Damsel, page 24
“What are you talking about?” Floria said.
“The dragon. It’s been by itself in these caves for so long. The notes said it had a family once, too. But what happened? How long has this dragon been here all alone?”
“I don’t know what notes you’re talking about, El, but don’t start feeling sorry for it! It eats people like us, and it’s going to come back any second and do just that if we don’t hurry!”
Elodie blinked, and reality slammed back into her.
She scrambled to her feet and ran from the graveyard of dragon babies. But when she got to the shore of the pond, she stopped short. Elodie looked across the expanse of deep, seemingly bottomless green water to Floria on the platform, and back.
“I can’t swim,” she whispered. And of course, neither could Floria.
The sisters stared at each other. So close, yet impassably far.
And then a voice hot with fire rasped through the tunnels, accompanied by the angry scrape of leather on stone. “Ni reka. Nytuirrai se, akrerrit. Fy nitrerra ni e re. I am coming to claim what is owed. Your blood and your sister’s are mine.”
ELODIE
Elodie looked at Floria, communicating in that brief glance not to leave the stone platform. Not that Flor could, given that she couldn’t swim, either. But still, it was worth conveying the message, because with what was about to happen…well, Elodie needed to make sure her sister stayed put and didn’t try anything rash.
The harshness of leather rushing and scraping against rock echoed through the tunnels. Elodie ran to hide in the shadows of one of the many statues near the tunnel from which the dragon would emerge, making sure she’d be able to position herself between Floria and the dragon. It had gone that way to chase after the noise of Elodie’s contraption rigged from the sword, shield, and waterskin. Based on the sounds of its angry movements, it was returning through the same tunnel.
She held Father’s sword steady and took in a steeling breath. The dragon was close now. Elodie could feel the vibration of its scales on the rocks.
The dragon charged into its lair, smoke already billowing from its nostrils, fangs bared.
The first thing it saw, however, was the uncovered eggs and its desiccated, stillborn babies exposed.
“DEV ADERRUT!” It came to a sudden halt on the hoard of coins.
Elodie sprang from behind the statue and pointed the sword directly at one of the dragon’s violet eyes.
“Kho aderrit,” she said. I dared.
It snorted, and a plume of fresh smoke puffed from its nose. It glared at the sword pointed at its eye. “Voro nyothyrrud kho. Sodo fierrad raenif.”
That won’t kill me, you know. It will only make me angry.
Elodie knew she was taking a risk. But she had a plan, and that required maneuvering both herself and the dragon to where she wanted them to be. She needed to buy some time to do it.
Elodie advanced a step, the tip of the sword forcing the dragon back a few feet. She moved a little to her right. The dragon, a hunter even when it had a blade pointed at it, followed her shift in position. Elodie just needed to keep repeating the movement, a hundred small steps and pivots along the riverbank, to have a chance at saving herself and Flor. To distract the dragon from what she was doing, she would need to keep talking.
“Vis kir vis, sanae kir res,” Elodie said. “Life for life, blood for fire. The meaning of the first part is clear—if the kingdom sacrifices lives to you, you will spare the lives of the rest of Aurea.”
“Did you only come to that conclusion now?” the dragon growled. “How disappointing.”
“No. That part was obvious. But ‘blood for fire’…” She recalled what it had said when she was in the cave of mushrooms and icicles. Nyonnedrae. Verif drae. Syrrif drae. Drae suverru. The dragon didn’t want just any royal spawn to eat. It wanted the right one. The cunning one. The princess who survives.
There was a purpose to the sacrifice beyond the bloody symbolism. The dragon had told her it had been waiting for her for a very long time. Elodie was smart and resourceful. She was a survivor.
She had a role to play in the dragon’s grander plans.
“Blood for fire…” Elodie glanced at the split eggs and all the stillborn babies. “You think our blood will bring back dragons, don’t you?”
