Chapter 10
Ten
Ipressed a thumb against my hip bone, examining myself intently in the mirror.
The sludge was working.
It wasn’t a drastic change, but my ribs looked softer, and my hip bones no longer jutted outwards quite so savagely. The hollows of my cheeks had filled in.
Now I was merely quite thin, rather than cadaverous.
Since I’d laid eyes on Maristela, the fear of failure had been a worm infecting my body, wriggling through me to gnaw on both mind and soul. If I allowed it to rule my mind, it would eat holes through me entirely, leaving nothing behind.
Only with discipline and determination could we win, and I was the weak link in our chain. Only by becoming stronger, harder, reforged into iron, would we make it through this alive and victorious.
When we’d returned to the eyrie, I’d asked Viros to go over the harness with me. He’d been a patient instructor, taking me over every harness in the training room until I could buckle them as swiftly and effortlessly as Maristela had done.
It was only when Rhylan and Kirana interrupted, forcing me to eat dinner, that I stopped. My hands were a little sore, still tender from the rope burns, but it was nothing that would stop me.
The flight to Jhazra had given me plenty of time to work on my plan. I wasn’t doing nearly enough.
The tight bands of fear squeezed around my chest every time I thought about it, how each minute spent resting was a minute wasted. Not a single second could be allowed to fly by without me doing at least one thing to become the iron draga I needed to be.
Rhylan left after dinner, but I’d pulled Kirana back, asking her for a private word. She hadn’t refused my request, though she’d been concerned about the wisdom of it.
From now until the First Claim, I would drink two jars of the sludge a day. My stomach could handle it, if only because I’d force it down if I had to. She’d prepared a second jar that night, and I’d made myself sit awake to go over a map, pinpointing the village Maristela had visited between horrible, shuddering draughts: Winterhill, a small but busy outpost for wyvern-riders.
That was worth keeping in mind; anyone would be able to send a message through them and it would be nearly untraceable, given the number of postal riders who flew through on a regular basis.
Thinking about who Maristela might be courting—and why, when she had deliberately harpooned her own chances of taking the throne—made it easier to ignore the rancid flavor on my tongue.
And on this morning, five days later, I saw the results of suffering through it. Kirana had assured me it wouldn’t hurt in the short term, but within a month I’d have to taper off on my intake. She’d been particularly stubborn that I couldn’t live on sludge alone, and if I weren’t careful, that I’d become dangerously dependent on it.
I pinched my stomach, no longer sunken in, then began braiding my hair into a crown.
The day after the harness work, I’d asked Viros for a sword from the armory. In the Koressis Training Grounds, my highest marks had been earned with a sword; he found a thin, rapier-like steel weapon, heavier than it looked, more function than form.
Kirana was my new practice partner.
I finished pinning my hair and pulled on clothes for training: thin cotton trousers that clung to my skin, a sleeveless tunic with a wide sash to belt it. Like all the clothes Jenra had created in the last several days, mumbling sourly about letting out seams the entire time, they were in shades of black and soft dove gray.
My black boots nearly reached my knees, and I finished with my sword-belt, the weight of a weapon already familiar and welcome. It was a relief to drop my hand and feel the density of solid, cold steel, instead of a stick sharpened with rocks.
There was no sign of anyone as I left my room. Rhylan had his own practice hours, but he chose to train outside the eyrie, in the less forgiving terrain of the mountains. Nilsa had been conscripted by Jenra to prepare for the First Claim, and Kirana was likely already waiting in the eyrie’s training court.
I took the spiral staircase down nearly six levels until I came across an arched doorway, a symbol of a silver sword inlaid in the keystone of the arch.
On this level of the eyrie, ensconced within the windowless, well-protected corridors of the mountain, there were multiple training rooms. Some were simple practice courts, with polished floors and armories of weapons; others were larger, entire obstacle courses created by past generations of the Obsidian Flame dragonbloods.
Kirana had chosen a single training court for our daily evening sessions, a simple room of stone walls and wooden floors, but when I arrived, there was no sign of her. The only sign of life was the fact that the light crystals set in the ceiling overhead were all ablaze—Erebos knew we were here.
