wait.
But they called to her, long after she closed her eyes. And all she could think was tomorrow. Tomorrow she would see them again.
TWENTY-ONE
FINNEGAN WOKE HER EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, with one gentle hand on her shoulder. She sat up, stretching her stiff back muscles. “Up the river today,” Lucas said.
“Hope you enjoyed the shelter,” Finnegan said. “I doubt we’ll find anything like it once we get close to dragon territory.”
“Then how will we sleep tonight?”
“With caution,” Finnegan said. “We’ll keep watch. If the dragons get close, we’ll have to have a sudden swim.”
Aurora had never swum in her life. “All right,” she said. She hauled her pack onto her shoulders.
The walk north proved exhausting, the mountain growing so slowly on the horizon that they seemed to be walking in place. Aurora slipped her hands through the reeds as they passed them. They prickled against her skin.
The dragons were large in the sky now. Aurora could make out the points where their wings met their bodies, the claws on their legs. She watched as they soared through the air.
One of the dragons landed close enough to make the ground rumble, almost throwing Aurora off her feet. She looked east, where the dragon shook its wings, its tail thrashing from side to side. It stared back at her. Even from a distance, she could feel its eyes, cutting down to her heart.
Aurora gripped the dragon necklace, imagining she could feel the heat of the dragon’s blood glowing inside it.
As they walked, Aurora kept thinking back to that tattered wanted poster, to the words scrawled across the paper. Witch, they had called her. They would see how witchlike she was now.
Their group settled on the riverbank as night fell, sitting as close to the water as they could without falling into the mud. Aurora lit a fire.
“I’ll keep watch,” Aurora said, after they had eaten a scanty meal. “I don’t think I’ll sleep anyway.”
She half expected someone to argue, but Finnegan nodded. “Wake us the moment you hear anything,” he said. With the prince in agreement, Lucas could do little to protest. He and Finnegan lay on the hard ground, blankets wrapped around them, and Aurora urged the fire out. They did not want to alert the dragons to their presence overnight.
Aurora hugged herself with her own blanket, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Hundreds of stars blinked above her, never-ending spatters of light as far as she could see, and she tilted her head back, taking in every one. She had expected the night to be eerily quiet, for the stillness to creep into her bones, but even this desolate place bristled with sound, once she got quiet enough to listen. The wind tickled her ear, and she could hear the soft splashing of the river as it tumbled over stones, Lucas’s soft breathing, the way Finnegan shifted on the ground. This was a different kind of sleeplessness, she found, as she curled her legs beneath her and stared across the river. It was stillness that wasn’t really still at all. The world was breathing around her.
The river reflected the moon, creating a second sky, blurred and distorted. She clutched her necklace, running her finger along the ridges of her dragon’s wings. Finnegan shifted again, his blanket falling to rest against her side. Even though he did not speak, she knew he wasn’t asleep.
“Can dragons see in the dark?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” Finnegan said. “No one’s ever tested it.” The blankets rustled, and he sat up. “They can create their own light though.”
“Yes,” Aurora said. “That’s true.” She pressed her thumb against the dragon’s feet, as though it were perched on her hand, about to fly. “You’re not sleeping.”
“Couldn’t,” he said. “I can take watch if you like.”
She laughed softly. “Not afraid, are you?”
“What’s there to be afraid of? Man-eating dragons? Not me.” He shifted closer. His hand rested on hers, fingers sliding into the gaps between her knuckles. She didn’t know how he had found it in the dark. She could make out the outline of his face, the shape of his nose. She couldn’t tell if he was smiling.
Aurora looked away, staring back up at the stars, searching the horizon for any hint of a dragon. Red streaked across the sky.
“There’s one thing I still don’t understand,” she said. “About any of this. Why did Rodric wake me up? I don’t love him, not the way true love should mean. He doesn’t love me. And