Chapter 12
He moved into the den, and I stepped backward, heat spreading down my spine.
Myth omitted a low growl.
“Tell your dragon to stop,” Covington demanded, his eyes on me.
After two attempts at swallowing, I finally said, “Myth, it’s okay.”
Covington nodded his approval as Myth’s growling ceased. “You didn’t think I’d let this go, did you?”
Sweat was forming on my back already, and I couldn’t seem to find a single word to say to him, my body in shock at his sudden arrival.
He stepped out of the light and into the shadows inside Myth’s den. “The whole city has been on the lookout for a black wild dragon after what happened the day of the race. Now we know where he is.”
My heart fell clean out of my chest. Myth would die, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“We’re bonded!” I hissed, trying to keep my voice quiet.
Covington laughed. “Impossible. He still has his flame, doesn’t he?”
“No,” I said, resolute.
He shook his head, a worried half-laugh escaping. “Cutting a dragon’s flame duct at that age kills them.”
“Then it’s a good thing he’s not what you think he is.” Years of pretending everything was fine, for Evie’s sake, had given me plenty of practice at twisting my words to fit what another person already expected to be true.
His eyes narrowed. “You’re lying.” He gestured toward Myth. “You’re putting us all at risk by bringing him here.”
“My dragon has papers.”
He let out a quiet scoff. “Easy enough to verify with a little digging.”
I wanted to punch him. Every rule in our world was built by people like him, and yet he lived like they were all beneath him.
He floated on a plane above the rest of us, above the rules, and he knew it.
If he’d been the one to decide to keep Myth, he could have bent society’s iron bars just to protect him.
But me, I had no power to bend the world.
“Dig all you want.” I was pushing my limits, but Covington needed to believe I had nothing to hide.
He looked as if he wanted to say more, and I waited as if he held me at gunpoint.
Finally, he sighed and ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Fine. But if I find out you’re lying, you’re gone. And that beast will die.”
“Fine.”
He held my gaze for several agonizing seconds. Then he turned on his heel and marched away.
I waited until his footsteps diminished, and then I slumped forward, hands on my knees.
My time at Cardan Lott was tied inexorably to that boy and how long he believed my lie.
I made it to the next morning, and the next. But each time a professor walked toward me in the halls or looked at me too long in the Great Hall, I feared the news about Myth had been discovered.
“You’re a bit jumpy,” Vanya concluded as we marched to the lair for our first official day of training with our dragons.
“Just nervous,” I said with a shrug. It was true enough.
“Don’t worry about what people say. You’ll catch up. No one here has as much training as they let on. Even if they’ve ridden, they haven’t ridden their dragons for long. Big difference.”
She thought I was nervous about my poor performance at the ceremony.
That would be the case if I weren’t so worried about Myth.
But she was right, at least, that even the most experienced riders here had only had at most a few months of riding their own dragon.
Bonding only happened when a person stopped growing, which for most of us was at eighteen or nineteen, and the first years here had all bonded within the past school year. I’d only barely made the cutoff.
Day one of training turned out to involve nothing more than Bryce telling us the proper way to sit in the saddle—contrary to what he assured us were bad habits we’d formed before coming here. I, however, had no habits when it came to sitting on a dragon, a fact that no one let me forget.
Snickers and half-covered coughs followed me everywhere. As I mounted Myth for training, wobbly but not as disastrous as the first time, my entire class spewed barely contained laughter.
“See here,” Bryce said, stomping over to me with his heavy gait. “She will be the perfect student here because, unlike you all, she doesn’t have to unlearn anything. See her ankles? They’re exactly where I told her to hold them. Unlike you lot, with your legs dangling like limp noodles.”
It was meant as a compliment, I think, but it had the opposite effect.
My classmates leered at me, their pinched brows and tight lips enough to make me sweat.
Myth danced around in agitated little circles, which made listening harder.
He was feeding off my energy, and I hated how obvious it was that the other students were getting to me.
Even if I could hide it on my face, Myth’s behavior was playing my emotions for them like an orchestra.
“Tense, Miro?” asked Covington as he paraded by on Azeron at the end of the lesson.
Ignoring him, I loosened Myth’s saddle and carefully pried it off his spikes.
Beside me, Clarence was grunting under the weight of his saddle as he hauled it down from his dragon’s back.
Bryce had instructed us to unsaddle our dragons in the rotunda today, so he could correct any errors we made—did we unstrap the girth after the neck straps, did we loosen the saddle before pulling it off, did we properly check our dragon’s scales for any signs of the saddle impinging movement?
He and Indigo weaved among us, observing.
“Vaughan, if you rip off the saddle like that, you could hurt him or damage your saddle,” Indigo said, patting Theo’s dark green side.
Clarence nodded vigorously, then adjusted his glasses. “Sorry.”
“No need to apologize,” Professor Indigo said, moving on to watch Vanya.
Clarence shot me an embarrassed grimace.
“Father insisted that I have no advantages here.” His eyes were on Indigo as she complimented Vanya.
“Being the headmaster's son,” he said in imitation of his father’s deep voice, “will come with enough trouble. I will not have you looking like I’ve given you unfair treatment. ”
I let out a small laugh. “Well, at least you know all the answers in chemistry.”
His cheeks flushed. “He couldn’t keep me from reading.”
At that, I smiled, but it faded quickly.
I’d read what I could get my hands on growing up, but I was woefully behind the others, whose erudite answers this week had shown me just how far I needed to climb to be anyone’s competition this year.
“Why aren’t you in Sapphire, Clarence?” He was easier to call by his first name than Covington—everyone was easier to call by their first name, for that matter.
He busied himself with his saddle, folding the straps in and prying it off the ground the way I’d shown him. When it was balanced on his shoulder, he turned to me. “My father wanted it, but the dragons had other ideas.”