The eyrie was too massive to go searching for her. Instead I unbuckled my belt, balanced my sword against the wall, and began to do the series of sit-ups and push-ups that I’d started four nights ago.
Sweat dripped down my face, splattering on the floor as I pushed myself up again on shaking arms, gasping for breath.
Every time failure loomed, when my limbs were jelly and I knew I couldn’t do another push-up without dying, I thought of Maristela.
I thought of how all of this would be for nothing, that I would shame not only my ancestors and the ashes left to me, but cost Rhylan and Kirana their House’s reputation as well.
That was when I would reach deep inside and find just one more in me.
And another, and another.
It wasn’t until my arms or abdomen gave out and I collapsed, literally unable to hold myself up, that I accepted there were no more left in me.
Which was how Kirana found me, sprawled on my back, my tunic soaked, my wasted stomach muscles burning.
She stopped in the doorway, hands braced on her hips, her toned biceps enviable from my pathetic position on the floor.
“Sera…” she began, and fell short. She knew perfectly well that she couldn’t convince me to stop.
“Don’t.” I wiped sweat off my face with the back of my arm, then let my arm drop. “We both know it’s necessary.”
Kirana frowned, an expression that she was beginning to wear more often than not when we spoke. “There’s a fine line between necessary and obsessive,” she said slowly. “You’re going to run yourself into the ground.”
A sharp laugh escaped me. I managed to push myself up on my elbows to look at her.
“I’ve already been run into the ground. I’ve hit my limit a thousand times already, and I’m still here.” With a grunt of effort, I got to my feet. “There is no further I can fall, Kirana. Let me do this.”
My body ached, but it was nourished now, becoming more functional by the day. I could handle aches, drinking sludge and constant training, and pretending to a whole life that was a lie.
What I could not handle was that fear-worm, gnawing away at me piece by piece in the night while I lay curled sleepless under my bed, my chest imploding as I gasped for breath, heart racing like it would burst.
I would crush it underfoot, prove it wrong, if it was the last thing I did.
Kirana could not read my mind. But she read the way I straightened up and squared my shoulders perfectly well. I grabbed my sword and unsheathed it with a ring of metal, taking the starting position.
“Let’s get to it.”
I knew I’d won when her hands slipped from her hips. She let out a nearly silent sigh, the corners of her mouth turned down as she unsheathed her own plain practice sword and faced me.
My palms immediately began sweating as I took in Kirana’s poise, her flawless stance, the determined hardness in the planes of her face.
This was going to hurt, like it did every night, but there was no other way forward.
There was no warning before she attacked, chopping downwards with a harsh series of blows that jarred the sword in my grasp, my shoulder screaming for mercy almost immediately.
I held her off—just barely. The tip of my sword drooped as Kirana backed away, her jaw set.
“We can still call a stop to this and put you on a gentler schedule,” she said, flicking a strand of hair out of her face.
I stretched my arm, the muscles in my shoulder tightening and relaxing. “Over my dead body.”
I slid into guard stance again, remembering my instructor in the Training Grounds and how she’d whipped at my back and legs with a leather riding crop—she’d been a wyvern trainer, and had never given up the crop. What was once used on wyverns had been used on her students in Koressis.
It was still easy to imagine the little stings of pain: straighten my back, ground my feet, keep my shoulders loose and relaxed.
Kirana gave me a grim smile. “That just might happen.”
The next time she attacked, she burst towards me, sweeping the sword upwards in a cut designed to gut me from crotch to sternum, before reversing into a sideways slash.
I moved like an automaton, remembering the Training Grounds: parry, riposte, guard.
Sweat dripped into my eyes as we moved, dancing around each other, the only sound our own breaths and the clash of swords.
“Again,” I gasped, when Kirana stepped back, the cool determination on her face giving way to concern.
She scowled, and attacked without giving me time to settle into my guard stance.
I managed a single thrust that nearly disarmed her, but she easily parried the blow, ripping the sword out of my hands.
Her mouth still firmly set, she picked it up, handed it back to me, and attacked again.
And again. And again.
Sparring with Kirana had made one thing very clear to me: I was leagues and bounds out of practice, practically a child in comparison to her. My muscles remembered the forms, but were still too wasted to keep up.
