Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
IDALLIA
I wake up so stiff and sore, I fleetingly fear that parts of me don’t work anymore. The terrifying thought fades as I gingerly stretch and take stock of my limbs. All there, all intact, and more importantly, so are my birds.
Little Embersol sleeps tucked into the crook of my right arm. Rimblaze warms my entire left side. Fyrestar lounges at the base of the bed, keeping my feet from feeling the constant chill in my open-windowed quarters.
I know who else is in the room before I even turn my head. Sybil sits at my bedside, holding a mug of hot something between her hands. I smile at her a little warily as she looks at me through the steam rising from the cup.
My sheepish grin turns into a grimace. “I’m in for a scolding, aren’t I?” The rasping words scrape my parched throat.
“That was hard to fix.” She doesn’t look amused, eyeing me as if she wants to do more damage than healing right now.
“It was just a few scratches.”
She snorts. “Tell that to the skin on your back I had to regrow.”
“Fine, really deep scratches.” I try to sit up and immediately abandon the idea. Between everything hurting and my phoenixes pinning me down under my blanket, I stay where I am. “Scars?” I ask hesitantly.
“As if I’d let anything mar that skin of yours.”
Relief sweeps through me—vanity striking again. I’d eventually heal on my own, but Sybil’s magic both speeds it up and erases visible damage. I only have one mark on me, smallish twin scars on the inside of my right forearm that happened before my perfect memory kicked in.
“Did I almost die?” I ask.
She shakes her head, her frown accentuating the fine lines around her mouth. “You’re hard to kill. Luckily.”
I nod, the usual questions circling my mind like crows and pecking at where I’m the most sensitive and unsure.
I carefully stretch my limbs without disturbing the phoenixes, glad to be alive and healed, but wondering what in the blazing stars I am.
I’ve already lived about a hundred and thirty years too long for a human and still look like I’m twenty-five.
My slow aging and natural healing are on par with the fae and vampires, but I don’t have fae magic, and I might have a finicky appetite, but I’ve never once been tempted to latch on to a vein and guzzle down blood.
I don’t shift into anything, were or dragon. So what does that leave?
“Was healing me even harder than usual?” The dimming of magic is always a concern these days.
“It was…intense,” she answers.
I don’t like her cagey tone and look over sharply. “What do you mean?”
“Stuart’s convinced I’ve lost a year off my life.” She shrugs. “It just took a lot out of me.”
I stare at her in shock. “Is that possible? A year?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought so, but magic has never been this weak, and everything is harder now.”
“I’m so sorry, Sybil.” Tears well in my eyes. “I wish you’d left me scarred.”
“Are you jesting?” Outrage lifts her voice along with her brows. “I would consider it a professional failure to leave so much as a scratch on you. Besides, I know how much you’d hate it.”
My throat thickens. “I’d hate losing you more.”
“That, my friend,”—she reaches out and lightly grips my hand, a still-sleeping Sol between us—“is inevitable.”
I squeeze her hand back, fighting the rise of more tears.
Sybil has already crossed over the halfway mark of a normal human lifetime.
Healing magic only exists in humans, which is another reason the southern kingdom of Ruthinock needs the Dragon King’s protection.
Everyone wants a human sorcerer around—especially a healer—but not everyone wants to give them a choice about where they go or who they work for.
“Don’t worry.” Sybil sits back again, the steaming mug still in one hand.
“Even if Cealastra doesn’t see fit to replenish magic in Ellonrift, you won’t have to worry about much more than decapitation, extreme blood loss, or a sword through the heart.
And there will still be healers around, even if they’re not as powerful as they are now. ”
“You’re right,” I say hoarsely. But they won’t be my best friend.
I close my eyes, and that familiar, queasy feeling of dread hits me like a gong, vibrating the worst of my memories through me.
I’d been so alone at Glarraden House. Rita and Gerard were always too wrapped up in each other to notice me.
There were no other children on the estate, just a few crusty old dragon shifters on staff in an isolated country mansion—the “big house” of a small town.
Nearly forty years went by before my adoptive parents looked up from each other enough to notice I wasn’t aging and wouldn’t live a human lifetime and die.
Being sent off to the Drayke School of Fire and Flight was going to change everything.
Companions. Socializing. Normal-life stuff.
It was all I wanted, and it couldn’t have gone more wrong.
Nothing went right until Bale offered me a job and a home.