The dragon flinched under her mocking tone but did not move more than that while she had a sword at its eye. “Not think. I know. Sanae kir res. Those were the last words my mother spoke to me. The blood of The One shall herald the beginning of the next generation of dragons.”
Elodie shifted a few more feet and made as if she were going to jab at the dragon’s eye. “Selfish. You would kill so many just because you’re lonely? You are cruel and heartless.” She said it all in Khaevis Ventvis.
“Do not befoul my language by speaking such terrible lies!” the dragon spat, sparks leaping from its mouth. “It is humans who are cruel and heartless! It is the fault of humans that I am all alone!”
The dragon rushed at Elodie, teeth slashing through her dress and into the skin of her chest. At the same time, she plunged her father’s sword into its eye.
Except it didn’t go in. The beast’s eyeball was hard as marble. Elodie’s blade sliced only the surface and skimmed off. Merdú! But then the blade found purchase in the soft folds in the corner of the dragon’s eye.
The momentum of the attack threw Elodie against the monster, so her wounded chest hugged its cheek, the dragon’s purple blood now spilling like violet-black tears.
It shrieked, the sound high-pitched and piercing like a thousand spears against glass, and in its pain, it flung Elodie to the opposite bank of the river. She landed roughly in the mud, the jolt knocking the sword from her grip.
“Elodie!” Floria screamed.
There was blood all over Elodie’s chest and dress. A purple haze formed a corona in her vision, the threat of a concussion or shock about to overtake her. She had only enough wits to drag herself and the sword out of the reach of the river before violet clouded everything she saw.
“Retaza!” a small voice whimpered. It came from the mouth of a dragon, a young one. “Retaza, my belly aches.”
A full-grown dragon with lavender scales lay next to the little one. They were on the shore of a subterranean river.
It was the same cave Elodie was in now, except there were no dragon statues. No gold coins. Only a river and a baby and its mother.
Retaza. Mother.
Was this…a memory?
Elodie’s mind was in the scene, but she was not. Rather, she seemed to be hearing and seeing through the perspective of—
The dragon! Its blood was all over her. And now she was experiencing one of its memories, just like the visions of princesses past.
But this was from a long, long time ago. This dragon was only a baby then. How long ago? A millennium?
Let the story unfold, Elodie thought.
She stopped asking questions and allowed the blood memory to engulf her. The sounds and thoughts in Khaevis Ventvis no longer sounded sharp and ominous, but instead soothing and familiar, as they would to dragon ears.
The mother dragon opened heavy-lidded eyes. It seemed to take her effort.
“Retaza, my belly aches,” the little dragon said again.
“Rest, kho aikoro.”
“But I’m hungry. I want more meat.”
“There is no more.”
“I only got to eat a little,” the young dragon whined.
The mother surged upright, her golden pupils wild. “It was already too much! The princess Victoria poisoned her own blood. I did not know until it was too late. I should not have given her arm to you…”
The little dragon whimpered, curling against the throbbing in her stomach.
Why could they not live together in peace, the dragons and the humans who had recently arrived on the isle? Why were they trying to force the dragons from the isle that had been their home for a thousand years?
But then the small dragon remembered that the humans did not even know she existed. Her mother had kept her hidden away, for as soon as the new arrivals saw her mother, they had immediately decided that she was evil. Simply because they could not understand any creature that did not look like them.
Her mother was trying to keep her safe. She had survived the soldiers sent by the king and queen, but now, if there had been poison in the princess’s blood…
Is that why her mother lay on the banks of the river, hardly moving? The little dragon had consumed only a few bites of the princess, but her mother had eaten the rest.
“Retaza?” the young dragon said, barely audible for the trembling in her little voice. “Are we going to die?”
“Ny,” her mother said, wheezing at the same time that fire flamed from her nostrils. She staggered to her feet, but the gold in her eyes was clear. “I will not let you die. I. Will. Not.”
