Chapter 14
Fourteen
“Yes, she has always been this…melodramatic.” I watched resignedly across the campfire as Myst nibbled delicately on a deer haunch.
She was only being dainty now because she had eaten a rack of ribs and two other legs like a starving wolf.
“You don’t say.” Rhylan squinted at the bags of provisions we’d laid out; our dried beef had mysteriously vanished.
There was no way we had the energy to fly through the night back to Jhazra Eyrie, so we’d found a terrace several floors up from the vault with a wide courtyard that was mostly clear of the riotous jasmine. The espaliered plum trees had slipped from their carefully-tended designs, creeping outwards to form a natural canopy of branches we could sleep under.
Neither had anyone wanted to walk down several hundred steps to the kitchens of the eyrie; we elected to build a campfire in the middle of the courtyard. The risk of the light being seen was outweighed by the need to eat, and we had both agreed that it was highly unlikely that any other dragonbloods would be flying through my territory and come to investigate.
Rhylan had briefly left to gather firewood from the forest below, while I laid out our bedrolls and watched Myst heave sighs and rub her stomach. The Ascendant’s contribution to the campsite had been to blow a meager whisper of iridescent flame at the pile of branches Rhylan brought back, and then to watch with rapt attention as he butchered the deer he’d caught.
I was the one who sharpened the stakes for skewering tidbits. In my time on Mistward, I’d perfected the art of rapidly preparing a meal, although a rabbit was a lot less to cook than an entire deer.
We worked in relative silence, and though I couldn’t be sure of what Rhylan was thinking, I knew I was lost in one particular thought.
What had he meant?
I thought I would be driven to madness, trying to decipher such a simple statement. Because on its face, it did seem simple: Rhylan had wanted to be there for me. Had been there for me, although I’d never known it.
But then, that was too simple.
Because it did not align with everything else I knew of him: he was directly responsible for my exile to an isle right out of the Nine Hells. When he had come for me, he had directly told me that he could not stand me either, and was only willing to tolerate me because I was a clear path to his vengeance against Tidas.
In the end, after spinning back and forth through these thoughts, I decided on one thing: I was grateful Myst had chosen that moment to interrupt, because if I’d asked the question that made my hands shake and heart pound, I would have been so ashamed if Rhylan had had to clear up the misconception.
Letting him think I’d ever had any sort of feelings about him would ruin our ruse more quickly than anything else; my pride wouldn’t be able to withstand knowing he’d preen his ego over thinking ‘Perfect Serafina’ had secretly been in love with him.
And as for that name…I despised it. And yet I could look back at the trainee I had been, nose always to the grindstone, and understand perfectly well why the other draga I’d kept at arm’s length would give me such a moniker.
Skewering a bit of venison shoulder and settling it over the fire, I considered how…unlikable I had been. Still was. I had made no effort my entire life to be particularly friendly, because that wasn’t what I was supposed to be.
My mother had wanted a daughter who would be Dragonesse, someone who prized the bigger picture over the smaller pieces, someone who could look at an eyrie…and sentence everyone within it, because they had never been close to me.
Someone cold without cruelty, someone who could hold everyone else at a distance.
I had succeeded spectacularly on that front.
My peers in the Training Grounds—Kirana, Maristela, Elinor—knew me only by sight and reputation. My first week in the Training Grounds, they’d made efforts to invite me to their group, to join them for training and tea and visits to the local wyvern-rider outpost, where we could earn free passes to visit.
Those invitations had dried up within days. I’d made it clear I was there to train, not to bond.
In fact, I’d never even been to the outpost. My free passes had languished in favor of more time spent in the training yards.
Perfect Serafina. It was less a moniker than a mockery.
And as much as I despised it…I had earned it.
Even now, staring into the flames, sitting on the terrace of my overgrown, empty eyrie, I wondered if I’d deserved Mistward. If no one had spoken up for me, because I’d never bothered to speak up for them.
“You’re brooding.” Rhylan turned the other haunch on the makeshift spit. “You make this specific face when you brood, you know. Like this.”
I looked up from the fire just in time to watch him grotesquely pull the corners of his mouth down, nostrils flared and eyes crossed. “I do not look like that!”
