Elodie watched as the rope traced a fiery path down what would have been her fate had she been a heartbeat slower.
“Kuirra kir ni, zedrae. Nykrerr errai sarif.”
I am coming for you, princess. Do not think you are safe.
ELODIE
Elodie ran toward the horses her father and the sailors had left tethered to the pine trees. Her gait was uneven, her sprained ankle awkward, and all her muscles on the edge of complete collapse. The dragon couldn’t come up the narrow chute, but it wouldn’t take long for it to exit the caves a different way. Elodie had only moments to decide which horse would serve her best; she untied the smallest one, a piebald mare, and clambered onto its saddle.
She had to get to the harbor. Unlike when she was underground, the path was clearer here—down the switchbacks of Mount Khaevis, past the palace in all its ill-gotten gold glory, then through the orchards and fields of aurum wheat and barley toward the briny smell of the sea. But just because the way was clear did not mean it would be easy.
There would be Aurean knights near the palace. And a dragon in pursuit. She would have to set sail immediately and hope the fog would keep them shrouded from the dragon as they raced out to sea.
The odds were emphatically against her.
But she had to try.
“Hya!” Elodie nudged the horse with her heel, and it took off down the mountain. The sun had dipped below the horizon now, and she shivered in her thin, torn dress. Banks of fog spilled over the summit like the froth of a rabid beast, and wolves howled too close for Elodie’s liking.
Suddenly, the purpling sky darkened as a silhouette blocked the rising moon. Then just as quickly, hot orange and blue blazed above, casting a fiery glow on Mount Khaevis. The dragon roared, its anger carried by flames.
“KHO ZEDRAE!”
Elodie yanked the horse off the trail and into the woods. They wove through gnarled old trees and through the craggy terrain. She ducked beneath pines and spruces, sending pine cones scattering across the rocks. They leapt over boulders and creeks and thick shrubs of spiny gorse. They sent small avalanches of gravel careening off the mountainside as they changed direction again and again.
But no matter how deep into the mountain Elodie rode, the dragon’s wings only beat louder, closer.
The horse’s hooves are too loud, she realized. Elodie tugged on the reins and brought the horse to an abrupt stop. “Thank you for your help,” she said. “But I have to continue on my own now.”
She slid off the saddle, then smacked the horse on the rump. It turned and ran back up the mountain, galloping to rejoin its brethren tied by the cave entrance.
Elodie shoved her way through tangles of thorns. The shrubs grew thick and nearly to the height of some trees, creating a needle-sharp warren in which she could hide. From one labyrinth to another.
She wriggled her way deeper and deeper into the thorns. Their chartreuse flowers gave off a scent like mothballs and mildewed socks, which made Elodie light-headed and nauseous. But perhaps it would also provide cover from the dragon. She hoped it wouldn’t be able to sniff out her blood over the pungent stench of the bushes.
“Akrerra audirrai kho, Elodie. Kuirr or else you will be to blame for what comes next.”
I know you can hear me, she translated to herself as she cowered, unmoving, in the thorns. Come out, or else you’ll be to blame for what comes next.
Elodie shuddered.
The dragon’s shadow covered the portion of the woods where she hid, and the beating of its wings sounded as if thunder were crashing directly above her. More fire streaked across the sky, painting dusk in violent streaks of yellow and red.
It roared again, and this time, it launched flames at the copse of trees where Elodie had dismounted her horse, just north of her thorny shelter. The heat of the fire hit like a sonic wave, engulfing the chill of the fog in a single, decisive blow. The force of it shoved Elodie into the thorns, her skin pierced in a dozen different places. If the dragon couldn’t smell her blood before, it would be able to soon, now that her blood flowed freely.
Farther up the mountain, a horse whinnied.
“Zedrae!” The dragon whirled in the sky and dove down toward the sound of the horse.
It thinks I’m up there, near the horse! For a moment, she was relieved. But then she feared for the horse. Please don’t hurt it, she prayed as she scrambled out of the bushes.
In her rush, the thorns left long gashes everywhere skin was exposed, and she half limped, half sprinted away from the encroaching flames. With the dragon’s attention elsewhere, she ran back to the dirt road and crossed to the other side, putting as much space as possible between herself and the last place she’d hidden.
Here, there were no hedges of thorn bushes. In fact, there was hardly any vegetation at all. But there was a veritable battlefield of downed trees, their trunks charred to black from ancient lightning strikes—or perhaps dragon attacks—and Elodie hoped they were too far burned to catch fire again. She ducked into the clusters of fallen trunks, got down on her hands and knees, and crawled into an overhang of scorched wood. There she crumbled bits of burned bark into ash and smeared it all over her skin to disguise the smell of her blood. She winced as the ash touched her wounds, but infection was the least of her worries today.
A short distance away, the dragon bellowed, likely having discovered that the horse was a riderless decoy. It doubled back, down the mountain to where Elodie had been. Its wings pounded a rhythm in the sky, shaking Mount Khaevis and reverberating through the rocks and into Elodie’s bones.
She curled herself into a ball and squeezed her eyes shut. Any second now, the dragon would rain fire down upon her, and she would end up just like these dead trees under which she hid.
It swooped above her, whipping the wind like a hurricane. Twigs and small rocks flew everywhere, pelting her body like scattershot. Branches tore off trees. Several of the charred trunks lifted off the ground and slammed into the mountainside, splintering themselves into shrapnel.
But then the dragon shot past Elodie’s hideout of dead trees, down the mountain and toward the palace, spitting sparks as it screamed, “Vorra kho tke raz. Vorra kho tke trivi. Vis kir vis, sanae kir res!”
Elodie’s eyes widened as she peeked out of her charred shelter of trees.
“I want my share of the bargain. I want my share of the harvest. Life for life, blood for fire!”
The dragon was charging toward the castle, and beyond that lay the farms and villages. Elodie burst from her hiding place.
“Oh god, what have I unleashed?”
