Chapter 6
Six
Iheld my arms out obediently for the tailor, gazing wistfully at the plate of food across the room.
They would not permit me to eat during fittings, so I had been reduced to cramming as much food in my face as possible between them. Kirana’s tailor had altered several simple dresses and a basic, unadorned set of leathers to fit my thin body, and I heard occasional sighs and snorts of displeasure from somewhere around my waistline.
“We’re going to have to let this out in a week at the rate you’re eating.” The seamstress had a deep, raspy voice from years of smoking chokeroot.
She jabbed several pins around my waist, nipping and tugging at the garment with fastidious prickliness.
I ignored the general rudeness of the comment, all of my focus reserved for the flaky, apricot cream-stuffed rolls.
“That’s the general idea, Jenra.” Kirana sat in a chair, watching with a critical eye as the tailor fussed over my leggings. “This is simply so she doesn’t need to walk about the eyrie naked.”
Shortly after Rhylan had nearly caused my heart to burst, Nilsa had declared that I had places to be and things to do. She had apparently been appointed the lord and master of my daily schedule, herding me from place to place with a silent, still-somewhat-hostile efficiency.
Those places included going straight back into the bath, where I was attended upon by no less than three Bloodless maidservants all at once.
They made it clear that my luxurious soak of the morning had been the equivalent of rolling around in a mud puddle and calling it good. I was scrubbed down twice, once with crushed nut shells and the second time with handfuls of oily grit. My hair was combed out, a thick mask of ooze massaged into it, and coiled to perch on top of my head for an hour.
My thick, claw-like nails had been filed mercilessly. They were no longer jagged, dirt-encrusted talons, but evenly matched and buffed to a shine.
Then they’d rinsed the mask out of my hair and washed it with rose-scented soft soap, and gave my feet the same treatment as my hands, while gently scrubbing the grit over my chapped lips with a tiny brush.
Now I was clean, soft, and shining all over. The pale strands in my hair gleamed metallic silver, years’ worth of dead skin had been washed down the drain, and my scales had been oiled and were no longer cracking. Even I had to admit there was some improvement to that horrible draga reflected in the mirror.
For the first time, I could look at myself and almost see the Sera that used to be.
They’d given me just enough time to eat, and then I was whisked into an empty room adjoining mine, where the tailor, Jenra, had laid out what looked like a million bolts of cloth. I was posed in the middle of the room as the draga prowled around me.
Now Kirana stretched. She’d been sitting there for almost two hours while my dresses were fitted. “Once she’s filled out, we’ll have the secondary fittings. She and Rhylan must present a unified front; I think it”s best if we play off their colors.”
“Ebony, obviously,” Jenra said, running her hand over a bolt of black velvet and eyeing me up and down. “And midnight blue as well, I would think, with that pale skin of hers.”
“Silver, of course.” Kirana got up, walking a circle around me. Her hair had been tied back in little braids, leaving the rest to fall in luxurious waves. “They’ll both need silver.”
I had ignored most of the conversation until now, but that word awakened the greedy draga in me. “I don’t want to borrow your jewelry. I have my own family vault in Varyamar.”
Which my poor, neglected Ascendant was likely sleeping on at this very moment.
All dragonbloods possessed the deep, intense desire for treasure, and there was no army between us and Varyamar. If I could just convince Rhylan to fly us there, I could ensure my Ascendant was well, and retrieve enough of the family hoard to not have to live entirely off the generosity of the Obsidian Flames.
Already the clothing and food expenses were making me nervous; I had to assume that at some point, payment would come due.
Kirana’s hazel eyes met mine, full of pity. “You’ll have to borrow for now, Sera. We can’t risk your health backsliding after a long flight. You’re not ready.”
I opened my mouth to protest, thinking of how dark and cold my eyrie’s halls must be, the loneliness my Ascendant had endured.