He laughed, but it was short-lived and pensive. “Fine, you don’t, but you really do have a brooding face.”
“Hmm.” I sorted through a pack, finding a little bag stuffed full of herbs. Viros had provisioned us like he expected us to be trapped here for months, and there was no shortage of seasoning packets or soup-balls or tea.
I tore the herb bag open and sprinkled it over the venison. To Rhylan it would probably taste about as good as a mouthful of ashes, but to me, well…it beat a scrawny raw rabbit any day.
“‘Hmm’? That’s it?” He adjusted the spit against and leaned back on his bedroll. “You’re not going to elaborate on your broodiness?”
I raised my brows. “You want to listen to me whine?”
“Sure, why not?” Rhylan crossed his arms behind his head to make a pillow and grinned at me. “Passes the time as well as anything else.”
Myst crunched a deer bone across the fire, lifting her pale head to stare at us.
“Oh, no,” she said, talking between uncomfortably crunchy chewing. “We have much more pressing matters to discuss.”
I sat up straighter. “Yes, Myst?”
It was more than a little strange to be talking to my Ascendant—the creator of my bloodline, the architect of this eyrie, a ten thousand-year-old dragon—while she was smaller than I was, but Myst had rarely taken full form during my life here.
Vague memories of a time in the Koressis Royal Court tugged at me—I had been only six at the time, visiting my father, and Myst had braved leaving her eyrie to accompany me. She had been in her full size, and to six-year-old me, she had been a mountain, towering a thousand miles overhead.
Rhylan also sat up, resting his elbows on his knees as he watched my Ascendant cock her head and consider me.
“Something is not right,” she finally pronounced, silver-fire eyes focused on my face. “You’ve been gone for years, leaving me to languish and starve. I smell no mate bond between you and it’s well past time for such things. And I want to know exactly why you’re here with the son of Obsidian Flame.”
Rhylan looked rather taken aback at that, but he wasn’t going to mouth off to an Ascendant, no matter how small and vulnerable she appeared at this moment.
I took a deep breath, steeling myself to explain to my Ascendant that I was breaking her parents’ Laws for personal gain, but of course my false mate beat me to it, in a much less roundabout fashion than I would’ve used.
“We’re pretending to be mate bonded so we can gain the throne, and Sera has been recovering from her exile in my eyrie. Once we’ve secured the support of the other Great Houses, she receives Yura’s head, I receive Tidas’s head, she becomes the next Dragonesse, and I will abdicate as Drakkon once her right to might is sealed.”
I froze, my mouth open, as Myst’s gaze swung from him back to me.
“Breaking the Law,” she mused, taking another speculative bite of bone and slurping out the marrow. “Plotting murder. Deceiving your allies…”
My lungs did not want to work. My Ascendant had every right to throw me out of her House for such audacity. I’d planned to present our case in a much less incriminating light…if that were even possible.
Myst peered into the hollow bone, saw it was licked clean of marrow, and tossed it into the flames with a sigh. “Sounds fascinating. Do tell me more.”
“I…” My voice broke, and I cleared my throat. “Myst, we’re pretending to be mates. This means our heads if we’re found out…”
“It’s rather simple then, isn’t it?” she said, patting the distinct bulge of her over-full belly. “Don’t be found out.”
Rhylan narrowed his eyes. “It took Kirana days to talk Erebos around to this plan, and you just—”
“Erebos!” Myst snorted, sending twin spirals of pale flame into the night sky. “Old, fusty, stodgy Erebos…of course he wouldn’t know a good idea if it jumped up and bit him on the snout.”
“No love lost between those two, is there?” Rhylan muttered to me, and I shrugged. I’d never heard Myst speak of Erebos before, although she would talk at length about the magnificent bulk and glorious hoard of Caru, the Ascendant of the Jade Leaves.
“So your plan may have a few gaping holes—” Myst waved a claw dismissively. “—but naturally my last scion must become the Dragonesse.”
All the world came to a pinpoint focus on Myst. “Your last scion?” I repeated, utterly still inside.
