The Dragon Mistress: Book 2 (PAPERBACK, LGBT)

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ONE

THE SOUND OF VOICES raised in anger greeted us as we picked our way closer to the entrance of the secluded mountain cave. From the corner of my eye, I caught Nyx’s flinch. The green dragon—whose damaged wing he was supporting with careful hands—made a low groaning sound in her chest. Her emerald eyes rolled as she canted her head first to one side and then the other, eyeing the way ahead nervously.

“Let Eldris take care of things,” I said, keeping my voice as calm as I could manage. “I trust him, Nyx. He hasn’t let me down yet.”

Nyx squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head as though trying to dislodge something before opening them again. I tried not to stare at the glowing viridity that lit his gaze from within.

“I can’t think straight,” he whispered. “Frella, what’s happening to me?”

As much as I wished I did, I had no real answers for him.
“It’ll be all right,” I reassured him. “Let’s just worry about getting your new friend to the cave so we can help her.”

It seemed unbelievable that I’d only learned about the existence of the last five remaining dragons a day ago. Everyone in Utrea believed the creatures had been hunted to extinction years ago, after the great purge ordered by the current king’s father as part of a peace agreement with the neighboring Alyrion Empire. Now, I’d managed to blunder into the middle of a drama that rivaled the most fantastical legends ever immortalized in song and verse.

The three soldiers-for-hire I’d met on the trade road to Safaad were hiding a secret—one that could end up getting all of us killed if we weren’t careful. Their leader, Rayth, had unexpectedly come upon a cache of viable dragon eggs some two years previously, and successfully hatched five dragonettes by setting fire to the forest around the cave where the nest was hidden.

He and his two comrades—a dark-skinned giant named Eldris and a silver-tongued shadow called Aristede—had been watching over the beasts ever since, trying to tame them and keep them safe from the king’s bounty hunters. Ultimately, though, the five dragons wouldn’t be safe until they formed soul-bonds with five humans. According to the others, that connection would change them from wild beasts into intelligent partners. Only with the soul-bonds could the dragons understand the necessity of hiding themselves away and remaining undiscovered.

How painfully ironic that more than two years after Rayth had found the nest, Nyx had stumbled in and—to all appearances—fallen directly into a soul-bond with the delicate green female dragon. She had always been skittish, and the others had given her up for dead after she disappeared weeks ago. This new development would have been fine if Nyx were anyone else. In fact, it would have been a blessing. But fate was cruel, and the gods’ sense of humor capricious.

Nyx had been born Leannyck, and some years ago he’d been Rayth’s steward in the Utrean cavalry. He’d been young at the time—sixteen. When he’d lost his nerve and fled during a battle, his moment of cowardice led to the death of three of the soldiers under Rayth’s command. For that, Rayth had never forgiven him. And indeed, after the initial moment of shock when the two unexpectedly came face to face yesterday morning, Rayth had made a rather spirited attempt to kill him.

I’d stopped Rayth from putting a crossbow bolt through Nyx’s heart by the somewhat extreme method of skewering him through the bicep with a small throwing dagger, in order to ruin his aim. Nyx ran away immediately afterward, disappearing into the mountains. That should have been the end of it. Instead, Nyx had stumbled upon the injured green dragon during his headlong flight, and somehow formed a soul-bond with her.

I didn’t have to imagine what Rayth’s reaction to that was likely to be; I could hear it with my own ears as we got closer to the cave entrance.

“Impossible!” he was shouting. “It’s… it must be some kind of trick… a ruse to save that worthless deserter’s life!”

Eldris wasn’t yelling, exactly, but his voice sounded like boulders grinding together, poised on the verge of an avalanche. “Stop and think very carefully before you call me a liar to my face, Prince Rathanii.”

I winced, because, yeah, that was another thing. If Nyx was to be believed, the wine-soaked asshole who’d been rubbing my hackles the wrong way since pretty much the first moment we’d met was actually a prince, and had for some strange reason neglected to mention that tiny fact.

To anyone, judging by Eldris’ reaction.

The beat of silence that followed was answer enough, if you asked me. When the pause threatened to grow too long, Aristede filled it.

