Chapter 274: He Was Coming Because She Asked

ASH’S POV

The first man at the roadblock told Ash there was a fee to pass.

The second told him to stop looking at their guns.

Ash broke the barrier between them and kept walking.

Behind him, the clinic vehicle waited beside a shuttered gas station with its engine running. The medical worker stayed inside with Thorne and two other patients, while two guards watched the road. Ash had scouted ahead because the route should have been clear. Instead, a dozen men had decided an ambulance made from a delivery van looked easy to frighten.

They were learning otherwise.

One fired before Ash reached him. Ash moved behind the nearest concrete post, crossed the short gap while the man struggled to aim again, and hit him hard enough that the others stopped shouting.

"Get off the road," Ash said.

A man farther back raised a length of chain. Ash caught it, pulled him forward, and sent him into the men behind him. He didn’t need to become a dragon to make them understand the size of their mistake. He needed them away from the vehicle before one of them panicked and shot through a window.

The last three ran. Ash let them, watching until they disappeared behind the gas station. Then he dragged the broken barrier clear and signaled the guards forward.

Thorne saw the blood on his sleeve through the open passenger window.

"Yours?"

"No."

"Good. Dove will be annoyed if we both arrive needing bandages."

Ash wiped his hand on a cloth before touching the door. The joke should have irritated him. Instead it made him picture her waiting with her hands on her hips, telling them both exactly what she thought of their timing.

He wanted that so badly that he had begun to distrust every quiet moment inside his own head.

The clinic guards had held the two delivery men after neither could name who had ordered their boxes. Their questions had been passed to the security captain, and the medical convoy had left by a different gate. Ash still didn’t know who had sent them. He did know they hadn’t been allowed to follow the patients out.

They stopped beyond the roadblock, where the medical worker checked the patients before continuing. Thorne lay partly back on the supported seat, pale beneath his usual color. He wasn’t making a show of being brave. He was doing the harder thing, admitting when the road hurt and letting someone help.

Ash had once mistaken that kind of openness for weakness. He was beginning to understand why Dove hadn’t.

The guard who had driven asked whether Ash could scout the next stretch from above. He could. He stepped behind the empty building, left his clothes with the vehicle, and shifted where no bystander would be crushed by the sudden size of him.

Air rushed beneath his wings. The road shrank, the vehicle became a bright shape among dull roofs, and the heat rising from the pavement struck his scales. From above he could see the detour, the damaged bridge farther east, and a line of cars crawling around a fallen sign.

He could not see Dove.

It annoyed him that part of him kept looking, as if wanting her hard enough would make a white-haired woman appear on every road. Her hair wasn’t even the same white now. He remembered the fading dye, the strands falling against her cheek while she told him to stay back, and found himself remembering the exact place she tucked them behind her ear.

He had no business remembering that much.

He remembered it anyway.

She had said she wanted him there. He had replayed the words until they were worn into him. He kept remembering the pause before she said it. How much easier it would have been for her to end the call without asking for him at all.

He could kill the men on this road. He could carry the vehicle’s wounded passenger out of danger if another flight became necessary. He could do a hundred useful things that frightened other men into giving way.

He still couldn’t make her look at him the way she looked at Thorne.

He wanted to land beside the driver and order him onto the road closest to her. Thorne could rest there as easily as anywhere, he told himself, then caught the lie before it left his mouth. The clinic had chosen this route for its patients. Ash turned back toward the vehicle, furious with the distance and with himself for wanting to make it somebody else’s problem.

He circled back and landed out of sight of the patients, dressed, and reported the road ahead. Thorne watched him through half-closed eyes while the guard checked the map.

"You’re being quiet," Thorne said.

"Would you prefer complaints?"

"Dove has that covered. Save your strength."

Ash looked at him. "How do you stand not knowing where she is every moment?"

Thorne’s expression changed, the humor easing out of it. "Badly."

It was such an honest answer that Ash had nothing ready for it.

"Then I remember she keeps thinking when I’m not there," Thorne continued. "She isn’t a thing I misplaced. She’s trying to get back to us."

Ash looked away toward the road. He knew the difference in words. Living by it was proving more difficult.

Ash took the next stretch on foot beside the vehicle while the driver eased around the damaged sign. Men watched from the buildings and stayed inside when he looked back. For once he was glad of the fear. It kept the road quiet without another fight, and quiet meant the injured man behind him could rest. He could use what he was for that. He didn’t have to enjoy frightening Dove for it to matter.

The radio in the vehicle crackled. The northern station had received Dove’s morning update. She and Edrik were moving toward the reservoir’s western road and would call again from the next staffed stop.

Thorne reached for the microphone, then let the medical worker steady it for him. He sent a short message, warm enough that Ash looked out the window to give him something resembling privacy.

Before the operator could close the call, another voice cut in with a warning from the reservoir road.

The western crossing had been blocked after a fight. Travelers were turning back, and a recovery crew was offering a different way through.

Ash leaned toward the radio.

"Which crew?" he demanded, although he already knew he wasn’t going to like the answer.