20. Alar
ALAR
I came to Elucia under false pretenses, hoping to gain knowledge, immortality, and perhaps even a dragon alliance to save the future of my people.
I'm leaving it as a rider and a man in love.
The irony is not lost on me. I spent months pretending to be someone I wasn't, and in the process became someone I actually wanted to be.
Now I'm being dragged back to the life I had escaped.
—From the private journals of Prince Alaranthus Tekumuton the Fifth
The stairwell to the roof had never felt so arduous despite having to climb only three floors from the officers' floor, and it wasn't because my rucksack was heavy.
The emotional heaviness was worse than the physical.
Each step was a countdown, each landing was another piece of the Citadel that I was leaving behind, another layer of the life I'd built here peeling away.
My civilian soft leather boots whispered instead of struck.
For months, I'd climbed these steps in military-issue footwear, the hard soles striking a rhythm that my mind had learned to associate with purpose.
It was another reminder of the difference between the life I was leaving behind and the one I was returning to.
When I reached the roof, the cold morning air carried the scent of snow from the higher peaks. The auroras were still visible, as they always were in Elucia, but they were fading in the growing daylight.
Commander Ravel was there with Onyx and five other dragons, and riders were mounted and ready. Onyx's obsidian scales absorbed the morning light rather than reflecting it, making him look like a hole cut in the fabric of the world.
"Good morning, Alar." Ravel said as he dismounted from Onyx.
He’d seen me earlier, so I assumed he was just being polite, repeating the greeting, and he regarded me with compassion that I didn't want. The only way I was going to survive this day was to turn cold, and compassion or empathy had the power to dissolve the ice I was building around my heart.
"Commander," I said without repeating the greeting. There was nothing good about this morning.
"Give me your pack." He reached for it. "I'll secure it to Onyx's underbelly."
"I can do that." I started toward the dragon.
"No, you can't. Dragons prefer when their bonded riders do it, but you can watch me and practice with Veynathei when you return."
I shrugged off the rucksack and handed it over. "I appreciate your confidence in my return."
He offered me a rare smile. "I trust Saphir. I don't know what he wrote in that letter to your father, but I'm sure it's convincing."
The commander secured the pack to the specialized harness strapped under his dragon. It looked so small against Onyx's massive frame. My entire life in Elucia was reduced to a lump dangling beneath a dragon's belly.
Ravel climbed on Onyx's back and motioned for me to join him.
I didn't forget to ask the dragon's permission before following his rider's instructions, and once permission was granted with a nod of the massive reptilian head, I climbed onto Onyx's back and settled behind Ravel's position.
The dragon's scales were different from Veynathei's, rougher and warmer, like sun-heated stone compared to her smooth crystal. The riding straps were configured for a passenger, wider and more padded than the rider's setup. I buckled in the same way I'd been practicing for months.
"All strapped in?" Ravel asked over his shoulder.
"Yes, sir."
He handed me a pair of goggles and then pulled his into place. "We'll fly at cruising altitude. The route takes us southwest over the central range and then south to Podana. About forty minutes' flight."
The last forty minutes I would spend in Elucia's sky.
On Ravel's signal, Onyx launched, and the roof dropped away beneath us with a force that pressed me into the saddle, but I still managed to turn my head over my shoulder and watch the squadron follow us in tight formation, the dragons flanking us forming a V pattern.
Ravel and I were about the same height, which meant that I couldn't see over his head, but I could see enough by looking to the side, and the view was spectacular as always. Except this time, I was about to see much more of Elucia than the academy's training airspace.
The mountains rose in jagged ranks, their peaks white with snow, and their valleys filled with blue-gray mist. The auroras painted their fading colors across the sky above, and between the peaks, I imagined the magnetic currents shimmering faintly, visible only to dragons' eyes and other creatures that navigated by them.
"Elucia is beautiful," Ravel's voice carried back to me over the wind.
"Yes, it is."
We flew in silence for a while, the only sounds the rhythmic beat of Onyx's wings and the rush of air past my ears. The squadron maintained their formation, their dragons adjusting for wind and thermal shifts.
