Page 2 of Salt in the Seas
Sylmar cleared his throat from where he stood in the room’s center. He leaned on his staff to glare at her. “Well, what happened this time?” His guttural voice matched the harsh scars lining his face.
“I’m sorry. I lost track of time.” She hurried to stand before him, smoothing down her skirt. She held back a grimace when she found a drop of blood on it, then caught sight of a cut on her palm. How had she not noticed one of the vials had cut her? She tucked it in the folds of her skirt while picturing the broken skin mending, willing her starlock to heal the wound. Except that part of her magic seemed to be failing lately too.
Sylmar placed a hand on Aeliana’s shoulder. “What were you doing that had you so distracted?”
“It was my turn to help Iris with the winex after lunch. You know how needy they are these days. It took longer than I anticipated.” The first part had been the truth.
His eyes narrowed, and he gripped her shoulder tighter. “Why are you lying?”
She went still, but her heart beat faster. Why had she let him touch her? Sifting the truth of her words was his secondary spoke and something he could only do with a point of contact. She’d been foolish to let her guard down.
“Give her a break, Sylmar,” Velden called from the sparring ring. “You were young once. Or have you forgotten? At her age, I had plenty of secrets and private affairs I didn’t want to share with my elders or mentors. Nothing nefarious, just the normal reckless life of a youth. Let her live a little.”
Velden winked at her, then grunted when Holm jabbed him in the stomach with his fist. The two resumed their wrestling, while Aeliana turned to Sylmar with a sheepish smile, her face too hot and likely red.
Sylmar placed his hand back on his staff and hummed his disapproval, but then directed Aeliana to a chair, apparently willing to let it drop for now. A flutter of relief rushed through Aeliana. Her secret errands for her mother hadn’t been discovered. Until they had solid evidence, Sylmar wouldn’t be willing to listen to her mother’s theory that Mayvus was alive. Not when Mayvus’ assumed death gave everyone else comfort.
“Today I want you to try connecting with Durriken,” Sylmar said.
Her anxiety returned. She ran a hand over the detestable mark on her right hand. “I don’t want to bother him. He lost his freedom for years, then I severed his paw. I think the last dragon alive deserves to be left in peace.”
“I’m not asking you to control him through your brand, but as long as you have it, you can see if you can tell where he left Mayvus’ body.” The eagerness that rolled off Sylmar made Aeliana hesitate.
At one time, Sylmar had been Mayvus’ bondmate. He’d been willing to use blood magic to brand people, taking over their will andreplacing it with his own. Such evil was the reason Aeliana had never wanted to brand Durriken in the first place, but desperation had overruled her desires. It had been the only way to weaken Mayvus.
She shook her head to dispel the suspicion. Sylmar was faithful to the Recreants’ cause. He simply wanted to find Mayvus’ body to reassure everyone she was no longer a threat. Aeliana didn’t always like his methods, but she could trust him with information.
“All right.” She’d only caught glimpses of Durriken’s location or hints of his thoughts in the past. As long as she refused to impose her will on him, maybe it wasn’t as intrusive as it seemed.
She closed her eyes and pressed on the brand mark, focusing on the massive dragon as she’d last seen him, his azure and amethyst scales fading into the night sky as he flew off with his prize: Mayvus.
CHAPTER 2
Sharp pain stabbedthrough Aeliana’s—no, Durriken’s—wing. They flew over a charred city, the sting of an arrow piercing his nearly translucent blue wing. He dove for the barren ground, not bothering to see where the arrow had come from. It was nothing compared to the phantom pain she—no, he—constantly sensed in his severed paw.
The clarity within his mind was overwhelming, but her own mind felt fuzzy, like she only half existed while connected to him. Or maybe she was simply experiencing his memory. She still didn’t understand the brand that joined them.
An irritated rumble in her chest showed that Durriken was equally aware of the invasion in his mind. So, then, not a memory.
He ignored the men camped outside the city’s ruins. Instead, he crossed the wall dividing forest from destruction and landed in a sprawling courtyard, his gait unsteady with his change in balance. He limped across the broken stones that had once held a market with shops and patrons, his remaining paws crushing the scattered wares.
Only it wasn’t just wares.
Brittle bones and ashes flattened beneath his feet, the sense of the souls they’d held weighing him down further. When he reached the courtyard’s center, he spun once, letting his tail curl in until he settled in a ball, his nose nestled beneath the curve of his scales.Aeliana felt the Sun on his back, spreading its warmth through to the tips of his paws.
For a moment it seemed as if he’d returned to Islara just to nap in the wake of his destruction, and Aeliana would be forced to remain curled up in his mind while he did so. Hundreds, if not thousands, of lives had been taken from the city by the fire of his breath mere weeks earlier. He’d annihilated Islara and its residents in the span of a day, and now he wanted to sleep in their remains?
But Aeliana sensed an alertness within him, a new kind of pain that grew to surpass that in his foreleg.
Could a dragon feel sorrow? Remorse?
Durriken growled his irritation. He didn’t want her here for this moment. He didn’t want her sensing the way he mourned the people he’d killed.
She didn’t feel right about it either. Not when he didn’t want her there. She focused on his external surroundings instead, letting her magic flow across their connection and through to the other side, but it wasn’t something she could control. Daisies grew by his snout, but he let out a frustrated huff of hot air that wilted them into the ground.
She stretched the limits of her autonomy, attempting to divide his will from her own. If she could make him understand she didn’t want this forced connection, maybe he would willingly exchange information. They could remain the equals they’d been when they’d parted. But the moment she sensed his will separate from her own, a new urgency emerged—a desire to impose her own will on his.
She fought against its pull while trying to remember what information Sylmar sought, what she was supposed to ask. The questions remained out of reach, just beyond the haze left in the wake of her need to command him. The effort to resist was too reminiscent of her past struggles against blood magic.
