Frost joined the corps late in life. She had to be waived into the proving; a process that was directly overseen by the King-of-Kings himself. She had thrown herself upon his mercy. There had been no other way. At every past turn, her mother had blockaded her attempts to join. And, at nineteen years old, she’d been beyond the cut-off by over two years.
Reportedly handsome Emperor Ekr ibin’Dorn hadn’t hidden his interest in her when she knelt before him. In fact, it was the first thing he told her: “I am not disinterested in you, Daughter of Hel’s Hatchery,” he’d said. She could practically hear the slippery smile on his lips. Her forehead had been glued to the red runner leading up to the dais, otherwise she might have confirmed it. He’d continued with, “You are only just a young lady, and yet your legend is known even within my own circle. You will be even greater one day. If I denied your wish to serve me in some higher capacity, it would be as if I had cast a ransom of diamonds into the sea for want of a mouthful of sand. Rise, Drakidautr. Here is your waiver. Go, and make war in my name.”
Without raising her head, she’d kissed his signet ring after taking a scroll from his hand. It was that same hand that twisted to touch and caress a loose lock of her pale hair. She still hadn’t dared to look. She had his favor and her wish. If she had looked into his eyes, she somehow knew she would have been lost to something else entirely.
Madness.
The emperor of the UFD had to be mad. What kind of person held that kind of single-minded, baseless faith in her? Not her mother, nor her father. What had the emperor, a stranger, seen in her? What potential had he perceived? The only greatness tied to her name at that point was one of murder, bloodshed, and rebellion. If that was the great legend he had referred to, Frost couldn’t imagine what he deemed mythic.
What’s so great about fratricide?
With her waiver, she’d put her past onto paper and locked it away.
She was going to be a dragon rider. No other feat in her life mattered more than that. She would tear down her hatcher identity and build a novel one, dedicated to feats wrought from the back of a creature of fire and gold.
She passed her proving with literal flying colors. And, due in part to her strange circumstances, she was given the privilege to personally choose her right wing. Looking through dozens of dossiers, there were nearly none that caught her eye. She was almost resigned to being stationed homestead permanently—a solo flier only good for courier duties and suicidal scouting missions—when someone brought her the file of a severed wing.
“Thamlin Sharpier,” she’d whispered, testing her pronunciation. She had never even heard of a Dornborn rider before. And yet, his sepia-tinted photograph stared back at her, his expression that of a boy trying very hard (and failing) not to smile. He didn’t have the look of a Dornborn, and that was what clinched it for her. Little else.
Here was another outsider, just like her.
Weeks later, when she finally had the chance to interview him, she saw him first at the stables, by happenstance. Of course, he hadn’t seen her, but she’d lingered near the entrance to the bay and watched as he readied his drake for a morning flight. His drake kept biting at an attendant and Sharpier was laughing. But, at long last, the rider had had his fill of the foolish display and gave one firm word of warning. The drake stilled as if it had been struck, its yellow eyes fixed on Sharp’s face as smoke crawled out from between its ivory teeth. Then the dragon bent its neck in submission and put its belly to the ground so that the attendant could get to the saddle without being molested. Sharpier grinned then and scratched at the beast’s muzzle.
Frost left after that, doubly deciding that that rider alone would be her right wing, or she would forfeit everything for solitude. She had always prided herself on her social objectivity. She had never felt fraternal or sexual attraction towards anyone or any activity. She knew how to exploit those feelings in other people—and she knew her effect on people of the opposite sex.
Sharpier’s photographic smile had intrigued her.
Seeing Thamlin smile in real-time, however, had awakened something essential in her that she hadn’t ever felt before.
She hadn’t smiled in years—not since the arena.
How can someone who’s just lost their partner smile so freely like that? It isn’t fucking fair! Who the fuck does he think he is?
She hated him. There could be no other explanation for the wealth of feeling she had towards him—when she hadn’t even met him yet.
When they did officially meet, Rider Frost Drakidautr didn’t even give him the satisfaction of her name, nor a handshake or a nod. She had simply glowered at him as he had smiled goodnaturedly in confusion. Then she’d made eye contact with their Flightmeister and nodded tersely. “He’ll do.”
