A breeze kicked up out of the distance, carrying with it the scent of the forest, along with a hint of heat that streamered within it. I stood at the tree line, staring into the depths of the forest—I couldn’t see anything, though I could feel it.
I focused on the heat. That was the part of the energy that I needed to grasp, the power I needed to master, but the problem was in detecting more than just that fire. The problem was in recognizing how that fire connected to some deep part of me—a part I hadn’t known about until I felt like I was too old to do anything about it.
“What do you feel?”
I glanced over at Jerith. He watched me, his dark expression frowning almost disapprovingly, as he often had seemed in the months I’d been within the capital. Training here had offered me understanding and a chance to learn about the connection I shared with the dragons, even if I hadn’t yet mastered it. It was that failure of mastery that led to the disappointment my instructors shared. Supposedly, I had potential but couldn’t reach it.
“I can feel the heat. I can smell it, too.”
Jerith arched a brow. Doing so gave him a distorted look. He had a long scar on his forehead that I suspected came from a fight with the Vard, though he never spoke of it. A burn on his other cheek most likely came from dragons, but again that was something else he didn’t speak of.
“You can smell it?”
I shrugged, nodding to him. “I can smell something in the air. Heat, or perhaps it’s merely the energy coming off of the dragon.”
Jerith grunted, turning to look out of the forest. “Smelling the heat of the dragon is not what most would describe it as,” Jerith said.
“Maybe that’s wrong then,” I said quickly.
I was careful with how I reacted to the instructors I worked with—Jerith possibly less than some of them. He’d been the most accommodating to me, and had never really seemed to mind my questions, though I still didn’t know whether I needed to be more careful.
“Nothing is wrong, unless you choose to say it is,” Jerith said. “You feel what you feel. And you smell what you smell. I cannot be the one to tell you how to describe it. All I’m looking for is for you to recognize there is something out there.”
I couldn’t see the dragon, though I knew the details of the test and that there was one in the distance. I had to find it by my connection to it.
“I don’t entirely know what it is I feel,” I said. “All I can tell you is that I can smell a little bit of heat—smoke mixed with the edge of oak, almost a faint char that simmers in the air.” As I described it, I flushed slightly. It was most ridiculous to describe magic quite like that, though there was something about that smell that brought back memories of the farm I’d left behind.
“Your experience is your own. As I said, I’m not here to tell you what to detect. All I’m here to do is to help ensure you recognize there’s something here. Once you do, then you can borrow that, and you can stretch beyond yourself, using what you detect in order to find the connection—and the power within yourself.”
It was part of what they had been working on with me ever since reaching the capital. On my journey here, Manuel had promised me I would work with others who had similar power as me, claiming that I’d proven I had potential to be more than even a dragon rider. A dragon mage.
Other than the dragon I’d traveled to the city with, I had failed to connect to them. Even with that dragon, I found it more difficult than I would have thought. Power always seemed to be at the edge of my ability to reach.
I had found the instructors to be willing to teach, even eager. Apparently, it was not terribly common for them to find students who had an ability to work with the dragons the way I did. Dragon riders themselves were not all that rare. There were plenty of dragon riders, especially in this part of the kingdom—men and women who were willing to risk themselves in the skies, but far too few dragons to ride.
The idea that I might be able to use the power of the dragons, summon it and turn it into something external, the kind of power I’d only seen a few times prior to coming to the city itself, had left me doubting myself. It was a far cry from the farmer I had been. I kept wondering if perhaps all of this were a dream.
Still, I couldn’t shake the connection that I felt to the dragons from time to time. Power emanated from them, which Jerith tried to convey to me through his instruction. All I needed was to find a way to latch onto that power, to connect to it, and to use it so I could find some other way of summoning it.
“What happens when I detect the power?” I asked.
“All I’m trying to get you to do right now is to focus on what you can detect. Once you master that, the next step is going to be pulling that energy into yourself. The key here is grasping for heat, and then letting it flow through you.”
Jerith set his hands off to either side of him. He positioned himself in a way that I had seen the other dragon mages do. I could feel heat bubbling up from him,
