When Dragons Burn

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Rayna

It happened fast. One second he was breathing in that shallow, steady way that let me watch the rise and fall and count it in my head. The next, his whole body tightened like a wire being pulled. His hand shot for the bandage and I caught his wrist before he tore it.

“Hey—Miron. Stay with me.” I kept my voice low. Firm. The way I talk to people trying to climb off backboards.

He jerked again, not seeing me. Words tumbled out of him, not English at first, then the edges caught. “Shadowflames,” he said, rough. “Council—move—hold the line—” His breath came in uneven bursts, and the heat off his skin pulsed against my forearm.

“I’ve got you,” I said, leaning in to block his hand. He was strong even like this. If he flailed, he could rip the wrap and undo everything we’d managed. “Don’t fight me.”

He didn’t hear. His eyes were open but fixed past me like he was watching something on the ceiling that wasn’t there. A tremor went through him from shoulder to hip. The cot protested with a small metallic sound.

“Miron.” I put my palm on his sternum, just above the bandage, enough pressure to cue his body to breathe deeper. “You’re at the cabin. I’m Rayna. You’re safe for now.”

He said something in that other language, a few clipped syllables like orders. “Shadowflames—” Again, this time sharper, like a warning to someone behind me. “Council… breach.”

His temperature felt even higher. The blanket trapped it. The air in the room had gone thick and wet, like a laundry room in summer. I slid the foil down to his waist and grabbed the little washbasin from the shelf. The water pitcher was cold from sitting near the door. I poured, dunked a cloth, and wrung it out hard.

“Hold on,” I said. “I’m cooling you down.”

I laid the cloth on his forehead. It should have felt cold. It didn’t. Steam lifted around the edges almost immediately. I blinked and told myself it was the cabin heat. Then I touched the cloth to the inside of my wrist. It had started cool. It wasn’t now.

He flinched under it and made a noise that sounded like a swallowed shout. His good hand balled into a fist and released. He tried to turn his head. I steadied it with my palm. “Easy. Don’t fight.”

“Stay back,” he said to the air, not me. “Ward the north—” His voice broke. Something like grief crossed his face and was gone. “Voss, hold—”

The stove ticked as the wood settled. Rain hit the window in uneven sheets. I ran the cloth down the sides of his neck and re-wet it, not caring that the basin water went warm. Steam curled up again. I swapped cloths and kept going. His pulse at the wrist was fast and strong, not the fluttery shock I’d expected. I counted it out loud to anchor both of us. “One, two, three…”

His eyes finally cut to me. For a moment he looked almost present. “Rayna?” The word was sanded down to its vowels.

“I’m here.” I squeezed his hand once. “You’re at the cabin. Rangers are on their way. You’re safe.”

He stared like he was trying to fit that into some other picture. “No. Not safe.” His mouth shaped the other language again. “Shroud. Thin.”

I had nothing to say to that, and even if I did, it wouldn’t help. I focused on what I could do. “Drink.” I held the cup to his lips and steadied the back of his head. He got a little down and coughed. I gave him a beat to catch up.

He grabbed my wrist. Not hard enough to hurt, but not gentle either. “Go,” he said, clearer than before. “You should go.”

“Not happening.” I pulled his hand off slow and set it on the blanket, palm up so the muscles would relax. “You don’t get to fire your medic.”

He blinked at that like the words took a second to land. Then another wave of something—pain, memory—rolled through him and he tensed again. His jaw clenched. He said “Shadowflames” one more time and then a string of words I couldn’t track.

“Okay,” I said, to both of us. “Okay.” I swapped the cloth again. The steam rising from his forehead looked ridiculous in a room this size. I kept going until the basin water went lukewarm and then refilled it from the pitcher and the kettle, mixing until the cloth felt cool against my cheek. “You’re okay. Keep breathing.”

He fought the bandage twice more, each time turning his head like he was trying to see something over his shoulder. His eyes were darker now. Or maybe the light changed. The lamp’s hum had deepened, taking on that slightly lower note lights get before they blow. I tapped the base. It steadied.

“Miron.” I leaned close. “I need you to look at me.” I always say that, even if it doesn’t make sense. People do look. It’s an anchor. He tried. His gaze skittered past my face to the window behind me.

Lightning flashed. It filled the room for a breath. In the glass, his reflection looked wrong. Not his face—the face was the same strained, too-pale human face I’d been staring at for an hour—but the eyes in the reflection were not the eyes I’d been checking with my penlight. In the glass, his pupils were slits, narrow vertical lines instead of circles, and the irises had that coppery glow I’d talked myself out of seeing. The light faded. The reflection snapped back to normal—a man on a cot, injured, eyes brown and too bright.

My stomach dropped in a way that felt mechanical, like a trapdoor opening. I didn’t move. If I moved, my hands would shake. If I let my hands shake, I’d lose the thread I’d held since I touched him under the laurel.

“Rayna,” he said, low. Not a question this time.

