Page 116 of Dragon Gods

FOX

Fox threw up in the alley on his way home from the prison. He couldn’t get rid of the metallic smell of Sofia’s blood from his skin or shake the cold looks from the other prisoners in the cells. He’d recognized the redheaded woman from the cenote and given Sofia the cell next to hers, but it also meant he had to listen as she hissed out a series of dragon-tongue words that he was pretty sure he recognized from the worst drunks in the slums. He didn’t need Sofia awake to translate them for him.

He tried his best to hold on to the look of pride the chief commander had given him, but he also couldn’t shake the discomfort and horror of watching him stand over a broken Sofia. For the first time since before his brother had died, Fox had the sense that something was seriously wrong with the system.

People were dying, but what the crown was doing wasn’t working. If anything, things were getting worse. Perhaps if the people of Suvi knew the dragons were alive—that they were real—they’d recognize that the Dragonborn weren’t stupid or even superstitious.

But he could only imagine the wave of fear that would crash through the city if they knew the monsters of their childhood nightmares were real—and just as destructive as the tales warned.

It was nearly nightfall by the time he made it back home, stopping in the kitchens long enough to order food to be sent up. He collapsed in his reading chair the moment he was alone in his room.

He was only a bit surprised when someone knocked on his door a few minutes later, the cooks having apparently worked faster than normal.

“Come in.”

But it wasn’t a kitchen maid who stepped through the door a second later.

“Ian,” he said, straightening up, as if stiff shoulders might hide his bloodshot eyes or the strain along his brow.

“Your mother said you just came home. You look like shit.”

“About what I’m feeling,” he said, shrugging. “It’s been an adjustment.”

Ian gave a nod, lips pursed. He didn’t look like he believed Fox, but he didn’t ask any follow-up questions, either. Instead, he took the chair across from Fox. He hadn’t visited Fox since those long blinks after Leon’s death. It was turning into a habit for Ian to show up when Fox was at this lowest—first when his brother died and now. Except this time, Fox couldn’t explain what he was feeling to Ian. At least not everything.

“It’s strange being back,” he said, perhaps to break the silence or perhaps because he simply wanted to say it out loud to someone. “There were definitely a few points where I didn’t think I’d make it home.”

“The rainforest can feel like a world of its own. You were out there alone?” Ian watched him carefully. Fox hated the scrutiny.

“No.” The word slipped out before he could question why his brother’s old friend was the one person he wanted to trust with the information. “I was out there with one of the Dragonborn that originally kidnapped me.”

“Is that why it took so long to return?”

Well, we got kidnapped by shapeshifting wolves that ran so fast it took us two days just to get back.

“We…were captured by some men,” he said, knowing just how ridiculous he was sounding. “They knocked us out and dragged us out the opposite way in the forest. It took a while to figure out where we were and what direction to go after that.”

Ian nodded, as if contemplating this. “Perhaps we should add way-finding to the training regimen for all recruits.”

“I think there are a few skills we’ve been missing out on given the assumption we wouldn’t be out in the rainforest.” He looked at Ian, a finger tapping on his leg slowly. “There were…things out there. Animals I can’t explain.”

The corners of Ian’s mouth tightened and his brow twitched, but it wasn’t the look of a man that thought Fox was crazy.

“There’s a reason our ancestors built the wall,” Ian said. “I imagine there is a lot more than savages out there that it’s protecting all of us from.”

“So you believe the Dragonborn stories about monsters and faeries? About the dragons?” Fox asked.

For as long as he’d known Ian, they’d never talked about their beliefs around these things.

Ian didn’t answer immediately and Fox could see the thoughts flickering across his face, even if he couldn’t read them. At last, he nodded.

“They may be a superstitious bunch, but I think their ancestors knew this land. There is a lot that our people chose to forget over the centuries. It doesn’t take magic for monsters to exist.”

Fox might have held the same sentiment if it weren’t for the image of the first faery he’d encountered still burned into his brain. The black smoke seeping from its skin and the black hair of the woman he would have sworn he’d been trying to help. There was more he’d seen out in the rainforest than could be explained by monsters born purely of flesh.

He remembered Sofia’s words.

The dragon shed her feathers, each one falling to the earth, imbued with magic to become the creatures of the forest.

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