She was trying to force me into quitting, but all I could think of was the fact that failure meant we’d all end up executed.
If I couldn’t fight, I was dead weight.
Kirana delivered one ‘death’ blow after another, disarming me more than once, and my body screamed for mercy.
But the world did not have mercy to give, nor time.
The final time she disarmed me, I let out a cry against my will as my shoulder knotted, my fingers spasming around the sword’s grip.
“That’s enough,” Kirana said harshly. “I’m calling it now. We’re done.”
The last thing I wanted to do was stop, but my body physically couldn’t take anymore. It had been an hour straight from the Nine Hells.
I stumbled to the wall, barely managing to lower my sword before I dropped it.
If I’d thought my exercises before the practice were hard, I’d been sadly mistaken. This was a thousand times worse, every muscle screaming, legs trembling and cramping.
Gods, maybe this would actually be the last thing I’d do before I died.
In contrast, Kirana’s clothes were soaked with sweat, her face red as she puffed for breath, but she wasn’t knocking on Nakasha’s Gates. She drank from a glass bottle and handed one to me.
I took the proffered water and drank greedily, rivulets escaping the corners of my mouth to run down my chin. “This time tomorrow?” I rasped out, coughing a little when I’d finished drinking.
Kirana wiped her face, exhaling slowly. Her eyes were bright against her flushed face.
“This time tomorrow,” she agreed, but she scowled while she said it, the line between her brows a deep groove. “But you need to think about what I said.”
“I already did.” I lifted my chin, daring her to argue.
“What are you supposed to be thinking about?” a husky, all-too-familiar voice asked.
Rhylan leaned against the doorway, wearing pants, thank the gods, but his chest was still covered in sweat from his own outdoor training.
It was only because I was exhausted enough to collapse that I couldn’t pull my gaze away from the dense muscles of his shoulders and chest, or the long, smooth V of muscle dipping into his pants. He was simply…something to focus my eyes on while the room spun around me.
“You talk sense into her,” Kirana snapped, pushing past her brother and leaving me alone with the half-naked, sweaty dragon.
I didn’t have the energy to be embarrassed about my current state as he looked me up and down. Rhylan slowly raised an eyebrow.
I raised my own. “You might as well tell me to stop doing what I’m doing, so I can tell you no, and we can end this argument before it starts.”
Rhylan’s look of bemusement became a slow, syrupy smile.
“And what are you doing that you’re not supposed to be doing?” he asked. His already deep voice had a hint of a purr in it, sending a shiver up my spine.
He hadn’t given me that slow grin since the day we’d flown out over the tarn.
“Training.” With an iron grip on my willpower, I fetched my sword from the floor without groaning or collapsing. A draga had to maintain some small semblance of dignity.
When I straightened up, he was watching me with a glint in his eye.
“You’re telling me that Kirana wants you to stop training.”
“Mm-hmm.” I was the picture of innocence, grabbing a cloth to wipe down the sword, polishing the metal until it shone.
“And what, exactly, might you be doing to cause such a reaction?” Rhylan tilted his head, a lock of hair falling over one eye. I was extremely focused on cleaning my weapon; my eyes wanted to track the bead of sweat sliding over the ridges of his abdomen, where muscles were layered on top of muscles under dark gold skin, but the sword really needed quite a bit of attention.
“All I’m doing,” I said delicately, swiping the cloth upwards over the blade, “In exact terms, is training as much as I need to in order to keep this ruse in place.”
I wiped the sword from tip to hilt again slowly, sure I’d seen a flaw in the steel. Weapons did need to be tended to remain in their best condition.
Rhylan watched my hand move back up, sucking in his lower lip and biting it.
“Would you care to describe this training?” he asked, taking another step into the room.
“Absolutely.” My hands were shaking as I tried to wipe the damn flaw away. “I’ve been doing cardiovascular exercises and strength work. Things to, ah, get the blood flowing.”
Another step, slow and stalking.
“Mmm.” His gaze raked me from head to toe again, taking in my flushed face and sweaty clothes. “And have you been stretching properly after these exercises?”
