Violet Stormwing's Arc

Chapter 41 of 46

Two days after Nick left, the crystal in the silver tree vanished. Violet found the bare branch at dawn. Someone had crossed the rim. The berry-smell still hung on the pink dragon's scales, but it meant nothing now. A scout had found the valley, and Kael's hunter would follow. She could not smell the danger or hear it. She would not know how close the bonded tracker was until it dropped over the ridge. She needed eyes she did not have. She thought of the pale wolf, and of the silver tree with its moon-and-star leaves. Then she thought of Nick. His dragon dropped into the grass by midmorning. He climbed down with a sack over his shoulder and the old bite scar white on his forearm. He set the sack in the flowers and looked at the empty branch before she said a word. "Somebody's been here," he said. "Last night. The crystal's gone." Violet's voice stayed flat. "His hunter's coming, and I can't watch the whole rim." Nick crouched and opened the sack. Berry seeds, a fistful of red cloth strips, and something wrapped in leaves. He unwrapped it. A single dark bloom, dusk-purple petals streaked with storm-gray. Violet knew the flower. A stranger had given her one like it once, and the wild dragon had known it too. "Found it growing north," Nick said. "Dragons calm around it. Yours should stay quiet if the hunter passes close." That was not enough, and they both knew it. A calm dragon could still be found. Violet looked at the wolf, then at the ridge, and a plan came together. "I don't hide anymore," she said. "I watch." They worked through the day. Violet tied red cloth to the white deer and walked it to the narrow cut in the rim. If the hunter came, the deer would bolt through and warn her. She whistled the pale wolf up the slope and set it on the high ground, nose to the wind. She tucked the dark bloom into the crystal hoard where the wild dragon coiled, and the beast settled deeper, quiet. At dusk the deer bolted through the cut, red cloth flying. The wolf howled once. Violet did not run. She mounted the pink dragon and climbed above the rim to meet the hunter in open sky. A silver-and-gold dragon crested the ridge, a rider low on its neck. It swung its head, searching for a scent that never reached it. The berry-wall held. The hunter circled, found nothing, and turned back the way it came. Violet landed in the dark grass. Nick waited by his mount. "You turned him," he said. "This time." She looked at the empty branch, then at the seeds in the sack. "He knows the valley now. He'll come back with more than one dragon." The watching had beaten the hunter. But her hiding place was hiding no longer.