“No.” She almost snapped the word, bracing her hands on her hips. “As the eyrie healer, I am responsible for your care, and Rhylan will not forgive lightly if I allow you to push yourself beyond your limits. You just spent four years starving to death. You’re in no condition to fly to Varyamar yet.”
This wasn’t much of an improvement over the Kirana who was willing to accuse my family of murder. I didn’t want to accept that she was right—I desperately wanted to go home.
But hours of flight, locked with frozen tension on the back of a dragon I couldn’t communicate with, would undo what this single day’s work had begun.
Kirana’s tight lips softened. “I know you want to go home. I’m sorry. But we have days of practice ahead of us, and only so much time before the First Claim. You must look healthy and whole if anyone is to believe this.”
“Why are you going along with the plan, anyway?” I supposed after years of exile, I was rather nihilistic about anyone overhearing. The Obsidian Flame family seemed to trust their family servants implicitly, even though what we were doing was so far beyond the Law, it was unheard of. “You said you’d be damned before you watched Yura and Tidas take the throne. What did they do to you?”
Kirana’s lovely features seemed to pinch up, and she looked away, staring out the large window.
“Who doesn’t have a good reason to hate them?” she asked quietly. “Don’t you remember the Training Grounds? What she was like?”
My lips curled in a sour smile against my will. I remembered all of it.
I also remembered what Yura had done to me the last time we were together. My hand rose to my throat, unthinking, and I touched the flat, mottled scar that was nearly invisible against my skin.
Well…I remembered parts of it. Claws, and teeth red with my blood. Much of that memory was a blur.
“I see your point.”
“Well, knowing what I know, and what I experienced, there is no world in which I support Yura as the Dragonesse. She’s only gotten worse since…since you were gone.” Kirana paced briskly, picking up a bolt of sheer black silk and handing it to Jenra. “Let’s get an idea of what this will look like.”
“Why don’t you want the title?” I asked, obediently holding my arms up again. “You’re a princess. You could have equal claim with a mate.”
Kirana shook her head and laughed. “Me? Dragonesse? First of all, I don’t want a dragon mate. Second, I spent three years apprenticed to a healer after I was released from the Training Grounds. I poured more of my own blood, sweat, and tears into earning that knowledge than I ever did in training. If I became Dragonesse, I would have to give that up.”
She showed me the hammered gold bangle, pointing out each polished malachite. “See these? Each one represents mastery over an aspect of healing. It took… everything I had in me to earn them.” Kirana frowned, twisting the bangle. “This is the life I want. The life I worked for. I’ve already abdicated my role as a princess in this House. I don’t want to share my mind with a dragon, and I’d rather work with the healers than rule from the top of an eyrie. Koressis always seemed so… lonely to me, somehow.”
“You understand that if this plan fails, if someone catches on, you’re going to be just as culpable under the Law as we are?” I winced as the seamstress came dangerously close to pinning my arm to the black silk. “They won’t allow you to walk free. Your entire household will be given the death sentence along with us.”
To my surprise, it wasn’t Kirana who answered, but Jenra.
“Some things are worth it,” she said roughly, her gentle hands belying her tone as she draped silk over my shoulders. “Sometimes risks must be taken.”
I met Kirana’s eyes. Her face was solemn and set; she nodded once in agreement.
“This is why you have to do your best to get along with Rhylan,” she said, placing a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. “You must get well before you return to Varyamar. Every facet of this plan must be in accordance with the others; at no point must anyone suspect you are anything other than a mate bonded pair.”
“I’m trying,” I said honestly.
I truly was, even though the Obsidian Flames were hiding something from me. Something so big that even their servants were fully committed to the charade; what had Tidas and Yura done?
Knowing my murderous, cold-hearted sister… something terrible.
A chill ran down my spine as that flash of memory recurred—her teeth, shining under moonlight?
I couldn’t quite remember, and maybe that was for the best.
Nilsa knocked on the door and entered quietly. She carried a large glass bottle filled to the brim with the most disgusting-looking glop I’d ever seen, and after years on the prison isle, that was genuinely a tough title to claim.
