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The flint sparks in her fingers, sending pinpricks of light everywhere but into the kindling. Abby flinches against her better judgment, then sets her shoulders. She isn’t afraid of a little fire. She’s a knight. The forest is quiet as it settles into night.
The road to Whitecliff Monastery winds through the Thornwood for three days before breaking into open country. Abby has walked it twice before— once as a novitiate, once to retrieve a shipment of illuminated texts. Never with a passenger. Never with this kind of passenger.
Ellie leans against the crumbling masonry of the abandoned Shepard’s rest. She hadn’t offered to help Abby set up camp, and Abby hadn’t asked. She's been quiet since they left the Mother House at dawn, which should be a relief but instead sets Abby's teeth on edge. In her experience, Ellie's silences are more dangerous than her words.
The dragon whisperer. That's what the Abbess called her when she handed Abby the sealed orders. A valuable asset. A dangerous liability. Deliver her to Whitecliff intact and tell no one what she is. The Abbess's eyes had been grave, her voice weighted with implications Abby didn't want to examine.
Now Ellie is her responsibility. Her burden. Her penance, maybe, though for what sin Abby isn't certain.
"Need help?" Ellie asks, voice edged with something that might be amusement.
"No." Abby arranges the kindling with precise, methodical movements. Her hands are steady. They're always steady now, years of discipline overriding the tremor that still lives in her bones.
She strikes the flint. Once, twice. Sparks fly but don't catch. Abby's breath comes a little faster. She strikes again. The spark catches. A tiny flame curls around a twist of dried grass. Abby stares at it, at the way it eats the fuel, growing larger. For a moment she's fifteen again, watching flames lick across bunting. Hearing the roar, the screams. Seeing the shadow overhead, wings blotting out the sun—
She shoves the memory down and blows gently on the ember. The flame grows.
"Took you long enough," Ellie says, moving closer.
A muscle in the back of Abby's neck jumps. "Controlled fire takes time. If you want a forest fire, call your little dragon friend."
Ellie goes completely still. When Abby glances up, the girl's eyes glitter with fury. Then her expression shutters.
"Oh?" Ellie's voice is carefully light. "Is that what it is? Afraid of it catching?"
Abby is on her feet before she realizes she's moving, striding into Ellie's space with her fists clenched. For all Ellie’s spitfire, Abby has a head and sixty pounds on her. "Shut your mouth."
But Ellie doesn't back down. She tips her head back to meet Abby's glare, and there's something wild in her eyes. Reckless. "Make me."
They stand there, too close, breathing the same air. Abby can see the freckles scattered across Ellie's pale skin, the scar through her right eyebrow. Up close, there's something feverish about her, like she's burning from the inside out.
Abby steps back first. "Get some sleep. We leave at first light."
"Yes, Sister." The title is mocking, but Ellie moves toward her bedroll without further argument.
Abby tends the fire, feeding it carefully measured pieces of wood. She doesn't look at Ellie, but she can feel the weight of the girl's stare like a hand between her shoulder blades.
--
The second day is worse.
They're deep in the Thornwood now, where the canopy blocks out most of the sky. The undergrowth is thick with thorns that catch at their clothes and draw thin lines of blood across Abby's forearms. Ellie navigates it with uncanny ease, barely making a sound.
"You've been through here before," Abby observes.
"Maybe." Ellie doesn't elaborate.
"The Abbess said you came from the southern monasteries."
"The Abbess says a lot of things." Ellie ducks under a low branch.
Abby's patience, already worn thin, frays a little more. "I'm trying to understand what I'm dealing with here."
Ellie stops and turns, her expression sharp. "You're dealing with a prisoner. Someone being shipped off because she's too dangerous to keep and too valuable to kill. That's all you need to know."
"You're not a prisoner—"
"Then I can leave?" Ellie crosses her arms. "Go my own way, no escorts, no babysitters?"
Abby says nothing. They both know the answer.
"Right." Ellie's smile is bitter. "That's what I thought."
She turns and keeps walking. Abby follows, the words she wants to say tangled in her throat. I'm not your enemy. I'm trying to help. This is for your own safety. But they all sound hollow, even in her own head.
They make camp that night in a small clearing. No ruins this time, just open sky and the oppressive weight of trees on all sides. Abby builds another fire, her hands steadier this time. The routine helps. Gather, arrange, strike, blow. Don't think about the flames. Don't think about wings overhead.
