Violet Stormwing's Arc

Chapter 43 of 46

The wolf did not howl at dawn. Violet stood at the valley rim and listened. No whistle answer. No deer bolting through the cut. Since the last hunter fled, her sentries had gone silent. She had built the warning system to tell her when a rider slipped in. Now it told her nothing. If Kael sent a man tonight, she would learn of it too late. She climbed down and found the deer grazing far from the cut, its red cloth torn loose in the brush. The wolf lay by the pool, ribs sharp under fur. It had not eaten. It would not leave the water to run the ridge. Her whole net of eyes had rotted while she flew south to bargain. She needed a signal that no beast could sleep through. Theo found her there at midday. He came on foot, boots muddy, his easy smile in place. He had lied to Kael's soldiers once to save her, and traded the lord's trust for hers. Now he leaned in close, the way he always did before hard news. "Kael raised the horn," he said. "He wants to see the dragon fly. His rider comes in two days to watch." "Then I need to know the moment he crosses the rim," Violet said. "My animals failed me. The wolf won't run. The deer won't stay marked." Theo crouched by the pool. He studied the silver tree, the empty branch, the runestone half-buried in the flower field where the dragon had woken. "You keep asking beasts to warn you," he said. "Beasts get tired. Stone doesn't." He pressed his palm to the runestone's carved face. A steady glow spilled from its grooves, brighter as the wild dragon lifted its head across the field. "It answered the dragon before. It'll answer any dragon that flies in." Violet knelt beside him. When Kael's rider crossed the valley on a bonded mount, the stone would feel it, the way it had felt her pink dragon. The glow would be her alarm. No hunger, no fear, no torn cloth could dull it. "We tie a bell above it," she said. "When it glows, the light trips the bell. I hear it from the cave." They worked the afternoon. Theo strung a thin cord from a low branch to a bronze bell. Violet banked the flowers back so the glow showed clear. At dusk she led the pink dragon low across the field. The runestone flared. The cord pulled. The bell rang across the still valley. "It works," Theo said. Violet let out a breath. Her sentries were dead, but she had a warning again, one no animal could fail. Now she would hear Kael's rider the moment he entered. But the test proved something colder. In two days a stranger would stand in her valley and watch the last wild dragon fly for the lord who claimed it.