setting fires and never seemed to tire of it. His fire-starting kit was always in a small pouch at his throat. The endless misting rain sizzled as it met the reaching flames.
‘Tired?’ Tats’ voice came from the darkness to her left.
‘Beyond tired,’ she replied. ‘Will this journey never be over? I’ve forgotten what it is like to be in one place for more than a night or two.’
‘It’s worse than that. Once we get wherever we’re going with the dragons, eventually we’ll have to make the trip back downriver.’
She was still for a moment. ‘You’d leave your dragon?’ she asked him quietly. She had still not made amends with Sintara, still ached when she thought of the dragon. She cared for the dragon as she always had, grooming her and finding extra food for her, but they spoke little now. It made the contrast sharper when she saw the fondness that some of the other keepers shared with their dragons. Tats and Fente were close. Or she had thought they were.
He put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed gently. ‘I don’t know. It depends, I suppose. Sometimes she seems to need me, to even be fond of me. Other times, well—’
Even as she shrugged away from his hands, her body registered how good it felt to have his warm touch on her sore muscles. He stepped back from her, acknowledging her rebuke. Like a rising flood of warm water, the image of Greft and Jerd’s tangled bodies washed through her. For a blink of time, she thought of turning to face him, dared to imagine running her hands down his warm, bare back. But the next image that jolted her was the thought of his hands sliding over her scaled skin. Like petting a warm lizard, she mocked herself, and folded her lips tightly to keep from crying out at the unfairness of it. Greft and Jerd might be able to indulge in the forbidden, but perhaps it was only because each had found a fellow outcast as a partner. Neither would be repelled by how the Rain Wilds had touched the other. That would not be the case with someone like Tats. He came from the Tattooed folk; he had not been born here. His skin was as smooth as a Bingtown girl’s, unmarked by wattles or scaling. Unlike her own.
‘A long day,’ Tats said into her silence.
His tentative tone wondered if he had angered her by taking a liberty. She swallowed her fury at fate and evened her voice. ‘A long day, and I’m still sore from being “rescued” by Mercor. I’ll be glad of a warm fire and a bit of hot food tonight’
As if in answer, the fire suddenly climbed up the heaped driftwood. The glowing light outlined her friends gathering around the fire. Slight Sylve was there, standing next to narrow Harrikin. They were laughing, for long-limbed Warken was doing a frenzied dance to shake a shower of sparks from his wild hair and worn shirt.
Boxter and Kase were twin blocks of darkness, the cousins together as always. Lecter stalked past them, the spines on his neck and back clearly limned against the fire’s light. He’d had to cut the neck of his shirt to allow for their growth. That sight somehow reassured her. Those are my friends, she thought, and smiled. They were just as marked as she was. Then she caught a glimpse of Jerd’s seated profile. She was perched on a piece of driftwood and Greft stood behind her, powerful and protective. As Thymara watched, Jerd leaned back so that the top of her head touched his thigh as she spoke up to him. Greft bent to answer her and for an instant they formed a closed shape, the two of them becoming a single entity that shut out the rest of the world.
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