Page 80 of Dragon Slayer

He tumbled through the stars and woke on the ground, his head pillowed on someone’s strong leg, his mouth full of his own blood.

He scrambled to get up. “Vlad!”

Hands caught him by the shoulders. “Easy, easy now,” Iskander said. “Just rest a minute until you get your bearings back.”

“But Vlad.” As the black spots cleared from his vision, the training yard began to take shape in front of him. Iskander had moved him up against the wall, in a patch of shade, and if the cool water trickling down into his collar was anything to go by, had been mopping his face and throat with a wet cloth.

Vlad was gone, as were all the other boys…save the heir.

Mehmet knelt on the ground, his sword laid across his lap. Hair clung to his face, skin sun-dark and shiny with sweat. He breathed raggedly through his mouth – his smiling mouth. Blood flecked his cheeks, and the bridge of his nose, and his throat – grisly freckles.

When Val met his gaze, he laughed, breathless. “What, do you think I killed him? I only hit him in the head.” He lowered his own head, and looked up at Val from beneath slanted brows. “Your brother needs to learn his place, little one. Today was a lesson. Nobody gets in the way of what I want.”

“Your grace,” the sword master said, stepping up and offering a hand down to the future sultan.

Mehmet held Val’s gaze a long, uncomfortable moment, then put his practice sword in the master’s hand and climbed to his feet without assistance. “Don’t worry, Radu,” he called over his shoulder as he headed for the arched doorway that led into the weapons room, “I don’t have any interest infightingyou.”

Val swallowed thickly, the taste of his own blood threatening to gag him. Cold sweat prickled at his hairline and it had nothing to do with his fainting spell.

“What does he mean?” he asked, turning a look up and around to Iskander.

He got a grim frown and a shake of a head in response. “Stay away from him, Radu. Don’t do anything to catch his attention.”

“But…I haven’t.”

The hands tightened on his shoulders. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Where’s Vlad? Is he…?”

“Breathing, when they carried him off. I suspect he’s in the infirmary. Just like I suspect…” He lifted a brow, knowing. “That neither of you boys is altogether human, are you?”

~*~

In years past, Vlad had spent a probably-embarrassing amount of time wondering what it would be like if he could dream-walk like his brother. Val had explained it to him, talked about vast spaces, and pinpricks of light like stars, and the sense of flying. Like a dream, he’d said. But that wasn’t any help, because Vlad dreamed of concrete things: the scent of rain, the feel of a horse beneath him, the taste of Helga’s sweetcakes fresh from the oven. The way his muscles burned pleasantly when he drew a bowstring, or swung a sword. The taste of fresh blood over his tongue – once he’d dreamed of a hunt he’d taken with Fenrir, when the big wolf had shifted into his shaggy four-legged shape and helped him fell a deer. Fenrir had lay on the still-alive beast, and Vlad had crept up, quiet, careful, and bared his fangs, set his teeth in the stag’s neck. That day he’d drunklivingblood, pumping across his tongue in pulses, the beat of the animal’s heart, and he’d dreamed of it often, afterward.

But he couldn’t control his dreams. Couldn’t go visit with the people he wanted to see, convey messages he needed to send. He couldn’t control himself in his dreams, couldn’t stop the awful coursing anger; most nights he screamed through dreams that were really nightmares, and woke to find his throat tight, phantom leftover threads of his subconscious fury.

This sleep, now, was dreamless. He woke to dizziness, and pain, and heavy eyelids that he cracked open slowly. It was dusk, the light angled and thick, a dull blue shaft that slanted over the bed where he lay. His head throbbed, and his chest ached, and there was a sharp pain that undercut both of those hurts: the familiar sensation of bone knitting faster than was humanly possible.

Three broken ribs, he thought. A skull fracture, for sure, the way the pain blossomed bright and white and sent stars wheeling across his vision. Huh. Were these anything like the stars Val meant when he talked about the astral plane?

An amused thought, just before nausea overwhelmed him and he jackknifed upright, shouting as the movement jerked his ribs. A physician materialized beside the bed, bowl held ready to catch the watery bile that Vlad vomited up.

The room spun and he shut his eyes.Mama, he thought, once, piteously. He wanted his mama.

“You should rest, young lord,” the physician said in Slavic.

He put a hand to Vlad’s shoulder and helped him to lie back down. Carefully, Vlad eased his eyes open again. The ceiling swayed above him, and the bed seemed to tilt.

He knew three things:

The heir wanted to fuck Valerian.

An heir of whom Vlad had just made an enemy for life.

And if it was the last godforsaken thing he did in his miserable life, Vlad was going to kill him.

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