Violet Stormwing's Arc

Chapter 46 of 46

The second summons came four days after the first. Kael wanted proof again, this time at his fortress. Violet stood in the valley and knew the trap in the bargain. If she flew south, she left the wild dragon alone for two full days. It hoarded crystals now, but crystals did not calm a restless beast. She had seen it pace the rim last night. The pale wolf had whistled twice at dawn. The dragon wanted the sky, and she would not be here to hold it. She could refuse the summons. Then Kael would hunt them both. She could obey and risk the dragon bolting into open air, straight toward Kael's scouts. Either path lost her the beast. She needed a keeper who could watch the valley while she rode away. Nick Coal came up the narrow crack that afternoon, a sack over his shoulder. He tamed dragons for a trade and rode out east to check on her when he could spare the time. He set the sack down and looked at the churned earth along the rim. "It's been pacing," he said. Not a question. "Two days I have to leave it," Violet said. "Kael's called me south." Nick crouched by the wolf and let it smell his hand. The wolf allowed it. He pulled a fistful of moonpetal vine from the sack. "Grew these from the seeds. Figured you'd run short." Violet stared at the pale blossoms. "You can't calm it. It kills any rider but me." "Not riding it," Nick said. "Feeding it. Watching it." He crushed a blossom and held it to the wind. "The vine works whether I climb its back or not." He was right. The dragon feared a rider, not a keeper with an offering. Violet had used the vine from the ground herself. She showed him the crystal hoard in the rocks, the whistle for the wolf, the red cloth on the deer. Nick listened and repeated each signal back in three words. He missed nothing. "Two days," she said. "If it flies, don't chase it. Whistle the wolf and lay vine along the rim. It comes back for the hoard." "I'll hold it," Nick said. She believed him. She saddled the pink dragon and flew south with the moonpetal proof for Kael. When she returned two days later, the valley was quiet. The wild dragon lay coiled on its crystals. Nick sat on a rock nearby, a fresh scrape across his forearm. "It flew once," he said. "First night." "And?" "Vine brought it down." He shrugged. "Bit me. Then slept." Violet looked at the sleeping beast, then at Nick. She had answered the summons and kept the dragon both. The leash on her time no longer meant losing the valley. But now the wild dragon knew a second calming hand, and she was not sure yet what that would come to mean.