Mother.
She grows larger every day, all smiles and laughter. She doesn’t notice the dirt or the blandness of the food. Her wonder at the world heals my pain…
Longing slammed into me, stronger than it had been with the whiff of her perfume. I remembered her writing. So many nights I’d lain drowsy on our pallet and watched her write by moonlight.
… I miss you so much. I miss everyone. The people here, they are so good to me, but they can never understand…
… She asks about her father. What do I tell her? For now I change the subject, but I cannot do that forever…
There weren’t many letters. All on coarse paper, smudged with dirt, written in an ink that clumped. Never did they say Krysta or Adara or even Merram.
But there:
Yesterday, we saw a dragon flying among the clouds. She squealed with delight. I told her, if the First One is kind, she’ll bond with one someday. I shouldn’t have said that; it’s too dangerous, but she is only three and oh! My love, if only you could have seen the joy on her face.
I had my proof.
By the time Orrik returned, I sat in my seat as if I’d never left. A scowl covered his face as he handed me a burned scrap of paper. “Do you recognize the handwriting?”
No amount of smoke could soften that angry, slanted script. It was as recognizable as my mother’s elegant script.
“I don’t,” I said. The lie slipped easily off my tongue. I had been a Threepines for too long.
Orrik took the scrap, but not before I made out the words please deliver.
“Have you received any suspicious packages or notes? Something from an unnamed admirer, perhaps, or something odd from a classmate?”
Sometimes the best way to avoid a question, I’d learned, was to ask one of my own. I gave Orrik a frown. “What’s going on?”
“Trainee Anastasi has left the Kyer.”
Vaguely I noticed he was studying me for a reaction, but my surprise was genuine. “Anastasi? She was the spy?”
“A spy. We are unsure what information she could have passed on, being only a trainee.”
Unsure as a tax collector. He knew what a trainee could discover. Anastasi’s attempts at friendship made so much sense now. Someone had put the perfume and sapphire in my room. Now I knew who.
Orrik still loomed. My hands itched to touch the bulge in my pocket. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Tell me, or Shamino if I am gone, if you ever suspect anyone of aligning with the enemy.”
“I will.” I said evenly. “If I am here.”
Orrik paused as he took his seat. “Whatever is blocking your Gift, you will overcome it. You’ve achieved too much to fail now.”
The sapphire hiding in my wardrobe agreed.
“My next appointment waits. You are dismissed.”
I left, taking care to keep the pocket with the letters out of his view, certain he would comment on my odd way of walking. He didn’t. Orrik was already absorbed in some note he was writing. I made it past the nervous young man in the waiting room, and, after that, past the steward. I checked the Time Spheres—I had just enough time to drop off the letters in my apartment before going to the Dragon Quarters. I wished I could plead ill so I could stay and read them, but I dared not, when the depressed dragon might die at any moment. I couldn’t leave Shamino alone to face that.
Mother’s secrets had waited ten years. They could wait for a few Spheres longer.
Chapter Twenty
It was my turn to care for Yuriah, the dragon who’d recently lost her mage. I found her huddled in the corner of the empty, undecorated cave. Her brilliant orange scales had faded to a muted, dried-leaves brown. She breathed, but she barely moved. Her only injury had been her eye, destroyed in the battle. She hadn’t even been treated with the wave of wounded.
She’s only been bonded for a year, Shamino had told me. I thought maybe she’d pull through, but…
“It’s chilly,” I commented upon entering her cave, but she didn’t stir. I went to the great double doors, wishing for an air spell. Instead I shoved until sweat coated my back and my lungs heaved. Once the doors opened, sunlight flooded the room and fractured through the large crystals that hung from the ceiling. Rainbows flickered across the cave, but Yuriah had chosen the one corner with neither sunlight nor rainbows.
“Will you come into the sunlight?” I asked, exhausted and without much hope. “Please?”
She didn’t move. Dragons ate little during the summer months because they somehow turned energy from the sun into strength. Yuriah was, by staying in darkness, starving herself.
I busied myself with tasks, shoveling dragon dung and mopping up piss. There wasn’t much of either. I freshened her untouched water and talked the entire time, telling her stories from my childhood. But she never twitched.
A Sphere formed and the next began. My hour had ended, leaving nothing changed. I told myself that I’d spared Shamino an hour of heartbreak, but it was little consolation. Heart heavy, I began to gather my supplies.
The human’s door opened. Jerroth, of all people, entered the cave. At the sight of me, he startled. “Excuse me. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Do you need something?” I asked. I tried to be Quarters Adara, not paranoid-about-secrets Adara.
He paused. “Yes and no. I’m petitioning the Dragonmaster for an early bonding. I thought I could meet the dragons.”
After overhearing his conversation with Tressa this morning, I had expected him to abandon the Kyer. The estate of Katier, while a county, was in the Karpak mountains. An unbonded Tressa could run the estate, but she’d said herself that she would be unhappy away from court. Shouldn’t Jerroth try to find a way into Dragonsridge?
My curiosity must have shown, because he added, “The sooner I bond, the sooner I can train for aerial combat. I am allowed to
