Violet Stormwing's Arc

Chapter 21 of 46

The wind swung west and pushed the smoke back up the mountain. Violet smelled scorched meat and dragon fire drift toward Jasper's cave. Below, the torches slowed. One man lifted his head and sniffed the air. The lie she had painted on the far ridge would not hold. If the wind kept blowing, the men would climb straight to her flight. She had bought hours. Now she had none. "They're stopping," Jasper whispered. His antlers dipped as he leaned out. "They smell it." Violet pressed her hand to the stone wall. Cold seeped into her palm. She needed the men to look anywhere but up. She needed a story bigger than smoke. Her eyes fell on a carved stone near the cave mouth, its grooves lit with a steady blue glow. Jasper had said it was old, older than the village. It threw light without fire and made no smoke at all. An idea snapped into place. "Bring me the pearlwing hatchling," she said. "The white one with the gold." Jasper hesitated. "You're sending a baby out there?" "Not out. Up." Violet lifted the glowing runestone and tied it to the hatchling's collar with a strip of leather. The blue light spilled across its soft scales. "They can't smell a light. But they can chase one." She carried the pearlwing to the high peak above the cave. The other dragons watched from the dark. Violet knelt and pointed north, away from the flight, toward the empty ridges. "Fly there," she murmured. "Circle low. Let them see you. Then come home the long way." The hatchling pressed its warm head to her cheek, then leapt. The blue glow rose into the black sky. It drifted north, bright and slow, a floating light no torch could match. Below, a shout went up. The men forgot the smoke. They forgot the ridge. They pointed at the glow and turned their horses north to chase it. Violet held her breath until the last torch bent away. The line of orange dots stretched down the wrong pass and vanished behind the peaks. The smoke still curled up from her false trail, but no one was left to smell it. The pearlwing returned near dawn, wings trembling, the runestone still bound to its collar. Violet caught it and held it close. It had done what six lies could not. It had bought her days without a single soldier ever looking up. But days were all it bought. Jasper set down his broom and met her eyes. "They'll come back," he said. "When the light leads nowhere, they'll come back angry." Violet looked at her flight crowded in the cave, and she knew he was right. Running would never end while she hid on this mountain. She thought of the one place Kael's men would never think to search: her own home, the cliffside cottage where she was born. She had to bring the dragons there. Tonight.