“Perhaps we should wait for the others arrive so you can see the situation firsthand, rather than—”

Rayth muttered something low and angry, the words too hushed for me to make out.

“You’re toeing the line with me right now, mate,” Eldris said, in the same dangerous tone of voice as before.

Nyx and the dragon came to a halt behind me, perhaps two-dozen steps from the entrance. I continued forward, setting my jaw in preparation for jumping into the fray. Three pairs of eyes settled on me as I poked my head inside the cave.

“Rayth,” I said, “shut your trap. One of your dragons is badly hurt, and she needs help. Oh, and she’s also not your dragon anymore. She’s Nyx’s dragon now, and Nyx is terrified of you. With good reason, from what I’ve seen. So get the fuck out of this cave for an hour or two. And I swear if you so much as look at him sideways as you leave, I’ll aim my next knife at your princely cock instead of your princely arm.”

Tense silence reigned for the space of several heartbeats.

“What color are the boy’s eyes?” Rayth asked eventually, which was admittedly not high on the list of responses I was braced for.

My eyes narrowed. “He’s not a boy, and they’re glowing with an unnatural green light,” I told him. “They were hazel before, brown with only a small ring of green around the edge of the irises.”

Rayth cursed softly under his breath.

Nyx had evidently gathered his courage to approach the rest of the way. I heard another low rumble of distress from the injured dragon, and turned to find them right outside the entrance.

“Come on, let’s get her inside. It’s fine,” I told Nyx, throwing Rayth a glare that said it had damned well better be fine.

Nyx reluctantly led the dragon through the cave’s opening. I watched Rayth with wary eyes, seeing the instant when he really took it all in and accepted the truth. For a moment, his face paled, and he looked like he’d been punched. Or, more accurately, he looked like a man whose entire world had just been knocked off its axis.

My sympathy for him hovered right on the verge of nonexistence, if I were being perfectly honest.

Aristede frowned and stepped forward, his attention centered on the dragon’s injured side and ripped wing. “This needs sewing, and setting,” he said. He came around to Nyx’s side, with eyes only for the wounds that needed treatment. “I could probably—”

Nyx flinched at his approach, and the dragon arched its neck, hissing. A gout of flame shot from its open mouth, singing the shoulder of Aristede’s jerkin as he ducked to the side with a gasp of surprise.

“Nyx!” I cried, suddenly remembering his unaccountably fearful reaction upon his and Aristede’s first meeting. I still had no idea what was behind Nyx’s distrust, since they’d never met before and Aristede had been nothing but pleasant toward him as far as I’d seen. It didn’t matter, though—the dragon was picking up on Nyx’s fear, and that could have deadly effects for anyone on the wrong end of its fiery defensiveness.

“S-sorry,” Nyx said. “I don’t… I can’t…”

“Nyx, breathe,” I commanded, stepping in front of him to block his view of the others. “Try to stay calm.”

But Nyx looked like he was on his last nerve. “It’s too much! I can’t… keep things straight inside my head.”

He was shaking, despite the warmth of the morning and the remaining heat from the fire inside the cave. I looked back and forth between the four men in the cave and made a quick decision.

“All of you, give them some space,” I told Rayth, Aristede, and Eldris. “Go stand on the far side of the cave until Nyx and I can get the dragon away from the entrance. Then leave.”

Aristede met my eyes and gave a slight nod, backing away.

“You gonna be all right in here alone with the two of them, Frella?” Eldris asked.

“Yeah, don’t worry about me, big man,” I said. “Though I might need you in a bit to run messages back and forth. Aristede, I take it you know something about healing and medicine?”

“Battlefield medicine, yes,” he replied, sounding admirably calm after his recent brush with being flambéed.

“Good,” I said. “I used to assist the healer in my village sometimes, after she got too old to do the physically demanding part of things. But the only thing I’ve ever sewn is cloth. If you think that wing can be stitched up, I’m going to need a quick and dirty education on how to do it.”

He nodded.

“Nyx,” I said, “are you going to let me look at her wing properly? It may hurt her, and it’s going to be up to you to make sure she understands I’m helping, not attacking her.”

He was breathing hard, and when he didn’t answer right away, I took a chance and cupped his cheek, making him look at me with those eerie, glowing eyes. “Nyx,” I said more softly.

