Page 455 of Kingdoms of Night

His sister made some kind of mud concoction that he could only assume had magic woven into it. She pressed it into the walls to keep the heat inside, while he made the best roof he could, given the circumstances. They left the front open for Tanis to lie against and warm with the fires in her belly. When it was all finished, Rowan was still unsure if it could even hold the weight of winter.

And when the snows came, they all stood back to realize that this was little more than half a house. It was and always would be. They weren’t talented home builders, that much was certain, but he hoped it was enough to keep them alive.

An icy wind beat at his back as he chopped wood for the inside of their cabin. Sweat slicked between his shoulder blades, and it froze the longer he stood out here swinging the handmade axe over his head. This wasn’t what he thought running would look like. And yet, he supposed the snow was a good thing. No one would follow them in this weather.

He swung the axe over his head and brought it down on the log. It split in half, good enough for the fire and yet now they would need to heat it inside the cabin so that it dried out. It was always the game of what would they need tomorrow, because if they didn’t do it today, they might end up frozen in place.

Rowan wiped a hand over his forehead and realized his fingers were turning purple. He needed Aster to hunt more rabbits so they could use the hides for some sort of mittens. If he was going to be out here, swinging an axe for days on end, then he needed some way to keep his fingers attached to his hands.

“Rowan?”

That voice. It had driven him crazy for weeks now, and he knew it was because he’d only seen the beautiful dragon woman once since she laid her eggs. Tanis had been lovely pregnant, but untouchable in a way that seemed almost holy. Now? She was a monolith of a warrior, a woman made of steel and iron.

And the fact that he’d only seen her once like that set his teeth on edge. He knew it wasn’t the time or the place to be having those thoughts, either. They were on the brink of death every single day, and he was over here fantasizing about the way her hair had slid over her strong shoulders.

Hallucinations were his only excuse. He bent down and piled the wood high in his arms. He was delirious with the cold and hunger, that was all. Thoughts of her like that were his mind’s way of dealing with all this trauma, and he was only conjuring up images in his mind of her like that because he wanted to see something beautiful in this cold, desolate plain.

“Coming!” he called back to Tanis. “I was finished anyway.”

She eyed him with a single, massive eye as he walked by her. Her tail lashed in the snow. “If you keep doing that, you’re going to lose fingers.”

“No one else is going to do it,” he grumbled.

“I can do it. It’s very easy for me to break them with my teeth.” She bared them for him to see, but he refused to look at her. “Let me help, Rowan.”

“And yet, I still want to do it, so I’m not stuck in that cabin for the rest of existence.” He had no intent of staying in that room for any longer with his sister. They would tear each other’s throats out.

And as he walked in the door of his home, he was reminded of that fact almost immediately. Aster had holed herself up in the cabin all day. She’d taken to skinning the animals indoors because the hides ended up too frozen outside to get the meat off them for tanning. But now the entire cabin smelled like meat, fur, fat, and innards that he didn’t want to smell when he was trying to relax.

“Aster,” he snarled, dropping the wood onto the frozen dirt floor. “What did I tell you about bringing all that mess inside?”

“It’s not a mess, Rowan. It’s keeping us alive.” She didn’t even look at him. She just stared at her work and the pile of gristle next to her that she’d scraped off the hide of the rabbit.

He was going to throttle her. That was the only option here. He’d have to tackle her, put her face into the dirt, and then sit on her until she stopped breathing. Then he would smash her face into that mess one last time before he let her wake back up.

He stalked toward her to do just that, only to feel a low huff of warm breath on his back. As if Tanis’s throat was glowing with power because he had dared to act on his anger.

“We are all tired,” Tanis said, and her voice melted through the ice shards that had stuck themselves firmly into his heart. “You both have been working all day, but night comes. Perhaps we should consider putting down our tools for the night.”

“Only if she removes all the meat from the building.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

Aster scoffed. “Well, you’re the one bringing splinters into the place where we sleep. You could at least bring the wood over to the fire, Rowan!”

No dragon would stop him from launching at her. He would fight her like they had when they were children, and he’d always beaten her then. He’d beat her now.

“I cannot stand to be in the same cabin with you any longer!” he shouted. “I’m going to build my own place. You will drive me mad in these close quarters.”

“You don’t have to build another house. I’ve already decided I’m leaving.”

The words fell like heavy rocks on his shoulders. Rowan’s breath caught in his lungs and suddenly all that anger leaked out of his ears. She was what?

“You’re not leaving,” he said, waving a hand in the air to dismiss even the thought. “Where would you go? We’re all stuck here until the snow melts.”

“I’m not.” Aster finally turned toward him, her cheeks bright red with the cold and her eyes filled with tears. “Tanis and I have already talked this through. You will not change my mind, brother. Someone needs to stay with her in case something happens, but one of us has to go see if there is anyone left.”

“But...” He struggled to keep up with her argument. “We know there is no one left. Tanis would have felt any of the surviving dragons by now. We’d have seen one or she would have made contact.”

“No one is questioning if any of the dragons survived. We need to know if the humans who attacked us are still here, and if so, how many.” Aster crossed her arms over her chest. “I know it’s difficult to think of me leaving like this, but you must understand that this is the best course of action. It has to be one of us, and you’re the better fighter.”

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