Forty Nine
Alara
“She feels fine with you on her back,” I tell Getha, looking over Thorrad, her green scales shining as her chest glows.
“Really?” Getha asks.
“Yeah.”
Thorrad purrs, and I smile, stroking her side.
“You’re doing so well,” I tell her, and she shifts, ears flickering.
“Will this really work?” Sigrid asks, watching them.
“It is working,” I reply. “We don’t have much time, but it has to be enough.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it.” I tell her softly. “We have to.”
She walks up to the bars and strokes Thorrad’s snout. “You’re right.” She turns to Getha. “How do you feel?”
Getha looks down. “In awe,” she whispers, brown eyes shining. “I’m ready to do whatever it takes, Dragonbond.”
She places a closed fist over her heart.
“I know,” Sigrid replies. “Stay on her back longer, get a feel for her, where your hands need to be. You won’t have reins, but Thorrad knows this and will hold you well.”
“I know,” Getha says. “I feel it when she moves. How careful she is.”
I grin at them and we move along, Sigrid following me.
She looks at the guards upon the castle walls, torches casting an orange glow on their faces as they look down at us, but they can’t really see what we’re doing.
“I can’t wait to have Celeste rip their heads off after what they’ve done to us.”
I grimace. “Gruesome.”
She eyes me. “We have to be. Some come down and start fights, try to enter tents they’re not welcome in.”
I bite my lip and look down. “What about the ones who don’t? What if they don’t have a choice either?”
“What?” she asks, checking her dagger.
“They hold the walls and watch over us, but I can’t help but think that maybe some of them didn’t have a choice in the matter either.
The king doesn’t like rebellion, being questioned…
” I stop between the boundary between her dragons and mine.
“What if they have another at home? A family, children? What if they’re forced to be here, otherwise they will be hurt? ”
She sighs. “It’s not black and white, Alara.”
“Exactly.”
“War is not kind. Sometimes a side has to be picked, sometimes we have no choice in the matter. We kill our own members.” She points in the direction of the Enclave. “We are forced into these Games, to have blood on our hands, to choose between them and us.”
“I know that,” I say quietly, but she slashes her hand through the air.
“I understand your thoughts on them, but we all have no choice here, understand? We all must do what we can to protect our own, and that means innocents are caught between what is right, what is wrong, and what is best.”
I look down at my booted feet. “I just… I can’t help but feel… sadness for it all. All the death.”
She dips down and catches my eye. “You’re empathetic to others, and I understand, we aren’t fond of death either, but over time, we’ve had to harden ourselves to it.” She stands, and turns, beginning to walk away. “It’s the only way we can survive ourselves sometimes.”
I watch her disappear into the night and I look up to those above, sighing.
They would shoot us down with Nighturn, they would shoot our dragons down with it, I know this, but I can’t help wondering that if given the choice without a consequence, would they choose to do it still?
I imagine myself standing between them and a dragon, between Rohan and yes… she’s right.
I would choose them.
No matter what.
“Come,” Rohan says, and I turn, finding him standing next to Solia, hand out.
I go without question, my hand slipping into his.
His palm is warm, and I look up at him, eyes catching those braids still in his hair.
Yes. I would do anything to keep him safe.
“What is it?” he asks, glancing down at me.
I shake my head. “Thank you for always taking care of me.”
He stops at that, swallowing roughly.
“It’s my duty.”
“Your duty is to your clan.”
“My duty changed from the moment I met you.”
I blink up at him, heartbeat pounding.
I raise on my tiptoes and he dips down, our lips connecting.
It’s a soft kiss, reassuring, a feeling of needing to be closer, of unspoken words and connected hearts.
I break the kiss, and he places one to my forehead before he squeezes my hand, guiding me back through the dragons.
“Did it go well?” he asks,
“Yes, that’s five now on dragonback.”
“Many more than what we started with,” he muses.
“It is,” I agree. “Where are we going?”
“You have a guest.”
Niyah sits across from me while Rohan and Alexandar stay near the entrance, the tension thick in the air between them.
“I would like some privacy with my sister,” Niyah says, and warmth spreads through me at her words.
My sister.
“No,” they both say, and we turn to them.
“It’s okay,” I tell Rohan, giving him a soft smile. “I would like time with her too.”
I don’t know how much I’ll even be able to have.
He looks between Niyah and Alexandar.
“He comes with me.” He points to Alexandar. “And you,” he says to Niyah. “Don’t upset her.”
Niyah tilts her head. “Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know you,” he says. “So I don’t know your motives.”
“They’re sisters, Rohan, like we are brothers,” Alexandar chimes in.
Rohan turns to him. “If that’s your example, I may as well kill her now.”
“Rohan!” I gasp, while Niyah grins.
“And you are not my brother,” he finishes.
Alexandar’s fingers curl in his gloved hands. “Be careful how you speak about her.”
Rohan raises a brow. “Oh? And what will you do—”
“Rohan, please?” I cut him off.
He snaps his mouth shut, eyes glaring for a moment. Then his nostrils flare.
“Fine.”
He opens the tent flap, gesturing for the prince to follow.
Alexandar stares hard at my sister, and then he walks out, back stiff.