“Must’ve been pretty nasty, to make you flinch like that.”
Abby starts, the twig she was feeding to the growing flame jumping from her hand. She turns to Ellie, to find her canny eyes watching carefully. At Abby’s gaze, the corner of one lip twitches upward. Abby scoffs, turning away to hide the way her ears burn at the indictment. “Fuck off.”
Ellie tilts forward, elbows on knees. The flames paint her face in shifting orange and shadow. “Dragonfire?”
Abby doesn’t grace this question with a response. She’s not sure she could force sound from her throat in a way that wouldn’t embarrass her.
Ellie’s voice is casual, but Abby can trace both a deliberate intention and something else-- curiosity?-- underneath her words. “I’ve seen what it looks like,” Ellie continued.
Abby focused very hard on the glowing orange at the heart of the fire. At the motion of feeding the flame from her pile of deadfall. At the ringing sound of screaming, happening somewhere just outside of hearing.
“You don’t hide it, you know. You flinch every time you light a fire. You scan the sky like you're expecting something to fall on you. And you look at me like I'm—" Ellie stops.
Abby’s shoulders are ratcheted tight. Her stomach flips as adrenaline builds, ready to fight something that can’t be fought. "Like you're what?" Her voice is flat.
"Like I'm a monster."
The word sits between them, heavy as iron. Abby wants to deny it, but the lie won't come. She does look at Ellie that way, sometimes. When the girl moves too quickly, or her eyes catch the light wrong, or Abby remembers the glint of teeth that had torn members of her convent apart.
"I'm not afraid of you," Abby says finally.
"Liar." But Ellie's tone isn't mocking anymore. Just tired.
“I have good reason to be,” Abby replies tersely. Two more days.
Ellie's hands curl into fists on her knees. In the firelight, her eyes look strange-- almost golden at the edges. She scowls into the dirt. “I haven’t fucking done anything,” she mutters.
Abby's pulse kicks up. “You could.” Abby doesn't know what it means to be a dragon-whisperer, but anyone who can communicate with dragons is more dangerous than Abby can imagine.
Ellie turns her burning gaze to Abby. Her voice is empty when she says, “I could. I could burn it all down. It would be so easy.”
The fire pops, sending up a shower of sparks. Abby flinches. Ellie notices, and something pained crosses her face. Then she turns, abruptly, and coils on her side away from the firelight. Abby’s pulse kicks in her chest. Wind roars above them in the treetops, and she looks up for a dragon that isn’t there.
--
The third day starts with rain.
It's a cold, miserable drizzle that soaks through their cloaks and turns the forest floor to mud. Abby pushes them hard, eager to reach the forest's edge before nightfall. Ellie follows without complaint, her usual acerbic commentary notably absent.
They’re still several kilometres from the tree line when Abby hears it-- a low, rumbling growl from somewhere overhead.
She freezes. Her hand goes to the sword at her hip.
"Don't," Ellie says sharply. She's looking up at the canopy, her face pale. "Don't draw your weapon."
"What is that?"
"A dragon." Ellie's voice is strange, strained. "A big one. Hunting."
Abby's vision tunnels. She can hear wingbeats, heavy and rhythmic. Can see the shadow moving through the trees. Her hand is shaking on her sword hilt.
The shadow circles overhead once, twice. Then, with a rush of displaced air, it descends.
The dragon is massive-- easily three times the size of a warhorse, with scales the color of old bronze. Its eyes are molten gold, intelligent and ancient. It lands twenty feet away with a ground-shaking thud, wings folding against its sides.
Abby can't breathe. Can't think. All she can see is fire, stones crumbling, her father--
Ellie’s hand is on her arm, surprisingly strong. It squeezes once, then lets go. She steps forward.
The dragon lets out a growl, pitched so low Abby feels it in her chest. Its reptilian lip curls, revealing yellowed fangs dripping with saliva.
Ellie speaks. The sound is raspy and discordant, something that has no place in a human throat.
The dragon responds in a rumble like boulders grinding together. Its massive foot claws the sodden ground, leaving gouges that fill quickly with rainwater.
Ellie speaks again, stiff backed, insistent.
A roar erupts from the dragon’s throat, bursting into the clearing like a landslide. Its mouth gapes open and Abby stumbles back. She yanks at her sword hit, but her trembling hand causes it to catch in the sheath. Ellie bristles, looking first irritated and then-- with a backward glance at Abby-- resigned.
