washed, body scrubbed, hair dried and loose from my braid, my furry boots off and drying by the fire, a clean and herb-scented tunic dress on, I feel… feminine. Pretty, even. The dragon has been gone long enough that I start to wonder if him getting a whiff of me pre-bath made him decide not to come back at all.
While I bathed, our food cooked. Or reheated, rather, since the stew’s been here all morning, but I’m still claiming cooking-credit. I got it to bubbling, so it counts. I’m just spooning the last of my portion into my mouth when Halki’s head enters the lodge. He doesn’t change from his dragon’s form, and he stays with only his head in the doorway. “I have returned, drhema.”
Relief is sweet and jittery in my veins. He came back. He’s going to help! He thinks you’re pretty—even when you should be tossed in a pond with a gob of lye soap. “That’s great,” I say with a nervous smile. “Did you catch anything?” I tip my bowl a bit so that he can see into it. “I have stew warm and ready for you, if you’d like.”
“I would,” he confirms. “I’ll just be one moment.”
His head disappears, the door flap drops down, and then there’s a horrible retching sound.
Shoving my bowl to my bench seat, his saved feathers poofing into the air, I race for the doorway. “Halki?”
I emerge from the lodge to the sight of the colossal dragon’s back heaving as he sits on his haunches, shoulders hunched, long neck lowered, snout nearly touching the ground. His wings are closed tight to his sides—and his ribs stand out in a painful-looking way as he looses another awful, hacking cough.
This dragon will put fear into the hearts of all women who would try to come against us. He’ll protect us. He’ll rescue my brother. He’s our saving grace.
My tribe’s saving grace is vomiting.
And more worrying to me on a personal level, the man I just mentally planned an entire night-before-a-daring-rescue with in the hour he left me alone enough to think has fallen sick.
“Halki! What have you eaten? Was it poisonous?” I shout, worried.
From my vantage point, I watch in horror as something large and dark crests his tongue as he gags. His jaws open wide, and two thin flaps of nearly transparent tissue connect his lower jaw to his upper one at the creases of his lips. They stretch and flex and fold, following his mouth’s movements.
The thing on his tongue sucks back into his throat when he inhales, starting the painful gagging all over again.
Visions of my protective, lunatic devoted dragon that I’ve called mine for less than a day go up in smoke as I watch him work to heave his guts up. Why is my dragon dying?
I race around him, trying to get a better look at what’s wrong. He’s hacking like he’s caught a wishbone in the back of his throat, with that dark thing emerging further every time he retches, but not evacuating entirely.
“Are you choking?” I ask, panicked. I even hold my arm up, fingers splayed, like I might reach in and try to clear any obstruction from his throat.
But his rows of incredibly long pointed teeth gleam. It would be stupid to stick my hand anywhere between those jaws, and even that measure would only help if I could manage to reach far enough back to clear any obstruction.
Halki coughs again—and then he hurls up a massive oblong… thing.
It drops to the ground with a soft coosh rather than a plop. Instead of wet and glisteny like stomach contents or his very innards from the violence of his disgorging, whatever has emerged is compact and dry and… odd. “What… is that?”
Kulla, one of my tribeswomen, takes her hand away from her mouth so she can point at Halki’s… whatever it is. “Is that a bull’s nose ring?” she asks.
I can’t believe I’m getting closer, but I am. I peer down at it until my jaw drops in disbelief. Then I turn a look on our dragon. “What is this? Dragon, did you eat one of our bulls?”
“No.” Halki reaches out with his claws and takes hold of the lumpy thing he vomited up like it’s precious treasure and not his rejected stomach contents. “I flew until I came to some livestock penned near Ember Pass. I found food to hunt there.”
“Umm, Halki? It’s not ‘hunting’ if you found them in a pen,” I point out.
“Ember