Free Draykon by Charlotte E. English Page B

pain in her
arm and back. 'Not even a tiny bit hungry.'
    'You must eat,
Llan. You lost a lot of blood. Take some soup.' A set of dishes was
arranged over Llandry's bedside table. Ynara lifted the lid of one,
releasing a fragrant aroma of mushroom broth. The smell alone was
enough to turn Llandry's stomach, but she took the bowl and
obediently applied herself to eating. Ynara waited patiently,
watching the progress of Llandry's spoon as she painfully consumed
half the bowl. Then she set it aside.
    'Ma?'
    'Yes,
love.'
    'You said I was
"found".'
    'Yes, only just
in time. You were in a bad way.'
    'What happened? I
remember that I fell out of the sky.'
    A male voice
spoke in deep, rather melodious tones: certainly not her father. 'I
found you.'
    Llandry
stiffened, peeking over her blankets. A stranger stood in the
doorway, carrying Sigwide in his arms. The orting looked
offensively unconcerned at his predicament; in fact he seemed quite
at home in this intruder's embrace.
    'May I come in?'
The man looked first at Ynara and then at Llandry.
    'For a minute,'
her mother said, waving him in. 'Don't tire her.'
    'I'm already
tired,' Llandry said, trying to focus on this new person. She
received a vague impression of dark hair and paler skin than was
commonly seen in Glinnery. Darklands pale. But he didn't seem to
suffer in the light. He approached Llandry's bed, gently placing
the orting onto the covers. She noticed he avoided her injured
side.
    'I arrived late
yesterday,' he said, chuckling as Sigwide ducked under her blanket
and burrowed determinedly down to her feet. 'I found you
unconscious in the moss, with that little demon sitting guard over
you. He actually bit me when I tried to pick you up.'
    Llandry lay
unmoving, silent with discomfort. The presence of a stranger was
unwelcome at any time, and still more so when she lay, prone and
injured and barely conscious. She wished her mother had not let him
in, then swiftly chided herself for her ingratitude.
    'We haven't met,'
she managed. She felt she ought to say more, but the words didn't
come.
    'I'm a friend of
your mother's,' he said comfortably. 'I could hardly fail to
realise who you were. You could've been Ynara herself, except for
the colour of your wings.'
    Llandry's eyes
flicked to her mother's face. It was true about the resemblance,
superficially anyway: Ynara's honey-brown skin, wavy black hair and
grey eyes were echoed in her daughter's colouring. But to suggest
that they were virtually identical was meaningless flattery.
Llandry's features may be similar to her mother's, but something
about their arrangement fell far short of the perfect symmetry of
Ynara's. Llandry was perfectly aware that she looked plain next to
her mother: that the similarities were striking but that the
differences were equally so. She glowered darkly at him, refusing
to make any effort to speak. Sigwide had worked his way back up to
her chest, winding himself into a tight, sleeping ball of fur, and
she occupied herself with stroking his soft head.
    The man either
didn't notice or refused to take the hint. He continued to stare at
her - probably wondering how Ynara's features could be so poorly
transposed onto her daughter's face. The notion made her
uncomfortable and she shrank beneath her blankets, wincing as the
lacerations on her back sang with pain. Divining Llandry's
thoughts, her mother touched the stranger on the
shoulder.
    'Dev, Llandry
should sleep now.'
    'Dev?' Llandry's
eyes returned to the man's face, too weak to phrase the questions
that bloomed in her mind. He smiled and extended a hand, then
remembered her arm and dropped it again.
    'Devary Kant, of
Nimdre,' he said. 'We'll meet properly later, no doubt.' Her heart
sank a little. Obviously he intended to stay a while. She made no
move as Devary Kant nodded pleasantly to her and left the
room.
    'Sleep, love.'
Ynara paused to brush a lock of hair away from Llandry's eyes and
then left as well, closing the door quietly behind