The Dragon's Price (Transference #1)(80)

I close my eyes as the pain from all of my wounds slowly starts to grow, merging with the horror of Golmarr trying to kill me. Tears trickle over my temples and into my hair as the thump of galloping hooves echoes against the ground. Without looking, I know that Golmarr is gone. And now, despite the people milling around me, I am alone.

I lie on the ice with my eyes closed until Enzio comes and carefully lifts me into his arms. He carries me to the wagon of dead and injured soldiers and presses a piece of cloth to my wounded shoulder to slow the bleeding. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I should never have left you. I thought, since you were with Golmarr…” I curl on my side and put my head in his lap. As the tears start pouring from my eyes, he puts his hand on my head. “I’m so sorry.”





When we arrive at King Marrkul’s house, Yerengul and Enzio help me out of the wagon. Without a word, Yerengul lifts me into his arms and carries me to the kitchen. He lays me on the long, rectangular wooden table and cuts the blood-soaked clothing away from my left shoulder.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I have been trained as a healer. I am tending to your wounds.” For the first time since I met him, there is no mischief in his eyes. I stare silently up at the ceiling as he pokes and prods my wound. While he examines me, Enzio wads up a blanket and puts it beneath my head.

“There’s water heating on the fire,” Yerengul says to Enzio. “Can you add a few more logs?” Without a word, Enzio goes to the hearth.

King Marrkul strides into the kitchen and studies me with worried eyes. “How bad is it?” he asks Yerengul.

His son looks up. “Bad. He would have hit her heart if she hadn’t blocked his attack.”

Marrkul presses his hands over his eyes and slowly slides them down his battle-weary face. “Do you know why he tried to…” He grunts, and I realize he cannot say the words kill her.

Yerengul shakes his head and his eyes meet mine. “Do you know why he tried to kill you?”

I nod and close my eyes. “It’s not what you think,” I whisper, and fresh tears spill over my temples. “The glass dragon…Her treasure was hatred. Especially hatred for me.”

King Marrkul runs his hand through his tangled black hair. “I’m sorry, lass.”

“Do you know where he went?” Yerengul asks. I shake my head the tiniest bit.

When the water is hot, Yerengul washes my face and frowns. “Her forehead is split, too,” he says. “Enzio, will you hold her down while I mend her shoulder?”

Enzio nods and his warm hands press on my arms. Hot water is poured over my wound. I gasp and whimper at the pain and try not to writhe. A minute later, I moan as a needle is stuck through my skin and pulled beneath the cut and out the other side. Every time the needle stabs, I moan, and Enzio flinches and pushes me down a little harder, holding me immobile.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, Princess,” Enzio whispers.

Through a fog of pain, I hear Marrkul ask, “What think you of the fire, son?”

For a moment Yerengul stops stitching my shoulder. “You mean the one that didn’t burn her, or the one that consumed the dragon?”

“I mean the one the she used to save Golmarr from the dragon. The one that burned her without burning her. Everyone saw it! It is all our soldiers whispered of on the ride home.”

“I will tell you what I think,” someone calls as booted feet thud on the wooden floor. Seven dark and strapping horse lords stride into the kitchen. They gather around the table and stare down at me—some with pale hazel eyes, some with dark. They are still dirty from battle and dressed in bloodstained armor. Silently, they study me, laid out on the table, and my heart starts to pound—a weak, tired flutter befitting my ravaged body.

After a drawn-out moment, Ingvar breaks the silence. “She is a witch. That is what I think,” he states, eyeing me.

“And as such, she will be sought after by every king and queen in the world,” Jessen says, folding his arms over his broad chest.

“Wars will be waged over her,” another brother says, narrowing his deep brown eyes and studying me further.

“Men will die to own her,” Yerengul adds.

“Or they will try to buy her,” Olenn says.

“Or steal her,” King Marrkul muses.

“And dragons will seek to destroy her,” Nayadi’s aged, grating voice rings out. Two brothers step aside, letting the hunched, withered hag join the circle. She stands beside my wounded shoulder. Reaching out a bent, gnarled finger, she touches the half-stitched gash. Before I can open my mouth to protest her closeness, all the pain is whisked away from the wound, and muscles I didn’t realize I was clenching relax as I sigh and sink against the hard table. “Stitch the rest quickly,” Nayadi instructs Yerengul. “I, unlike some, do not have the power to bring one back from the brink of death, let alone heal a small wound. The pain will be back before long.” Her unseeing eyes meet mine, and she licks her pink gums.

Yerengul bites the side of his cheek and leans over my shoulder, deep in concentration as he finishes stitching. I feel nothing but a light tugging on my skin.

“So, what shall we do with this Faodarian princess, who is pledged to your youngest brother?” King Marrkul asks. His troubled eyes meet mine.