When she’d made it to the door, Sharpier had growled after her, “That’s it? He’ll do? Like I’m some bull at market?! I say nay!”
She hadn’t turned to face him as she said gruffly, “Neigh? Then you are a stud at market then. You don’t have a choice either way, Rider Shapier. You’re to be my right wing or no one’s. I would be grateful if I were in your position.”
He’d made a frustrated noise in his throat, but then said, “Fine then. I know when to fold. And that’s normally when emperors are involved. See ya at the stables later… Lefty. Let’s hope your seat is more flexible than your spine.”
Frost had lost her temper then, snapping over her shoulder, “My seat is none of your bloody business.”
Sharpier had been grinning from ear to ear, which had only served to pull her rage right to the surface. He’d crossed his arms as he raised an eyebrow. “You’re my wing too.” He’d taken a couple steps toward her (and their Flightmeister had looked between them as if he regretted a lack of peanuts). “Your seat,” Thamlin Sharpier iterated, “along with all the snow attached to it, is as much my business as everything I’m made of is yours. Or do you really intend to make me your smoke-eater? That’s not how a partnership works. We fly side-by-side or not at all, Ice Princess.”
When she’d only stared at him, a witty retort completely arrested in her throat by his utter lack of self-awareness, Sharpier had taken that as his cue to salute their superior and then throw a chin toward the door. “Come along, Rider. We’re going for a flight!” Then he’d hooked his arm through hers, making her physically recoil from him in disgust. “What’chour name, anyway? Did I guess right, Ice Princess?”
He has to be drunk. There’s no way someone just operates like this in the open without reprisal, she’d thought to herself. If he touches me one more time, I’m going to cut something vital of his off at the quick.
The rest is, as the skalds say, history.
“Frost, get up.”
Oh Hel, everything hurts.
“I know, I know. We’re both drugged up to the horns, but we’re doin’ a turn outside town. Come on, easy does it…”
There was nothing easy about coming back to awareness.
Why does the air hurt?
She stirred, her head lolling sideways without her permission. She could barely breathe. There was a pressure in her chest and a sloshing sensation in her guts. She wasn’t sure if she was nauseous or diuretic, or both. Worst still, someone very warm was trying to get her flat footed onto Vertical Land, but the world of Humble Horizontal Inquiry seemed to be winning the fight for her soul.
Oh Hel, toss this fish back in the pond. I can’t do this.
She very much wanted to go back to bed.
“You’re one tough sonuvabitch, you know that?” Her familiar someone hissed in her ear. “Grab my hand. That’s it. Hup! Come on, drag your boots… Dorn save me, you’re dense. However does your hen get you off the ground? Heheheh…”
“Tham… lin,” Frost managed to say, before groaning in pain. Anything above a whisper drove an invisible javelin through her, stabbing from head to groin, which only made her cry out, causing that much more pain.
“Shush, shush. I’m here. Through the flap—nice. Okay, try to keep it down now. We’re spiriting away in the night,” he said, and she could tell his mouth was making that tiny shape it made whenever he was trying not to panic.
Spiriting away…? Oh, this fool!
“Don’t freeze up like that, you’ll only hurt yourself! We’re not deserting, stupid! Calm down.” He added close to the shell of her ear, “We’re doing a secret mission for Flightmeister.”
“You…” Frost gasped and bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming. “You’re lying,” she said after gulping air. The arm not wrapped over Thamlin’s shoulders hung uselessly at her side, swinging into things in the dark, sending shots of pain to her neck.
“I’m not lying,” he said in his lying voice. “Listen, we’ve got some contacts outside city limits that can heal your wounds. Then we’re coming back, alright? Peace.”
“Tham,” she whimpered. “Am I… Are we… dying?”
“You’re not going to die,” he said a little too loudly, then he readjusted her against him and said in a low voice, “You’re healing up just fine. The timing’s just a little too slow for the flight’s sake.”
