Damara's house.
Damara was here.
Rib stood in front of the dark detailed building, waiting for Zheal who'd went inside. The Huskhn's dragon steed was nudging Rib with her muzzle, but he didn't look at her. When she put her face in front of his, eyes soft, he moved and continued to watch the doorway as Zheal had commanded.
Soon the Huskhn came out, empty handed.
"If you've killed her, I swear I'll thrust my sword down your throat," he snarled, stalking up to Rib with a maddened look in his eye. "Where is she?"
Damara is not here.
Where is she?
Rib stood still, unable to think of possibilities, unable to answer.
Zheal cursed.
"Find her," he ordered, and mounted his beast's saddle.
Find her.
Rib had no sense of smell to track her with, but listened attentively and swept his eyes through the outskirts of town. No one else could be seen. The streets were muddy. Hail began to pelt down on them.
In the distance, through the fall of a million ice pellets, Rib picked up a voice. It sounded like the man he had left Damara with. Her brother, calling her name.
Damara.
Rib flew after the voice with Zheal and his dragon. It led him into the nearby forest of red and yellow, past a tall white pine, to a sheer rock cliff. At the base of it was the man speaking up to Damara, who lay cradled in the notch of a boulder, face turned towards the oncoming hail with eyes closed.
"Damara," her brother called to her. "Stop punishing yoursel- What?!" He cut off as Rib glided to the top of the cliff where Damara was. "Hey!"
At this, the young woman opened her eyes to Rib standing over her. Little spheres of ice were caught in her hair, whiter than the parts of her eyes reddened from crying. One glimpse of him and she jerked herself upright, exclaiming, "Xander!"
But it was too late. Zheal already stood behind her brother and struck him on the head with the hilt of his sword. It was a brutal blow. Xander was knocked to the ground, where Zheal stepped on his chest, holding the tip of his blade to the man's throat.
"Who are you?" the Huskhn demanded.
"Zheal!" Damara leapt to her feet with dagger drawn. "Get off my brother!"
Zheal looked up at her.
"Damara." He let his arm slacken a little, bringing his sword farther away from her brother's throat. As soon as he had, Xander tried to thrust him off, but Zheal kicked him in the face.
Damara screamed in fury and moved as if to jump down, but Zheal ordered Rib to catch her. Rib quickly had the young woman in his clutch and the Huskhn below mounted his dragon steed, who quivered with fear.
"Damara!" Xander cried out as Rib carried her away, following Zheal as he was ordered to.
The young woman shouted and struggled, but even with a dagger her fight was ineffective. Once, she stabbed at Rib's foreclaw, but it glanced off his talon and fell from her hand, lost to the ground below. Rib took her all the way to Cliffport, where people stared in horror and cleared from the dock as the two dragons descended.
Zheal had his steed land on a large Huskhn ship. Another Huskhn met him on the deck as he dismounted, exchanging words. Rib brought Damara close but did not set her down until his bewitcher told him to.
When he did, Damara threw herself at Zheal with fists clenched, yelling, "You struck my brother, you cur!"
Zheal stepped back for the other man to catch her. Though she cursed and kicked, the Huskhn wrestled her arms behind her back without much trouble.
In time, she gave up the struggle, slumping in the stranger's grasp, her string of curses now melting into sobs.
Zheal stared at her a moment longer, then ordered Rib to land where shackles lay attached to the deck. When Rib did so, the young man quickly fastened chained metal clasps around the dragon's legs and tail, bound his wings with rope, and locked his head in a wooden framework stand.
Having finished this, Zheal stood back and studied him.
Rib returned his gaze with a slow blink.
The Huskhn's expression hardened as his dragon steed crept forward to nose Rib with a whine.
"Tairg!" Zheal barked at her and she cowered away.
Leaning in with his hands against the wooden brace around Rib's neck, the young man glared into the dragon's eyes.
"I don't know what you did to make Damara like this," he hissed. "But I promise I'll wait until you can understand exactly what I'm doing when I punish you."
He tapped a finger hard on Rib's temple. "Won't be long now."
Rib gave another slow blink.
"Let me go," Damara wept from behind and Rib saw Zheal's eyes soften before he turned back to her.
"I don't understand," the young man said, approaching her carefully. "How did you get here from Husk? Why are you behaving like this?"
Damara didn't answer but hung her head in the drizzle with another soft cry.
"Do you even know?" Zheal asked, kneeling to stroke her hair comfortingly.
She jerked herself away, though the other man still held tight to her arms.
Zheal took his hand back, and stood again, shoulders slackening.
"Where is your torchstone?" he murmured. "Rib made you get rid of it, didn't he?"
Rib saw how the young woman hardly kept herself up, with knees bent and upper body slouched. If the stranger behind her were to let go, she'd probably drop on the deck. As she choked on another wave of tears, Rib felt a touch of sympathy stir inside of him.
"Hey, it's alright," Zheal hushed her and touched her sleeve. "Look, he soiled my powder too. This is what he'd been scheming. Him and that heinous Dragon Knight. He fooled us both, Damara."
What??
Rib's eyes grew as he began to gain his thoughts back. With a gasp, he came to realize what trouble he was in, shackled to a ship with his head in a frame. The most he could do was squirm and jangle his chains.
Zheal peered back at him, a loathsome flash in his eyes.
"But he'll pay," the Huskhn uttered.
What?! Rib tried in vain to pull his head from the brace.
Beside Zheal, Damara looked up just barely. Wet, brown hair hung in front of her freckled face, but Rib could see her expression full of anguish. He stared back at her in fear.
What's going to happen to us?
Then, something changed in her eyes and she looked past him. Rib startled at the sound of small talons taking hold of the wood next to his ear. He strained to see a white wyvern perched there, peering at him.