Nyx blinked, the glow fading until I could see a hint of his natural eye color behind it.

“Yes,” he managed in a hoarse rasp. “I’ll make sure she understands.”

“Glad to hear it,” I replied dryly, lowering my hand. “Now, let’s get her over to the fire so I’ll be able to see what I’m doing.”

Nyx urged the dragon deeper into the cave, cutting nervous glances at Rayth and the others as he did. To my relief, the three men left quietly once they could get past to the entrance without crowding us. I noticed that Eldris had a hand around Rayth’s uninjured arm, but from the brief glance I was able to spare them, it looked more like support than manhandling.

There were so many invisible riptides swirling beneath the surface right now that I feared being dragged under if I let my focus slip from the task in front of me. Nyx urged the dragon to lie down with her injured side facing the flickering glow of the firelight. She did so clumsily, another small bleat of distress escaping her as her right hind leg crumpled awkwardly on the way down.

I forced myself to take note of everything—she’d been limping on that leg on the way here. Nyx tried to help her the rest of the way down, but even though she was smaller and thinner than the other dragons I’d seen, she was still far too large for him to support. She ended up with her forelegs tucked in front of her and both hind legs stretched out to the side like a resting cat. Her good wing was neatly folded against her body, but the damaged one lay twisted and limp once Nyx settled it carefully on the ground next to her.

I’d been right in my initial assessment —it was not only torn, but also broken. A feeling of helplessness tried to overwhelm the rational side of my mind, but I shoved it down.

“Nyx, help me out here,” I said. “I see a large tear in her wing’s webbing, and at least two broken bones. Also, there are scrapes on her side and underbelly with some scales missing. And whatever’s wrong with her right hind leg. Pretend she’s an injured horse. Tell me if I’m missing anything.”

I was banking on Nyx’s experience as a stablehand, combined with whatever extra insight the soul-bond might give him. My impression from the injuries was that they could have come from either a rockslide or a flying mishap. And while the exact details might not matter, I didn’t want to miss anything major in my concern over her wing.

“There’s swelling over the middle joint in her hind leg,” he said uncertainly. “Could be bruising, or it could’ve gotten twisted. I think those are all the major injuries, though.”

“Are you able to communicate things to her?” I asked. “Can you keep her calm while I straighten out the wing to see where the breaks are?”

His features twisted with worry. “I’m… not sure. Let me do it instead, just in case. She won’t hurt me.”

“All right,” I agreed, crouching down to get a better view of the expanse of scales and webbing as Nyx gently unfurled it. He winced as he did it, his face going pale. My heart sped up in worry. “Nyx… do you feel what she’s feeling right now? Are you feeling the pain from her injuries?”

Because, crap—I was not prepared for that. Would he be able to keep the dragon calm if he were also in pain from the things I was doing as I tried to treat her?

His brows drew together. “Not exactly. It’s—I can’t explain it very well. I can feel that she’s in pain, but it’s not my pain. I don’t feel it in my body… if that makes sense?”

It didn’t—not really—but as long as it meant Nyx wasn’t living through the experience of the dragon’s bones being reset, that was probably a good thing.

“All right,” I told him. “I was just checking. I see three breaks here. Does that seem right to you?”

He was still pale, but he appeared to be coming back to himself a bit now that the others were gone. He nodded.

“I think so.” He pointed. “The second large bone, there, and the first two that look like long fingers, about halfway along… here and here. Is that what you’re seeing, too?”

“It is,” I told him. “I’m going to go talk to Aristede about how best to do this. You just stay here and keep her calm, all right? I won’t bring Aristede here, but I might bring Eldris as far as the entrance so he can ask Aristede any questions I might have while I’m working, and bring back the answers for me.”

Nyx swallowed and pressed the heel of his palm against his right eye socket. “I’m sorry, Frella. I know it would be easier to let Aristede do this. I just… everything’s all tangled up in my head, and I can’t help it. I didn’t mean for her to breathe fire at him like that.”

I tried to smile, but I suspect it ended up being more of a grimace. “I know. I’m sure he knows, too. Now, you two rest for a bit while I go learn how to sew up a torn wing. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”