Core (20 page)

But most of all, she’d been there for him, in her own Onna way. When his brothers broke the furniture during their therapy sessions, it was Onna he vented to. It was Onna who went running with him to calm his mood.

“Have I ever thanked you?” Cale asked.

“Too many times,” she replied.

Onna stood up and offered Cale her hand. He hid his flinch from her as her palm pressed against the splinters he still wore in his broken hand. She was about to walk off when Cale grabbed her arm. “One more thing. Where did you and Ava take off to earlier?”

Onna shrugged, her frown returning, her face darkening. “Ask her yourself.”

So Cale knocked on the door of the guest room that he and Ava shared. She sat on the edge of the bed in her pajamas, running a towel over her hair. Cale knew she’d just gotten out of the shower. She smelled like soap.

Ava lowered her towel when she saw him. She waited for a moment, as if deciding whether to speak or not. “There was a lot of shouting going on down ther
e,” she said at last. “Lots of…smashing.”

Cale smiled, but he felt his head reel a bit. He sat next to Ava on the bed and took in the sight of her, the steadiness of her gaze. If he tried, he could feel how strong her heartbeat was without even touching her.

Cale held out his hand to her. “I broke it,” he said.

Ava’s eyes widened when she saw it. His skin was black and red, his joints swollen. She took it as gently as she could and turned it over in hers. Little chunks of wood mixed with the bright red blood in his palm.

Ava stretched over the bed, reaching toward her pillow. Cale couldn’t help but stare. When she moved, she revealed the smooth brown of her midsection. Cale wondered what her skin would feel like, but he didn’t try to find out. Instead, he waited patiently as she retrieved the dragonblade that she’d kept tucked under her pillow.

Cale had a feeling that if she wasn’t in her pajamas, she would have had the weapon on her person.
 
People don’t know what they’re talking about.
 His rider was ready for anything. His trust for her was tangible. When he looked at her furrowed brow, at how she used the knife to ease the splinters out one by one, he could almost taste how he felt about her. Rothai wasn’t a strong enough word, even though it came from his core, from the vocabulary that had been passed on since the birth of the first red dragon. It didn’t capture Ava. Not entirely. Cale closed his eyes for a second as the word came to him. 
Sarai. 
He had no doubt in his mind. If he could choose a title for Ava, that would be it.

He winced as she pulled at a particularly snarled sliver of wood. She glanced up at him for less than a second. “Don’t be a baby.”

He grinned at that. Then he reached out and wrapped an arm around her. “I’m really glad I have you, Ava.”

After a moment, s
he broke free of his embrace, a smile on her own face. “You’re extra mushy tonight. Your brothers give you a hard time about me?”

Cale shrugged. “It was more about me, actually.”

“You? What did 
you
 do wrong?”

Cale sighed.
“Apparently not enough.”

Ava stopped and looked at him. Then she reached back under her pillow again. Cale swallowed, knowing he should be responsible, knowing he should close his eyes or look away. But he watched eagerly, imagining tracing a finger against her abdomen, imagining what it would feel like.

Ava sat back up with a lighter in her hand. She frowned at Cale. “What?”

Cale almost jumped. “What?
Nothing.”

“Yo
u look…funny.”

Cale prayed to God she didn’t ask what he’d been thinking about. He sighed with relief as she flicked the lighter on and held it under his hand. His bones mended slowly and the holes the splinters left in him stitched themselves back together.

Ava watched the fire for a while, thinking through what she was about to say until she found the right combination of words.

“There’s nothing wrong with needing them, Cale.”

Cale hated the pang in his chest. He wanted to be numb again, but being with Ava made him put his defenses down, made the numbness dissolve into raw emotion. “I think…I think it might be easier… not to need people.”

Ava bit her lip, her thoughts moving like deep waters when she wanted them to be trickles.
Too much for her to distill quickly. Too much to explain. She could still feel what had happened to her, what she’d done to herself.

Sometimes, when she really thought about it, when she felt around for it, when she wondered what had become of it, she found it. There it was. Her heart sat in her chest like a stone. Nothing could get in to hurt it, but nothing could get in to help it either.

She turned her attention back to the lighter. “I don’t want you to be like me.”

“I don’t think I can do this if I still need them, Ava.”

“Do what?”

He had to swallow.
“Anything.”

Ava wanted to find something wise and meaningful to say, but as she looked over Cale’s shoulder, her words died on her tongue. Her breath caught in her mouth. She wanted to scream, but no sound came out. Cale sat up straighter when he saw his rider’s expression, her eyes wide,
her mouth open.

“Ava?”

The siren stood, rocking back and forth in front of the closed door, its arms wrapped around itself. Its ghostly face watched the dragon and rider in silence, the black of its eyes leaving no room for white.

Cale whipped his head around and reached for the dragonblade that always sat in his pocket. He pounced on the creature, thrusting his blade into its chest and swinging it against the siren’s neck.
It’s head rolled to the floor. The monster made no sound, no shriek, no hiss.

“Cale!”
Onna called out from the living room.

Both Ava and Cale raced down the stairs. Cale took the life of another nightfolk that lingered in the corner of the kitchen, trying to hide between the fridge and the wall.

Ava watched as Onna spun her dragonblade in her hands so that the sword made a swooshing sound. The dragon lifted her arm and sent the sword flying. It landed with a slice into a nightfolk’s chest. As purple blood spurted from the wound, Onna ran at the creature. She kicked it to the ground, her foot landing on its stomach as she yanked her blade from its heart. She brought the sword down over its neck without hesitation.

Ava was agape as she watched Onna. Her technique was immaculate, from her stance to the slow, meaningful breaths sh
e took as she moved her weapon.
No wonder the dragons in the Cave respect her so much.
Onna was a killer. 