Ellie unfolds.
It happens so fast Abby almost misses it-- one moment the girl is standing there, rain-soaked and defiant, and the next she's changing. Her spine arches, bones cracking and reforming with sounds that make Abby's stomach turn. Scales ripple across her skin, rust-red and gold, spreading from her hands up her arms. Her face elongates, jaw unhinging with a wet pop as teeth-- rows of them, daggerlike-- push through her gums.
"No," Abby breathes. The word comes out strangled. "No, no, no--"
But Ellie is already gone. In her place stands a dragon.
Smaller than the bronze one, but no less terrifying. Her scales gleam wet in the rain, rust-colored with veins of gold running through them like cracks in pottery. Her eyes-- still those same eyes, hazel bleeding into molten amber-- fix on the larger dragon with unmistakable fury.
She roars.
The sound tears through the clearing, primal and furious and utterly inhuman. Abby's knees give out. She hits the mud hard, sword finally coming free from its sheath to clatter uselessly beside her.
The bronze dragon rears back, rising on two legs to tower over its rival. Then it lunges.
They collide in a tangle of scales and teeth and claws. Ellie-- the dragon that was Ellie-- meets the attack head-on, smaller but faster, ducking under the bronze's snapping jaws to rake her claws across its throat. Dark blood, almost black, spatters across the mud.
The bronze dragon bellows, wounded and enraged. It rears up on its hind legs, wings spreading to their full terrible span, blotting out what little light filters through the canopy. Abby can see the fire building in its throat, the telltale glow--
Ellie launches herself at its chest, wings beating once for momentum. They crash together again, and this time she gets her jaws around the bronze dragon's neck. It screams.
The bronze dragon thrashes, throwing Ellie off with a violent shake. She tumbles through the air, wings flaring to catch herself, and lands in a crouch between Abby and the larger beast. She’s close enough Abby can smell the animal musk of her, feel the heat radiating off scales the size of dinner plates. Her lips-- her snout, God, her snout-- pulls back in a snarl, exposing every one of those terrible teeth.
She roars again, and this time there's something almost like words in it. A challenge. A warning.
The bronze dragon backs up a step. Then another. Its golden eyes dart between Ellie and Abby, calculating. It makes a sound like grinding stone-- disgust, maybe, or acknowledgment-- and launches itself skyward with two powerful beats of its wings.
The clearing shakes with the force of its departure. Branches crack and fall. And then it's gone, disappeared into the rain and mist.
Silence, except for the patter of rain and Abby's ragged breathing.
The dragon that was Ellie stands there for a long moment, sides heaving, blood dripping from her claws. Her tail lashes once with a noise like a whip crack. Then she turns to look at Abby. Her breath comes in heavy, hot gusts, and Abby winces away from the heat of it. For a moment she stares into the eyes of a predator. Not bravely, but because she cannot tear her eyes away. Then those half-familiar eyes make an expression so achingly human that Abby's chest constricts.
The transformation reverses. It's slower this time, more controlled, and somehow that makes it worse. Abby watches scales recede like a tide going out, watches bones crack and reset, watches Ellie's face reform from snout to human features with wet, organic sounds that will probably haunt Abby's nightmares.
When it's done, Ellie collapses to her hands and knees in the mud. She's shaking violently, naked except for the tattered remains of her cloak. Blood-- the bronze dragon's blood-- drips from her hands. Her own blood runs from her nose, her ears.
Abby’s hand scrabbles in the cold mud and clutches the hilt of her sword. She’s shaking so hard she might fall over. She does not attempt to raise her sword.
She does not know what just happened. She did not know such a thing could happen. What it means for the dragon wars.
Ellie lets out a sharp, coughing exhale, and wanders into the scuffled clearing to find her knapsack. Her pale skin stands out starkly against the rain-darkened forest, like polished bone. Blood sluices off her into the mud. She picks up her battered knapsack, scowling. “I don’t have a spare change of pants.”
Abby manages, after several tries, to sheath her sword. She stands, shakily, cold mud stiff on her trousers. She should run. Should put distance between herself and this-- this thing that just tore into another dragon with claws and teeth. Should complete her mission the way it was meant to be completed: with Ellie bound and gagged if necessary, delivered to Whitecliff's cells like the dangerous creature she clearly is.
