Page 48 of Lady Dragon
Skies help me, she thought.I have my own warmth. My own fire. I don’t need another’s, as humans do.It was more insistence than fact, and Kirek knew it would only hurt Samansa to hear, as much as Kirek wanted to trumpet it to the world.
At leastsheknew how to keep her thoughts to herself, as a dragon.
When she turned—careful of her wings and sweeping tail, her sight sharpening in the falling darkness—she found Samansa huddled on the ground in her tattered yellow gown, human and small and frail once more. Blood seeped from her shoulder where the javelin had hit her dragon’s wing, but the wound looked superficial and didn’t seem to bother her much. Her teeth were chattering and her eyes were wide. Her gaze shot to the burning farmhouse in rising alarm.
Don’t look at it, Kirek commanded.Look at me, little one.
Samansa did, visibly calming somewhat, though her hunched shoulders still shook. “Little one?”
It was how Kirek would have spoken to a younger dragon under her watch. She didn’t entirely know where the diminutive had come from, but at least it was helping to distract the princess.
Well, youarelittle. Now follow me.
Kirek hoped she was making the right choice. And yet, now that she had, there was no room for wavering. No time, not if this transformation was temporary.
“Where?” the princess croaked, but she obeyed, dragging herself to her feet as Kirek started off into the gloom of the field.
The barn.Which luckily sat away from the farmhouse and the grisly scene with the cows.
“Whatever for?”
Kirek turned and hissed back at her, suddenly angry at the blow her pride was about to take, making the princess draw up short in startled surprise.Because we need a saddle.
13
SAMANSA
Flying atop a dragon was indeed much easier with a saddle. It had been less easy to attach it to said dragon’s back, especially with Samansa’s injured shoulder, which she’d bound tightly with cloth strips torn from the hem of her skirt. Kirek assured her, based on her own experience, that it should be healed the next time Samansa transformed, which was slight comfort alongside the thought of becoming a dragon again—one neither of them seemed to relish. At least the Heartstone shard lodged in her chest didn’t pain her as much as it had, burrowing deeper inside of her and partially healing over, though the ache still tugged at her when she moved. They’d managed to hoist and secure the saddle with long straps of leather they’d found in the barn along with other useful items, and Samansa had even used some of those straps as well as a thick belt at her waist to tie herself down in case she lost her seat—an outcome that was more of a certainty than a possibility, she imagined.
She’d also packed a saddlebag with a couple of skins of water, which Kirek told her not to drain too soon, strips of dried meat, and as many apples as she could fit. Samansa promptly packed a few extra apples in her stomach. When she found anold blanket, Kirek groused as Samansa wrapped it around her shoulders:
You smell like horse. And you won’t need that for long. Not where we’re going.
The draconic realm apparently ran hot and dry, composed of a wide desert and a long string of active volcanoes, as if the sandy wasteland wasn’t already hot enough. Samansa knew about it through her studies, and imagining it gave her little solace, though she didn’t say that aloud.
“Yes, but right now it’s nightfall in Andrath and I’mfreezing,” she’d responded through chattering teeth. Perhaps it was the shock more than the temperature, but true in any case.
Samansa had pretended not to notice when Kirek slunk off as gracefully as ever with her serpentine, glimmering bulk to eat one of the cows, or at least that’s what the princess suspected she was doing. At least the dragon made it quick. Samansa supposed Kirek needed the stamina for flying, after all. Especially with the burden of carrying a passenger, and with as far as they were intending to go.
Taking off was both thrilling and terrifying—an echo of what she’d experienced before, as a dragon. Samansa felt as if her stomach was left behind on the ground as she soared upward with the force of Kirek’s wings. She couldn’t even think, only feel the weight of the skies pressing down on her, and yet still she rose. As a dragon, she had felt powerful, at home in the air and in control—if not at home in her own body or in control of her thoughts. At least now she was herself, though it felt precarious in a more physical way. The tightness of the straps seemed to be the only thing keeping her from tearing loose of the saddle. Her cheeks and hands burned both fromthe cold and how hard she was clenching her jaws and fists. And yet in no time, her entire world and all its troubles was left far beneath her, the pieces of it laid out as tiny as children’s toys. For a moment, she felt freer than she ever had been.
Even freer than she had as a dragon. Then, it had seemed an outside force was hemming her in, pinning her down, even as she flew.
She appreciated the blanket all the more once they were high up and the chill air currents cut through her as if striving for the bone, making her shoulder wound ache. At least they had left the horrid view of the burning farm behind, though she could still smell the smoke and charred meat in her hair. She hunched over the dragon’s back, tears streaming from her eyes from both the wind and the images haunting her, and tried not to perish of cold. Kirek’s bulk began to rumble, and heat eventually seeped up through her scales and the saddle, but the wind was bitterly persistent.
Samansa crouched so low she was eventually nearly flattened along Kirek’s neck, squeezing her eyes closed. She couldn’t help it when her arms drifted away from clutching the saddle to embrace the dragon beneath her instead. And not just for the warmth, but for the simple closeness of another being at such an unsettling time.
Perhaps also because Kirek was a veryspecificbeing.
Kirek hummed in response. She sounded almost pleased at the contact. Or merely relieved they were both all right.
Samansa wasn’t all right.Alive, yes,safeorall right, no.
More tears streamed from beneath her lids, glazing her cheeks in what felt like ice, and a sob lodged in her throat that she could neither swallow nor release, choking her.
Jamsens, she thought.
It was as if Kirek could hear her, even like this, because the dragon asked,How are you doing up there, little one?