She realized the hand she gripped was wrapped in tape, capped off by the open mouth of a plaster cast. “Your arm,” she groaned. “Are you… Are you well?”
He stifled a short laugh. “Am I well? Buoni dei. You are unbelievable.” But then he halted their limping mass of limbs and slowly crouched down, bringing her down with him, whispering, “Hold tight, here comes a lantern… Alright, he’s passed.” But before they rose to continue, he spit some of her hair out of his mouth and whispered, “Of course I’m not okay. A bloody building blew up and fell on top of my favorite wing. Come on, it looks like it's clear from here.” He pulled her up and, this time, she was able to get her feet under her, her heels scraping the cobbles. Her left ankle ached with sprain, but it was the least of her wounds, so she focused on it to exclude all others.
It didn’t help.
“Did they get… the beggar?” she wheezed.
“The bomber, you mean? No. And there were more than one. Now shush. We’ll deal with all that when we get back to Oril. I need you to focus on keeping awake. I know everything hurts. You were lung punched, Lefty.” She could feel the fingers of his good hand digging bruises into her hip. “Don’t you ever push me out of the way like that ever again.”
She huffed a laugh but couldn’t find the strength to tell him off. “Whatever.”
“Never again, Frost. I mean it.”
“Again,” she stated in an unrepentant, dulcet tone, “What… ever.”
He muttered, “You can be such a fucking child sometimes.”
“Rich…”
“Don’t finish.”
“... coming…”
“I’m gonna drop you.”
“... from…”
“Frost.”
“... you.”
Thamlin growled something incoherent under his breath. “I’m not high enough for this.”
Thirty minutes or thirty hours later, it was the smell of dragons and blood-letted meat that brought the Helian back to the present and told her that they’d arrived at the stables.
“I can’t…” she began, but then trailed off as she realized which stall they were headed for. “I am not riding bitch, Thamlin Sharpier!” she practically roared before falling from her partner’s grasp to wretch on the ground, spilling a slick concoction of blood and bile all over the frozen mud.
“Dorn’s bones, Frost. Peace…” Thamlin put a hand on her back and waited for her to finish. She was shaking by the time the blood stopped coming up. Then, the only things she could see in front of her face were her alabaster hands framing a dark pool of red gore.
She fainted.
Frost met Oli a couple months after she met Thamlin. The Coaster offered a neat distraction from the stresses of her new partnership’s growing pains—and he was serviceable as far as lovers went. At first, that physical intimacy was all they expected of one another. Just like Frost, Oliver was straight forward about his expectations. They were business-like about their encounters and often planned to see one another months in advanced, framing their dalliances around movements and military appointments.
After exchanging pleasantries, Oliver would say something like, “I’m free this Monday, after midday.”
To which Frost would reply with, “Monday? I have drill in the morning until zenithal, then I take watch after evening.”
“So, I’ll see you after sup, but before dinner?”
“Yes. Expect me at your tent at one.”
“Excellent. I will have refreshments available if you bring protection.”
“These conditions are acceptable. Good day, Oliver.”
“Good day, Frost.”
And always, as she saluted, he would grin at her as if he had just caught the punchline that had soared over the top of her head, but it was that smile that, at least for a while, she had lived to see again and again.
Thamlin found out about their relations after the second rendezvous, but when Frost dared him to say something, Tham had gestured at his chest, demanding hotly, “Me? Judge you? Me? Have you ever said anything about who I shack up with? Ever?”
“No,” she’d stated. “Whom you relax with is none of my business.”
He’d grinned at that and flicked a hand dismissively as if to say, Well, there you are then, and followed up with a verbal, “Your doctor is your business, Miss Cold-Shoulders. But if you need any bedroom tips—”
“Noted.”
It was when Oliver began to open up about his family in the southwest that Frost began to realize how advantageous a union between them could actually be. Of course, the first time she brought it up—over a year ago now—Oli had laughed at her, asking why she should be motivated to alter the conditions of their perfectly acceptable arrangement. The second time was in Leshela, when Oliver had patently refused her romantic overture.
Now he was dead.
And what had Tham said about that?
He’d wanted to know what she would do now that he was dead.
