Page 102 of A Subtle Scar
He squawked, but there was no time, and this was the easiest and safest way to bring him along, a decision I didn’t like.
Tiamat walked shoulder to shoulder with me, her green eyes narrowed and not fully human. There was still dragon in there.
“They are trying to hurt one of my children,” she hissed.
Well, those humans were all fucked.
But also…
When trying to understand Chandler and what he had to be feeling, alone when his twin should have been there, I had imagined this, and now it haunted me. Had thinking Ronny gone caused this to happen? I growled, ground my teeth.
I started running, and the Dragon Mother easily matched my speed. Past the stupid posters, past the disgusting rooms, down the stairs. It took so fucking long.
I had to put Chandler on his feet inside the tunnel because it was so narrow. He looked pissed like a water hydrant in a dog park but didn’t complain. “Light, please,” was the only thing he said, and when I’d magicked him a shining orb, he hiked into the tunnel, sliding past jutting rocks and generally matching our speed even if he looked pale and near fainting all through it.
When we got to where we had been ambushed, the noises of something snapping, followed by a sighing wind charm noise, made my stomach fall.
Bird wings were hollow-boned and easy to snap…a god’s wings weren’t like that, but I knew the stories: when a god’s wing bone broke, it sounded like a flute. Or a wind charm.
“Ronny!”
Later, I had no memory of how I got up the slope and over the heap of fallen rocks.
“Leave him alone!” I screamed when I saw Ronny, lying on his side in a puddle of blood, broken feathers floating on the surface.
His wings were broken. They had gored him, caused damage the kind a boar might.They had broken his fucking wings, his beautiful fucking wings.
I started toward him, but the creatures that had done this blocked my way and attacked me, which was fine. If they came at me, they couldn’t touch him. The only ones who didn’t leave Ronny alone were the humans we had permitted to live, the stone throwers, those coming at us with fists and foul words.
Now, they had knives.
“Don’t you fucking touch him!” I said.
That boy both Ronny and I had spared, he looked at me and stilled the large fork he was holding, but he was the only one.
The creatures attacked. There were seven of them. I could tell they had once been the women, kneeling naked in front of that magical dish. Most of the carvings on their skin had filled in with copper, same as their eyes. Their skin was a graying green. They were dead already, they just didn’t know it yet.
The heat of a summer storm rushed past me, pushing me out of the way. Tiamat. She appeared in front of me, taking the attention of the seven things that had been people, and began fighting them.
Only when a Dragon Mother fought, it wasn’t about fists or strength of body, it was her strength of spirit, her magic, and whatever those human puppets were, they were not a match for her.
Tiamat moved her lips. At the very edges of my hearing, there was a tiny noise, just for a second, and when Tiamat stopped speaking, the seven creatures stopped, toppled over or sideways, and collapsed like broken dolls.
Chandler clambered over the rocks too, and I could see the exact moment he saw Ronny. The shock on Chandler’s face, it was raw. It hurt. It was a mirror image of my own.
The Dragon Mother’s spell had ebbed and I ran past her, toward Ronny, punching one of the humans who was stabbing him as I got there. The rest of them backed away. Bless their fucking self-preservation instincts.
“Ronny! Shit, Ronny! Open your eyes, Ronny!”
Chandler was there all of a sudden, kneeling next to me as I carefully, oh so carefully, shifted Ronny’s head into my lap. Chandler reached out as if to touch Ronny’s ruined wing, but he stopped in the last moment. His blue eyes stood out starkly in his face, chalky like a death mask.
“We do not have very much time. The god coin is still feeding. It’s been feeding off Chandler’s magic, and even yours. It’s been feeding off Charon’s. Let me heal him while I can. Move, boys,” the Dragon Mother said.
The moments dragged, one heartbeat, one drop of Ronny’s blood hitting the ground feeling like a millennium. His torn bottom lip quivered, but he didn’t open his eyes. I wasn’t sure he knew we were there, but I hoped he did.
The Dragon Mother put her hands on Ronny, on his wing, another on his abdomen, which—butchery. That’s what this had been.
“While you can? What does that mean?” Chandler said. He looked so pale, as if he were bleeding too. I wanted to check, hold him against me, but I couldn’t let Ronny go, not yet.
