The Dragon's Price (Transference #1)(15)

The cave curves to the left, and Golmarr stops, pointing to something long and coiled, resting between two rocks. He picks it up. It is a piece of rope leading deeper into the cave. “This looks like the same rope they lowered us down with. The rope taken from the lamb.”

After we have gone twenty steps, he pauses and frowns, rubbing the rope between his fingers. “This feels different,” he says, and holds it close to the dragon scale. The rope is blackened and brittle. “I think…” He holds it up to his nose and sniffs. His eyes grow wide and he drops it. “This is burned!” he whispers. “The fire dragon must cook its food before it eats it.”

My stomach turns. “How? With the low ceiling, you said it wouldn’t fit.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s smaller than the history books say it is. But it has been here.” Beneath our feet, the ground rumbles. Overhead, the thousands of bats coating the ceiling start to screech and drop, catching themselves in midair a mere instant before they hit us. They surge around us and over us, flying in the direction of the cave’s opening. Golmarr and I look at each other with wide eyes. He clutches my hand in his and starts pulling me deeper into the cave.

“Shouldn’t we be following the bats? We need to get away!” I say, grasping layers of skirt and petticoats in my free hand in an attempt to keep up with him.

“We’re not trying to get away. We’re trying to find somewhere to hide!” He leaps over a rock, and my hand is torn from his. I stumble on my skirts and fall to my knees. Without a word, Golmarr leaps to my side and lifts me to my feet. I silently curse myself for not cutting off my ridiculous skirt earlier, because far, far ahead, an orange glow lights the darkness. And I can barely run.





The entire tunnel is illuminated. It looks like a long orange worm, and the light is growing brighter and brighter. The air around us is being drawn toward the light, sucking my shirt against my back and pulling loose wisps of hair that have escaped my braid forward around my face.

“Fire,” Golmarr yells. “We need to find shelter!” He is looking everywhere, his eyes scanning the ground, the walls, the ceiling. I’m too petrified to move, so I stare at him in a daze. “Sorrowlynn! I need your help! We need to find somewhere to hide before the fire reaches here.” He puts his hands on my shoulders and gives me a firm shake. “You’re destined to die by your own hand, right?” I blink at him and nod. “Well, if you are burned to death, you are not dying by your own hand. That means you’re going to survive this, so help me!”

I look around the cave, at the rocks, the walls, the ceiling, but there is nowhere to go. And then Golmarr’s hand wraps tight around my wrist, and he is pulling me to the side, toward a jagged crack in the wall. The wind is roaring now, the tunnel glowing like midday. The fire is almost upon us.

Golmarr practically throws me at the crack. I put my hands up to shield my face and fall forward, landing hard on the ground. Golmarr tumbles to the ground beside me, and then we are engulfed in heat. I dig my elbows into the ground and drag myself forward, away from the smoldering air and deeper into the crack in the side of the cave. The farther I go, the cooler the air becomes. I crawl until I come to solid rock and can go no farther. Together, Golmarr and I huddle against the rock and shield our faces from the heat. I peer through my fingers. The crack we fell through looks like a slash of orange lightning. And then, like a flock of birds flying past a window, the fire is gone and we are plunged into darkness.

The dragon scale hanging from my neck looks hardly brighter than an ember buried by ash. The air is hot and dry and seems to solidify and darken, and then the horse lord and I are coughing as smoke fills our lungs and stings our eyes. I put my sleeve over my mouth and nose and breathe through it, but it hardly helps.

“Get down,” Golmarr says between coughs, pushing me toward the ground. I press my cheek against the stone floor and breathe, and the air is a little fresher. Golmarr slithers on his belly toward the wall’s opening. I stop beside him, our shoulders barely fitting side by side in the narrow fissure, and look out into the cave. It is like trying to see with a thick blanket over my head, but the air is a little less smoky. I lay my cheek down on my arm. The horse lord shifts, and I feel him lay his head down beside mine. His hair spills over my hand, and I run my fingers through it.

“How did you know?” I ask.

“Know what?” His face is so close to mine that his breath tickles my skin when he talks.

I inhale and choke on smoke. “That I am supposed to die by my own hand,” I gasp.

“I’ve known all my life, I suppose. Well, probably since I was two. That’s how old I was when you were born. My brothers and I talked about you a lot when we were growing up.” His voice is hoarse from the smoke.

“I hate that ridiculous prediction. I have been called Suicide Sorrow behind my back for my whole life because of it,” I grumble.

Golmarr laughs a whispered laugh. “Do you want to know what my brothers and I would say about you, Suicide Sorrow?”

“Not really,” I say, which makes him laugh again.

“We would say, ‘I wish I had a birth prediction like that, because I would know without a doubt that no matter what I did, I wouldn’t die…unless it was by my own hand.’ I remember taming a stallion a few years ago, and the first time I rode him he tried and tried to buck me off. All I could think was, If I had a prediction like that stupid, spoiled Faodarian princess, this would be a lot less scary, because if I’m not careful this horse is going to throw me and I’m going to break my neck.” He laughs, and I laugh, too. “That is why, when I saw that fire coming, I knew you were going to survive. That fire was not your own hand, so it couldn’t kill you.”