No Rest in peace or Oh, poor Oliver—certainly no My condolences.
Like her wing should be, he’d only been concerned for her.
She was woken up by Thamlin whooping behind her. She was bundled up in her riding gear, strapped down by jesses and belts coming off her limbs. She couldn’t see the ground through her goggles, but she could see the snow falling beside them. She knew they were descending.
“Tham,” she whispered. Obviously, he didn’t hear her over the dull roar of wind and the metronome whumps! of his drake’s wingbeats as his dragon bore them back to the ground. Still, she wet her lips and called out softly, “Thamlin…” She already knew, after a bland self-inspection, that her wounds had been reopened in-flight. Her cold-gear and riding leathers were most probably the only things keeping her in one piece.
Once we land, will I have the strength I need to tell Thamlin to go fist himself? One last time… for old time’s sake…
“Frost. Come on. We’re landed. I’ve taken the jesses off… Quit being a prima donna and slide down. I’m right here. I’ve got you.” Thamlin had his arms outstretched.
“Embarrassing,” Frost muttered as she slid into him. Alas, Thamlin did not have her, and he buckled. They landed in a tangle of laments and curses, kicking up gravel-infused snow.
Frost grunted, “Call me… fat… one more—”
“Oh, forgive me, Queen Elbows-and-Knees,” Thamlin hissed. “I forgot how bleeding sensitive you are! Ow! That is literally my face!”
Frost was forced to bite back a retort as pain lanced through her. Instead, she managed through gritted teeth, “Prick.”
Thamlin rolled one of her limbs off him. “Snowflake!”
She accidentally hit him in the face again. “Help me stand.”
“Get off me first!”
Out of desperation, she whistled for his drake and the dragon, with an amused expression on its face, picked her up in the hammock of one wing and laid her aside his rider.
“Sorry,” she muttered in the darkness.
Thamlin brushed snow off his jacket front and helped her to her boots. “Why’re you apologizing? Come on. You seem to’ve found your land legs. Should make this quick.”
“Not… good form… calling someone… else’s dra—”
“Hel save you, Drakidautr. Your priorities have always been twisted, but this really snatches the swallow.”
“The… what?”
His grin was forced. “Figure of speech. I’m saying you worry about the wrong things. Right now, I need you to worry about putting your feet in front of each other—left then right then left, and on…” His voice had a reedy quality to it that she very rarely heard from him.
She could feel tepid blood saturating the folds of her shirt, rubbing uncomfortably with the shifting of her waistband. “How far…?”
“Not far. Stay here, Rath!” he called back. “Stay! We’ll be back soon.” Then he stopped their walk to fix his dragon in a chastising stare. “Rath! I mean it. Stay. I see hide or horn of you anywhere near these Promises and, I promise you, you won’t eat for a week.”
Promises? Frost thought the word—spoken like a title—sounded familiar. It was tied to something about caves and magic; stories built to scare children into keeping close to the hearth at night…
Thamlin’s drake made a low keening noise in the barrel of its chest, a dollop of lava lighting up the area as it fell out of the dragon’s clenched maw. The glob hissed and crackled when it hit the snow-covered ground, taking the sallow, sickly light with its drowning.
“He’ll be… back, Rath,” Frost whispered.
“We’ll be back,” Thamlin insisted. Then he dragged his partner the rest of the way, into the mouth of an open structure or cave. The wind and snow died away the deeper they went and eventually, Frost’s eyes acclimatized to the change in light. Everything ran together like flames seen through falling water, but as they swayed together, she began to make out shapes and symbols etched into the walls. And then the world began to take on solid shape. She felt cold, even wrapped up in so many layers, and her lips stuck together. She knew she had a fever, but she also knew her body was going into shock, throwing the world into sharp relief.
I am dying, she thought numbly. This is just like that clarity that Far had right before he died. That moment still haunts Mor… Will I be able to haunt her like father? Or will I go to my brothers?
Thamlin’s breath, much like her own, came in gasps as they labored through the labyrinthine passages. He took a torch off a cavern wall and let her rest a minute against it as he inspected the artwork. “I don’t understand… Some of this is in Dornish—Wait. I see Fairie and Helian too. What is this place?”