“I’ll be just outside,” Rohan tells me.
“I know.” After one more look, the flap closes behind him.
“He is quite protective,” Niyah says, eyes on the entrance.
I smile down into my cup. “He is.”
We sit in awkward silence, taking sips of water until Niyah sighs.
“We will become more comfortable with each other.”
I lift my head. “Will… will we have time to be?”
Her eyes harden. “I’ll make sure of it.”
I nod, and we lock eyes once more.
More memories are slowly coming back since I met her, from when I was young and all I saw was my sister.
How we would play, she’d give me yellow flowers, I think she made me a crown of them once. And then she would read to me…
“I can’t read,” I blurt out.
I haven’t said those words aloud before, not even with Rohan. Though he guessed without me needing to voice it. But for some reason, I want to tell her.
“You can’t?” she asks, eyebrows high.
I shake my head. “No. I wasn’t… taught to. I wasn’t needed for that.”
She blows out a harsh breath.
“Did… How?…” she trails off, frowning. “Shit,” she says, rubbing a hand down her face.
“They didn’t rape me. Not as a child, not as I got older.”
She nods. “I know you told me some about the underground… I just wasn’t sure how much… You were so small,” she murmurs, looking me over.
“I still am.”
She laughs, and I do too, it feels nice.
“You were born a little earlier than most. You were tiny really, perfectly fitting in my arms as young as I was. They didn’t think you would make it.”
I blink at that. “Really?”
“Yeah. You struggled to breathe at first, and would get really sick, but Elanore…”
I jolt at that name.
“Alara,” I tell her, and she blinks at me as I shift uncomfortably. “My name is Alara.”
She eyes me for a moment, sadness washing across her face but she nods.
“Alara,” she whispers. “You were strong, even back then.”
My cheeks heat. “Rohan tells me I’m strong, but I don’t feel it.”
“To have survived so much makes you strong, but it also doesn’t mean those who didn’t, aren’t either—” she winces, grabbing the side of her head suddenly, groaning under her breath.
I get up and sit beside her, hand hovering over the side of her head.
“Are you okay?”
She smiles at me, though it’s a little strained.
“Yeah, it’s just been a long day.”
I nod, sitting back on my heels as she turns to me, grabbing my hand.
“My sister,” she whispers, and my chest warms. “I still can’t believe it.”
“Neither can I. It’s been a very long time.”
“It has.” She lifts her hand and traces over my face. “It’s strange to see you with no Seidr.”
“Seidr?”
“Markings. To be under Elvanan’s blessing.”
“You have some?”
She turns and holds her hair up, and there, just below her hair line are delicate markings. Pretty. Feminine.
She turns back to me and lifts the bottom of her tunic, pulling her pants down a little at her hips. She has lines there too, like branches that disappear further down.
“I have them all over my body with being so close to the elder tree, but most have face markings somewhere. Mine are just at the back.”
“How is it done?”
“With mana, the source of the lands.”
“Magic?”
She nods.
“It’s beautiful.”
Niyah smiles, moving her very long hair over her shoulder to rest in her lap.
“They all have different meanings, subtle changes to represent who we are.”
“When did you have yours done?”
“Sixteen.”
“Did it hurt?”
She tilts her head, thinking. “Yes and no. It feels like you’re fully connected to mana, and that can burn.”
“Do you have magic then?”
“Hmm,” she thinks for a moment. “Not in the way you would think. More like enhancing abilities.”
I’ve never heard of that before.
“Would I need to get one?”
She places her slender finger upon my cheek. “I would love for you to have our family markings upon you, but if you don’t want them on your skin, you are no less a part of us.”
My brows furrow. “I don’t know if I would want to. I… I’m not sure I belong there.”
I look down, worrying she will be upset with me.
“Oh, little sister. You belong wherever you want to be, and I think your answer lies with the brooding man outside.”
I laugh, and she grins, until it slowly dies.
“He’ll take care of you.”
“He already has,” I reassure her.
“Good.”
“He wants to get me out of here,” I tell her, and she nods.
“I know, and I agree. When an opportunity arises, we need to get you away from here.”
I frown. “We have a plan, we just need a moment to make it work, and if not, well, I… I won’t leave them.”
“Sometimes we have no choice,” she says sadly.
Silence settles around us again until I ask, “Do you want to marry him?”
She startles. “Alexandar?”
I nod.
“I…No.”
“Then why—”
“Part of my journey here was in hope of finding you, and unbelievably, I did, but there is much more to do now.”
“Like?”
“Like protecting the Elven lands, the source of mana, and if that means marrying that asshole, then that’s what I will do.”
The tent flap opens. “Niyah,” Alexandar barks. “Time to go.”
“But—”
“Now!”
She rolls her eyes then draws me into a hug. “I’ll see you very soon, sister.”
And then she’s gone like the wind, and Rohan enters.
He sits behind me as I stare at the tent’s exit, his legs encasing me as he undoes my braid and combs through my hair.
“Will she be okay marrying Alexandar?”
“I don’t know.”
My shoulders slump, and he sighs, taking my chin in his hand and turning me to face him.
“But if we’re going off of the fact that she just tried to stab him, I think she’ll be fine.”