“Well—”
“Because I didn’t see you do any stretching. You stopped training and went right to cleaning up your weapon.”
His hand closed around mine, on the hilt of the sword.
I couldn’t breathe; it was entirely too hot this deep in the mountain, where the stone walls were warmed by volcanic activity below.
“Maybe,” he breathed, taking it out of my hand, “You should get on the floor, and do things in the correct order, don’t you think?”
A retort was on the tip of my tongue, but if I was thinking clearly, he was right; the sword was fine. It was my leg muscles and shoulders that were cramped and throbbing, guaranteeing a sleepless night of agony.
“As much as it pains me to admit you have a point...”
My lungs failed as Rhylan leaned down inches from my face, his eyes never leaving mine as he fetched the sheath from the wall next to me; he slid the sword in without even looking at it.
It slid home with a definite snap right in front of my eyes, the muscles in his forearms flexing.
“Floor,” he ordered. “Now.”
Any rejoinder I had was gone. My entire vocabulary had seemingly deserted my tired brain.
But before I could drop down, he shook his head. “On your back.”
Some distant part of me was shrieking to run out of there, but I couldn’t remember why. It didn’t seem very important at all anymore.
I rolled onto my back with a small whimper of pain, stretching out across the smooth floorboards.
Rhylan knelt next to me, sliding a hand under my knee. My heart started galloping again, like I’d just run up and down the spiral stairs, when Rhylan frowned.
“Raise your leg up. Your hamstrings are hard as stone.”
Without waiting for me to begin the movement, he pushed my leg upwards, keeping it straight.
Pain burst into vivid life as a muscle in my thigh cramped, balling into a tight knot. I sucked in a sharp breath, my entire body tensing, and when Rhylan dug his thumb into the knot, pushing down hard, I bit back a cry.
“Shh,” he murmured. “You’re in my hands now. It’ll pass.”
A few more spasms wracked my leg before it passed, the pain relieving almost instantly. A cold sweat had broken out on my forehead.
But I could thank the pain for one thing: it had clarified my mind, blasting through my exhaustion and bringing with it the intense awareness that Rhylan would be able to scent my desire for him in the close, humid air of this tiny room.
I’d nearly lost myself to the dragonbloods’ primal instinct, losing all rational intellect.
Rhylan released the pressure, using the ball of his thumb to massage the muscle while pushing my leg towards my chest. I winced, fingers clenching as another tiny quiver went through my leg.
This one didn’t erupt into pain, not with Rhylan intensely pressing the muscle at certain points. He moved from the back of my knee, steadily working his way down, and when his fingers brushed my inner thigh, a shudder went through me.
He froze, the heat of his hands soaking into my skin, a white-hot brand everywhere he touched.
I wanted him so deeply it ached, an almost physical pain embedded in the construct of my being. We were born for this, for a draga to become one with a dragon, the natural instincts of the creatures we were descended from ingrained within our very bones.
He stared at me, eyes burning, nostrils flaring when he smelled my desire.
“Sera,” he said huskily, fingers tightening to dimple my flesh, only inches away from where I wanted him to touch…
No. No.
He had chosen me out of pity.
A bond could never be equal when one pitied the other. One day that pity would become weariness, and finally contempt.
There was no future for us. I would have love, or nothing.
This had to stop before that ravenous, craving instinct ruined everything.
“It hurts,” I said harshly, my voice too loud. “I can do the rest on my own.”
Like I’d thrown ice water in his face, the embers in his gaze died. He released me like I was a hot coal, rising to his feet in one smooth motion.
His face, so open with desire a moment ago, was now a closed book. A fist seemed to be squeezing my heart, measuring each beat in its indifferent grasp.
Instincts were simply nature. Anything more than that wasn’t in my cards.
“Here’s the sense I’ll talk into you,” he said, looking away as he wiped his face. “Cool down and stretch right after you train. You know that much from the godsdamned Training Grounds.”
He turned on his heel and walked away, leaving me alone on the floor.
I finished the stretching on my own, rubbing the cramps from my muscles as I held back whimpers.
If there were tears mixed with the sweat on my face…well, no one would be able to tell.