I would have given anything to be flying Veynathei right now, to feel her presence in my mind and the shifting colors of her scales beneath my hands. Instead, I was a passenger on another rider's dragon, a cargo being delivered to the border.
"Can I ask you something?"
"You can ask. I may not answer."
"Fair enough." I needed to talk to someone about what Kailin had seen, and Ravel was my last chance.
"Four times Kailin has dreamt of me dying.
In two of the dreams, it occurred during Shedun attacks on the Citadel and in the other two, it was by falling off Veynathei's back.
Obviously, I can only die once, so the dreams contradicted themselves.
Then I was summoned home so neither of those dreams would come to pass. I don't know what to make of that."
Ravel was quiet for long enough that I thought he might not answer.
"Kailin's dream about Podana saved thousands of lives.
I was there. I saw the attack unfold exactly as she'd described it, so I believe her dreams carry weight, but your points are valid.
You are leaving, so you are not going to die in either way.
Then again, you might return, and then one of those could come to pass, or the dreams might be metaphorical. "
I hadn't thought of that. "In what way?"
He shrugged. "Maybe the death scenarios indicate your departure from a life as a rider and back to your life as a prince of Catonia. Perhaps your part in the prophecy is diplomatic in nature, and you can only fulfill it from Catonia."
"So, you think that me leaving was the right thing to do?"
He chuckled. "You're making it sound as if it was your choice.
It wasn't. If the diplomatic demand hadn't come, you'd still be here, flying with Veynathei, ignoring Kailin's warnings, and convincing yourself that the dreams were just nightmares.
But perhaps the summons came at the right time to save you from dying. "
The following stretch of silence was filled by the wind and the wingbeats and the vast beauty of the mountains below.
We passed a lake, its surface reflecting the fading auroras like a dark mirror.
Then a valley came into view, where a small settlement clung to the mountainside, smoke rising from chimneys, and tiny shapes of people moving around.
"Take care of her," I said.
Ravel's shoulders stiffened, almost imperceptible. "Kailin doesn't need anyone taking care of her."
"That's not what I meant."
The silence that followed was charged with things neither of us was willing to spell out.
I could have resented him for the feelings he was trying so hard to hide and failing.
Part of me did. But a larger part recognized that when I was gone, Kailin would need someone who cared about her well-being.
She had Shovia, Codric, and Morek, but Ravel was a commander, and he could do more for her than those three combined.
"It's going to be difficult for her no matter what everyone around her does to cheer her up," Ravel said.
"The best way to help her cope is to keep her so busy that she won't have time to think about you.
Saphir has plans to intensify her shamanic training, and Morgateth will keep her strong through it. "
"That's not what I meant either, but I'll take it."
He turned his head just enough that I caught the edge of his profile. "What exactly do you mean, Prince Alaranthus?"
"I mean that she's going to be lonely, Commander.
She left her family and her dog and her grandmother's apothecary to become something she never wanted to be, and now she's losing me.
" I swallowed. "She'll throw herself into training and shaman duties and pretend she's fine because that's what Kailin does.
But she won't be fine. Not for a while. I'm afraid for her. "
"And you want me to watch out for that."
"I want someone to notice when she's falling apart and pretending to be just fine."
Ravel was quiet for a long moment. "I'll notice," he said finally.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. I would have done it regardless of whether you asked me to. I'll just feel a little less guilty about it now that you gave me your blessing."
The honesty of his words and in his tone told me everything I needed to know and everything I'd suspected for months. I should have been angry. I should have felt territorial, possessive, jealous. And I was all those things, but I was also grateful.
For me, the hardest part of leaving was knowing that Kailin suffered. My suffering didn't mean half as much to me as hers did.
The mountains began to change as we flew south.
The jagged, impossible peaks of the central range gave way to lower, gentler formations, still formidable by any standard but lacking the lethal grandeur of the interior.
Podana appeared ahead, the capital city of Elucia, built of stone and timber on the mountainside, its squat, simple buildings a far cry from the skyscrapers of Catonia's capital.