Page 37 of Scaled Hearts

I look over to her and wave at her with my free hand.

She eyes the macabre display in her front yard with a surprising amount of calmness. I can’t tell if it’s because she’s used to this kind of gore because she’s lived so long, or if it’s because she regularly fixes up the sick and broken.

Regardless of what it is, I’m envious.

Angurus lets go of my arm and stands up once more. His cloak is soaked in blood as well as the front of his pants and bare chest. It looks like he’s been offered up as some kind of sacrifice to The Warrior.

“You both must leave before the orcs come looking for you.” Old Agatha speaks again.

I get up onto my feet slowly. “What about you and Kara? Chet said he bribed the orcs with the promise of her body.”

The old woman shakes her head. “She’ll be safe here. I’ll hide her if any of them come around looking.”

My heart squeezes. In a twisted turn of events, Agatha has been my greatest ally when it comes to protecting my sister.

“Thank you,” I breathe out. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

I turn back to look at the bodies littering the ground. We need to clean these up before someone passing by spots them and comes to Agatha’s door asking questions.

Though, as if reading my mind, Angurus heads over and starts collecting bodies. He picks them up as easily as a basket full of freshly baked rolls. I don’t spend too much time staring at him, afraid that for some reason it’ll turn me on watching him.

I don’t want to look too deeply into anything like that right now. I’m already on the edge of a mental breakdown, I don’t need my budding attraction for Angurus picking up dead bodies like they weigh nothing to add on top of that.

I head over to Agatha’s door and help her reset it onto its hinges. They’re busted to all hell, but it’ll do for now. When I come back, I’ll help her put on a new one.

I kiss my sister goodbye and quickly head out with Angurus.

Whenever this Paradise Lotus lies, I need to find it.

Quickly, before it’s too late.

17

Angurus

Even after decades of sleep, the way to N’Kezza Dorana is clear in my mind. It’s an arduous journey, but a memorable one. No dragon can very well forget their first time crossing the peaks of the sinking mountains and landing across from the dying lake.

“I think we’ve already crossed this river before.”

“Yes.” Does she think I am a fool? “I am the being who is flying. I know that we’ve crossed this river already.”

Kelly’s hands tighten against my shoulders as she leans to make sure I hear her above the roar of the wind through my wings. “Are you lost?”

“I’m not lost.” I’m never lost. “I could take you back to your settlement right now, if you desire.”

“My sister…”

I don’t want to hear another lecture about her undying love for her sister. It does something strange to my stomach, like indigestion, but warmer.

“The landscape might have changed a bit since the last time I was here,” I allow. It’s been ages, quite literally, since the last time I was here. “This river used to be a whisper of a stream. And those hills beneath us used to be mountains topped with snow.”

“Does that mean we’re close?” she asks, terse.

I would devour anyone else for that tone, but I can appreciate a desire for efficiency. I can also, somehow, tolerate in this human what I cannot forgive in others. And so I merely inhale deeply.

If I can’t see my former path, perhaps I can smell it. I pick up the scent, faint but undeniable, of sickly sweet decay. It’s even stronger than it had been before, which must mean the fruitless cities continually built on top of the ruins must have failed again and again. I bank hard to the right, and sail over the hills and across a barren, cracked valley.

I suppose the sinking mountains finally sank, and the dying lake finally became the salt dunes that dot the land.

---