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Madja had left him.
She hesitated, he thought. The day at the i
Why?
Why was she not satisfied with his lair? Why was she not satisfied with their life together? Why was she not satisfied with him?
Because he did not love her?
Why did I not just say the words? he wondered. His initial response had been instinctive, but after he realized how much it meant to her, he could have corrected himself, could have lied for her benefit.
No, Sevrrn did not want to die for her, but the knowledge that she was gone, that she had left him, it made him feel…
Empty.
Hollow.
Dead.
The night that Madja had been dragged from her home and put on a litter bound for Sevrrn’s lair, she had mostly just cried. The girl she had been had hoped that the soldiers would take pity on her, forsake their orders, and release her, as though she were some helpless maiden in a fairy tale.
Madja was no longer that girl, and this time, she was not simply fighting for her own life, but also the life of her child. She started with trying to reason with the guards that took her from her cell, telling them of the terrible mistake they were making. When that didn’t work, she threatened them, telling them that their city and their families would all die if they killed her. When that didn’t work, she kicked and scratched, clawed and cursed; trying to fight them off like a cornered beast.
In the end, they dragged her to her execution site. The nobility had managed to stop huddling in their houses to show up for the event, and she could hear the high priest proclaiming her to be the sacrifice necessary to summon their god.
The wave of people parted to let her captors pass. No one tried to help her, not that she thought they would. She could see the Prince, along with several members of the royal family, seated on a raised dais. She tried desperately to catch his gaze, but he kept his eyes averted.
Jerl stood in front of the freshly dug pit, looking smug. Next to him was the high priest, who had taken up a low chant meant to invoke the god. There had been a time when his chanting, when this entire grisly affair, may have seemed necessary to her. After all, what was one person’s death for the greater good?
But now she knew the truth. Perhaps there was some divine being listening to the prayers of man, but it was not Sevrrn. He was a dragon, a powerful and ethereal creature—but nothing more. He was not listening to their chants or their prayers, and her sacrifice would not summon him.
Though it would doom them.
Even as she was led to her death, she felt no joy at this. She didn’t want anyone to die—well, not everyone to die, she thought, as she eyed Jerl. She only wanted her and her baby to live. She couldn’t blame the people for their fear or their ignorance.
By the time she was brought to stand before the high priest, her strength had nearly failed her. He murmured a long prayer, making meaningless religious gestures as he did so. Madja tried to reason with him.
“You’re making a mistake.”
“Sevrrn values me. He won’t want this.”
“Please, you can’t do this.”
Madja stopped just short of begging when she realized that the priest wasn’t listening. He looked at her, but at the same time, seemed to look right through her. It was just as the guards had done. If they listened to her, treated her as if she were a human being and not just a means to an end, they would have to face their own shame.
She knew one person who wouldn’t ignore her. Looking at Jerl, she said, “He offered to kill you, you know? Offered to kill you and your whole family. I told him not to. One of the many mistakes I made.”
“Cease your lies, girl,” Jerl said, though he had paled considerably. “You’re a deceptive wretch, just like your father.”
“Sevrrn will kill you now. I’d say that he’ll kill you first, but when he finds out what you did—” she raised her voice, “—what you all did, he’ll probably go into a rage and burn the city. But rest assured, Jerl, he knows your name and one way or another, Sevrrn will find you and he will kill you.”
There was fear and uncertainty in Jerl’s eyes and, for a moment, Madja felt a thrill of victory. Then, she was gagged. Her arms had already been bound behind her back, and they bound her feet as well. With a final prayer, she was unceremoniously pushed into the hole.
She hit the soft earth with a hard thud. Her body instinctively curled up and by the time she reoriented herself, they were already shoveling dirt into the hole. She managed to push herself into a sitting position. The hole was deep, perhaps the length of two grown men. Even if she could somehow stand, she knew from her father’s execution that if she tried to, they would pelt her with rocks until she fell unconscious.
I’m going to die.
She had known that from the moment she’d been thrown in the dungeon, but now it was all too real. They were hefting dirt into the hole and it filled at both a terrifyingly fast and agonizingly slow rate. Within minutes, it would be up to her neck, then, it would cover her head. She would no longer be able to breathe, and she would die.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, both to her unborn child, and to Sevrrn.
It was all she had left to say. She turned her head up to the sky and gazed at it for one, final time.
9
Chapter Nine
Tracing Madja’s scent in the city was infinitely easier than in his lair. Although the territory was significantly larger and there were millions of different scents, there was only one Madja. In his lair, her scent was everywhere. Here, it was not at all difficult to hone in on her. Not only was her scent wholly unique to him, but no matter how much she washed, or how dirty she became, she always carried the faintest hint of his own scent. No other human could claim that.
He did not bend the light around himself as he flew over the city, he did not have the energy to do so. Maintaining his dragon form so far from his lair was troublesome enough, but there was also the fact that he had depleted most of his energy in battle.
If one could call it that.
Sevrrn had tracked Madja’s scent all the way back to Bern. When he arrived, the small town had been abandoned and there had been an entire fleet of Allonan ships bearing down on it. Once he realized that Madja was not in the town and that her scent led eastward, he almost ignored the ships.
Then, he thought of the fish auction, which resided at the docks. He might want to go back to that auction one day, he’d decided. Then there was the i
And above all, if he destroyed those warships, it would make Madja happy. At the time, he did not care about her happiness at all.
He was furious.
And empty.
And hollow.
And dead inside.
But mostly furious.
Still, he knew that once Madja apologized for leaving him, once she begged for his forgiveness, and then let him mate with her, he would forgive her. And if he destroyed this fleet of warships and protected the island, it would likely facilitate that entire process.