Violet Stormwing's Arc

Chapter 24 of 46

The cellar was safe for one moon. Violet had thirty days to find a place Kael's patrols never touched. She spread her maps across the flowered fortress floor and traced every pass she knew. Each one crawled with Kael's riders. She had no answer, and the flight stayed cornered. A blue light drifted through the vines. Lumina, the little fairy who had guided Violet on the mountain, landed on the map's edge. Her glow pooled over the inked peaks. She had warned Violet before torches came; now she frowned at the tangle of pass lines. "You keep drawing the roads men use," Lumina said. "No wonder they find you." "There are no other roads," Violet said. "The deer say otherwise." Lumina flitted to the broken window. Beyond the purple walls, a white deer stepped from the brush. Spots dappled its flank. It picked a path along the wall and slipped into a gap between two fallen towers. "It comes and goes. It never crosses open ground. Follow where it goes, not where the roads go." Violet weighed the words. A deer took the safest ground by instinct. Kael's riders followed the passes because horses needed them. If the deer knew a way through that horses could not manage, then no patrol would ever ride it. She folded the map and climbed after the deer. Lumina lit the way. The animal led her along a narrow shelf of stone behind the fortress. The shelf pinched to a crack no horse could enter, then opened into a wooded fold hidden between two ridges. Water ran clear over stone. Thick trees closed the sky. From below, no rider could see in. From above, no rider could climb down. Violet stood in the green hollow and breathed. Grass for grazing. Water. Cover on every side. One path in, too tight for a mounted man. She tested the ground and found it firm enough for a dragon to land. "This is it," she said. "They can't bring horses here. They'd have to come on foot, one at a time." Lumina circled the clearing. "And you'd hear them a mile off." That night Violet moved the flight. She woke the hatchlings and led the mother dragon up the shelf while the moon was down. The pink dragon came last, wings tucked to fit the crack. By dawn the whole flight rested in the hidden fold. The cellar stood empty behind them. Violet had her refuge. No patrol could reach it. But the deer's path ran only one way. To reach the hollow she had crossed open sky above the ridges. Kael's men had not seen her tonight. In daylight, any flight in or out would show against the peaks. She had a home Kael could never enter. She could no longer come and go unseen.