The bravado lasted only so long as Brodrick remained in sight. As soon as the darkness of the cave swallowed him, Taliesin’s forelegs gave way, and with an inhuman whimper he collapsed. Rhiannon cried his name in a panic.
Crimson spurted from the tear in his scales along his collarbone. Blood stained sapphire scales as it ran down to soak into the dirt at their feet. Already the ground was turning into a muddy slick. Rhiannon pressed her hand over the open wound to stanch the bleeding, but it was too long and wide to be effective.
“Tell Bellflower what’s happened,” Taliesin gritted out. “She’ll know what to do.”
Rhiannon shook her head. “I can’t just leave you like this!”
He nudged her with his muzzle. “Go. It wasn’t an enchanted sword. It should shrink with me when I change back.”
But if he changed back... “You’ll have less blood then.”
The muzzle curled back in an attempt at good humor, though it came out more as a pained grimace. “Then I’ll also be lighter for Bells to lug me back inside.” He nudged her again. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine for a few minutes.”
Reluctantly, she relieved the pressure on the wound. Without her hands there, the blood gushed uninhibited. She gritted her teeth and ran as fast as her feet would carry her. Please be okay, please be okay, please be okay. If he died because of her...
Bellflower waited for her at the door, concern creasing her brow. “Taliesin’s hurt!” Rhiannon shouted, even though her lungs screamed for oxygen from the mad dash. “Taliesin’s hurt,” she gasped as she staggered closer. Red smeared her nightgown when she doubled over to wheeze, “Brodrick—a knight—hit him with a sword. I don’t know what to do—”
A serious frown replaced the surprise, and Bellflower gave a curt nod. She vanished into the cottage for a moment. When she returned, it was with a collection of bandages and an opened jar of strong-smelling salve. She gestured for Rhiannon to wait inside before hurrying past her toward the spot Taliesin might lay dying.
Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, ones Rhiannon stubbornly wiped away. Crying wouldn’t help anyone. She needed to keep her head in case Bellflower needed her help. Her return took longer due to her wobbly legs. By the time Rhiannon got there, Taliesin had removed himself to the trunk of a nearby flowering tree. He’d returned to his human shape and leaned back against the rough bark. She couldn’t take her eyes away from Bellflower, who was finishing her delicate stitching together of the rough edges of the bloody wound across his chest.
The fringe of Rhiannon’s vision went hazy, and Bellflower carefully clipped her thread before addressing their audience. As usual, she said not a word, taking Rhiannon’s hand instead to put into Taliesin’s clammy one. He turned to her with a pained smile. “I’m fine.”
“You’re anything but!”
“I’ll be fine,” he amended. “Bellflower knows what she’s doing.” He sucked in a sharp breath when Bellflower slathered the wound with the emerald green ointment. “Could I ask you to distract me? Bells knows what she’s doing, but it still hurts.”
She squeezed his hand. “Of course.” Casting about for something—anything—to talk about, she settled on, “Thank you for last night. You were right. That spell did give me pleasant dreams.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and gritted out, “That’s good.”
“And, um...” She desperately tried to think of another topic. “Oh! Breakfast today. Well, I guess I don’t know what Bellflower prepared, but um...lunch! How about I make a quiche for our lunch when we get back?”
Duly impressed, he said, “You know how to make quiche?”
“I spent a lot of time in the kitchens,” Rhiannon admitted. “Sir Brodrick wasn’t allowed down there after he knocked over the soup meant for the royal luncheon.” He’d been angry at her for something, and the argument had inevitably spiraled out of control. Enraged, Brodrick took it out on anything nearby, thus overturning any pots and pans within arm’s reach. The cook, being the only person Rhiannon knew who could be scarier than Brodrick, chased him out with a butcher’s knife in hand. Afterward, he’d been banned for life, and so Rhiannon spent an increasing amount of time there, being put to work in exchange.
“He did strike me as the sort to waste food,” Taliesin said with a chuckle. It obviously hurt him to do so. “It’s a good thing Bells wasn’t around, or she might have given him a piece of her mind too.” The silkie nodded in wholehearted agreement.
While Bellflower continued to bandage the wound, Rhiannon kept up her chatter. “If I make a quiche, what should I put in it? Oh, but maybe we don’t have the ingredients... I’ll have to see what’s there.”
“The pantry restocks itself,” Taliesin explained. “Anything you need should be in there without you needing to ask.”
“Really? Can anything be done with enough magic?”
“It can be when you have a whole city of witches worried you aren’t eating enough. My mother and her friends convinced themselves that I would starve on a bard’s earnings, so they worked at the spells for months. I still don’t know how they managed to keep it a secret.”
“Really? When did they do all that?”
“About...” He cast about in his memory. “Five years ago? When I turned sixteen.”
Something didn’t add up. “I thought you would’ve lived here your whole life,” Rhiannon commented. The promise had been to marry her to the dragon on Storm Bearer’s Peak, not the dragon of the witch’s city.
Mildly confused, he said, “I have lived here most of my life.”
“But doesn’t your mother live in Magia?”
Comprehension flickered in his tired eyes. “She raised me here with my father. After I earned my Witch’s title and decided to pursue music, they moved. My father went back to the Dragon’s Cauldron and my mother splits her time between the Cauldron and Magia. She always meant to give me this house, so she took the bard thing a little hard.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not here much. I like to travel. Staying in one place makes me itch for an adventure.”