“You… brought us here… and you…” She trailed off. “Promises.”
The Promittitus were Radian witches that practiced old magic. Their power was that stolen from Fairie thousands of years ago. It was limitless compared to contemporary magic, but with a steep cost to match it. Only zealots of the Thousand-Eyed God practiced it.
Her right-wing winced. “Look, your superstitious lot make mountains out of mole hills, Lefty, and don’t you deny it. We’re here to get some healing. That’s all.”
“Thamlin, where are we?” If they were in a lair of the Promittitus, she was going to scream.
“Look, they’re just Radian clerics. Like, healing-type clerics.”
“Like witches, but religious?”
“Yeah!”
“Witches that invoke the power made from oaths and promises?”
“Mm… Yeah!”
She slumped against the wall. “I’m going to scream.”
He smiled nervously and grabbed under her arm. “Scream later. Walk now.” He swept the torch before them and they shuffled down into the system, winding their way deep enough that standing water became a common sight.
“It’s not frozen,” Frost whispered.
“You’re feverish,” Thamlin said. “But I’m sweating because it’s blasted hot down here. It’s like the deeper we go, the closer we get to the heart of the world.”
“The center of the world?”
“No, they say the heart of the world is like that of a dragon’s, with chambers made from mercury and iron that push lava in and out of them. Hence, volcanoes and quakes and such.”
“You scoff at fair folk magicians but believe the Ambiguous They say the world has a beating heart… with a straight face. I will never understand you Dornborn.”
He made a face at her. “Science and magic oft look the same, Frost. Even you can’t deny that.”
“They oft look the same, but that does not mean they are—augh!” She pressed a hand to her clavicle as sharp pains checked her volume, and she saw Thamlin smirking before it morphed into worry again. She caught her breath and said in a low voice, “They’ll ask for something three-fold in value, Tham. We can’t afford to pay that. We should go back… We should fly back…” Even as she insisted on returning, she knew she wouldn’t survive a return journey.
Still, her logical sensibilities rebelled at the idea of making a deal with a water hag willingly.
But the illogical part of her brain screamed for the pain to stop at any cost—if that cost did not include harming Thamlin… because all of her knew that dying would harm Thamlin a great deal.
“We should do a lot of things,” Thamlin said soberly. “But right now, we can’t. We can only move forward and hope that things work out in the end.” He held her close and the warm light at the end of the tunnel took on a sickly green tone. Before they turned that final bend, he met her eye-to-eye and said, “No matter who or what is in there… we trust each other.” It was not a question.
“I trust you… more than I trust myself,” Frost declared softly.
“I dunno about all that,” Tham said lightly, but then his smile fell as he faced forward and dragged her the rest of the way, leaving behind a red trail in their wake. If she hadn’t been right next to him, she might have missed what he said under his breath next: “I swear, I’ll unman whoever the fuck did this to us. I swear it.”
Be careful about swears around them, Tham, she wanted to say aloud, but the clarity from before was beginning to wane. Their power is in the making and the breaking of such things… and they are not to be trifled with. Even half-meant jests carry the will of the world about them in their presence… Oh, what the fuck ever. Like Thamlin listens to me when he’s decided he’s in the right.
They reached a door made from found driftwood and barbed wire. The green and blue light within the room beyond was bright enough to obscure any look through the cracks in the door’s lashed-together construction. But before Thamlin could knock, breach, or otherwise, a collection of voices called out from behind the door.
Two women and two men spoke at the same time, but their tones and accents varied wildly, drawing out their words strangely and enunciating vowels at different times. The effect was deeply unsettling and discordant to the ears. The Quartet said, “You know there is a cost for healing, and you fear it, but you should not. You are mastered by the threads of Fate, but we will thrall you to the will of Luck. Enter and let us gaze upon you with the many eyes of The Rift’s sleeping dragon. You are welcome.”
The door swung inward by itself, and she felt Thamlin stiffen.
