Page 63 of Dragon Gods

She nodded silently as she gave another violent shiver. There would be no fire tonight, and she wouldn’t be able to sleep in her wet clothes. The thought heated his cheeks, and he bit his tongue to stop his mind from wandering further in that direction.

The second time the earth shook beneath their feet it lasted no longer—only a second at most—and Sofia caught herself before falling again. A shiver traveled up Fox’s spine. Earthquakes weren’t incredibly rare on the peninsula, but it had been some time since he’d felt two so close together. And he definitely didn’t like being underground when they happened.

“Let’s move faster,” Sofia said, as if reading his mind.

He didn’t verbalize his agreement, but he picked up his pace, using a hand to steady her elbow as her own shorter legs struggled through the water.

“Take off the cloak,” he said.

“No!”

“It’s only making you colder and slower. I can carry it.”

She didn’t argue and slipped the material off her shoulders even as they continued walking. It was heavy as he scooped it into his arms.

The water seemed to deepen here, even along the edge of the river, pressed up as they were against the wall. It only made it more difficult to walk. He was happy the starworms continued to light their way.

It was because of their light that he realized that the river wasn’t just getting deeper but that the water was actively rising around their legs, the current getting faster with every step they took. In the same moment his mind was able to understand this, the water roared behind them, growling like an ancient beast awoken.

“Fox?”

“Run!”

FOX

AGE 13

The old crone eyed the boy as he kneeled before her, begging for his life. She took pity on the creature because although his mother, the queen, was so cruel in her rule, he had never had a chance to know better. So instead of killing him, she laid a curse on him. She turned him into a black raven, the most feared of the creatures of the sky. And when the servants came into his room to find him, they chased him out with brooms and sticks. He slept alone in the trees outside his home that night and the next night.

-The Raven Prince by Emilio Laurn

Fox had relished the last two days, staying with his brother in the military barracks and eating the grueling rations. Anything was better than being home. The visit wouldn’t last forever, but his brother had finally convinced his high major to allow him an on-campus leave and a visitor. Their father had seen Leon plenty of times during his training and then even after he had been promoted to scout, but his brother had only visited home twice, briefly. Each time left Fox in awe at the changes that had overcome his brother’s body over the last cycle and a half. He could still see their mother’s fine bone structure in the curve of his jaw, but his tunics fit tightly against his shoulders and arms and the blond hair dusting his jaw made him look distinctly more like their father.

“Keep up,” Leon said, looking back at where Fox trailed behind him, distracted by the unending fields that were laid out to their left, waves of green and yellow. His brother had been assigned to the eastern barracks on the edge of the labor farms. Fox could just make out the bent backs of the prisoners that worked the farms in the distance, weeding and pruning to feed the country they had betrayed. The strongest of the prisoners went into the mines to dig for the gold that kept Suvi prosperous even as the droughts swept in and killed the crops, yet it seemed that there were hundreds of people scattered through the fields.

“It’s best not to watch them,” Leon said, suddenly close beside him.

“There are so many. So many people willing to betray their own king and people.”

His brother didn’t answer immediately and he looked up to see his lips pinched tightly. Leon’s eyes flickered down, noticing Fox’s stare and he shrugged.

“The king’s justice can be swift and decisive. There may be some that didn’t mean to betray Suvi. They may have gotten caught in the wrong place. But many Dragonborn, and even some Dereyans, are not happy with where the kingdom is going. Where it’s gone.”

“Where do they want it to go?” Fox said, not hiding the small sneer. “If they think they know so much better than the king?”

Leon paused again, not speaking again for too long, his own eyes now tracing the horizon and the prisoners there. He turned around at last, not meeting Fox’s eyes as he shrugged again. “I don’t know, but I don’t think everyone believes the king is all powerful and all knowing. Now come on, I want to show you the wall. It’s twice as high as near the city and the trees here stretch up to meet the height. You’ll see nothing like it in the west.”

* * *

The next morning,his brother left him in the dorms with strict instructions to not wander out. He promised either he or Ian would be back before lunch to take him to the mess hall. He was going east to look at a possible breach in the wall. Fox proudly lasted until midmorning before he gave up sitting on his brother’s bunk, flipping through books on military strategy and farming. There was a very narrow range of topics in the barracks’ library, but he also knew there was a small library in the fort along the western wall, where they had more books on the rainforest and the indigenous life beyond the wall, for the scouts to reference.

He knew that if he left now, he’d have just enough time to sneak a few books out of the fort library and be back when Leon returned. He slipped his brother’s thin coat over his shoulders. It was warm enough outside to not need the protection, but the green and gold would allow him to blend in better around the campus. Knowing his brother, he’d told the other soldiers stationed here that Fox wasn’t supposed to be wandering out alone.

The sun was higher in the sky than he expected by the time he finally made it to the large stone building that protruded from the city wall. His brother hadn’t been exaggerating. The fort was three floors tall, and yet the wall towered over it. A narrow set of steps led up from the roof of the fort to the top of the wall. They had gone up the stairs the day before and Fox had looked out over the wall to the forest beyond. Even at the top of the wall, there were trees just beyond that towered over them and the vertigo of looking down toward the forest floor, barely visible through the thick foliage, made his stomach swoop.

As Fox approached the fort, someone moved above him on the wall, pausing in their rounds to look down at where he stood. The trees threw shadows along the top, making it impossible to differentiate any details beyond the silhouette. He looked back for a moment, wondering if he was being paranoid, but whoever it was began walking toward the stairs.

Without waiting to see if they were coming for him, he ducked through the side door of the fort. Keeping his head down and walking fast, he quickly found his way toward the library. The hallways were wide to accommodate soldiers moving around with weapons and supplies, the rooms well-marked for new recruits. Less than two minutes later, Fox was standing at the entrance of the library, smile stretched wide. Even the shelves were marked, books organized into categories: edible plants, wildlife, Dragonborn mythologies, survival skills.

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