Page 58 of Fortune's Blade

But she seemed to like my answer for once, and nodded. “That is even better. We make each other’s light brighter, you see?”

No, I didn’t see. I didn’t see a goddamned thing. I also didn’t know what was happening to me, until I looked down. And saw all that green light sinking into my skin, lessening the pain, and knitting up the worst of the wounds.

I looked back up at her, and she had the strangest expression on her face. It took me a moment to realize that she was laughing at me. “You will not die, Dory of House Basarab. And you will find your sister for yourself. But perhaps, I will come along as well.

“There may be much that we can learn from each other.”

Chapter Nineteen

The next morning dawned clear and cold, enough of the latter for me to feel it despite being wrapped in a huge, silken fur that I’d been brought overnight. We were still in the field, although it was starting to look more like a real camp and less like someone’s cloak that had been draped over a stick. I did not know why we were out here, but here we were, with ‘we’ meaning me and Claire, because everyone else had flown off while dawn was still staining the sky.

But I saw it all because Louis-Cesare was letting me look through his eyes, which is how I watched the running takeoff Lord Rathen made as if I was experiencing it from atop his back, while being only too happy that I was not. After last night, I’d be just as glad if my feet never left the ground again. Which was why I was gasping in my tent as we soared into the heavens, with nothing but clear, bitingly cold air all around us.

The images cut out a moment later, as it would have been disorienting for me to go around all day seeing double. But it was the only way I could follow the events where they were going, being in no shape to travel myself. Claire said it might be days before I was able to hobble around properly, and considering how I felt, I believed her.

Louis-Cesare hadn’t wanted to leave my side, where he’d slept all night, curled up protectively beside me. I’d healed enough that he could drape a long arm across me without causing me agony, and there it had stayed, like an iron band. It should have been uncomfortable, but instead had given me the reassurance I needed to fall headlong into one of the deepest sleeps of my life.

My Hubby had seemed to enjoy finally getting to protect the little woman, and for the moment, I had enjoyed being protected. It was a lie, of course; neither of us was actually safe out here, or anywhere in Faerie. But it had felt that way, especially when dragon calls sounded in the distance all night, as if patrolling the skies around us.

Perhaps we’d been safer than I’d thought.

And the next thing I knew, I was yawning into the sunlight streaming through the propped-open door flap of my tent, and soon thereafter having a hearty breakfast around a cold campfire.

“How did you make it with no heat?” I asked Claire, because the logs had burned down at some point in the night and nobody had relit them.

She crouched beside me with a brown cloak thrown over her unusual form, which was even more startling by daylight, although she had ditched the evening dress. I guessed when you were covered in harder-than-steel scales you didn’t need it, and it might catch on the underbrush. Which was a concern as she was obviously planning to venture deeper into the forest, judging by the basket she’d thrown over one silvered arm.

“Eat,” she said, in that guttural tone that no longer worried me.

I ate, leaving it up to her whether she answered or not. I had discovered last night that that was the best way to get more speech and less grunting out of her, along with doing as she ordered. Claire’s other half was bossy, too, it seemed.

So, I concentrated on shoveling in a great quantity of actually cooked food—sausage and bread and some kind of porridge—while she smoothed down my unruly hair. It felt a bit like a pet, the motion you’d make on a good dog’s head who had obeyed a command, but I had my mouth full and failed to point that out.

I likely would have failed anyway, as I had more to steal my attention than food. Dragons were flying everywhere this morning, zooming about in all directions. That and our continued presence in the middle of the woods despite a much more comfortable castle being a short flight away told me that something was happening, but I had no idea what.

“They come,” Claire said suddenly, indicating a somewhat low-flying dragon—a brilliant, pure yellow with a white belly, who had just leisurely sailed over our treetops. It had been low enough to bend some limbs, yet hadn’t tried to land. But I got the distinct impression that it was staring at us, having the same crawling speed and craning neck of looky-loos passing a highway accident.

I felt like waving back, but wasn’t quite that brave. But I was feeling a bit steadier as I got more of the feast for twelve in the massive bowl down my throat. So, I decided to try another question.

“Why do they come. And who are they?”

It was a compound question, which dragons—at least this one—didn’t seem to like. But I got half of it answered, anyway. “Other clans. Different houses. Some pledged to House Eddred, others not. Some even hostile.”

“But not last-night hostile,” I guessed.

“No.” Claire decided I was warm enough and eating enough and that her work here was done. “I go.”

“Wait.” I caught her hand. “Why do they come?”

“To talk.”

She left.

I watched her disappear into the forest, shimmering away into the foliage like a part of it, and almost immediately invisible courtesy of those kaleidoscoping scales. And wondered what I was supposed to do if someone was more Steen-level hostile than they seemed. I had my Dirty Harry gun, which I’d gotten back from Louis-Cesare this morning, along with a couple of knives that I’d hidden under the fur, although they were less than reassuring as I ate alone in a dragon buzzed campsite in Faerie.

But I didn’t stay alone for long.

My spoon was just scraping the bottom of the massive bowl when I looked up and saw a very large, very unknown man striding toward me across the clearing. Shit! I tried to get up, to at least meet him on my feet, but I was as weak as a kitten and the giant fur was heavy as lead. And I somehow ended up tangled in it, to the point that I couldn’t even get my gun free to—

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