CHAPTER ONE
FOX
“You should go home, Pale One,”Eha said. The dragon’s voice was soft and cool in Fox’s mind.
He pushed the reading glasses up his nose and rubbed his eyes, a few strands of pale blond hair falling in front of his eyes. His knee bumped the rickety desk where he was sitting, sending his pen rolling. He caught it with his left hand and winced as his bandaged finger throbbed at the sudden movement. His father had broken it in their fight, right before Fox had driven the blade into his chest. He’d told the healer an escaping prisoner had done it.
“You are too tired,”Eha said. Her voice was gentle but insistent. In the few days he’d known the dragon, she had already taken to parenting him. His stomach twisted. She deserved better. When Chief Commander Harlow had brought Fox down here directly after the prison break, Eha had thought Fox was there to free her.
Her and her child.
You came for me.
But he’d failed them both. She was still chained up and her child was locked away somewhere deeper in the cavern’s tunnels, to be dragged out when they needed to ensure Eha’s cooperation.
All Fox had done over the past few days was translate nonsensejournals and watch Chief Commander Harlow and his fellow soldiers abuse and degrade Eha and the Dragonborn they had imprisoned in the back cells.
He needed to do better.
“I’m almost done with this journal. I have fewer than a dozen pages left.”
He looked back down at the page he was currently translating, grimacing at the words that seemed to swirl and dance before his eyes. Eha wasn’t wrong, but he couldn’t stop. The faster he translated these pages, the faster he found the information Harlow needed.
And the faster Fox could destroy it.
“When did you sleep last?”Eha asked, sounding more mother than fierce dragon god.
“I slept yesterday.”Fox paused.“Or the day before that.”He didn’t actually know what day it was. Harlow had told him when he handed over the papers and assigned Fox to translating them that there was another scholar helping with the work. Every page that Fox didn’t translate, they might get ahold of. And that meant every page Fox didn’t translate was a page that could lead to the ruination of the Dragonborn. Fox had his doubts about whether Chief Commander Harlow would discover some secret to mind-controlling the dragons. But he was also searching for any information on the whereabouts of the lost gods. And Fox knew there was no way he could allow the army to find the last of them. Sofia would never forgive him.
The name sent an ache through his chest, and his fingers clenched hard around his quill. The page before him swam again, and he took a breath, looking up and blinking into the dimness of the cavern.
His small lantern was the only light on his level, but just a few levels below him the torches that lined the main pit were lit, never quite allowing Eha the peace of darkness even when there was no one else around. She was chained to the ground, her white scales dull in the shadowy cavern.
“When is she coming?”Eha asked, and Fox realized she’d read his thoughts again.
She—Sofia.
“I haven’t heard from her yet,”he said. He hadn’t gottenused to speaking through his mind to the dragon. And he definitely hadn’t gotten used to her constantly poking around his thoughts. The longer he spent in the cavern with her, the easier it was for her to simply prance into his mind and settle in there.“She’ll come, though.”
Even as he said it, he doubted himself. And he felt Eha’s own disappointment as she felt that doubt.
“We didn’t have time to make a plan when we separated, but she will come back. She has things to do.”His lips flattened.“Chief commanders to kill.”
Eha snorted, and he heard it from below.
“She will have to fight me for the honor.”
“I’ll let her know for you.”
“I was thinking of ripping his throat out, but that may be too quick. Humans are such fragile things. Perhaps I will go for his hands first. He loves doing that, does he not?”
Fox listened as she described in detail all the small ways she hoped to torment the man, and his stomach twisted.
In the week since Chalia had flown off with the resistance and Fox had promised to spy for them, he hadn’t gotten used to the idea of truly going against Chief Commander Harlow. He had spent over two decades worshipping the ground he walked on. But he knew, no matter his own feelings toward Harlow, he couldn’t let the man win either. The chief commander winning meant the destruction of the Dragonborn.
He swallowed. He thought again about the way Harlow had looked at Sofia when she’d been beaten and chained in his office.
Hateful. Rageful. Hungry.