Swallowing hard, I open my eyes. I hate my memories more than seeing the age on Sybil’s face and the gray strands mixing into her brown hair. But I don’t turn to her yet. I look to Fyrestar instead.
His golden gaze meets mine, compassionate and warm. “Don’t be sad, Idallia. You know humans never last, and Sybil’s life is good and filled with comfort and friends.”
I clamp my mouth tight against the surge of emotion trying to emerge as an anguished sound. Leave it to Fyrestar to know exactly what I’m thinking, and leave it to being recently injured to make my reactions so raw I feel turned inside out and buffeted by rough updrafts beating at my exposed heart.
I already lost Everly to the human rot of age, and she wasn’t even that old.
She was a healer, too, and very different from Sybil, much quieter and more maternal.
After she died, I avoided humans for a long time, furious at them for their fleetingness.
I didn’t talk to any of the sorcerers for years, but then Sybil showed up, young, alone, nervous, and just like me when I was at school—desperately in need of a friend.
I inhale quietly, pulling my emotions back inside.
Sybil inspects the mug, carefully swirling its contents. “Almost cool enough to drink, and you need some food.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I don’t care.” She stares me down and, as usual, she wins.
“Fine. But I hope it’s a vegetable broth and not something with meat.” I usually can’t stomach meat. Luckily, there’s never a shortage of highly carnivorous dragon shifters around to finish what I don’t eat.
“Of course. For now,” she adds ominously. “And without anything that might’ve even remotely touched a turnip.”
“Thank Cealastra,” I murmur. I hate turnips.
Sybil helps me sit up straighter and tucks an extra pillow behind my back. My skin is sore, but I know the discomfort will pass. I still groan, the creaking stiffness in my muscles a mix of healing remnants and having fought so many werebeasts that I lost count somewhere along the way.
Sol barely stirs as Sybil hands me the mug. Rim clicks his beak, making sure I know he’s watching me until I take a sip. Fyrestar surveys us all from the foot of the bed.
I take a few swallows of the thick soup, warm liquid soothing my dry throat. “Satisfied?” I ask the room in general.
Sybil nods but won’t take the mug back when I try to hand it to her.
Fyrestar chuckles. “Nice try.”
“Finish it or I’ll tickle you,” Rim says, placing his beak menacingly close to my armpit.
I instinctively pull my arms in, give him the stink eye, and take another sip.
It takes some effort, especially after my initial thirst is quenched, but I down the entire mug. The soup was dense, but at least there were no chunks. “I deserve a medal for that.” Setting the empty mug on my bedside table, I settle back into my pillows, tucking Sol in close.
Sybil’s exaggerated exhalation speaks to how many times we’ve had this same conversation after I wake up from an injury. “My biggest triumph will be the day I find something you like to eat.”
“I liked my birthday cake.” I made sure both Sybil and Stuart got a piece.
“I’m not talking about fruit or desserts.”
Sighing, I stroke Rim’s feathers, his inner fire warming my fingers. With my other hand, I gently tease the soft plumes of Sol’s little yellow head crest, her small talons lightly twitching against my waist as she sleeps. Fyrestar continues to keep my feet comfortable with his pleasant glow.
I blink heavily, drowsy now that I’m toasty and fed. “Kellan flew me back,” I murmur.
“I know.” Sybil pitches forward, her hazel eyes gleaming with interest. “And? What was that like?”
For some reason, my chest squeezes tight. “He’s big and scaly.”
She laughs. “You used to enjoy riding him.”
“You were young. You don’t remember right.”
One graying eyebrow creeps up. “I arrived here at seventeen years old and remember everything perfectly—including that the two of you couldn’t keep your hands off each other.”
I shrug a little painfully. “Things change.”
“Not for him.”
Guilt blooms in the lingering tightness of my chest. “Kellan wanted more than I can give.”
Sybil sits back, her brow creasing. “He wanted to marry you. Mate. Have a family. Is that so bad?”
“Yes, when I realized I didn’t want to marry him.” The guilt still eats at me. For hurting Kellan. For the tension still impacting the team. Some days are fine. Some are strange and hard and so incredibly awkward I wish I could reverse time and never start something that was going to end.
That I was going to end.
“I know he antagonizes you, but that’s only because he wants your attention.”
He definitely antagonizes me. He’d also lay down his life for me in a heartbeat. “Kellan wanted all of me, and I don’t even know who I am. What I am. I just…couldn’t.”
“It’s more than that,” Fyrestar rumbles in my mind.
“And something was missing,” I add softly. “It just didn’t feel right.”