“There’s nothing I can do.”
Paige began to protest, but Mettalise rang louder. *I could eat her.* I whipped my head around, and Mettalise held up a claw. *Joking! But seriously, you have to fight.*
“I can’t,” I said to both of them. I stood, but where could I run? I choked back the sob forming in my throat. “I can’t play the Game, I can’t be what he needs—”
“He needs a good steward for the estate and a wife to love him here, at the Kyer. He needs you. Please!” Paige grabbed my arm again. “He’s depressed because of all that’s happened. He’d never choose her otherwise. He rejected her years ago! You can’t let him make the greatest mistake of his life.”
I struggled against her.
“I know you like him!”
I couldn’t hold the tears back. They began to spill.
I love him.
Through my blurry vision, a streak of silver lowered between Paige and me. Mettalise gently pushed Paige back so she’d let go.
*Paige is right, but I will defend you. Even from your friends.*
“Fine!” Paige snapped. “I’ll talk to him. I know this is wrong, and you are—are—a bumbling peasant!”
The door to Mettalise’s cave slammed.
Mettalise held me in her claws as best she could while I cried. The smooth, hot scales of her hand gave me little comfort except for the knowledge that, for once, I wasn’t alone.
Mettalise’s voice gently entered my mind. *Why do you not tell her your secret?*
I wiped my eyes. “She wants to play the Game.”
That thoroughly confused her.
I stammered through a poor explanation. It helped calm me. “If it wasn’t for the Illusioned tiger, Paige never would have come to the Kyer. And while she’s not an active player, she’s always thinking in terms of the Game. She made all those assumptions about Shamino and Tressa in minutes.”
*It doesn’t mean she will tell. Paige may know a way out of this mess.*
My gut still said no. “Paige expected me to stop being friends with her when my magic began to work, because I’m a blue and she’s so low. She’s always telling me I’m a fool.”
*Ah. So if she expects betrayal from you, it could be because it is an action she would consider herself. Thus, there’s no way to ensure her secrecy.* Mettalise bowed her head. *Forgive me. I chose you partly for your intelligence, so I should not doubt you.*
I snorted. “You can doubt me. I always do.”
*Only because you have self-confidence issues.*
She fell silent, and I felt her thinking. As for me…
“It has to be this way, Mettalise,” I whispered. “I can’t stay here if people know about my mother.” A pressure—I interrupted Mettalise’s mental speech. “Even if Shamino forgave me for lying to him about, well, everything, he wouldn’t be allowed to stay Seneschal if he courted me. I’ll not ruin his life. I… I love him too much for that.”
Mettalise put a full block against her discontent and held me tight.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
After one week of Shamino’s courtship, I wished I’d listened to Mettalise. I should have punched Tressa and stolen her dessert.
At first, Shamino and Tressa made sense to me. Tressa had beauty, wealth, social grace and connections, and the convenience of not being at the Kyer much longer. If nobles didn’t marry for love, as many professed, then Tressa made the perfect partner.
I hated, however, what it did to Shamino.
He stopped being him. I never saw him in the Quarters, and not just because he avoided me. He simply was never there. Tressa kept him on tour, showing him off at every public affair—and it turned out that the elderly mages not at war kept full days. Tressa claimed him during her free time as well. The few times I did see Shamino, he seemed stressed, miserable, and exhausted.
She’s making him prove himself after refusing her before. Tressa didn’t forgive. Shamino had to be a very nice catch for her to swallow her pride and court him now. But she’d demand perfection. She’d demand that the whole world know it, too.
Meanwhile, the tasks at the Quarters still needed to be done. I stepped into one of my favorite rooms in the Quarters: Sylvia’s herbary.
Sunlight streamed through one of the rare windows of the Kyer. Plants of all kinds grew on every surface: in pots on the floor, in trays on shelves and tables, on lattices up the walls. Drying plants made a patchy ceiling of greens and browns and fading colors. No stone could be seen anywhere except occasional spots on the floor, and the air smelled of earth and life…
But no longer home. Mettalise’s room, sulfur mixed with sunlight and heat, that was home to me now.
“I’m here for the potions,” I told Sylvia. She stood at the table, busy. An illness had been spreading through the Kyer, and no one enjoyed a dragon with a cold—especially elderly bored dragons with a cold.
“You are here?” Sylvia threw down the flowers she’d been tying. “You. Not Shamino.”
I cringed, though her instant fury wasn’t at me. “He left a note saying I’m to deliver them.”
“And I suppose he expects you to give each dragon an examination as well?” She picked up the bunch, fumbled with the tie, swore. “They can develop lung infections just like we can, or a clog to the fire chamber—wind and smoke, this cursed string—”
“Here.” My younger fingers knotted the string easily. I handed her the flowers.
“And where is the apprentice he promised? I could die any day, but does he care?”
“I’m sure, once things calm down—”
“Don’t you go making excuses for him!” Sylvia waved the bundle in my face, and pungent perfume wafted my hair. “I courted once, even had a husband back in the day. Shamino is a fool. People are on their best behavior while they court. If Tressa’s making him follow dance steps now, what will it be like in five years? With children? I promise, she’ll demand his presence in Dragonsridge every festival, every major event, every fortnight! But will he listen?”
I
