Chapter 72: THE NIGHT IN THE CAVERN

DIANA’S POV

Master Clair came to Diana’s apartments himself after midnight instead of sending a junior keeper or household messenger.

That was how she knew Vharos was bad.

Alma opened the door in her night robe with a candle in one hand and immediate hostility in her face.

"What happened?"

"Vharos’s pain increased."

Diana was already out of bed.

Master Clair continued while she pulled on the first warm dress Alma handed her.

"Healer Lou has treated what she can. He is restless. His breathing pattern changed. His Grace is below."

Diana fastened the dragonstone herself.

"Did you request her?" Alma asked.

"Yes."

Good.

Her two Household Guards fell in behind them as Master Clair led Diana and Alma through the secured northern route. Even at midnight, he had requested her because the evidence justified it rather than assuming Diana belonged beside Vharos whenever he suffered.

They reached the cavern quickly.

Raigoro sat on the floor beside Vharos’s head instead of in the observation chair.

Diana stopped at the sight.

She had never seen him sit there.

Vharos’s breathing came harder than usual.

Healer Lou knelt near his lower chest while an assistant prepared another dose.

Master Clair moved immediately to the keeper station.

"Any change?"

"None."

Raigoro looked up when Diana approached.

He looked exhausted.

Diana had seen that before. What stopped her was the fear he was making no attempt to hide from the dragon at his feet.

Diana had seen him angry, suspicious, injured, and focused on battle. This fear was quieter than all of them.

Diana took her observation position.

The dragonstone was already hot.

She recorded the temperature comparison, time, distance, Vharos’s breathing, and the pressure in her throat without being reminded.

The Dragon Healer finished.

"We wait."

Waiting again.

Diana sat in the second chair.

Raigoro remained on the floor.

After several minutes, Vharos’s breathing slowed slightly, too little to mean improvement. Diana recorded it. Master Clair checked the time and nodded without interpretation.

An hour passed.

Then another.

Alma eventually returned upstairs after Diana promised twice she would stay inside the keeper line and send word if anything changed.

Master Clair rotated the younger keepers.

The Dragon Healer rested for twenty minutes in the adjoining workroom before returning.

Raigoro kept one hand against Vharos’s jaw without trying to make him move or respond.

Vharos had once been the creature Southern stories used to make Raigoro monstrous.

The Black Dragon.

The Warlord’s beast.

The nightmare beneath every warning about Blackharrow.

Diana had never imagined the story from this side.

A man sitting awake beside something he might lose.

Vharos shifted.

Raigoro’s hand moved with him.

"Vharos and I bonded when I was eleven," Raigoro said.

Eleven.

Master Clair did not tell them to stop speaking. Apparently conversation did not alter tonight’s observation enough to matter.

Diana wrote:

Eleven?

"Yes. He was already difficult."

Diana wrote: HOW DID YOU MEET?

Raigoro’s hand remained against Vharos’s scales.

"He came back to the North badly injured."

Diana stopped.

"No one knew where he had been. He would not let the Dragonkeepers near him for long, and restraint made him worse."

Diana wrote: WHAT DID YOU DO?

"Stopped trying to make him come to me."

She waited.

"Eventually he came on his own."

Diana looked toward Vharos.

That required no evidence.

"He bit my first trainer."

The dryness returned briefly to Raigoro’s voice.

WHY?

"The trainer tried to tighten the flight harness while Vharos was eating."

Diana wrote: SENSIBLE.

Raigoro looked at her.

"You and he agree on too much."

Diana remembered a blue feeding bucket and a diplomatic carriage that had apparently committed the crime of being red.

Perhaps he had a point.

The humor disappeared quickly.

Vharos breathed in.

Slowly out.

Raigoro’s hand remained against the black scales.

"I asked too much of him."

Diana stopped writing.

Raigoro was not looking at her.

"He was strong."

Diana heard the beginning of a mistake rather than an excuse.

"Captain Toren had begun teaching me then. He thought bonding Vharos had made me considerably more confident than skilled."

Diana wrote: WAS HE RIGHT?

"Usually."

"He recovered faster than the others. Flew farther. Held through ward pressure that forced younger dragons back."

Diana waited.

"So when Blackharrow needed more, I asked him for more."

The cavern stayed quiet.

Diana remembered Vharos’s medical history.

Ashen breach.

Campaign.

Dragon Host strain.

Raigoro injured.

Years of peaks and collapses.

She wrote:

DID YOU KNOW HE WAS ILL?

"Not at first."

And later?

She did not need to write it.

Raigoro answered anyway.

"When the decline became clear, I reduced his deployment."

Reduced.

The deployments had continued.

Raigoro’s hand remained against Vharos’s scales.

"There were times the line needed him."

Diana understood where the guilt had settled.

Raigoro had known Vharos was weakening and had still asked him to fight when the line needed him.

Diana understood choices with no clean answer. She hated them.

Raigoro looked at the dragon.

"I would like to say I would choose differently knowing what I know now."

Diana waited.

"I do not know if that is true."

Diana would have known what to do with regret. This answer left the choice exactly as ugly as it had been when Raigoro made it.

If the Ashen Gate had failed, soldiers and civilians in the northern villages would have died, and the danger might have reached kingdoms farther south.

Vharos had paid part of the price.

Raigoro had asked him to.

Diana wrote slowly.

HE STILL WENT.

Raigoro read it.

"Yes."

The answer carried no comfort.

Diana added:

YOU DID TOO.

Raigoro looked at her.

She thought of Rellan, Third Watch, the border, and every time Blackharrow called him away.

He did not spend other lives from a comfortable throne.

Raigoro going with him did not repay what Vharos had given, but Diana understood why Raigoro could not separate the dragon’s suffering from his own decisions.

Raigoro looked back toward his dragon.

"That does not make the choice kind."

Diana wrote:

NO.

Neither of them tried to improve the sentence.

Near dawn, Vharos’s breathing finally settled into a deeper rhythm.

The Dragon Healer checked him.

"Better."

Master Clair asked, "Stable?"

"For now."

Once Healer Lou said Vharos was stable, the effort of staying awake seemed to reach everyone at once.

Diana had been sitting with her slate on her knees.

She intended to close her eyes for only a moment.

When she opened them again, the ward lamps had dimmed toward morning levels.

Something heavy covered her shoulders: Raigoro’s spare black wool cloak.

Diana looked across the cavern.

He was asleep in the other chair, though his sleep was shallow.

One hand still rested close enough to Vharos that the dragon could reach him without moving more than his head.

Diana touched the cloak as if she meant to remove it.

The cavern was cold, Raigoro was asleep, and no one had asked for it back.

She pulled it closer around herself.

Vharos slept in front of the two chairs. The arrangement was improper by every rule Diana knew, yet danger was the last thing she felt.

That was new enough to keep her awake.