Beads of oil floated on the dark surface of whatever it was, and it was dotted with bits of green. She presented it to Kirana without comment.
“Oh, lovely,” Kirana breathed. “It turned out much better this time. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to brew this up…”
I had a bad feeling about that ooze.
Kirana picked up a spoon from the table setting and scooped up a tiny amount, no larger than a pea, and quickly popped it into her mouth. I didn’t miss the violent shudder that shook her shoulders.
“Perfect,” she pronounced, her nose wrinkled and nostrils flared. “Like my salve, I mixed this batch special, just for you. This is far more intense than I would typically advise, but as we only have two weeks to turn you into presentable competition… well, sacrifices must be made.”
Someone had laid out a long golden straw with the table service. I cursed that someone as Kirana picked it up, slid it into the glop, and held the end of the straw up to my mouth.
“Drink up.” She smiled brightly.
I stared at the bottle of sludge that looked like it had been scraped from the deepest, darkest trenches of the foulest toilet on Mistward.
“Please,” I begged.
Kirana’s smile grew wider, showing every single one of her pearly white teeth. “Drink. It.”
I leaned my head forward and managed to catch the straw, taking a deep gulp while holding my breath.
The resulting shudder nearly dislodged Jenra and all her careful work.
I coughed, my stomach flipping this way and that. “That’s terrible,” I said, my voice coming out thin.
“It’ll put the meat back on your bones quickly. I wouldn’t do this if we had any other choice.” She poked a lacquered nail at the bony hollow between…well, what had once been nice breasts. They were now wasted away into barely-existent pads. “Right now, there’s nothing to hold your dress up.”
The next time she proffered the straw, I drank as fast I could, holding my breath the entire time.
It took me almost half an hour to drink it all, with breaks while my stomach tried to heave itself right out of my body. Jenra looked scandalized during each of these rests, grabbing cloth out of the way and shouting things like, “That’s Kyrian silk, you barbarians!” and “Not on the velvet, your mother would spin in her grave if she knew you’d treated a family heirloom this way!”
The cloth made it out unscathed. I could not say the same for my innards.
Even Kirana winced as she gave Nilsa the empty bottle, waving her hand in front of her nose to waft the stench away.
“You’ll have to drink one of those every day for the next two weeks, but you’ll—”
“Every day?” I was aghast. No one could do that. It would be pure torture.
Kirana took pity on me and brought me a cup of sugar-laced fruit juice. Even that failed to completely wash away the rancid taste of whatever in the Nine Hells had been in that bottle.
“Every day,” she said firmly. “I know it’s disgusting, but I am fully committed to seeing my brother’s plan through, and when you agreed to join him, you made the same commitment.”
I closed my eyes. She was right, of course.
I had made the commitment. They had made it clear they were willing to put their hatred for my family aside to see this through, and I could do no less but follow the plan.
Even if it meant drinking sewer sludge through a straw.
If I failed to give this agreement anything less than my absolute best effort, then how could I claim to be worth a damn as the Dragonesse? This was small in comparison. This was nothing.
“You’re right. But please, can I eat real food now?”
Jenra sighed and pulled a pin from a sleeve. “We might as well call it for the day. If you’re going to be feeding her up, there’s no point in starting the fittings now. She’s going to be bursting through these seams in a week.”
Kirana agreed, and they began to undrape me. I was allowed to pull on a fluffy robe and nibble a roll, watching as they loaded the unused bolts of cloth into trunks.
After the seamstress had begun directing servants on where to store them, Kirana joined me at the table. She buttered a roll, pouring us both tea.
“I swear I’m not trying to torture you,” she said, looking up at me with those bright hazel eyes. “It really will help. I designed it myself for our cousins in the Horde when they took in some refugees from the Eastern Wildlands…and it earned me my final healer’s stone, too. After an extended period of starvation, eating as much food as Rhylan is stuffing into you might just as easily kill you. The, ah, mixture will provide necessary nutrients, and prevent your body from going into shock from the new intake. And, fortunately for me, your dragonblood will make it easier. In a month you’ll be as good as new.”
