Chapter 6 Aderyn
ADERYN
It was hard to sleep again when Roland had gone. His warmth, curled against me, had been relaxing in a way nothing else ever was.
Sometimes, when we were traveling and I had trouble sleeping and the nightmares were strong, my sisters used to use me as a bed, all climbing atop me like I was a baby dragon nest. That, too, had been comforting.
It had almost always helped me sleep, even when my brain didn’t want to let go of the scattered bloody images of the Battle of Windy Pass.
Sharp spurs in my side. Vidar, my stolen feather beneath his armor, his cruel black eyes closed forever, his whole face covered in blood.
I’d hated him, yes, but his death was still the stuff that fueled my nightmares.
Sometimes, I dreamed that Roland had been the one to die that day, and it was his lifeless, blood-covered face I saw in my nightmares. His curls limp and covered with the bloody, shitty mud of the battlefield.
Those had been the worst, but at least they had only happened when we were away from the Spires.
Not that I ever told Hafgan that. He cared too much about us, and he’d have been heartbroken that his compromise of traveling had failed me in any way. He’d spent so much time, so much effort, trying to make everyone happy.
That was how I’d learned that compromise didn’t always work. When people didn’t all want the same thing, someone wasn’t going to get what they wanted. Maybe everyone wasn’t. Sometimes, that was okay.
Sometimes, it hurt.
But really, what did I have to complain about?
I didn’t live in a cage anymore, bleeding to feed Vidar’s men my magic.
Men who didn’t have the patience, or maybe the talent, to go to the Hudoliaeth and learn magic the right way, so he decided for them that they would trade their humanity to steal mine.
No one cut me every day. No one fed me rotting food not fit for the dogs. No one called me “Dragon” instead of using the name I’d chosen.
My life was in every way better than it had been.
Complaining would be silly.
Still, sleeping in a room that was about Roland, in my heart, without Roland there? It simply wasn’t going to happen.
So a while after he left, I sat up, reaching for my clothes, which were strewn around the room. I was still redoing the ties on my tunic when I reached the hallway, sleepily smiling to myself.
I would see Roland at breakfast. We would share a secret smile, and I’d blush, because in my human body, I couldn’t keep my skin from flushing bright red at the slightest provocation.
I’d duck my head, and he’d give me that enormous smile that always seemed, to me, a combination of Tristram’s pure joy at mere existence, and Bet’s sly amusement when he knew more than everyone else—which was always, of course.
Roland’s parents had been Reynold and his wife, neither of whom I’d ever met, but it seemed to me that all of his personality had come from the men who’d taken him in after his father’s death.
“You have the king’s ear,” a voice said, interrupting my thoughts and making me jerk to a stop in the middle of the hallway.
I didn’t like it. It reminded me of some of Vidar’s vassals, the ones who had agreed with him on everything, and then said cruel, slimy things to and about each other when he hadn’t been present.
Their words were slick and poisonous, and it had been one of a very few things that had made me glad to be inside a cage—being away from them. Protected by the very bars that had trapped me.
“The king keeps his own counsel,” I said, lifting my head and searching the hall till I found the source of the words.
It was one of the men who had escorted the strangers to dinner the night before. He had helped the woman in the mourning clothes into her seat, then slipped away into the hall, not eating dinner with the rest of us.
One of the dignitaries from across the sea.
I didn’t know what he was doing wandering the halls, let alone so near Roland’s rooms, but I was sure the palace guards knew where he was, and were keeping an eye on him.
That was their whole job, after all, even if he was a foreign dignitary and to be treated with respect.
“Certainly, he’s a clever young man,” the slimy fellow said, apparently agreeing with me, but . . . had that been what I’d said at all? “But he trusts you.”
That was true, or at least, I liked to think it was. Not that I advised Roland on matters of state, because what did I know about ruling a kingdom? I couldn’t do a thing like that. I was just a little dragon who’d been raised inside a cage.
“I’ve known him for a long time,” I hedged. Because it only made sense, didn’t it? One needed time to become trusted. One needed to prove themselves a trustworthy ally.