“I’m here,” I said, because that was still true.

He searched my face, and I knew he’d seen my reaction. Not panic. I won’t lie; a flare of something close to it hit and then went out. It wasn’t useful. The part of my brain that catalogs watched a list start to form: heat that didn’t match fever, wounds that looked seared from within, language I didn’t know, slitted pupils in a flash. The list didn’t change what I had to do in the next five minutes. That helped.

“Eyes on me,” I said, and lifted the cloth again. “Breathe with me.” I exaggerated the inhale, slow and even, then the exhale. He followed, a beat late at first, then closer.

His hand tightened around the sheet. “It was not—” he started, then stopped and hissed. “The boy smiled when he cut. Shadowflame. Fast.” His head ticked a fraction left. “Council was late. The Shroud—thin. Too thin.”

“Keep talking,” I said, even as I told myself I would not picture a boy smiling while he cut someone. I’ve seen enough ugly without borrowing more.

“Not safe for you,” he said. “Not safe for anyone.” His voice began to skid downhill again into the other language, the words like teeth clicking together. He said a name I didn’t catch and then another. The second one, “Voss,” I remembered from the last round of sleep talk.

“Who is Voss?” I asked. His eyes unfocused. I let it go. Not the priority right now.

I wrung the cloth out and laid it back across his forehead. Steam. Always the steam. I set my other palm against his wrist and counted again. Still fast, but a hair better. The bandage held. The edges weren’t leaking fresh blood. The stove kept humming. The radio kept silent. The storm kept changing pitch like a song I didn’t know.

He pushed against my hand again, testing me, and I pushed back just enough. “You’re strong,” I said, because sometimes hearing that gives people a reason to slow down. “Help is coming. You just have to make it another twenty minutes.”

He closed his mouth on a sound that wasn’t a word. His jaw loosened. He took a breath with me, then another, and some of the hard lines in his face eased. The room felt a hair less oppressive. I realized my shoulders had been up around my ears and dropped them.

Lightning flashed again. I watched the window this time on purpose. The reflection showed my small shape, his broad frame on the cot, the lamp, the stove glow. His eyes stayed human in the glass. I let out a breath and hated that I’d been holding it.

He must have read something in me because he said, “You saw.”

I kept my hand steady on his wrist. “I saw your pupils do a weird thing in the reflection when the lightning hit.” I wasn’t sure why I stated it like I was giving report in the ER. Maybe because that made it a fact instead of a fear.

He looked at the ceiling. “The Shroud is thin,” he said again, slower, as if he wanted me to understand it wasn’t nonsense. “Storm makes it worse. We’re too close to the line.” He swallowed. “I should not—shift.”

I let the word slide by. “Then don’t,” I said, simple as that, because sometimes people will follow plain instructions if you give them like you mean it.

He made a small sound that could have been a laugh if his ribs didn’t hurt. “Trying.”

“Good.” I rechecked the splint, making sure the tape hadn’t loosened. “Then do me a favor and stop wrestling me.”

He went quiet for three breaths. Then, not looking at me: “You are not afraid.”

“I’m busy,” I said. “I told you before, fear can get in line.”

That earned me another one of those painful almost-laughs. His eyes closed. “Rayna,” he said. “If I—if it happens—run.”

“No,” I said. I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t need to. “I’m not leaving you.”

He shifted his head a fraction to face me. There was a long pause where I felt like he weighed something I couldn’t see. Finally he said, “Then keep talking.”

So I did. I told him about the lodge owner’s tea and Tess’s stupid skull emoji. I told him about the kid at the gas station and how he asked if I had four-wheel. I described the trail in simple words—the hemlock, the slick spot where my boot slid, the drag marks, the blood that didn’t wash away at first. I kept the sentences short and the pace even. I kept my hands moving—cloth, bandage, pulse, breath. I watched the clock on the radio and counted down ten minutes in my head, then five. I listened for engines under the storm and tried not to jump at each branch slap against the window.

He held on. The thrashing came in smaller waves, then only a few twitches. When the next flash lit the glass, I didn’t look. I already knew what I’d seen. I also knew what his pulse felt like under my fingers and that mattered more to me than any reflection.

The radio finally cracked, clearer this time. “North Ridge cabin, Ranger Two. Half a mile out. Flashing lights in thirty seconds. Do not come out until we confirm the porch is clear.”

I picked up the handset. “Copy. Patient stable at this moment.”

“Good. Stay put.”

I set the radio down and looked at Miron. He watched me without moving his head, eyes tired but present. “Help’s here,” I said.

He exhaled. It was the first breath in the last hour that sounded like relief. “Good,” he said, and his eyes slid shut not from delirium this time, but because his body finally allowed it.

I swapped the cloth one more time. Steam rose in a thin ribbon and faded. Outside, the lightning came again, farther off now, and this time the thunder sounded like it belonged to weather and nothing else. I kept my hand on his wrist and waited for the knock.