Much of the time, true dragons emulated the same emotions their dragonblood descendants exhibited; Erebos’s humor was a reflection of Rhylan. But at other times, you looked at a true dragon, and you saw only the dragon.
This was one of those times. There was no readable emotion on Myst’s small, vaguely feline snout or in her eyes; she was a being as far removed from me as I was from a flea.
And like all true dragons, she was at heart driven by two motives: power and greed.
“My last scion,” she repeated. “The last of my blood. Honestly, Serafina, you should have produced at least two offspring by now to carry on the bloodline, but I can see you’re hopelessly behind schedule, so I’ll have to come with you.” She gave Rhylan a sidelong look. “Though maybe not children of Erebos’s bloodline…”
I quickly put an end to that line of thought. “If I’m the last scion, then there are no others who can claim this eyrie behind my back. That’s good to know.”
“Indeed, and I will seal the doors behind us.” Myst examined a claw, flicking away a remnant of venison. “They’ve been sealed, in fact, since Nerezza was brought out in chains. In such turbulent times, the wise dragon keeps her head down.”
“So you don’t know where everyone went?” I asked desperately. My call to arms would have a radically different outcome if my people had migrated into the territory of the Raging Tempests, rather than the Lunar Tides or Jade Leaves. We’d always had a rather fraught relationship with our southern neighbors.
“No idea,” she said blithely. “I decided the time was right to take a nap until you returned home.”
So she had been in the Dreamlands, at least until I’d touched the doors and announced my presence here.
It didn’t surprise me; it wasn’t like she could have come to Mistward herself to collect me, although I’d prayed someone would do just that. But, because of her nature, I couldn’t hold it against her that she’d been in the Dreamlands while I suffered.
Ascendants, as much as dragonbloods adored their own, were a different breed. They abided by different laws, some not entirely clear to their dragonblooded creations, and thousands of years ago had collectively agreed that the politics and punishments of their descendants were to be handled by the Drakkon and Dragonesse.
While many Ascendants would continue to provide counsel to their Houses, few, if any, would interfere in dragonbloods’ daily lives. My exile had been ordered by the Drakkon, and thus she would have been relatively powerless to change it.
In fact, it was slightly strange that Myst was involving herself at all in our scheme; I had half expected her to turn me out and leave me to make my way on my own.
But, if I was her last scion, I was literally the final living being in a ten-thousand-year-old bloodline who could continue said line.
For true dragons, it was considered a Great Work to build an eyrie and select the man or woman who would receive their blood. If a House naturally died out, it was rare—only one instance had ever been recorded by historical scholars—for an Ascendant to choose to begin anew.
With thousands of years of effort invested into her descendants, Myst’s goal to see her House lineage carried on was understandable, at least from my perspective. I was sure that for her, there was much more beneath the surface that I would never be able to understand.
While I was lost in thought, Rhylan removed the venison from the spit and carved it, giving me a heaping portion on a bowl we’d scrounged up from the parlor at the top of the eyrie.
“Eat up,” he said quietly. “We’re leaving at first light.”
I chewed and swallowed mechanically. The food was close enough to my fare on Mistward that I didn’t focus on it entirely, leaving me free to consider Myst’s extreme investment into ensuring that…well, that I had children.
Making her last scion Dragonesse was an understandably draconic goal; there was no Ascendant who did not vie to see their descendants on the throne.
But she wanted her House brought back to its full glory.
Gods…when I thought about my future Drakkon, the future father of my children, I could only see one face.
And as he’d just outlined to Myst, he fully intended to abide by the terms of our agreement.
The taste of the venison was suddenly ash and dust in my mouth. I gave it to Myst, who bolted it down in a flash, then curled up in front of the fire and seemed to drift into sleep immediately.
“I think I’ll get some sleep now too,” I said, trying to sound indifferent, like my insides weren’t being pulled a hundred separate ways.
Rhylan was also watching Myst, his brow crinkled in deep thought. “Sleep well, Sera.”
I didn’t want to want Rhylan. I didn’t want to want to be his Dragonesse, or the mother of his children, because I could already picture them, the silver scales of Silvered Embers and the brilliant blue eyes of Obsidian Flame, and how perfect they would be.
