The fire dragon bristled, but he restrained himself. “Contrary to your belief, there are other things I might want to talk to you about.”
“Like what?” Altair asked, genuinely curious.
“Patrol.”
Stiffening, the storm dragon waited for Rokh to continue.
“Are you ready to go out yet?”
Altair hesitated. He wanted to be ready, to be assigned to go out on patrol, but he couldn’t. Not while he was still struggling with his nightmares.
“What about all the newcomers?” he asked instead, trying to avoid directly answering the question.
Rokh glared at him. “You haven’t gone on one yet.”
“Neither have they,” Altair pointed out. He hated dodging responsibility, because he should be out on patrol, but he would just be putting others in jeopardy.
So far, Damien and Rane had managed to cover for him. There had only been two incidents, but he knew that it was just a matter of time before things got out of hand, before he did irreparable damage.
If he went out on patrol surrounded by vulnerable witches, and had an episode out in the field, he wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt. The witches couldn’t be asked to monitor him, to stop him if he started lashing out with his powers in the middle of his dreams. No, Altair couldn’t put anyone else at risk.
“Altair.”
“Rokh.”
The fire dragon grumbled. “Listen, I’m done playing your games, Altair. I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but you need to snap out of it. We have patrols that need dragons on them.”
“I have training I have to do,” he said, realizing he now had the perfect, tailor-made excuse. “Sorry.”
He backed away from Rokh for several steps, then spun and hurried off, not wanting to wait around for the fire dragon’s response. Reaching his door, he pushed it open and then closed behind him, sagging to the ground in relief.
I can’t keep doing this. Something needs to change.
Something was going to change, he vowed, picking himself up. Altair was going to shower, get some food, then he was headed right back to the library.
It was time to read up some more on Master Ada Erlinger.
Chapter Eleven
Christine
SHE GROANED AT THE sight of a brown envelope sticking out of her door.
“Is that what I think it is?” Jessie asked, skipping forward, snatching the mail before Christine could get to it. “Well, well, well. What do we have here?”
Christine slipped past her friend and into the room, trying to shut the door in Jessie’s face.
“Hey! Not fair. Open up. I live here too, you know?”
“No, you live across the hallway,” Christine pointed out. “You just don’t like your room so you’re always in my room, pretending like you live here. I think you have separation issues, is what it really is.”
The two of them had been roommates for most of their year as Initiates, but Apprentices and up were granted solo quarters to better help them study. The two of them had remained close though and had chosen rooms right across the hall from one another. Despite the teasing she was giving her friend now, Christine was happy to have Jessie around.
Jessie made a dismissive noise and then pushed harder on the door. “Open up or I’ll huff and puff and blow your damn door in!”
“That’s not how it goes,” Christine muttered, stepping back from the door just as Jessie gathered herself to push again.
The other woman stumbled in as the pressure disappeared abruptly, nearly falling flat on her face. She shot Christine a pouty face, but the look disappeared quickly as she brought the letter out.
“Dearest Christine,” she cooed, reading the header.
“Do we really have to do this?” Christine moaned, flopping back onto her bed. “You know I’m not in the mood for more of Julian’s talk about the two of us. Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because it’s fun, and you know you would darn well do the same thing to me if I got myself into a predicament like this.”
Christine frowned, trying to understand just what Jessie meant. What sort of predicament was she in? Julian was a boy, a man really, from the town of Elk Pines, the closest human settlement to Winterspell. He’d taken a shining to her some six months earlier during one of her infrequent visits to the town. Since then, he’d sent her mail once a month, outlining his ambitions to court her and eventually marry her. She’d yet to reply, however, and only by returning to Elk Pines would she even have to risk seeing him again. There was no predicament there.
“Hey, what did you mean by pred—”
“It has been six long months since I last heard from you,” Jessie continued, hopping up to sit on the corner of Christine’s desk, pushing her papers into a pile to clear some space. “I hope that you are well.”
“Why are you reading the entire thing? It’s going to be the same stuff as always. Pleasant, polite, and thoroughly uninteresting. You know this. I know this. Can we stop pretending now?” Christine grumbled.
“You haven’t responded to him once, Christi. Six months he’s written you. Never once has he gotten snippy, or even petty about the fact that you haven’t written or returned to see him.”
“We’re not a thing, so how many times do I have to tell you that?” she said, exasperated at the situation. “We met, we had a drink together. I let slip I was from Winterspell. Now he sends me mail once a month, because having a drink means we’re meant to be together.”
“He’s cute though,” Jessie pointed out.
“There are lots of cute guys in the world,” Christine countered, staring at the stone ceiling of her room in irritation. “It doesn’t mean I’m interested in all of them.”
“You could have written to him saying you weren’t interested,” Jessie pointed out. “That would stop the letters from coming.”
“I’m afraid if I did that, he would come himself,” she joked.
“It’s winter. They can’t get
