Chapter 16 Aderyn
ADERYN
The Summer Clan village was quiet when we arrived, which was unusual for them. Not that a tiny mountain village was ever especially loud, not like Atheldinas, constantly bustling with thousands of people in the streets, but the Summer Clan was . . . well, they were a busy people.
Rosalyn and her forge, Halwyn and her sheep, the twins running through the streets, playing and shouting. Things were rarely entirely quiet.
And yet that was the state of things when we arrived.
There was a hush over the whole mountainside.
Rhiannon, my sister’s namesake, was the one who came out to meet us, looking pale and wan, something that didn’t seem right at all. Rhiannon was a vibrant, happy dragon, constantly full of energy and fun.
She was also usually at the Hudoliaeth.
Bowen swept his cape around himself, looking around, and met her eye. “What’s happening?”
So clearly, I was not the only one who had felt the sheer wrongness of whatever was happening.
Rhiannon frowned, looking behind her, then back to us, her voice a bare whisper when she spoke up.
“The twins are sick. Sidonie and I flew here as soon as we heard. There’s been .
. . well, they thought it was just a sort of winter illness.
The sniffles, that sort of thing, you know?
But then the twins caught it, and . . . it’s so much worse than that. ”
I blinked at the thought, and had to cringe at my own selfishness when my first thought was of how this affected me.
Roland’s “line of succession” wasn’t so simple after all, if the twins were at risk.
It was unheard of. Dragon children didn’t get sick.
Even living in squalor and near-starvation for most of my childhood, I had never been particularly sickly.
So the twins, plump and hale and hearty as they had always been, very much the children of their enormous, brawny father .
. . well, it seemed impossible that they would be at risk for anything at all.
Still, as much of a jokester as Rhiannon was, this wasn’t the sort of thing anyone would jest over. Children being sick was a dragon’s worst nightmare. Children were a rare thing, each to be cherished and held dear.
So we followed her in silence to the cave Maddox, Gillian, and the twins lived inside.
Gillian was hunched over a cauldron on the fire, and Maddox was curled up between the two children, who looked pale and feverish. It was like something out of a nightmare, seeing two people I loved like my own siblings laid low by an illness.
So we all, as a family, fell into a pattern we always followed when unexpected things went wrong. We circled up and took care of our own.
Bowen joined Gillian at the cauldron, putting an arm around her and quietly asking what she needed. Hafgan joining Maddox and the twins to see what he could do. My sisters sitting down quietly, an action that was deeply out of character, to read while everyone else worked.
I was at a loss at first, but soon enough, I was helping Bowen finish making a stew while Gillian went to join her husband and children. We worked mostly in quiet for a while, and as stressful as the situation was, it was also soothing.
We would always come together as a family, to take care of each other.
Except, apparently, for Roland.
No, I would abandon him because I couldn’t conceive of opening a vein to take care of him.
And yet, even so far away, even knowing that Roland was nothing like Vidar, the very idea of doing so gave me a chill.
That wasn’t Roland. He didn’t use dragons up or treat us like stray dogs.
But feeding someone dragon blood was wrong.
It was wrong for me, and it was wrong for them, and my eternal nightmares of the dragon-monsters on the field at Windy Pass proved that true.
If people were meant to drink dragon’s blood, it wouldn’t turn them into awful monsters. It would just give them magic, as they wanted.
But if Roland were meant to have magic, he would simply have magic. Gillian was his aunt, and she did.
Sometimes Roland talked about having had magic as a child . . . but he didn’t anymore. Had drinking dragon blood killed his own magic? What an awful thought.
Bowen handed me a bowl of stew, dragging me out of my thoughts, and turned to lay a hand on my shoulder. “Your brother is angry right now, but remember something for me, bird.”
I blinked up at him, numb and mute, but nodded.
“He’ll feel better given some time to cool down.
But that doesn’t matter. You’re not him.
You don’t have to think what he does, or believe the same things as him.
Your life is yours. Your relationship with Roland is yours.
Only you and he get to decide what that looks like.
I love your brother more than anything else in the world, but I don’t make my decisions based only on his opinions.
” He leaned in, cupping my cheeks in his hands.
“Only you get to decide what you want your life to look like, and no one else gets to question it, as long as you’re happy and not hurting anyone. Understood?”
Again, I nodded, clutching the bowl of stew against my chest, but now I was also trying to blink back tears.
We spent the night there in Maddox and Gillian’s home, helping to take care of the family. Not that other dragons in the Summer Clan wouldn’t have done the same if they’d been asked, but Hafgan was very good at simply inserting himself into situations and not asking permission before helping.
And, I admitted to myself while thinking of my situation, sometimes he was wrong about what people needed help with, even if his heart was always in the right place.
Sometimes, the rest of us had to help ourselves, not just let Hafgan do things for us.
Yet almost two days later, I was still sitting in the square in Brynaf, sketching on a piece of paper. What else was I going to do while Hafgan nursed people back to health?
I was sitting there glaring at my work when a messenger arrived. When Rhiannon came running up the path, breathless, muttering something about humans being too damned helpless.
“Rhiannon?”
She looked over at me, scrunching up her face in concern. “It’s . . . a message from the palace.” Her eyes darted toward the cave. “How are they?”
“Better, I think,” I told her. “Teagan’s fever broke this morning, so I think she’s going to be fine. Bowen thinks they both will, and Bowen is never wrong.”
Rhiannon took a deep breath, nodding, her shoulders drooping with relief. “I guess things aren’t going so well at the palace,” she said, frowning and holding out a rolled-up note. “That king of theirs has been kidnapped. Again.”
For a moment I just stared at her, blinking in shock.
Roland? Did she mean . . . Roland?
Of course she did, who else could she mean? Roland was the only king the humans of Llangard had.
With a burst of speed, I leapt into action, snatching the letter from her hands and scanning it. Roland was gone, missing from the palace, and no one knew where he was.
They’d asked if he’d come here, after us. But if he had, surely he’d have made it by now.
I turned and rushed into the cave, only to stop short at tense whispers in the cooking area.
“He’s not getting better,” Hafgan was whispering. “I have no idea what to do. What it means. It’s just the sniffles. Dragons don’t get this sick with it.”
“Love,” Bowen said, calm and smooth. “They’re half dragons. Things aren’t the same for them. It might just take him longer to get over it. Or . . . or maybe we should ask the humans for help. Maybe it’s different for them.”
Hafgan made an annoyed face, clearly thinking of the one he should be asking for help: Tristram, whom he was angry with.
I didn’t have time for this, and frankly, neither did they. So instead of breaking into their conversation, I took my pencil and wrote on the back of the message about Roland.
I had to go back to find Roland. Only I can decide what kind of dragon I am. And I’m the kind of dragon who loves Roland Cavendish.
Love,
Aderyn.
And then, without saying a word to anyone, I shifted and flew toward the palace.