My brows rose. Headmaster Vaughan was largely a figurehead in my mind, a crisp suit with a powerful voice and commanding presence.
Inspiring every time he spoke to the student body and affable when addressing individual students in the hall, but he was a father, and he clearly had plans for his son to earn his place here.
“Did you want Ruby?” I asked. People could choose, but the dragons, who could apparently read us better than we could read ourselves, made the ultimate choice for us.
He flashed a grin that was both sheepish and proud. “I did. I didn’t think the dragons would let me in, to be honest. But I know it surprised my father. He thought I’d end up in Sapphire or Emerald.”
I lugged my saddle and walked beside him. “Emerald? No way. Diamond, maybe.”
He laughed. “Why do you say that?”
“Because you’re nice.”
His smile shrank but was touched with genuine delight. “Thanks, Miro.”
“Ari,” I said.
He nodded. “The dragons are never wrong.”
I glanced at him, a question on my brow.
“They only pick Ruby for the ones who dream big.” His meaningful look told me he knew I had dreams of my own.
I thought of Bev’s words, that one day I’d want something badly enough that I’d be desperate to get it.
I’d come here to change the future for my family, for everyone born to walk beneath the bridges of Treston.
I was desperate to see my family free from the cage of poverty, my brother free from the chains of gambling that had dragged my father down, and my sister free to choose whatever future she wanted rather than the few that were open to us bottomsiders.
As Clarence walked away, I wondered what his dreams were, and how many of us chosen for House Ruby would see our dreams fulfilled.
The next day, the lesson was short, over as soon as we successfully made our dragons walk in a slow circle in the yard behind the lair—a lesson in testing our dragon’s compliance.
Most of the other kids laughed at the assignment and completed it with ease.
Scarlett’s dragon, however, didn’t seem enthusiastic about the idea, and she had to raise her voice before the dragon complied. I tried to hide my smile.
“That’s right, Alcott,” shouted Prescott, his arms crossed. “You tell her.”
Covington and Clarence chuckled, and Scarlett cursed at them as she reentered the line of students watching. She swatted Covington’s arm, but as she turned to watch Vanya’s dragon, she was smiling contentedly.
Prescott could be annoying, but at least he treated everyone the same way.
After Vanya, it was my turn. Myth was still spinning in circles when Bryce came running over.
“He’s not a horse, for saint’s sake, Miro.” He lifted his hands to stop Myth’s endless circling.
Laughter crackled in my ears. I rescinded my thoughts about Prescott, who was chortling and pointing at me.
“I’m doing what you told me, sir. He just…I’m just…not very good at this.” Fairfax’s advice to win was sounding more and more ludicrous.
“Try asking him.” Bryce crossed his arms. When my mouth opened, he raised a hand. “Not like that.”
Lips turned down, I said in my head, Myth, walk in a circle like everyone else. Please.
Myth completed the circle.
I dismounted and caught Bryce giving me his equivalent of a grin, which was a slightly less intense frown.
“I didn’t think dragons could communicate telepathically,” I said as I led Myth back inside.
“They can’t. It’s not mind reading, Miro.
It’s intention reading. He hears what you’re feeling and senses your body language and can interpret those things in ways humans can’t.
I’ve found that speaking what I want my dragon to do always helps.
It’s us we need to shape, and words are our best way to do that.
You were giving him mixed signals until you focused your mind with words. ”
“Thank you,” I said, a little sheepishly, before I led Myth back inside.
Two weeks sailed by, but I barely noticed. Staying on top of schoolwork was taking every minute of my time that wasn’t already absorbed in training at the lair.
An autumn breeze ruffled my hair as I trooped back from the lair to the main school building one afternoon. I swung by the mail room, as I did every day on the way back from our physical conditioning.
A letter with my name on it sat in the pile of letters marked inbound.
Evie’s script made my heart leap.
I tore into her letter and read it as I walked back toward Ruby’s common room.
Dear Ari,
That’s amazing you can feel Myth’s emotions.
It all sounds so incredible! I’m having fun picturing what it’s like for you at Cardan Lott.
Mama is doing okay. She sends her thanks for the money your sponsor is sending.
It’s more than we’ve ever had, Ari. Thank you.
Mama even bought me a new dress and a hat. I look like a proper lady now.
I glanced up. Evie was not old enough to be a proper lady, no matter what she had on. And I wasn’t there to defend her from the wolves when they inevitably came. I kept reading.
I’ve decided it would be fun to start working.
My heart skipped and I stopped short, drawing the letter close to my face. “What?”
You always worked, and I feel like it’s time I learned a useful skill. Honestly, it’s hard being around Mama now that you’re not here for her to nag.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Mama was the one who was supposed to get a job.”
After finishing the letter, I hurried back to the common room and scratched out a quick reply, urging Evie to excel in school, to enjoy the money Fairfax was sending, and not to get a job.
When I leave here, Bennett and Mama can come with us to our mansion in the Nevrons. We won’t have to worry about jobs or hats, I wrote.
It wasn’t true, but it was fun to dream.
Even if I graduated from Cardan Lott in three years, buying a mansion was not likely going to be in my future.
There was no guarantee I’d be able to race competitively or take one of the few high-paying jobs for dragon riders, like joining the queen’s personal guard or becoming an ambassador for Cavaria.
I’d certainly never want to join the Hunt, no matter how much money they made.
Maybe the dragons picked hopeless dreamers as well as ambitious ones for House Ruby.
Either way, if I could reveal myself as a true bonded rider from Cardan Lott, I could at least walk topside, arm-in-arm with Evie as she wore the latest fashions and Myth trailed proudly behind us.
But it all hinged on how this year went, on whether Myth and I survived.