With a silent growl, I tucked myself into the bedroll and pulled it tightly around me with unnecessary violence.
I would continue my bloodline one day, doing my duty to my House, if nothing else.
And hopefully, unlikely though it might be, I would find a dragon who gave me a tenth of the pull I felt towards Rhylan.
I sent that wish up to the stars before I slept, but it was an empty gesture. The gods only knew how many wishes I’d sent that had never been answered before.
“Oh, this is clever,”Myst said approvingly, crawling all over Rhylan’s saddle and harness like a lizard.
She plucked at the hidden safety straps, turning her head this way and that, then skittered down on all fours and examined the ones on my pants. “Like the wyvern-riders, I see.”
“The idea was adapted from their harnesses,” I told her. “They’re simple enough to hook and unhook, but I have my doubts. It’s so…unnatural.”
She made a trilling sound in the back of her throat, a draconic sort of ‘hmmm’.
We had spent the dark hour before dawn in the vault; I wasn’t returning to Jhazra Eyrie empty-handed. Myst had firm opinions on which particular pieces of the hoard most deserved to be brought out, so I’d ended up with a sword that had an enormous blue goldstone set in the pommel, a diadem shaped rather cunningly like flames, and a necklace that was a thousand chains braided into a wide collar. My personal choices were rather more sedate than Myst’s penchant for flamboyance.
Currency, particularly silver half-moons and a few golden full-moons, were stuffed unceremoniously in sacks and hauled out. I wanted to be able to pay my way after what Rhylan and Kirana had given me.
I couldn’t allow it to be said that the House of Silvered Embers was stingy with their allies, or took more than they could pay for.
I strapped the sword to my belt, encouraged that it was functional and perfectly balanced despite the ostentatious jewel, but the necklace and diadem would have to wait. The hope that Myst would forget about them would remain harbored deep inside me.
“That sword belonged to Aela, your…forty-fifth grandmother?” Myst blinked, staring into the middle distance as she counted back. “Ah, it’s difficult to remember now. But she did become Dragonesse in her day, which makes her sword rather a good omen, don’t you think? And the diadem was cast by…”
She went on at length about ancestors I’d never heard of while I packed the saddlebags and loaded them onto the harness. Rhylan was bathing, and I had to keep myself moving, keep my mind from focusing on things that didn’t matter.
When he came up from the eyrie’s bath house, brushing back wet locks of black hair, I had to curl my fingers in the harness to keep myself from reaching out to touch them.
He wore only a towel wrapped around his waist, because he’d be shifting at any moment. Before I could tear my gaze away, my eyes followed the slow drip of a bead of water as it rolled over his chest and down the ridges of his stomach.
I looked up and found him staring at me. My cheeks burst into flame.
Myst cleared her throat. “Are we ready? Yes? I’m sealing the eyrie now!” She rose up on her hind legs, wings spreading wide behind her and catching the light like opaline prisms.
“All good,” Rhylan told her, with a lazy smile and a wink at me.
I gestured to the harness, examining the ceiling for anything interesting. “After you.”
“Not so fast.” He crossed to one of the columns, and I heard the sound of rustling leaves. A moment later he came to me, and I looked up at him while he wove a strand of star jasmine about my head like a crown.
My voice had vanished on me again while I watched his face. His mouth was set with concentration, and I took the time to fully examine the strong ridge of his nose, a thin scar on his forehead, a tiny sunburst speck of brilliant amber nestled in the iris of his left eye. All the tiny details I was not permitted to take in and memorize, because in the end…they were not for me.
“Just a little piece of home, huh?” He made a final adjustment, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear with a smile.
“Thanks,” I said hoarsely, finally finding words again. Rhylan looked into my eyes, his smile fading. His brows drew together as he reached some inner conclusion, but before he could move, the sound of rocks grinding together filled the terrace.
Myst let up on her growl when she realized she had our attention. “Let us be off!” Her silvery glare was focused on Rhylan.
I ducked away, unsure of what Rhylan had been thinking, afraid to ponder the answer.
Rhyland climbed under the harness and shifted, and as I began the process of buckling it into place, Myst let out a bell-like sound.
