Chasing Wings - Hanna Dare

CHAPTER ONE

Tris had been afraid of heights his whole life — right up until he flew with a dragon.

After that? Well, he was done for. He’d been only thirteen at the time, but he’d been pretty certain about how his life would go. He was a shepherd in a valley called Shadow’s Vale, tucked away in a sleepy part of an unremarkable kingdom. Tris had minded his family’s sheep from the time he was old enough to walk, and he knew one day he would take over from his parents and run the farm. His life was bound to the seasons and the sheep. There was lambing and the movement of the sheep from the low meadows to the high ones as the weather warmed. The shearing, the culling, the securing of the flock for the winters that locked the valley and its small village away from the rest of the world with snow. Tris didn’t think much about life beyond herding, but he supposed that someday he’d get married to a girl from the valley and have children of his own so the cycle could start up again with another generation.

He never questioned that path. It was just the way of things and Tris never thought to want anything more. His imagination was as contained as the valley itself.

Then one night, a dragon picked Tris up in his claws and the world opened up before him.

Tris sighed as he took in the first view of the valley. He was happy to be home, of course, and he could appreciate the springtime green of the tender grass and the new leaves freshly unfurled on the trees, but coming back meant admitting another failure. It had happened more times than he wanted to admit — Tris would set out, full of big boasts about seeing the world, making his fortune, and, more secretly, finding a dragon — only to stumble back months later, footsore and short on coin. The only adventures were in trying to avoid cutpurses and grifters who saw Tris as an easy mark, and the only dragons were in stories.

He was starting to fear that there were no more dragons in the world, except the one he’d already met, and that his quest was more of a childish obsession. Tris sighed again, hiked his rucksack higher up his shoulder, and started down the road toward home.

As he walked, Tris noted the changes in his months away. There were two cottages being built, not far off the main road, and in the village, he could spot a new roof on the blacksmith’s shop. The inn looked busy, as always, and Tris had to get off the road to make way for the large wagon carrying barrels of the inn’s renowned ale for delivery to the next valley over. He skirted well around the inn, though — he didn’t want to go there yet.

Tris raised his eyes to the mountains ringing the valley, noting the placements of different flocks of sheep on the lower meadows. One thing that never changed — not since he was thirteen years old, at least — was the broken crag of rock hanging partway out over the valley. Once that landmark, called the Lookout, had cast a long shadow over the valley for several months in the winter. Now it was more of a stub, shadowing nothing more than the abandoned keep that clung to the sloped side of the mountain beneath it. But it was important. That cracked and blackened rock was a reminder that something amazing had happened in the valley. Once a dragon had lit up the night sky with fire and burned the Lookout away. For Tris, the sight was a touchstone and he stared at it for a long moment to settle himself. Dragons were real and he wasn’t mad to want to see one again, he told himself. At least not completely mad.

His family’s farmhouse was past the village, a bit higher up the mountain and surrounded by trees that Tris had played hide and seek among as a child. He tapped the fence posts as he approached, counting his way home. The stone cottage awaited, still cosy despite the rooms added onto the back in the last few years. The heavy wooden door was closed against the spring chill in the air and Tris felt his heart swell, even as a bit of dread twisted his stomach. Any moment now, that door would open and his mother would call—

“Tris!”

His