I couldn’t bring myself to move from this spot. Snow soaked through my layers of clothes, but Cris and the other sylph stuck close, keeping me from shivering.
Soon I’d have to go back to camp. To Sam, Stef, and Whit. And I would have to tell them that I’d seen dragons and I had no idea what to do now. The dragons were hunting in the forest below. They must have had keen eyes to see that deer. And unlike the roc, they had no trouble diving into the forest.
They could snatch us up, too.
“We’re going to need extra cover,” I whispered. “We definitely don’t want to be caught in the open. Even in the forest, we’ll need to avoid looking like food.”
Cris nodded, trilling softly by my ear. -We will protect you.-
“Thank you.” I lowered my eyes and didn’t try to stop the tears, but what should have been a torrent came as only a trickle. I’d trekked through the cold woods before, gone hungry, been beaten, but I’d never felt like this. I’d never felt broken, like my spirit had split in two.
What hope was there? Stef had been right about the dragons. There was no chance of talking to them. They weren’t people. They weren’t sylph, who needed something from me, or centaurs, who’d been satisfied to have their children returned unharmed, and cowed by the presence of the sylph.
No, now we were in a huge winter forest, far, far from home and anything familiar. We’d taken weeks to get here, and for what purpose? There was no way I’d be able to convince the dragons to help us. What was I going to do? Shout from the cliff and ask for their assistance? Ask if I could borrow this mysterious weapon they had? They’d swoop in and eat me whole before I finished introducing myself.
And worse, I’d pushed away Sam with my secrets. It drove me crazy when he hid things from me and didn’t tell me what was going on, so I should have known. Instead, I’d become a hypocrite. I’d hurt his feelings and dragged him into the land of his nightmares because I had a plan.
“I can’t help you, Cris.” My whisper came out rough, broken. “There’s no way I’ll be able to speak to the dragons. They won’t destroy the temple for us. They won’t use their weapon for us. They’ll probably eat us. Janan will ascend and Range will erupt. Sylph will be cursed forever.”
Only the crack of dragon wings answered.
“I wish you hadn’t put your trust in me. I wish you had sided with the others to talk me out of this plan. We should never have come here. I made a mistake.”
Cris hummed. -I believe in you.-
I sagged, too weary to hold myself up anymore. “I don’t.”
As I wiped tears off my cheeks, reflected sunlight caught my eye, drawing my attention north.
A white tower pierced the sky, brilliant and bright against the shadowed forest. Like the temple. And below it, a white stone wall ringed the tower, cutting through the forest like a knife.
It wasn’t perfectly white like Janan’s temple, though. Age and weather had dulled the shine of stone, and there were places the forest had toppled the wall, but this prison had certainly survived the millennia better than the one Cris had found in the jungle.
“We’re almost there.”
Cris nodded.
“It doesn’t matter.” I stood and brushed snow and slush off my clothes. There was no point to being here now. I’d seen the dragons. I’d seen the futility of my plan.
The sylph dried my clothes as I took one more look at the valley and the dragons moving farther away, still hunting in the forest. Their wings snapping the air grew distant.
I trudged back to where I’d left the water bottles, but there was only a shallow hole in the snow where they’d been. Someone had taken them.
“Did one of your friends go tattle on me?” I glared at Cris, who hummed with annoyance.
“It wasn’t the sylph.” Sam’s voice came from not far off, just a few trees away. He peeled himself out of the shadows and stalked toward us. “You were gone a long time. We came looking, and some of the sylph indicated you’d gone off with Cris.” He kept his voice low, even, but couldn’t hide the lurking power in there, or the disappointment. His gaze darted to Cris, and he tilted his head.
Without comment, every sylph left the area.
Sam turned on me. “I told you to come back if you saw anything.”
I prickled. “I didn’t see anything. I heard something and went to investigate. I had Cris with me. He wouldn’t let anything harm me.” That last bit was meant as a barb—Cris still cared about me—but if Sam noticed my intent, he didn’t react.
“What would Cris do if you got into trouble?” His dark eyes narrowed. “What if a dragon carried you off? Or you slipped and broke a bone? He can’t catch you. He’d have to go find help, and you’d have to wait.”
“It doesn’t matter!” Shouting felt good. I didn’t fight it. “Nothing happened. The point is, he was there. I didn’t go alone. You’re just angry I didn’t run back and tell you.”