Ivory!
"Rib," the wyvern spoke in Tyrone's hushed voice. "Where are you? Do you need help?"
Tyrone's alright!
"Yes!" Rib exclaimed as footsteps quickened towards him. "Zheal has me at Cliffport with my sister and Da-"
The words stuck in his throat when Zheal was suddenly there, seizing Ivory before she could fly away. The wyvern lashed her thin tail, pecked and nipped at the young man's gloved hand, but he only gripped her tighter.
"Stop!" Rib cried as the wyvern screeched in pain, a cry of her own.
But with one quick motion, Zheal wrung her neck and dropped her to the floor.
"No!" Rib stared at Ivory's lifeless body, stark white against the damp wood of the deck. A few sun beams now poked through the clouds overhead, making her beady eyes glint like fallen rubies.
"Not this time," Zheal growled and scuffed the dead wyvern aside with his boot. "No Dragon Knight. No allies."
Memory crouched down before Ivory with a mournful sniff.
Damara's gave another choked and muffled sob.
Zheal took one glance back at her, then glowered at Rib, drawing his sword from its scabbard with a frightful shing.
"Hear how you make her cry?" the Huskhn muttered. "You betrayed her love for you."
Rib gaped at the glaring metal of the blade as Zheal turned it expertly in his hand.
"Frankly I wouldn't keep you even if I had the powder to control you."
The Huskhn brought the tip of his sword up
to Rib's face, so close that it blurred in Rib's vision.
He's going to kill me!
"No," Rib rasped, trying desperately now to pull his head from the framework, but it only strained his muscles. "No?"
"Zheal," Damara wept and struggled against the stranger holding her. "Don't!"
The Huskhn's expression was grim. He did not lower his sword.
"He's not what we thought he was," Zheal told Damara. "Soon we'll be back in Husk and we can forget about all that's happened here."
"You're wrong!" Damara shouted. "I'm not who you thought I was. I made a fool of you, Zheal!"
She's telling him that?!
Rib couldn't see the young woman behind Zheal, but he saw the Huskhn Heir blink twice, troubled. His grip on his sword slackened somewhat.
Is it working? Will he stop? For her?
"It was all a ruse!" Damara kept on. "My ruse. I was never going to marry you."
At this, Zheal's eyes narrowed and he clenched the hilt of his sword tighter still.
What has she done?! Now he's going to kill us both!
Again, Zheal fixed his fierce gaze on Rib.
"What have you threatened her with to make her lie so desperately?" he hissed. "You're cleverer than I thought. No matter. You have no hold on her I can't break, serpent."
"No," Rib tried to protest once more, but fear twisted his tongue in knots. "Nnn?"
Though the young woman cried again for him to stop, Zheal brought his sword back, readying to thrust Rib through.
I'm going to die!
Rib nearly snapped something in his neck in one last attempt to wrench himself free.
It was no use. He watched the blade come.
And then-
In a flash, Zheal disappeared from in front of his eyes.
What?
It was Memory. She'd tackled the Huskhn Heir, throwing him to the floor.
There was a sound of hard impact when the back of his skull hit a piece of iron bolted to the deck. The young man made not a sound himself, staring blindly up at Memory, his motionless body pinned beneath her claws.
Rib blinked at the empty space before him, the place where Zheal and his sword had just been.
Memory?saved me?
The Huskhn holding Damara dropped her in a rush to help Zheal, but Damara slammed all her weight into him from the side. With a simultaneous tilt of the ship from the waves, the man was sent overboard.
Actually saved me?
Damara peered past the sides of the ship at the man who splashed and shouted below, then hurried to where Zheal lay.
Memory lifted her foreclaws off the young man and nudged his stricken, unresponsive face. Long black hair stuck to his dusky skin. The hands once so close to ending Rib's life now rested on chains of empty shackles, useless.
Is he dead?
Did Memory kill him?
When Damara knelt beside Zheal and shooed Rib's uneasy sister away, she did not check for his pulse or listen for his breathing, but took a key from his vest and stood.
The other Huskhn found a way to climb up on the dock, but Damara picked up Zheal's sword in warning and with one glance at her, Memory, and Zheal's motionless body, the stranger hurried away. All the staring bystanders Rib hadn't noticed until now made way for him without a word.
This is it, Rib thought. We're safe?
Sighing, Damara dropped the sword and crouched beside Rib, unlocking each of his shackles. He felt her loosen the rope around his body to free his wings. Coming around to his front, she worked on the brace around his neck.
Rib looked at her face as she fiddled with the latch holding both pieces of the frame in place. She kept her light, serious eyes on her hands, with which she undid another lock. Her lips formed a thin line.
This is the second time someone bewitched me and had me snatch her?
It's all my fault. I shouldn't have gone to the Huskhn camp alone.
Rib recalled the battle he'd left Lynx, Tide, and Tyrone in when Zheal threw powder in his face. They seemed to be have been doing fine. And now that there was no more bewitchment magic, there wasn't much to worry about.
Damara finally got the frame apart and Rib lifted his head out, his neck hurting.
"Thank you," he murmured.
The young woman nodded, but avoided his gaze.
"I need to get home to my brother," was all she said.
"Of course?" he thought of how frantic the man must be after Rib took Damara away. "I'll fly you back."
It's the least I can do.
Memory came to him and pressed the crown of her head into his chest with a whimper. A fresh wave of love for her washed over him as he imagined what he'd look like, collapsed with a sword through his eye, had she not stopped Zheal.
She saved my life.
Rib rested his chin on her shoulder wing in gratitude and relief.
She acted on her own.
Chapter 32