“Myrddin made it sound like I saved everyone. I didn’t. You saw…you saw the funeral. I didn’t save anyone.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Alex tried to focus on her food. She still couldn’t get over the fact that she was seeing without Manny and not relying on the blindfold to numb her senses.
Jollies pulled Alex’s ear. “You didn’t save anyone. We did. All of us together.”
Alex laughed. She didn’t know where the laughter came from, but it was genuine. She couldn’t express how much she appreciated Jollies at that moment. “You’re right. It wasn’t me. It was all of us.”
“We did the best we could, and that’s the important thing. We can’t beat ourselves up about what we didn’t or couldn’t do. We did all we could.”
There was a knock. Both Jollies and Alex jumped at the sound. Alex went and opened the door.
Brath and Gill were standing looking haggard and unhappy. Alex opened the door wider and motioned for them to come in. Brath sat down on Alex’s bed, while Gill remained standing over by the door. “How are you guys doing?” Alex asked.
Brath pulled out his family’s knife and held it in his hand. “You didn’t stay for the rest of the funeral.”
“I couldn’t. It was all too much. I-I had to get out of there.”
Brath picked at his fingernails with his knife and nodded. “Yeah, I understand. I wish I hadn’t gone. It didn’t help. None of it helped.”
Gill walked over to Brath and rested his hand on the gnome’s shoulder. “We needed to pay our respects to the dead.”
Brath leaped off the bed and pushed Gill away. “Did we?” he asked. “Did we have to see everyone we couldn’t help? Did we have to lay coins on their eyes and hope they’re guided to the afterlife in peace? I don’t think we did. It didn’t matter if we were there or not. They’re dead.”
Gill walked away from Brath and sat at Alex’s desk. He hung his head, running his hands through his hair as he tried to find the right words. “We needed to be there,” he said. “It was important. We can’t run away from any of this.”
Gill looked at Alex, his face older than Alex had ever imagined it could be. He looked as if he had aged forty years, yet he still managed to smile. “We helped. We did everything we could. That’s what’s important. That’s all that matters.”
Brath solemnly nodded as he continued to pick at his fingernails. “Yeah, I guess,” he agreed. “It still feels really crappy.”
Jollies flew off Alex’s shoulder and flashed bright pink as she fluttered around the room. “That is the important thing, isn’t it?” she asked. “Isn’t that what being a dragonrider is all about? We’re here to do our part. To protect the realms as much as we can. And we started doing that yesterday.”
Alex knew Jollies was right deep in her heart, but that didn’t make the pain go away. Maybe the pain would never leave. Maybe the pain was important, even necessary. “So, did they sing a song for us?” Alex asked. “You know, like those old odes and stuff?”
Gill laughed. “Actually, they did,” he said. “Myrddin led it. It was terrible. Like, really bad. The guy cannot sing. At all. When Roy and Toppinir took over, it got better, but none of the cadets can hold a note. You didn’t miss anything.”
“What now?” Alex asked. “After all this, what are we supposed to do next?”
Gill pulled down his visor and then turned it off. “We keep going. There’s training tomorrow.”
There was nothing Alex wanted more than a break. She didn’t want to have to jump back on her dragon and continue on, yet that was what was expected of her. She was a dragonrider. That was what she was here for. “All right. What are we doing?”
Chapter Eight
The next day, Alex rose with the sun and went to breakfast, surrounded by cadets who whispered her name as she walked by. She grabbed a seat by herself and was joined by Jollies quickly enough. Neither of them spoke much.
About half an hour into breakfast, Brath and Gill sat down at Alex’s table. The four of them ate their meals in silence before getting up and leaving.
When Alex got back to her room, she checked her messages to see if she had received anything from her parents. The only message in her inbox was a reminder of the training she had to attend in an hour.
Alex laid in her bed and stared at the ceiling. She wasn’t wearing her blindfold. Her sight was much better. Today might be the first day she didn’t need Manny to trail behind her. Now that she thought of it, she hadn’t seen Manny at breakfast.
If anyone deserves a day off, it’s that weird ball of eyes, Alex thought.
Jollies got back to the room a little while after Alex, and they both got dressed and ready for their training. Jollies flew over to Alex and pecked her on the cheek. “It’s going to be okay,” Jollies said. “We’re all going to be okay.”
Alex playfully nudged the pixie. “Yeah, I know. We got this.”
The two left their room and made their way to the training field. The remaining cadets had already arrived, no doubt showing up early to avoid staying in their rooms and thinking about the last few days.
Brath and Gill were already on the field. They scooted over to make room for Alex.
Fier walked out onto the field. She looked tired, more tired than the cadets. “All right,” she shouted. “Today, we begin a new level of your training. I’m not going to waste your time trying to play nice about what happened. I respect you all too much.”
Alex felt Fier’s eyes on her, and she looked at the ground. When she looked up, she saw Manny at the far end of the field.