The dragon roared in the cave. Not in the past, but now. Elodie bolted upright, the memory vanishing as she blinked at the prowling dragon, clotting purple blood crusted around its injured eye.
Elodie gripped the handle of her father’s sword tightly and scrambled to her feet, readying the blade for another attack.
And yet it was no longer as easy to wish the dragon ill, now that she’d seen it as a baby, with a mother. And its own babies…even though the mummified fetuses were horrific to look at, they were still innocent lives that had done no wrong upon the world.
“What happened to your mother?” Elodie asked.
The dragon, which was stalking toward her, stopped. “Kho retaza? How do you know about my mother?”
Elodie touched the drying purple blood on her sword.
The dragon growled deep in its throat. “No one has ever walked my memories before. They are mine!”
Right. Elodie may have felt some empathy for the dragon because she’d seen part of history through its eyes. But that didn’t mean the dragon felt any differently about Elodie. In fact, sharing the memory was probably akin to stealing treasure from the deepest, most private chamber of its lair.
She had to return to her plan for saving herself and Floria. Elodie glanced at the platform of stone to confirm that her sister was still safe. She was.
So now Elodie just had to maneuver the dragon a little farther away…
“I am sorry,” Elodie said. “I didn’t mean to invade your privacy by seeing the vision of your mother. But Victoria—”
“Victoria murdered my retaza,” the dragon hissed, spewing smoke and ash.
“I’m sorry,” Elodie said again, and she meant it. She had lost her mother, too.
“Humans are never sorry!” the dragon roared while it advanced toward Elodie. “As my mother lay dying, she reminded me of the bargain the first royal family had made. She made me promise I would remember how Victoria tricked and killed her. Then my mother prophesied that revenge would come one day, that a princess’s blood would give birth to a new generation of dragons. The One who survives. Sanae kir res.”
Elodie still didn’t understand why the dragon was trying to kill her if it wanted a princess to survive. Or maybe they had different definitions, and what Elodie had done—escaped, fought back—meant she had already survived. But that was not enough for her; she wanted full survival.
She glanced at their position in the cave. They were almost where she wanted them. And Floria was watching, quiet but alert, far enough away now.
“And you believed your mother’s deathbed delirium?” Elodie asked. Just a few more yards…
“It was not delirium,” the dragon rasped. “You humans with your small minds cannot comprehend how the world truly works. My mother knew what was to come. She knew I would live, but Victoria’s poison ensured there would be no more dragons thereafter.”
“I see,” Elodie said, shifting them the last few yards she needed. “So you exacted your revenge year after year, holding tight to your mother’s prophecy.”
“Ed, zedrae. The world craves balance, and some day, a princess’s blood will right the wrongs of the first. Vis kir vis. Sanae kir res.”
Elodie thought again of the color of the dragon’s scales when it was cooing to its dead children. The color of its mother in the memory. And the color of Elodie’s own gown. The priestesses had chanted a song in the dragon’s language, but they had long forgotten the meaning of the words. Is that what had happened with the color of the dress, as well?
Perhaps the first priestesses—the ones of Victoria’s era—had known that lavender was the color of a dragon’s scales when it was in the role of a mother, and the color of a dragon who yearns for a child of its own. And if the prophecy was correct, then one of the princess sacrifices would be the key to this dragon becoming a mother again.
If that was the case, the dragon was right that humans were the ones who were cruel. They were terrible even to their own kind, dressing their princesses as symbols of fertility to the creature to which they would be sacrificed.
But it did not change the fact that Elodie was pitted against this dragon, and only one of them could win. And now she had the dragon where she wanted it.
“Vorra kho tke raz!” The dragon shot a plume of flame at Elodie. The fire swallowed her arm, accompanied by the dragon’s sticky, flammable tar, which spattered on her hair and lit it on fire. The fur trim of Lady Bayford’s cloak burst into flames, too, and searing heat engulfed Elodie. The pain turned her vision into nothing but white stars.
