Curse of the Stars Book 1

Chapter 16

Chapter XVI

Fyran was dreaming. Soft falling snow upon feathering pine trees and silver eyes that gleamed within the dark. Something shone in the distance and she was clambering over the snowbanks to see what it was. The wind made the process slow-going, the snow riling up and pushing against her face in cold flurries. Biting kisses nicked at her cheeks and caught in her eyelashes, crystallizing there like silver threads.

She reached out to wipe the frost from her eyelashes and saw that she was not lost deep in the forest after all but in a place of stone walls and dancing firelight flickering stories upon everything the shadows and lights touched.

The fire...it was dancing wildly against the walls and a chill was overtaking the room, a chill was riling to match the flame's hunger with a hunger of its own.

The door...it's open... Fyran thought in confusion as she blinked the sleep from her eyes. Beside her, her mother shivered in the straw.

A shadow stood in the doorway. Flurries of snow whirled around him and attacked the fire with sweeping wings.

"Who..." Fyran sat up abruptly. For a moment her heart beat with terror as the shadow loomed over the two of them. His face was swathed in darkness as he stood there, making no effort to close the door.

She froze, heart pounding, her mind too scattered to think clearly. Her breath was stolen from her throat; as the wind was crying its own wail. But then the shadow moved, very carefully and quietly, shut the door behind him. With that the fire's breathing grew steady again as if in a deep sigh of relief and caught the gleam of slick droplets trailing the man's cloak—a thing she hadn't noticed before, gathering in dark galaxies on the floor where the fire turned it red.

"Dad?" She whispered as she squinted at the stranger.

The man did not remove his arm from his side. Now what she thought was the inky blackness between stars had turned into something else entirely. She blinked the sleep from her eyes again, staring harder at the pools of void matter. It wasn't ink, it wasn't pieces of the night sky...

...It was blood. Blood ran down between his fingers and caught on the stone, painting it in quiet but ominous freckles. It was strange how something so quiet and so shadowy could scream the silence of terror.

Fyran stared at him in a kind of unbroken trance and the man stared back. Neither spoke a word.

And then Fyran's mother was shifting in her sleep, mumbling about the cold and nestling deeper into the straw to husband warmth onto herself.

"Lilthfyr." The shadow whispered in a hushed breath, as if noticing her for the very first time.

The woman sat up, suddenly as wide awake as the sun at daybreak as she looked over. It was as if she'd been trained to listen for his voice, or perhaps of her name being spoken. Perhaps her unconscious mind had been waiting for a time such as this: when her husband would arrive home and say her name.

"Hedarak?! Where have you been?!—" She withdrew a sharp breath at the sight of the blood that dripped off the ends of his cloak. With one hand he very carefully pulled his hood off so that his mussy hair toppled out and a face full of scars with dull gray eyes stared back at them, harsh under the light of the fire.

"There's a dragon in the city." The man said softly. "It fell over the wall into the city...and Tukm got it, perfect hit. Straight through the heart. I thought it was dead." The man spat and blood dribbled from his lips. "It's impossible..." he swore, suddenly growing agitated.

"What's impossible?!" Fyran's mother demanded but Fyran searched through the cupboards for anything to wrap his wounds with.

"That it's still alive!" The man choked and for the first time that night, Fyran saw real fear enter his eyes. "One moment I was sawing at its delicate looking hide, trying to grind through the bone at the base of the wing and the next—"

"Sssh, quiet." Lilthfyr shushed him. She tried to open his cloak to get to his wound but he kept his hand firmly planted on it, his eyes glazing over with memories.

"...And the next its great jaws were 'round me and it shook me like a rag and threw me into the wall! I've never seen such strength...it was so small...how could it have...how could it—"

"Hedarak!" Lilthfyr snapped. "Let me see your wound!"

"Teeth of iron." The man rambled on, ignoring his wife completely. "Strength of a thousand men!"

"Hedarak!"

"A dragon in the city..." Fyran whispered as her eyes scathed over the empty cupboards. She hesitated to look at her mother's green wedding dress tucked neatly in the corner but didn't dare pull it out.

"Fyran! Bring me some binding! Now!" Her mother shrieked and Fyran saw her desperate eyes burn holes into her. Their father was swaying from where he sat, and her mother was trying her best to keep him steady.

"There's nothing! You sold the leather. You sold the rags. You've sold everything!" Fyran snapped back, fear catching in her voice and making it sound harsher than she intended.

"Nothing? Nothing at all?!"

"Nothing save for a useless wedding dress!" Fyran snarled. She tried to swallow the rising hysteria but it did no good.

"Bring it here."

"But—"

"Bring it NOW!"

Fyran did as she was told, grabbing it none too carefully and tossing it to her mother in a small show of anger and panic.

To her own horror her mother didn't even hesitate before tearing at it with her fingers.

"Are you mad?!" Fyran stumbled forward and snatched it away from her mother. "This is the most valuable thing we own! Don't soil it!"

She herself began to undress and threw her own dress at her mother.

"What are you going to wear?"

"Does it matter?!" Fyran gave her mother eyes of fire.

Lilthfyr tore her dress with rough fingers until it was in ragged pieces, and then attempted to pry Hedarak's fingers from his wound.

"He won't let go." She grit her teeth in frustration. "Fyran! Little help?!" Their father had lost his wits too much by now to speak with and if he had ignored her commands the first couple times she bellowed at him, he wasn't going to listen now.

Together they yanked his arm backwards until their own hands were slick with blood as it burst forth like a freed river from a broken dam.

"Now." Lilthfyr shouted and Fyran passed her a strip of cloth. Together they tied as many layers as was available to them around his side, pulling it tight even as he moaned and lost consciousness.

"This isn't good..." Lilthfyr whispered fretfully as he hit the floor and they let him lay where he fell, hoping to not cause any more blood flow. For now the blood had soaked through every layer of cloth, and even Lilthfyr had stripped and for everything they had and still more blood came...

"We don't have anything else!" Fyran almost screamed as more blood crept through the layers and dribbled onto the floor.

"The dress..." Her mother didn't have to say which one.

"What if it does no good? Then we have nothing..."

"And we'll have nothing if he dies anyway!" Lilthfyr snapped.

"Let me get Vaekan...please...let me get him." Fyran pleaded. "He's rich...he'll help us." Even so she knew they couldn't go on living in their undergarments.

"No time! He lives on the other side of town!"

"Then perhaps Jaeance will have something?"

Lilthfyr shook her head stubbornly. She pointed at the dress again insistently.

As much as Fyran hated the idea of presenting herself to Vaekan in this dress, the real fear of watching her father die in front of her locked icy claws around the dress she held. She would not give it up. If he was gone, if it did nothing to help him...they would starve. They would die. This dress was their only chance... if he died...

But would it save him? All the other scraps had done nothing, hardly even slowed it in fact. Was one more dress really the answer between life or death?

Or were they going to waste their only hope on a man who was going to die anyway?