“Had the ambassador succeeded in gaining a foothold with the Irian council and delaying Torevan’s coronation, these troops would likely have arrived in Viali shortly thereafter to offer their ‘support.’ As it is, the ambassador is unlikely to be released anytime soon, so these lads should be tripping over their own feet for some time to come.”
The wyvern’s teeth snapped together loudly, a sound of annoyance if Vaniell was any judge.
“Then we must depart immediately,” Kyrion said, in a resolute tone that brooked no opposition. “I require rest, but I do not wish to risk them returning in greater numbers. We will fly north and break our journey somewhere in the forests of Eddris.”
Vaniell managed not to grimace outwardly, or show any other signs of his deep discomfort with their mode of travel. He was grateful, of course, that Kyrion had agreed to fly him the not-inconsiderable distance to their destination. But he reserved the right to be deeply apprehensive about it nonetheless.
Perhaps Kyrion had truly come to terms with their past association, but Vaniell could not help feeling nervous about putting himself so completely in the night elf’s power. Not that Kyrion couldn’t simply eat him any time he chose. But it was considerably more discomfiting to imagine flying far above the hard ground, only a single slip away from plummeting to his death. At the thought, Vaniell’s chest tightened painfully, and his fingers curled into his palms as if protesting what he was about to do…
“How does it feel?” Kyrion asked softly. “Knowing that your future is in the hands of one who has no reason to wish you well? As if your soul is being buried alive, your breath cut off, and the light extinguished from the world?”
There was only one possible answer. “Yes.” But it was hardly Vaniell’s first experience with that feeling. Every moment of every day he’d spent in the Garimoran court, he’d lived and breathed with the knowledge that the lives of those he loved were in the hands of a cruel stranger. That his own behavior might dictate whether they lived or died.
He’d been slowly suffocating, when, to the eyes of the world, he’d appeared carefree, rebellious, and extravagant.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. But he would never whine of injustice to one who had suffered far more than he, and at the same hand.
“My sense of smell is acute,” Kyrion said suddenly. “In either form. And fear has a stench unlike anything else. I know that you are afraid—of me, of flying, and of what I will do when we are high above the ground and you are at my mercy.”
Vaniell’s lips twisted wryly. So much for his pride in his ability to control his face. “It is not that I feel I am unable to take you at your word,” he admitted. “I know you said my debt to you is resolved, and I do not doubt your honor, however…” How could he make the other man understand his apprehension without somehow giving offense?
But it was the wyvern who spoke first. “I take no offense at your fear, Princeling. Perhaps there is no affection lost between us, but I can assure you that I do not despise you for the scars you bear.”
Vaniell raised his eyes to meet the bright silver gaze of the wyvern. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, once more seemingly robbed of the ability to speak.
“We are both shaped by our wounds, in unexpected ways,” Kyrion continued. “Though our prisons did not appear the same, the same man held our chains, and you were but a child when it began.”
Vaniell tried to choke back the emotions that rose at those words, but could not. Not entirely. “He was cruel and vindictive,” he muttered, feeling a sickening swell of shame as he recalled those years. “I hated and feared him, but a part of me still wanted his approval because I thought maybe that would fix it. Maybe I could win. But he manipulated even that part of me, and I cannot bear to think of putting myself in another’s power again.”
Except Karreya’s. She had held his hand and led him through the darkness, and he had not been afraid.
“Your reluctance means only that he did not destroy you fully, not that you are a coward. In your case, you were controlled not by fear alone, but by love, and that leaves scars that even time struggles to remove. ”
Vaniell swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely. It was the kind of acceptance he had never bothered to hope for, and from the last person he might have anticipated. The exchange left him both relieved and with an uncomfortable sensation of further debt. “But I will still apologize in advance for the stench. Even when I understand my reasons, I don’t know that I can manage to be completely unafraid of flying.”
The wyvern’s teeth were suddenly bared in a reptilian grin. “You will be very much afraid, Princeling. I will make sure of it.”
So swiftly that Vaniell never really saw him coming, Kyrion snatched him up by the back of his coat and flung him over his shoulder. “I won’t tell you not to fall,” he growled, “but do try to hold still.”
His wings beat once, twice as Vaniell scrambled for a grip. When the wyvern was a few feet off the ground, he grasped their packs in his claws and then rose slowly above the level of the trees.
A mist hung over the forest, and as they ascended through it, Vaniell’s stomach likewise ascended right into his throat. He was suspended in mid-air, far above the ground, where humans were never meant to go.
But then they burst through the fog into a clear sky, where the sun was beginning to peer over the edge of the world, illuminating everything in hues of orange and gold.
“Flying clearly has its upside,” Vaniell murmured, gazing out across the mist-shrouded forest. Perhaps this journey would not be as bad as he anticipated.
“Don’t get comfortable,” Kyrion threw back over his shoulder. “This is only the beginning.” Then he hurtled them up, into the deep blue of the morning sky, with powerful wing beats that left Vaniell clinging to his perch with desperate strength, praying with every breath that he would somehow survive until they touched down once again on solid ground.
* * *
It was perhaps midmorning when Kyrion finally banked, dove, hovered, and then landed on the bank of a narrow creek that rippled and burbled on its way through the dense woodlands.
Vaniell, his hands and legs frozen from the effort of not falling off in midair, finally did exactly that, landing in a heap on the mossy ground with his eyes closed and his stomach lurching uncomfortably.
“I must rest,” the wyvern said, but by the time Vaniell looked up, the winged reptile was gone, and the gray-skinned night elf had taken his place, looking decidedly haggard with weariness.
“Seems fair,” Vaniell managed to say, keeping his groans firmly locked behind his lips. “I should be able to move in a moment, and then I will keep watch while you sleep.”