Ava looked around the room, her own dragon blade still in her hand. But she didn’t move.
 
Something’s strange.
 Her heart was racing, just like it should have been. She expected the beasts to rush at her, to bear their fangs, to sing their songs over her. But the sirens stood in place, each of them. Cale and Onna hacked them down, but they did not fight back. They only swayed back and forth. Back and forth.

“Stop,” Ava called out. “Cale, Onna, stop.”

But the reds weren’t listening. They had been fighting sirens too long to react with anything but the instinct to end their lives. Ava hurried to Cale and grabbed onto his arm. She maneuvered herself so that she stood in between him and the siren he was about to kill.

“Ava, move,” Cale said gruffly, about to shove her out of the way.

Ava was breathless as she considered her own actions. 
Am I losing my mind?
 She was standing in front of a creature that could take her life, the life her dragon, of her foster mother. But Ava’s instinct was different than Cale’s. And it was that instinct–something she didn’t fully understand–that drove her to step between the blade and the creature.

“Cale, I need you to lower your weapon,” she said, slowly, as if talking to a child. She could see that Cale’s eyes weren’t his. She was looking into the face of a dragon. And he wanted the siren’s blood spilled.

“I need you to get Onna to stop as well,” she added.

The other red dragon was still going at the sirens. The more she killed, the more there seemed to be. Ava tried to look as intimidating as she could when she looked back at Cale. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin at him. “That’s an order.”

Cale’s eyes flashed. He lowered his blade hesitantly, his inane desire to defend humans fighting with his need to obey his rider. He turned away and intercepted Onna. She wasn’t as easy to halt. Cale had to wrench the blade from her. She screamed at him, though not with words. Cale looped his arm around Onna and lifted her quickly and easily over to where Ava stood in the kitchen.

Ava looked around once more. The nightfolk that crowded the room still swayed, their shadow eels twisting about their necks and ankles. It made Ava nervous to even consider speaking to them, but she had to follow through.
She had to.

“What is it you want?” she asked loudly.

The sirens waited for a moment, then all at once, they opened their mouths. The sound was blood curdling, like a dozen nails scratching against a dozen chalkboards.

Ava covered her ea
rs and yelled for them to stop. “One of you. Just one of you.”

A siren stepped forward.
A male, with a strong nose and wide, black eyes. He moved so close to Ava that Cale had to reposition himself. He raised his sword.

Ava rested her hand on his arm. “Cale, does it feel like I’m in danger?” Ava tried to reason with him.

Cale ignored her, but she persisted. “They’re not here to hurt us. You know it. Look at them. They’re not even fighting back.”

Cale still kept his sword poised, so Ava continued anyway, turning her attention back to the ghostly being. “What do you want? Why would you come here?”

The creature opened its mouth, but nothing came out apart from that same chilling shriek.

Ava stepped forward once more
, close enough to reach the monster. Her hand shook as she stretched it out toward the siren. 
Please don’t try to eat me. Please let me be right about this. Please.

Her eyes were drawn to the stone pendant that hung off of the siren neck. Slowly, carefully, she wrapped her fingers around the crest and pulled. The leather string snapped, but the crest seared her palm. She dropped it, gasping in shock.

The burn mark on her hand matched the scar on the siren’s chest. Right where the crest had rested on its breast bone was burnt white skin. She had to blink. 
Did it just sigh?

“Can you talk to me now?” Ava asked.

The siren opened its mouth, but it did not shriek. Nothing came out of its ashen lips. Only silence. The nightfolk locked eyes with Ava and spoke silence over her. She watched, looking into its eyes, trying to understand why they’d risked their lives to come to a dragon nest. Trying to understand why they didn’t fight back. Trying to understand.

She kept looking, kept staring until,
suddenly, she could hear nothing at all. Frightened, she wanted to move, wanted to unplug her ears. She listened, but she couldn’t hear the hum of the fridge or the sound of Cale hissing beside her. Around her, pressing in on her, was a crushing, chaotic quiet.

From the shimmering void of the siren’s eyes came one crystal tear. It fell slowly, changing color as it left the siren’s cheek, becoming a dark purple. Then, without warning, the siren itself became nothing. It turned to ash, vanishing in wind that didn’t exist.

The remaining sirens did the same, leaving nothing behind but the necklaces. The necklaces and tears of their own.

Ava gasped as the sounds of the world came back to her. She hadn’t realized that Cale had been shaking her, trying to wake her up. Worry –no, fear– was etched onto his face.

“Ava. Ava, are you okay?”

Ava blinked at him. She shook her head. 
I’m not okay. And I don’t know why.
 She had trouble remembering where she was, why she was there. Cale brushed at her cheeks and Ava took his hand, examining it in confusion. His fingertips were wet.

“I’m crying?”

“Ava, you’ve been crying for ten minutes. You’re scaring me.”

Ava looked around. All
the lights were on, the furniture mangled. All of the siren crests sat in a pile on the kitchen counter. Cale pressed his hands to her face so that he could see into her eyes.

“Tell me what happened,” he said softly. “Did they hurt you?”

Ava tried to focus on her body. Her legs, her torso, her arms, her head. She was uninjured. “I’m okay.”

“W
hat happened? You made us stop fighting them. Then they all disappeared, and you started crying. Why?”

“You didn’t see it? You didn’t hear it?”

Cale shook his head. He put his hands on Ava’s waist, lifted her effortlessly, and set her down on the counter. Then he fumbled in the fridge for a bottle of water. He opened the cap and handed it to her. She drank it, but it tasted strange in her mouth. She couldn’t even detect the moisture on her tongue.