Admittedly, no one could recreate the circumstances Roland and I had met under, or the bond that hardship had forged between us. How could anyone else understand what it was like to be held in a cage for Jarl Vidar’s amusement, when no one else had been through it?
The man’s lips pursed for a moment, his eyes strangely flat and cold, even for the discomfort of the pre-dawn chill in the palace.
Then he gave me a smile that once again reminded me of those slippery men who had worked for Vidar—not so much a smile as a baring of teeth, like an angry predator who wanted nothing more than to pounce.
“Of course,” he agreed. “But perhaps it’s someone like you, who has known him for a long time, who needs to remind him of his responsibilities. ”
I cocked my head at him, confused, and for some reason, he swallowed hard and took a step back. “I assure you, Roland knows his responsibilities very well. He’s been king since he was a small boy. He’s learned well what he owes his people.”
“A future,” the man said. “He owes them a future, does he not?”
That was . . . confusing, frankly. “Is there a reason to believe the future will not come?”
The man huffed, frustrated with my clear thick-headedness. No one had ever trained me as a courtier, though, so what did I know of subtlety? “He needs heirs,” the man said, stressing the word as though it were something I personally needed to consider. “How else will Llangard go on when he’s gone?”
The very notion stopped me cold, not for worry about Llangard, but Roland himself.
Roland, gone.
No, that wasn’t possible. How could anyone, anywhere, survive Roland’s death?
No, surely the world itself would break apart on the event of Roland’s death. Nothing could be without him. Roland was all things good and beautiful in the world, and without him, there would be no point in any of it.
When I didn’t respond, the man huffed a sigh. “He needs to marry and produce heirs. Without a clear line of succession, Llangard could fall to chaos.”
I continued frowning at him, and he looked ready to start again, when a young man—one of the palace guards—turned the corner at the end of the hall, Tris alongside him.
“Mister Aronin,” Tristram said, unusual tension filling his voice. “I’m sure you remember that this section of the palace is off limits to visitors.”
“The dragon is here,” the man protested, waving at me.
My stomach turned over at being referred to as “the dragon.” It was too close to “dragon,” the only name Vidar had allowed me as a child.
I didn’t—couldn’t—no. I turned and fled toward the rooms Hafgan and Bowen always took when we visited the palace, my feet rushing over the hard stone floors with no further care for how cold they were. I needed my brother.
Bowen was the one who was awake when I rushed into the sitting room in the middle of the suite, sitting at a delicate table that looked like it might break at just his impressive presence.
He shoved himself up, and mere seconds after I’d pushed into the room and nearly slammed the door shut behind me, his strong arms were enveloping me.
“There now, Aderyn, what’s wrong? Someone I need to crisp-fry?”
I gave a wet giggle and shook my head. “Aderyn,” I told him. “Always Aderyn. Never Dragon.”
“That’s right,” he agreed. Then he paused, and his eyes narrowed. “Did someone call you Dragon?”
“The dragon,” I whispered. “I don’t—I don’t like it.”
He squeezed me tight, knowing just what I needed. “Nor should you. Even aimed at someone other than you, calling a person by their race is almost certainly intended as disrespect. None of us has to accept that.”
Disrespect. Was that what it had been? He hadn’t seemed rude, precisely, just . . . wrong. And his main point, main concern, had been about Roland and some imagined power I had over him.
Did Roland need to marry, to secure . . . succession?
I looked up at Bowen. Bowen was ancient, and he knew so many things.
“Does Roland need to marry?” I asked him. “To . . . to secure the line of succession?”
He considered for a moment. “I don’t know that he needs to marry for that purpose, but I suppose it would be the standard thing for a human to do.
Dragons choose their leaders more through which matriarch is the best at leading.
Humans tend to pass such things on to their children.
I’ve always wondered what happens when they don’t have children.
Perhaps he’ll do as dragons do, and choose the best woman in his kingdom to follow him as leader.
” He scrunched up his face a little. “Or as Halwyn, and choose a male, though that’s still a little odd to me. I’m just old-fashioned, I suppose.”
Old-fashioned. Maybe that was it. Maybe having to have children was old-fashioned, for humans. Maybe . . . maybe I needed to learn more, before I went drawing any real conclusions.