Chapter 130: VHAROS

DIANA’S POV

Vharos was on the ground when Diana entered the cavern.

He was down, not resting. Diana knew the difference before Master Clair stopped her at the inner line.

"Stay there."

Diana stopped.

Raigoro had entered ahead of her and obeyed the same command.

Healer Lou knelt beside Vharos’s chest with two assistants, while three Dragonkeepers worked near his head and injured wing.

Nobody asked Raigoro for instructions.

Terrifying.

If the crisis had belonged to military command, Raigoro could have done something. Here, Master Clair controlled handling and Healer Lou controlled treatment.

The Grand Duke of Blackharrow stood behind a painted line with nothing useful to command.

Vharos’s breathing sounded wrong. Each inhale came shallow, and the exhale dragged behind it. One foreclaw curled inward while his left wing remained partly extended where his body had fallen across it.

Diana reached automatically for the observation board.

Her hand shook as she wrote:

DRAGONSTONE HOT.

Then: THROAT PRESSURE HIGH.

Master Clair read the board from several feet away.

"Time?"

Diana added it.

He nodded.

Work gave the fear edges.

Healer Lou listened against Vharos’s chest, moved to his neck, and checked the membranes near his eye.

"Again."

An assistant adjusted the instrument.

Lou checked the reading before continuing.

Raigoro asked, "What happened?"

Master Clair answered. "He stood after morning feeding."

"Normal?"

"Yes."

"Movement?"

"Six steps toward the lower pool." Clair glanced toward Vharos. "Then his strength failed."

"Wing?"

"Not primarily."

Healer Lou said, "I do not know yet."

Raigoro had spent years receiving casualty reports and making decisions while positions failed around him. Diana had seen what fear looked like when he could answer it with orders.

Nothing here belonged to him.

Lou requested another medicine, and an assistant prepared it while Master Clair moved the nearest keeper farther from Vharos’s jaw.

Even weakened, Vharos reacted to being crowded. His head shifted, and a low warning rolled through the cavern.

"Back," Clair said.

Everyone gave him space.

No restraint. No punishment for the warning.

Lou waited for Vharos’s breathing to settle before administering the medicine.

The first breaths afterward sounded no different.

Diana recorded everything because the alternative was standing beside Raigoro and waiting.

Breathing rate. Position. Eye response. Dragonstone temperature. The pressure around her scar.

When one breath became particularly difficult, Vharos moved his head toward Raigoro.

Raigoro saw him.

His hands stayed at his sides.

He did not cross the line.

Diana knew what obedience cost him.

"Can I go to him?" he asked.

Master Clair deferred to Lou.

The healer assessed Vharos’s position. "Head only."

Clair opened the line. "Slowly."

Raigoro approached without any of the authority that usually followed him through Blackharrow. He was simply a man walking toward the dragon who had been beside him for nineteen years.

He stopped where Clair indicated and crouched.

Vharos opened one eye.

Raigoro placed a hand against the scales along his jaw.

The bond remained invisible, but Diana saw pain cross Raigoro’s face before he controlled it.

Vharos exhaled.

His next inhale took too long.

Lou moved immediately.

"Raigoro, back."

He obeyed.

The Dragon Healer returned to Vharos’s chest while heat spread sharply around Diana’s scar.

She wrote: PAIN INCREASED.

Master Clair took the board.

"Yours?"

Diana nodded.

"Same location?"

She touched her throat, then her chest, then lower, where the sensation became harder to separate from her own fear.

Clair recorded each location separately.

He did not turn Diana’s pain into a conclusion the evidence could not support.

She hated how much she needed him to remain that precise.

Lou called for another instrument. One Dragonkeeper adjusted Vharos’s head under Clair’s direction.

Vharos allowed it without warning this time.

Diana preferred the warning.

Raigoro stood beside her.

His hands gave away nothing.

Diana knew what he did when fear gave him a problem he could solve. He became practical. He asked questions, built contingencies, closed routes, assigned guards, and found something useful to control.

Vharos already had the best people Blackharrow could give him.

Raigoro could not improve Healer Lou’s skill by interfering. He could not order Vharos’s body to respond or give him another position to hold.

All he could do was watch Vharos breathe.

Diana reached for his hand.

She did it deliberately.

Her fingers touched his.

Raigoro looked down.

Diana kept her hand there.

His fingers closed around hers.

His grip was warm and firm, tight enough for Diana to understand he needed something to hold without hurting her.

She stayed beside him.

No slate.

No explanation.

Vharos inhaled.

Healer Lou listened.

"Again."

Another breath followed.

The next came with less drag.

Diana’s scar still burned, and Raigoro’s hand remained around hers.

Time became difficult to measure by anything except Vharos’s breathing.

Lou repeated her assessments. Clair repositioned the keepers. They supported Vharos’s injured wing and placed water close enough for him to reach later without forcing him to stand.

Nobody called him recovered.

Nobody called him safe.

Eventually Healer Lou sat back on her heels.

"Stable."

Raigoro’s fingers tightened around Diana’s.

Master Clair asked, "Meaning?"

"He is no longer continuing to decline at this moment."

Diana had learned enough from Blackharrow’s healers to appreciate the ugliness of exact language.

Raigoro asked, "Cause?"

"I do not know."

"Broken Ward strain?"

"Possible contributor."

"Wardstone reaction?"

"Possible."

"Old injury?"

"Possible."

"Current ward pressure?"

Master Clair answered before Lou had to.

"Renn’s office is checking the cavern lines and the regional reports."

Raigoro looked at him. "Nothing confirmed?"

"Nothing."

Lou turned to Raigoro. "If you ask me the same question using different nouns, the answer will remain the same."

For a moment, Raigoro sounded like himself again.

"Understood."

Diana had never been so grateful to hear a Dragon Healer insult the Grand Duke.

Vharos’s eye remained closed, but his breathing had steadied enough that Diana could count each breath without fearing the next would fail to come.

Master Clair eventually allowed Raigoro near him again.

Raigoro sat beside Vharos’s head without releasing Diana’s hand.

Diana took the second chair.

The old black dragon’s scarred wing rested across the stone.

Diana knew some of those marks now.

The rougher tears along the lower section had come from falling stone in Valence when Vharos covered a six-year-old girl. Other damage belonged to years Diana had never seen.

Near the base of the wing, several pale lines crossed one another with a regularity the other scars did not have.

Straight.

Repeated.

Old restraint marks.

Diana stared at them.

Iron.

Stone.

A dragon unable to leave.

She had seen those scars before without knowing where they came from.

Raigoro’s thumb moved once against the back of her hand.

His gaze rested on the same marks.

Diana knew them from a broken chamber beneath Valence.

Raigoro knew them from somewhere else.

Nineteen years earlier, before Diana knew Blackharrow existed, a wounded black dragon had crossed the mountains carrying those scars.

He had arrived alone.

An eleven-year-old boy had been there when Vharos came home.