Page 74 of Broken Veil
“Hey!” Laura frowned and started after him. “I am working in an entirely different mythological framework than I was raised in, so you can just—” She switched to Yurok and started telling Angus off in another language entirely.
Duncan walked over and tucked Carys’s hand under his arm. “Don’t think twice about it, lass. You don’t owe me a penny.” His dimple showed up. “In fact, you’re saving me two hundred gold sovereigns a year.”
By the timethey arrived back at Angus’s forge, Cadell was already waiting.
He had remained in beast form.
Nêrys, you smell of the otherworld.
“How can you tell that?” She walked over and immediately threw her arms around his leathery green neck.Cadell, Seren is alive.
She felt the fire rise in him like a flame hit with a bellows.
What?
What is Ogwen Valley?
Who told you she was alive?
“Angus.” She stepped back and looked him in his great golden eye. “What is Ogwen Valley?”
There was a ripple along Cadell’s skin, and moments later, he faced her in human form. “Come with me.”
He led her to a round circle of tree stumps that had been cut and placed around a stone fire circle. He sat on one and Carys sat next to him.
“I heard Seren’s call for the first time when she was eleven years old,” Cadell said. “She was not my first nêr ddraig, but I had never…” The corner of his mouth turned up. “I had never been bonded to a human who fought me as Seren did.”
“She was stubborn.”
“Sostubborn,” he said. “Even as a child. I was the elder. Obviously I was battle-tested, but no matter how we trained or what we did, she had to do it her way.”
“And you went along with that?”
“Not at first, and not always,” he said. “Remember, I am your dragon, but I am not your servant.”
“I remember.”
“Seren took her power over me seriously, and she respected that, but I would always try to lead her in the direction I thought was the smartest or the safest. But she is her father’s daughter.” His eyes lit up. “As you are, Carys.”
She blinked away tears when she thought about her father. Her steady, solid guiding light in the world. “But my father was a teacher, not a king.”
Cadell nodded once. “Indeed. Seren grew up with a very clear path, and that path led directly to the throne.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “And she would have made a remarkable queen.”
“Ogwen Valley.”
“It was a testing run,” he said. “It is the final trial of the training school. The teachers and their dragons set up a series of trials—they’re different every time—and hers was the most challenging I have ever seen. Marksmanship, tracking, hunting, ambushes. She was limping and had a spear through her leg by the time we reached Ogwen Valley. She was half delirious fromblood loss, and there were more obstacles ahead. Spears thrown at my wings, sharpshooters in the hills.”
“You couldn’t fly over them?”
“Not if she wanted to pass the trial.” Cadell folded his hands and looked at the ground. “I knew what was coming, and I knew she was in pain. She wasn’t thinking clearly, so I had a complicated strategy planned to evade the sharpshooters and get us through the valley without her taking another hit.”
“More dangerous for you, I’m betting.”
He shrugged. “I am a dragon, nêrys. I heal much faster than a human.”
“But Seren had another plan.”
“‘Fly as fast as you can, as straight as you can.’” He shook his head. “Low to the ground, well in range of the sharpshooters, leaving both of us exposed. Pure speed and nothing else. ‘Just go as fast as you can. They’re expecting strategy, let us give them power.’”