Instead, Abby finds herself pulling off her own cloak. Moving forward on unsteady legs. She holds it out at arms length.
Ellie glares at the cloak, then at Abby. Her hair sticks wetly to her forehead. "What are you doing?"
"You're bleeding." Abby's voice sounds distant, like it belongs to someone else. "And you're going to freeze."
Ellie studies the cloak for another moment, then scoffs and snatches it from Abby’s hand. She whips it over her shoulders and tightens it over her chest. "I could've killed you." Ellie won't look at her. "I almost--" Her breath hitches, and her voice turns sour. "You should've run."
"Where?" Abby hears herself ask. The question comes out almost curious, detached. Shock, probably. "I wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
"Probably." Ellie's hands clutch the fabric of Abby’s cloak. She has an angry but fine-boned face, like a cat. Dangerous yes, but not dangerous like-- like the thing she had become. Abby had not considered that she needed to fear Ellie this way. One more day.
Ellie looks up to the grey sky. The rain is letting up. She says, “He’ll be back. He didn’t like me in ‘his’ territory.”
Abby’s pulse kicks up. “We’re in his territory?”
Ellie gives a tired, sarcastic smirk. “He wishes.” She digs in her pack, pulling out a new set of undergarments and a shirt. She really didn’t have a spare pair of pants. Abby considers giving Ellie hers, but they’d never fit, even with the drawstring tight.
Ellie straightens up. “Ready for the ball.”
It takes Abby a moment to realise Ellie is joking. Ellie’s eyes twinkle with impenitent amusement. She shoulders her knapsack and strides forward down the road.
—
They don't speak for the rest of the day. Ellie sets a punishing pace, and Abby lets her, too caught up in her own thoughts to protest. They break through the tree line just as the sun touches the horizon, painting the plains ahead in shades of gold and crimson.
Ellie stops at the forest's edge, staring out at the open land. From here, Whitecliff is visible in the distance-- a dark smudge on the horizon, its towers just barely distinguishable against the darkening sky.
"One more day," Ellie says quietly. She sounds exhausted.
Abby comes to stand beside her. Up close, she can see the toll the transformation took-- dark circles under Ellie's eyes, a tremor in her hands that won't stop, fresh blood still crusted around her nose and ears. "Are you alright?" Abby asks.
Ellie laughs, sharp and bitter. "Does it matter?"
Abby turns the question over in her head. The Abbottess asked only that Ellie was deposited at Whitecliff as discretely as possible. She had encouraged Abby to be kind, and be cautious. Abby had hated Ellie at first sight, for believing her a commiserator of dragons. There was no reason to care.
"I need to make camp," Abby says. "And you need to rest. We'll reach Whitecliff tomorrow."
"I can keep going--"
"You're bleeding from your ears, Ellie. We're stopping."
For a moment, Abby thinks Ellie will argue. But she only clenches her jaw and mutters, “fine."
They make camp in a small hollow just inside the tree line-- close enough to the forest for shelter, far enough from the depths to avoid another dragon encounter. Abby builds the fire, her hands only shaking a little, while Ellie sits with her back against a tree and watches the flames with hollow eyes.
They bed down. Abby tries and fails to roll the tension from her shoulders. She’s wound tight, tight like she always is, the shadow of enormous wings always flickering at the edge of her vision. She thinks of rain in her eyes, the deep-throated thundering of Ellie’s roar. If Ellie was a dragon, other dragons must also be people. Who had burned the monastery down?
She watches Ellie doze fitfully by the fire, her face pinched even in sleep. The girl-- the dragon-- is terrifying. More dangerous than Abby had imagined possible. A weapon that could level cities, burn armies, turn the tide of the dragon wars with a single transformation. The church would lock her away, study her, keep her contained. Safe.
But Abby thinks of the bronze dragon's eyes as it fled. The fear there. The recognition. Dragons can be hurt. Dragons can be killed, if you have the right weapon. And somewhere out there, a dragon with scales like tarnished silver still flies free, still burns, still destroys. The one who murdered her father. The one who has never answered for what it did.
Abby looks at Ellie, at this bitter, resigned girl who burns from the inside out. A weapon to rival the monster of her nightmares, who still flies somewhere. Abby has always been a risk-taker. Has always chosen the dangerous path when it offered something she needed. And there’s an ember rolling in Abby’s gut, a fire desperate to release. Ellie might be just what she needs.