The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(45)

Now, her torso. Gray flattens like a cat and proceeds with little jerks. The cabin creaks alarmingly as the edge of the porch catches and releases her dorsal spikes like a clock’s movement. She finally pops free and reinflates. She’s seven feet at the shoulders, a foot taller than the tallest draft horse Jeryon’s ever seen, with a body like an aurochs, nineteen feet from snout to tail, with a thirty-five-foot wingspan. She weighs a ton, he estimates.

To get this big, she ate six times a day, and nothing on the island was large enough to satisfy her. One week, when a pod of dolphins was migrating nearby, she ate ten of them, bringing each to Jeryon for his approval. The stink was horrific, especially when a few didn’t agree with her and she vomited them up under the cabin. At least she ate them again. Worse was their whistles and squawks and the way they flopped on the ground before she gobbled them.

Her greatest catch was a whale calf bigger than her. To his horror she kept dropping it in the sea while flying to the island, then diving down to retrieve it again. He wasn’t sure if she couldn’t carry it very far or if she was playing with the poor thing. Eventually she dropped it into camp with such force it left a dent in the packed ground before the cabin.

He takes his saddle, bridle, and other tack from a peg on the edge of the porch and puts them on her. To the saddle he affixes a dozen waterskins made of dragon skin, the bag full of shega, another full of olives boiled with herbs, sprinkled with sea salt and pepper and wrapped in palm leaves, and several spears with dragonbone tips. He figures this will last him several days. Of course if he doesn’t reach land, none of his supplies will matter. The dragon, which he’s flown in circles around the island to test her range and endurance, should be able to reach the land south of Yness in a day, but he’s not sure how far east he is and so could miss the continent entirely.

Jeryon goes inside. He wonders what life will be like with keys. And without bamboo. In the common area he checks the barrel of water, as well as crates full of dried fish, fruit, olives, and spices. These should last at least two months. He evens up the bamboo spears standing beside the door. He ducks into his bedroom. There, beside his bed, is his blade. He puts it in the pocket of his dragonskin pants, a good luck charm now that he has a dragonbone knife with a bamboo handle.

He pauses at the door of the other room. The cabin is silent. He steps in.

4



* * *



Everlyn lies facedown on a wide bed beneath a dragonskin coverlid. He’s cut her hair close to disguise the places where it didn’t grow back, but patches of puckered skin betray them.

She rolls on her side to show him the good half of her face. He kneels beside her. She says, “You’re going?” Her voice is raspy from her throat and lungs being burned.

He nods. He glances under the bed. Her sword is there. Somehow it survived the fire. A bamboo spear is easier for her to use, but she won’t give in to one. Practicing with the sword, she claims, works her body and eases her mind.

“I’ll see you off,” she says and sits up.

He puts a hand on her shoulder. “No.”

She shakes him off. “I can’t spend the week in bed.”

“It could be longer. Maybe a month. Or two.”

“Then I’ll have to get up,” she says. The blanket slides off her as she swings her legs over the other side of the bed. She wears only his old yellow shirt, which is long enough to reach her knees and worn soft. Her arms are crosshatched with pale white scars from where he pulled her through the hole Gray made, and they accent her wiry muscles.

“Shall I do your back?” he says.

She shakes her head. “I can do that.”

“I want to.”

She unbuttons the shirt and lets it drape over her hips. He uncovers a bamboo cup sitting beside the bed. The smell of honey and pepper fills the room. He spreads lotion on his palms and works it into her scars.

He also works in a year of fury at his mates. He sees their names written in wrinkles and puckers. He sees their faces drawn in desperate flesh. They did this, he thinks. They made her choose. He would trade every minute of their two years together, he would trade their ever having met, if she could be whole again. Even justice will have to wait. Seeing his mates in gibbets won’t heal her. He needs a ship to get her off the island.

The dragon isn’t big enough to carry them both on her back. He’d tested that proposition by hanging bags of rocks over his saddle. She found it difficult to take off and couldn’t balance in the air. Nor is she strong enough to carry one of them all the way to the League with her back claws. He’d tested that with a sling full of rocks. She’s fine for short distances, but Gray has to let go after a few miles. The poth is in too much pain to fly so he’ll go to Hanosh and bring back a ship.

The Trust, he’s sure, will be more than accommodating in exchange for his services with Gray.

He would fly to Yness, which is hundreds of miles closer, but no doubt they would kill him on sight and take the dragon.

When the poth can stretch without feeling like her skin will tear, he lifts his shirt back up over her shoulders, and she rebuttons it. He comes around the bed and offers her his arm. Her feet are sore. She doesn’t often wear her boots, and her legs stiffen when she doesn’t move for a while. They go outside. He climbs off the porch into the saddle and straps himself to it. He and the dragon move together. They didn’t always.