I had to keep in mind that she was an ordained healer. She would have seen something like this before. It was true that those of more ancient dragonblood healed quickly, just like their ancestors—but only as long as I could keep the sludge in my stomach and not on the floor.
“Whatever it takes to get to Varyamar.” I couldn’t believe I was still hungry after that.
Kirana watched me, her brow knitting. She looked so much like her brother when she made that face, it was uncanny.
“What made you agree to his plan?” she finally asked, picking a cookie into crumbs on her plate. “Since he was the one who…who sent you there.”
I stared into the depths of my tea cup. The leaves had settled on the bottom in little drifts.
I used to think fortune-readers could tell the future from the leaves, but now they didn’t seem to be telling me anything at all. Maybe that was a sign from the gods.
“Because he was my only choice. The exiles despise mainland Akalla. They’d happily see all your eyries ripped apart stone by stone and burned to ash. If I’d stayed, there was every chance one of them would’ve found me, mate bonded to me against my will, and used me as a pawn to initiate a war.” I set the tea cup back on the table. “At least with Rhylan, I know where I stand. I only ever wanted to go home.”
“I can understand that,” she said softly.
The homesickness burrowed into me so deeply it hurt.
“There was a dragon on Mistward,” I said abruptly. “Kalros, from the House of Bloodied Talons. He found me, he knew who I was. He was going to rape me, but Rhylan stopped him.”
It had just occurred to me that I hadn’t thanked Rhylan for saving me from that.
He wasn’t the one who’d been stupid enough to go get drunk in a tavern where all the dragons were gathering. He hadn’t given me away.
And if he was telling the truth, he’d tried to get me away from Mistward Isle. He’d spoken up on my behalf.
Kirana’s eyes became hard jewels. She reached across the table and took my hand, squeezing it tightly.
She didn’t have to say anything. I felt everything left unspoken in that tight grip.
It wasa relief to escape everyone and be left alone in my room.
On Mistward Isle, I had spoken to almost no one. When my mother had finally died, succumbing to the lung infection that had settled in after two years of living in a cold, mist-filled cave, I went silent.
Even in Farpost, the shantytown I’d dared only when the foraging was useless and I was too hungry to go another day without eating, I hadn’t had to speak much.
In the poverty of the Isle, a half-moon spoke more eloquently than any words.
I’d lived most of my life there in silence. In the single day I’d spent in Jhazra Eyrie, I’d spoken more words than I had in the last two years.
It was exhausting.
I curled up at the head of the bed, staring at my dim room. Sleep wouldn’t come; I watched as the moonlight drifted over the walls, creeping bit by tiny bit.
It was too open, too exposed. I didn’t like the doors to the hall or bathroom, or the wardrobe hulking in the corner. The previous night I had been at the very dregs of my reserves, collapsing without a second thought.
Tonight, with clarity of mind, I could not summon that release into sleeping oblivion.
I found myself wondering where Rhylan was. What was my supposed mate doing?
Did he lie awake at night, or was he sleeping peacefully down the hall, undisturbed by night terrors?
When I forced myself to close my eyes and count wyverns, it was Rhylan’s face that popped into my mind. The sensation of his rough fingers woven through mine, the softness of his lips.
I didn’t want to think about those things.
This was all a ruse, and he’d made it clear that he’d thought I was a haughty bitch then, and something to be merely tolerated in order to achieve his goals now.
I counted sixteen wyverns before the memory of his thumb on my lip intruded again. My eyes opened to see the moonlight had crept another centimeter towards the door.
With a low growl, I ripped a blanket and pillow off the bed and dropped to my knees. The underside was just wide enough to accommodate me. I pushed in the blanket, hauling myself after it on my belly.
I made a nest against the wall, tucking myself into a corner. It was warm and dark under here, secure against intruders.
Rhylan still had not left my head when I managed to close my eyes and finally drift to sleep.