Highland Dragon Rebel by Isabel Cooper

Author:Isabel Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2017-08-30T04:00:00+00:00

Twenty-four

“And do you truly breathe fire?” Namwynne asked, her violet eyes bird-bright with curiosity. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Aye, and no,” said Moiread cheerfully. The air was cool enough to walk comfortably, the forest smelled of slightly more metallic soil and slightly sweeter pine, and Namwynne was proving congenial company.

For hunting, the princess had dressed practically like the rest of them: long breeches of drab green tucked into boots, a gray robe pinned up around her waist, and brown leather gauntlets that laced up her arms to the shoulder, keeping her arms safe while giving her wings freedom. She’d pinned back her hair into a tight knot on top of her head, and although she hung sensibly back behind the men, she carried a bow as if she knew how to use it. She walked beside Moiread without seeming to begrudge her guest the necessity.

If she did lose Madoc’s company to someone, Moiread reflected, at least this woman seemed to be worth him. “We can,” she went on, “but only in dragon’s shape—I couldn’t do it to toast my bread, which I’ve sorely regretted on a few evenings in the wild—and it feels a bit as if you could make yourself sneeze, only more so. Fire other than our own doesn’t hurt us at all, as a general matter. One of my great-aunts swears by it for cleaning herself after a long day. She’ll not go near a bath, only steps into the fireplace for a while.”

“Stars and sky,” said Namwynne, her tone making it clear that the phrase was an oath. “Should we have given you a larger hearth, perhaps, and no bath?”

Moiread laughed. “Not me. I find the water soothing, and it’s always done well enough for me. You can’t always be minding what your ancestors say, aye? Though my father would doubtless wish I did more of that.”

“And your mother?”

“She died a good while back,” said Moiread.

Namwynne blinked. “Ah. I…I’m sorry.”

She said it with the air of one being polite about a matter she’d only encountered in books or tales.

“Thank you,” said Moiread, “but she’s been in heaven—or so I like to think, with all the masses we bought for her soul—a good hundred years or so, and these things do happen. At least to us. Do they,” she ventured, watching the princess for any sign of discomfort or offense, “to you?”

Namwynne hesitated before speaking. “In a way, yes. We go onward. We lose this form when our time here has passed and we wish to be—” She used a word that didn’t translate to Moiread, frowned, and said, “…to be another thing. And we can die, and that’s often unpleasant. Though some find the waiting to return restful, it’s only seemed boring to me, like having to spend days abed. Mother says that’s a sign of my youth.”

It was Moiread’s turn to blink. She looked up ahead to where Madoc walked and chatted with a few of the other hunters as they flew close to the ground. She

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