Scarlett Meris's Arc

Chapter 12 of 15

Kieran pointed south through the pines. "Two ridges over. We ride close, then walk." They left the blue dragon dozing under a screen of broken boughs and lifted off on Kieran's green mount. He set it down in a hollow behind the second ridge, well short of the horns. The dragon crouched low in the ferns. Scarlett buckled the rune-sword back at her hip. The runes woke faint against her palm. "On foot from here," Kieran said. "Your hair." She pulled her hood up. Her ears disappeared under wool. They climbed the ridge belly-down and stopped in the brush at the crest. Below, a human column had pinned a small fae scouting party against a creek. Bodies already lay in the shallows. The humans fought hard, but they were not fighting like hunters. They were fighting like people who believed they were right. One of them was shouting. A captain, from the sash. His voice carried up the slope. "—burned the mill at Ansel! Dragons on their leash! Every one of them knew!" A soldier near him held up a barb on a strip of leather. The same barb Scarlett had pulled from the silver pup. The same maker's mark. "Off a fae ship," the captain shouted. "Off a fae ship, and the beasts do their killing for them!" Scarlett's hand closed on wet moss. "They think the fae sent the dragons." "They think the fae armed the dragons," Kieran said. His voice had gone flat. "With barbs the fae make." "Which your father sold." "Which my father sold to hunters. And left the maker's mark on. And let both sides find." She turned her head. His face had no color left in it. "He wanted this," Kieran said. "Humans blame the fae. Fae see humans butcher us. The court runs to him. He protects them. From the ones he pointed at us." Below, a fae woman went down in the creek. The captain was already turning his line toward the trees. Scarlett started to rise. Kieran caught her wrist. "Not one sword," he said. "Not here. You draw that blade, they see fae rescue fae, and every word he's fed them is true." She held there, half up, her hand on the hilt. The runes were bright now. She could reach the captain in ten strides. She sat back down. Her breath shook once. "Then what," she said. "We take it from him." Kieran's eyes did not leave the creek. "The barbs. The harbor. The story. We put the dragons somewhere he can't reach. The old nesting sanctum in the eastern rock. Walls he doesn't own." "And your crown?" "Stays in my pocket until it's worth something." The fae woman in the creek did not get up. Scarlett watched her stop moving. She let her hand fall off the sword. "East," she said. "Tonight. We move every dragon that will follow." Kieran nodded once and slid back down the ridge.