Violet Stormwing's Arc

Chapter 20 of 46

Violet knelt at the cave mouth and looked down the dark slope. Torches climbed the low pass, a slow line of orange dots. Kael's men. By morning they would find the trail her flight had left—broken brush, deep claw marks, scorched grass where a hatchling had sneezed fire. She could move the dragons before dawn. But the trail would still point straight up the mountain to Jasper's cave. Kael's riders would follow it. She had no way to hide where the flight had gone. Jasper set his broom down and joined her. He was the horned young man who had shown her the hidden passage and given the flight this shelter. His antlers caught the firelight. His brown eyes were kind but worried. "They'll read the ground like a map," he said. "Every scratch tells them which way you flew." "Then I give them a wrong map," Violet said. She took the lantern from its chain by the door—an old iron thing shaped like a dragon, its glass full of trapped fire. She pried the glass open. The flame inside leaned and hissed. "Bring me a dry branch," she told Jasper. He fetched one. Violet lit it from the lantern. Then she woke the pink dragon and led her out onto the peak. She waved the burning branch low, dragging fresh scorch marks across the far ridge—away from the cave, west, toward a cliff that dropped into empty air. She scraped claw grooves in the frost with a rock. She scattered the last strips of meat down the wrong slope so the smell would pull the men after it. Work faster, she told herself. The torches were closer now. Jasper watched her paint the false trail. "You're teaching them a lie," he said, half a smile breaking through. "They'll chase a dragon that flew off a cliff and never landed." "They'll waste a day at the bottom," Violet said. She smeared her own boot prints toward the drop, then backed away, sweeping the real tracks behind her with Jasper's broom. Moss and frost closed over the marks. When she reached the cave, the ground behind her told no story at all. She hung the lantern back on its chain. The fire settled. Below, the first torches reached the false trail. She watched the orange line bend west, following her lie toward the empty cliff. "It worked," Jasper breathed. But the branch had burned low, and the wind was rising. Violet felt it push cold against her face, then swing hard from the west. Smoke from her false trail curled back up the mountain—straight toward the cave. If the wind held, it would carry the scent of scorched meat and dragon fire right to the true refuge. The men would smell it. They would look up. And this time there would be no lie left to feed them.