The crystals in the eyrie flared and went out. “There,” she said smugly. “No one will enter while I am away. Then we’ll come back with a nice, powerful dragon and you’ll fill it with precious little chublings to carry on my name. Caru has always had a strong bloodline, you know, six thousand years old, and his descendants are as prolific as rabbits…”
I mounted Rhylan, even as his back shook with chuckles. “Maybe in your wildest dreams,” I muttered.
My Ascendant strolled to the edge of the eyrie with cat-like grace, cocking her head as she looked back over her shoulder. “What was that?” she asked.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
I hooked my straps on and leaned forward, placing my palm on Rhylan in a moment of silence and peace.
He did not move until I patted him, then he soared out from the spire’s peak, followed by the ghostly form of Myst. I blinked my third eyelids down, leaning over the saddle and watching the glitter of Aurae’s Tears as they were lit by dawn’s rays.
I said my goodbyes inside my head, already feeling the wrench of leaving home so soon…but the crown of jasmine filled the air around me with its lush, ripe scent. Kirana might be able to bottle it for me.
With the scent of home in my nose, and my Ascendant flying at Rhylan’s side, a pearly phantom against his vast obsidian wings, the journey back to Jhazra seemed to take a fraction of the time it had taken to get there.
This time, all I had to do was look over at Myst as she cut through the sky and a smile would touch my face. Varyamar was no longer a distant dream, but a tangible project I was ready to begin working on.
After the First Claim, I would send out the call to my people. It gave me something to hold onto, a goal I could accomplish, rather than a plan that could fall apart at any moment.
I was so lost in thoughts of how to renew my House’s glory that several times during the flight, I didn’t realize that I had reached out and started stroking Rhylan’s back. Each time I would pull my hand back, resolved to keep it firmly tucked against the saddle, but there was something in the heat of dragon scales that was so comforting, a grounding touch.
We made it back just before dusk. The sun was a low, bloody orb in the sky as Rhylan circled the jagged peak of Jhazra and dropped into the dragon door.
I was stiff and sore in body but energized in spirit as I dismounted, delighted to see Myst come sweeping through the open windows after him. She perched on Viros’s desk, ruffling the pages of his enormous ledger without a care as she peered around, then began flipping through the logbook itself with an inquisitive eye.
Rhylan shifted, straightening up and stretching his arms out wide, rolling his neck. Without thinking, still bursting with gratitude and happiness, I flung myself at him, wrapping my arms around his chest and rising onto my tip-toes to press a kiss to his cheek.
Rhylan turned his head at the last second. My lips touched a smooth, slightly-stubbled cheek, then a soft mouth molded against mine.
He tasted like cinnamon, and smelled like dragonfire and smoke and cool air. His arms settled around me, holding me tightly against him as he kissed me back, the tip of his tongue flicking against my lower lip in encouragement to open for him.
My heart thrummed like a plucked string in my chest, stomach filling with butterflies. The muscles under my hands were hard as stone, tension vibrating through him, his hands trembling in my hair…
I kissed him harder, nipping his lower lip and drawing a growl out of him, and he slid a hand around my waist, grabbing me so tightly I felt the fullness of the hard shaft pushing against my stomach.
Heat shot through me like summer lightning, flooding every nerve ending with desire.
Rhylan snarled roughly, his tongue tangling around mine, head tilting to claim all of me—
“Is this the time or the place?” a fluting voice asked pointedly, only inches away from my ear.
With a sudden jolt, a feeling of being dropped back into my body from a thousand miles away, I realized where I was, what I was doing, who I was kissing.
I pulled back, staring at Rhylan with wide eyes, wondering how…how such a simple thing had changed so quickly.
“Sera,” he said roughly, but I pushed away from him, feeling my leathers rip where his claws had punctured into them.
“I have to go,” I said, my voice faint as I backed away.
We were partners in crime. Co-conspirators. Kissing without necessity was not part of the plan.
I almost ran into the eyrie door. The last thing I saw before I made it through was Rhylan rounding on a smug-looking Myst, his lips drawn back in a feral snarl over sharp teeth, black scales creeping over his entire body.
Nonetheless, I fled.