The river…
She couldn’t see. She couldn’t swim. But the only hope she had was to put out the flames, so she threw herself into the water.
It snuffed out the fire immediately. In shock, Elodie opened her eyes underwater, watching as her singed hair floated around her. The skin on her arm was red and raw, the charred sword clutched in her fist.
Everything moved as if time had slowed down, and the colors were all more saturated. Lady Bayford’s cloak billowed in the deep green water. The agony of the burns delivered itself in ponderous bursts, flares of searing pain drawn out to torture her. And blue glowworms drifted out of the cloak’s pocket, as if saying farewell since they were no longer useful as a lantern—
Wait! Elodie’s mind snapped back into real time. The glowworms could heal. She snatched at them and tried to put them on her burned skin, but because they were underwater, the helpful worms couldn’t stay and just kept floating away…
Her lungs burned. She needed to kick to the surface soon or drown. The white stars in her vision returned, and Elodie knew she had mere seconds left if she wanted to live, if she wanted to save Floria.
Elodie grabbed handfuls of glowworms and stuffed them into her mouth, swallowing them whole. Her reasoning was, like the dragon mother’s deathbed prophecy, half delirious. Elodie hoped the other half was astute.
Instinct made her legs kick, and she exploded through the surface of the river. A few more glowworms floated there and she scooped them toward her body, silently entreating them to stay.
“Elodie!” Floria screamed.
She looked up just in time to see the dragon plunging into the river after her. The water surged up and carried her closer to shore, though, and her feet brushed the rocky riverbed.
“Senir vo errut ni desto, Elodie. Nykomarr. This was always your destiny, Elodie. Do not fight it.”
“I don’t believe in destiny,” she said, wincing with every movement as she flailed and tried not to drown. “I believe in making my own future.”
“So trite. I expected more from you.” The dragon narrowed its eyes, then dipped its mouth down into the river. Bubbles began to rise, and the water churned.
Then it began to boil. The dragon was blowing fire into the river, and the scalding water came in waves against Elodie’s already burned body. She screamed as the waves shoved her toward shore, and she scrabbled up the sloped riverbed, hot water in her nose, her mouth, her lungs.
The dragon stalked toward her, sloshing through the boiling river and coming ashore.
Elodie coughed up the water. She couldn’t succumb now, she had to check her surroundings.
She was not too far off from her original plan. She hacked up some more water, then got up and ran limping to where she needed to be, dragging her father’s sword with her.
“I won’t give in to you,” she said. “If you want my blood, you’re going to have to come and get it. Just like your mother did to Victoria.”
“Elodie, no!” Floria cried.
Floria’s call distracted the dragon just enough for Elodie to get in front of the two-headed dragon fountain. “Come on!” she taunted. She would be merciless in her barbs, because it was the only way to make sure her plan worked. “What are you waiting for? Permission from your retaza? The one who left you here all alone? Permission from the dead babies you collect like morbid dolls? I am tired of this game, too. BURN ME, BITCH!”
Apoplectic, the dragon’s eyes turned into pure, molten gold, and it unleashed a roar of fire as scorching and furious as a thousand hells.
She threw herself out of the way. The flames hit the two-headed fountain, into the open mouths, blasting through the C-curve of the statue, then back out the other stone jaws like a boomerang. Fire exploded straight back at the dragon, and globs of its own sticky tar flung into its face, onto its neck, torso, and wings, and also burst into flame.
The dragon roared. It thrashed on the cave floor, its wings smashing statues, its tail slamming into the walls and dislodging centuries of emeralds and rubies and sapphires in a shower of color like sadistic confetti.
It got to its feet and tried to beat the flames out with its wings. But the sticky tar covered its body and would not be snuffed so easily, and instead, the motion lifted the dragon into the air. It slammed into the ceiling like a gargantuan fireball. Crystal stalactites shattered and crashed down.
