To Tame a Dragon - Tiffany Roberts Page 0,44
my mother. She, myself, and my sire fought them furiously, but he and I were spent from our battle, and we were outnumbered. Our efforts were not enough. The moon was stained with blood, and so was the sand. And though we killed all the others, they had ravaged my mother, slain her, and my father succumbed to his injuries shortly after we discovered her lifeless body.”
Elliya had never imagined his voice could be laced with such pain, such sorrow—it was well beyond the fury and bitterness he’d shown so far, beyond the tenderness and kindness he’d begun showing her today.
She frowned and lifted her head, meeting Falthyris’s gaze. “That must have been horrible to witness.”
He brushed her hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear, which he traced with the pad of his finger. “It was but one horror in a world of many, and yet I suppose it was the first that impacted me. Before that night, I was the force sewing terror throughout the desert. What had I to fear? Yet afterward…I could not separate my fear from my anger. They were too tightly interwoven. I was furious to see dragonkind brought low. Furious that I had lost everything I’d toiled to gain over the centuries in a single night.
“And I was fearful that I would succumb to Dragonsbane’s power, too. It took hundreds of years, but it finally overcame me this time. It finally won.”
Elliya frowned. In the back of her mind, her imagination was running wild, stirring up deep, strong emotions—presenting the what-if of her mother’s potential death. She’d never thought about it before. Telani had always been a presence in Elliya’s life, had always been a constant. Telani was in many ways the foundation of the tribe. The grief Elliya would feel when her mother was gone…
She could not allow herself to reflect upon that now.
“Dragonsbane is what you call the Red Star?” she asked.
“Yes, because it accomplished what no other force could—it triggered the slow death of dragonkind.”
Elliya dropped her gaze to his jawline and lifted a hand, running her fingertip over the bone-like spikes protruding from his jaw. “No creature is without some weakness, from the mightiest dragon to the tiniest insect.”
“Dragons were not meant to have such weaknesses,” he said, the words laced with a low growl. “I spent a great many years after the comet had come and gone in search of answers, speaking to dragon and human alike. The stories were always similar. The Red Heat driving creatures into frenzies, male dragons seeking to rut females that were mated to others. There were even tales of Heat-maddened dragons seeking out human females. We all knew that the mating bond could be forced, even by humans, and thus had rarely let humans near. I did not want to believe those stories. My pride had been wounded enough. I refused to accept that Dragonsbane was compelling my kind to actively seek that fate, that it was enhancing that one power humans had over us.
“No one had answers, neither human nor dragon. Dragonsbane had never been seen before, and no one knew what curse it had woven over our world, no one knew what power it had exercised over dragonkind. Even now, centuries later, I have no answers as to its nature.
“And, as the years passed, I slept for longer and longer periods. What point was there in seeking answers that did not exist? Years, decades…what difference did they make? Why should I have ventured through a desolate world and be reminded of all that was lost? Part of me, perhaps, believed that if I slept enough, I would outlast Dragonsbane. I would one day awaken and never again see its taunting red glare, never again feel its influence upon me.”
“You slept for decades at a time?” Elliya asked.
“Yes. I have slept through entire generations of your kind.”
Fresh emotion coiled in Elliya’s chest, difficult to decipher in the already existent jumble. Was it…sorrow? A sense of loss? Her life had been hard, and she’d had to fight for survival more than once, but it had also been full of so many joyous moments, of so many shining memories. It hurt her heart to know that Falthyris, after however many hundreds of years, had missed out on so much of what she’d experienced in less than two decades.
She shifted her hand up, smoothing her palm over his cheek. “What is the point of immortality if you spend so much time asleep,