Her lungs burned in her chest as she sprinted as quickly as she could go across the open space toward the sound of Gavin’s voice. He was running toward her, too, but the uneven terrain carved inside of the mountain was larger than she realized, and she refused to slow down to suck in air until she had her arms wrapped around him.
They collided into one another so powerfully, the air would’ve gotten knocked out of her lungs anyway. Nya ignored the pain and wrapped her arms tight around him as Gavin’s arms came around her waist and he lifted her from the ground. “I can’t believe it!” she said, as soon as she could speak again. “I really can’t believe it.” Tears stung her eyes as she considered what was happening. All of this time, over a year, she’d assumed he was dead. She’d had absolutely no reason to think otherwise. The fact that her father had known all along that Gavin was still alive and hadn’t told her was something she couldn’t quite grasp, an idea lodged in the recesses of her mind that she’d have to deal with sooner or later, but for now, there was nothing she could do about it, so she tried to forget her hurt, anger, and frustration so that she could focus on her friend who was releasing her, a wide smile on his face that proved he was very much alive.
“Gavin, thank Zans you’re okay,” she said, taking a step back from him but not removing her hand from his shoulder. The thought that she might somehow lose track of him if she took her hand off came to mind, even though that was ridiculous.
“I am. I’m just fine,” he assured her. He glanced over his shoulder and realized they were standing in the middle of a group of people who were training, so he moved her aside, guiding her out of the middle of a row of kicking legs and swinging fists. The instructor, a larger man, though not as big as Slate, with a black moustache and matching goatee looked a little irritated at her but continued to bark orders at his students as if nothing had happened.
Once they were out of the line of fire, Gavin stopped moving, and Nya wrapped her arms around him again, noticing this time he was bulkier than he had been before. His shoulders were broader, and the muscles that bulged from his shirt showed his biceps had also strengthened. Before he had become the sacrifice, Nya would’ve said he looked more like a boy than a man, but over the time that the two of them had been apart, it was clear that Gavin had been training. He was definitely more muscular. “How have you been?” he asked her.
“Awful,” Nya said, shaking her head. “Terrible! It’s been the worst year of my life for sure!”
Gavin hung his head. “I’m so sorry to hear that. I wanted to let you know I was alive, but I’m not permitted to leave here, not at the moment, anyway, and there was simply no way to get you word. I tried communicating with my trainers to tell them that you truly didn’t know that I wasn’t eaten alive by the dragon, but they all thought it was ridiculous, saying all of the kings and queens of the kingdoms who make donations are well aware that the people are for the army and not to be eaten by the dragon.”
Nya shook her head, that stab of anger coming back to her mind. “I wish my father would’ve told me. Why do you think that he has kept it a secret?”
“I don’t know,” Gavin replied. ‘But a lot of kingdoms do the same. Most of the people here were under the impression they were about to die when Lord Slate snatched them from the sacrificial points. Of course, I never have the opportunity to speak to him directly because he is Lord of the entire realm, so I have to go through channels, but all of my attempts at letting him know have failed.
“He knows now,” Nya assured him, stealing a glance back over her shoulder at where she’d left Slate. He was speaking to someone in a similar uniform as the trainer who’d been working with the group she had run through the middle of. They were gray uniforms sort of like the clothes Nya wore to train for hand-to-hand combat, though not the same colors they wore in Frindom. She turned her attention back to Gavin. “What have you been doing?”
“Training, mostly,” he said with a small chuckle. “We train for several hours every day so that when it’s time to go on our quest, we’ll be ready.”
Nya remembered what Slate had said about the Heart of Magic. She had to assume it was getting the stone back that Slate was training these troops for. “Sounds like fun,” she said, not sure what else to say in response to his statement.
“What about you?” he asked, giving her a jostle in the shoulder with his own. “What have you been up to? Besides missing me?”
Nya chuckled, but it wasn’t funny at all. She had missed him dearly. Not a moment had gone by since she’d told him goodbye that she hadn’t been thinking of him. “Training,” she said. “Same as you.”
“Why?” he asked. “Is the kingdom at war?”
“No,” she assured him. He looked relieved about that, since his father would be called into battle if a war did erupt between Frindom and another kingdom. “I was training to… kill the dragon.” It sounded ridiculous coming out of her mouth now, now that she knew the truth, that Slate was a shifter and that he hadn’t actually been killing the people he took with him all of these years. But it was the truth, and she wasn’t about to lie to Gavin, not now.
“You were going to kill the dragon?” His eyes went to Slate and then back to her. Nya got the impression that he wanted to laugh, but he didn’t. “Okay…” he said slowly.
“I know it sounds impossible. Maybe it is, but I thought I had to do it. To get revenge for you and the others. I needed to end the senseless massacre of innocent people.”
“Wow, Nya,” Gavin said as he folded his arms and looked at her, rubbing his chin with one hand as he always did when he wasn’t sure what to say to her. “That’s… amazing. I’m very proud of you for doing so much to try and avenge my death. But I’m also glad you didn’t try to go through with it. It would’ve been a huge mistake to kill Slate.”
“I did try to go through with it,” Nya admitted. “He just kept me from doing it, that’s all.”
His eyebrows raised. “You tried to kill Slate?”
Nya nodded. “I did. And then… he flew away with me on his back, took me to a spot further down the mountain, shifted, and we talked about it. Then, he brought me here.” She really was relieved that she hadn’t been successful in her attempt to kill the dragon now, or else she might never have found out that Gavin was still alive. She wondered what might’ve happened to all of these people if he had never come back. It sounded like the other dragon shifters wouldn’t be able to leave their lair, at least not as dragons, as long as they didn’t have the Heart of Magic. Could they leave in their human form? Was it even possible for humans to walk down the mountainside? She figured she’d find out eventually. Either that, or this was where she’d die.
“You’re amazing, Nya. No one but you would ever be brave enough to try something like that,” Gavin said.
“Brave… or stupid,” she said with a shrug. Gavin laughed and pulled her in for another hug, and Nya wrapped her arms tight around him, never wanting to let him go now that she’d found him again. She wished she could tell his parents. His mother would be so relieved. The fact that her father knew the truth and was keeping it from her made her seethe from within. Now, she had a whole new reason to seek revenge, and this time, she wouldn’t fail.