Now exposed, the teal light dimmed substantially, proving to be a glowing sphere at the center of the space, suspended above an in-ground pool of shimmering mercury. The room was perfectly domed in shape, about ten meters in diameter, with its highest point above the pool, set at five meters. Every bit appeared to be made of some dense white stone, pitted with water damage and traversal. There was no furniture, nor any indications that someone lived in the space.
There were three robed and hooded individuals standing around the sphere and pool, their hands raised up in shaking supplication. But the fourth person of interest paced around the other three in easy strides. They came to stand before Thamlin and Frost, their hands clasped behind their back. After a moment’s pause, they drew their hood back to reveal hairless, androgenous features and cat-like green eyes. There were tiny pearlescent scales scattered across the tops of their cheek bones and the bridge of their nose.
Frost had never seen their like before, but she knew what draconian magic felt like. She had felt such things before when she’d pressed her cheek to the swollen belly of a broodmother, or when she’d held her own dragon’s egg in her arms, thrumming with unborn potential. She meant to say something to Tham about this revelation, but the words died on her lips as she collapsed to the stone.
Pulling her up off the ground into his lap, Thamlin snapped at the robes, “I’m here to haggle for her life. I won’t trade mine, but barring that, I’m open to offers.”
One of the hooded Promises chortled.
The exposed Promise standing before them blinked like a basking snake and the four of them all said as one, “Normally petitioners ask our name first. But we understand there is much at stake. Our name is Zei’dan. We are the pieces of a promise made long ago. Our god, sleeping in the deep, is lost to us. He needs eyes to see the path before him. Only then can he return.”
“Eyes?” Thamlin stated, as if this meant something more.
A masculine Promise said, “We will make a promise for your eyes—one plucked from the other.”
A feminine one said, “With this, we will heal you both, but this will tie you together forever.”
A second male added, “While you are close, you will be indestructible and immortal. But apart, you will easily die.”
The Promise before them concluded with, “Should one of you die, the other will follow.”
The Quartet asked, “What say you?”
Thamlin looked down at Frost as she blinked, but she couldn’t tell what decision or emotion may have crossed his face, her vision a mishmash of shapes and shadows. “Lemme get this straight,” he said, “I give you one of my eyes and you’ll make me indestructible and immortal?”
“Yes.”
He scoffed, “Come on, what’s the catch?”
Tied together forever? Vulnerable apart? That is a shit deal, Thamlin, and you know it. Don’t be more stupid, Frost thought, her mouth refusing to voice such opinions.
The Promise over them tilted their head to the side, then said, “You don’t believe in magic. What does it matter our methods to you, Son of Ittan?”
Frost could imagine the scowl on his face. “My father’s name is Charis. And if you’re gonna be zappin’ us with—"
Frost coughed, expelling a mouthful of blood in the most undignified way possible, coating the two of them in pink and bright, arterial red.
“Time is not on your side,” the Quartet said as one.
“What say you?” one asked.
“What say you?” another reiterated.
“What say—?”
Thamlin shouted, “Yes! Dorn’s bones, I say yes. Get on with it.”
The androgenous Promise sounded amused as they said, “We must also hear an affirmative from the Daughter of Viyarun. A promise is a promise—”
“—is a promise,” the other three finished.
Thamlin gripped her chin and directed her to look at him. “Frost… Focus. You trust me?” She nodded listlessly, her arms limp, her breath ragged. “I need you to say yes.”
“Yesh,” she slurred.
“Yes, what?” the exposed Promised asked, one scaley brow raised.
“Oh, fuck right off! She gave you her affirmative! A promise is a promise! Now save her!” His voice broke on the final words.
The Promittitus cried out as one, “A promise has been made! A promise will be fulfilled! Give us your eyes! Cast them into the scry! Give Abr your sight! And, forever more, there will be nothing to fear in the night… save Fear herself!” The Quartet all began to laugh.
In any other context, the noise might have been a joyous, rapturous sound; intoxicating and infectious.
But Thamlin’s fingers were digging into her shoulders and his breath came in short, terrified bursts.
After that, Frost could blessedly perceive nothing.
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