Page 72 of Dragonbound

‘I’d like us to leave here, together, all of us. To make a small journey. Will you go with me, Sereh, please?’

His blazing eyes held hers, full of hope, full of love. Full of confidence. Her resolve melted, as though she was thawing.

She allowed herself to harden just a little.

‘Yes, I’ll follow you, Erann.’ Her voice was more steady than she felt. ‘For two more days. That’s all you have.’

Sereh squeezed his shoulder and walked to the fire. She sat, stoking it absently, watching the flames rise.

She wondered why she’d added the time restraint. She hadn’t meant to. It hadn’t been intentional. And then she realised.

She couldn’t let herself hope for long.

She owed herself more than that.

52

SEREH

She followed Erann’s pace, astonished at his speed. When she’d woken after her exposure, he’d barely been able to get about without his crutches. Now, he limped but loped along almost as fast as Arrow. She also felt much recovered and was eager to follow him and learn the truth, but even so, fatigue dragged at her feet.

Sereh stumbled and fell elbow deep in snow that was no longer soft and fluffy but wet and sludgy. She thumped the ground, sending a spray of slush into her face, grimacing at the bite of cold on her wind-reddened face. Arrow ran to her side. The wolf-dog had been walking in the middle ground between her and Erann. Sereh had the sneaking suspicion Arrow was as enamoured of Erann as she was.

‘By the Gods,’ she growled, gasping for breath. Sereh ran her hands through Arrow’s fur. It was at the in-between stage of changing from her Long Night to her Long Day coat, and as she stroked, handfuls of fur came free. Sereh released them into the gentle breeze, allowing the familiar movement to soothe her as she recovered.

Erann was many steps in front but stopped when he realised she wasn’t with him, then started walking back towards her. She heard the wet crunch of his boots, their snowshoes discarded, although Erann had managed to lose one in the avalanche anyway.

‘Are you well, Sereh?’ His voice rang with concern. She watched his progress, again marvelling at how quickly he was healing. The limp remained pronounced, but he was managing to walk unaided.

She held her hand up and shook her head to show he didn’t need to come and help her as she stumbled back to her feet. She resumed her steps, Arrow at her side. Erann watched for a moment – she sensed his scrutiny – but then continued on his way.

The day was glorious, the golden sun beating down on the melting landscape. At long last, she felt herself start to believe the Long Night had ended and the crops might stand a chance of first being harvested and being re-sown before the Long Night returned. Beneath her feet, the trickle of flowing water could be faintly heard. In the distance, glimpses between the huge mountains enclosing Vatna Jokull revealed a murky green-and-brown sludge where the snow was melting on the summer grazing meadows and slumbering crop fields.

They stuck to a path across the centre of Vatna Jokull, having hurried to get away from the devastation of the avalanche. Sereh felt sure they were retracing their steps from the first few days of their journey together, though only Gods knew why Erann would want to come back here. He hadn’t revealed their destination to her, but wherever they were going, it wasn’t towards the Library or towards the cave where she’d sheltered the first night, which had been their initial destination before the avalanche. Her feet grew heavier and heavier. She was tired and hungry and could feel her frustration growing.

She was following Erann because he’d saved her life. Surely that granted him a second chance. And, if she was entirely honest with herself, because she wanted to trust him. When he’d said he loved her on the day she’d left him, she’d been too angry for it to register. Since then, she’d thought of little else. It made sense. It made her feel right.

She hadn’t told him that.

She wasn’t inclined to let him know now, either. Not at the moment. As much as she felt for him, she wasn’t sure she trusted him right now. She knew he’d lied to her – by omission, if nothing else – and he had yet to apologise.

There were so many holes in his story. Where Emma was. How he’d known where to find her. How he’d been able to recover from a terrible broken leg in barely nine days. He claimed their destination would answer her questions, but she couldn’t see how. She could admit to herself that she desperately wanted to be convinced, however.

She wanted to believe her growing feelings for him were justified – it couldn’t just be because he was the single most attractive man she’d ever laid eyes on. She wasn’t that shallow. Was she? Neither could it be because he was the only person who could help her.

Finding him after all these rotations apart, only to lose him… It was unthinkable, but she would do it if he proved untrustworthy. Like Rankil.

Those days after she’d walked out and left, she realised, had been some of the loneliest of her entire life, even taking into account finding Estrith and her family dead in their steading.

The only time she’d ever felt more lost was in the days after her parents died. Her fury at them abandoning her, when she needed them, had never left her. It had only dulled to a muted ache once she realised that they’d not been the cause of her being sent to Rankil’s steading. No, he’d manipulated events to ensure that happened. She should have kept her home. She shouldn’t have been compelled to become his servant.

Living at Rankil’s, being forced to abandon child after child on the glacier, had hardened her heart to the needs of others. She’d thought only of herself and her anger at her parents and at Estrith for being dead. But finding Erann again, it had opened something in her. Not just the ache of desire, but an ache in her heart that only Erann could soothe.

To feel the blossoming of hope, friendship and love – only to have it all snatched away, especially by her own bloody-mindedness – was more than she could take. She’d nearly drowned in her grief. It was how she’d wandered off the edge of the glacier and fallen down a deep crevasse. She’d landed bruised, torn and unable to move from the ledge for fear she’d fall even further. She’d almost welcomed the helplessness of lying, trapped and freezing slowly to death. She’d known what it was to abandon all hope and to accept death as inevitable.

She’d been dimly aware of Arrow crashing down next to her. Sereh had tried to tell her it was all right. Arrow hadn’t listened and had abandoned her.

Some time later, Sereh had felt her return. She’d squinted up to the fragment of sky visible and seen what she’d thought was one huge green eye staring back at her. For a second she’d believed Arrow’s white fur had turned golden, but then she’d felt Arrow’s hot breath on her face and seen she was still snowy white – just dirtier than usual. When Sereh came to again, it was to hear Erann shouting down at her.