Chapter Twenty
Dax had borrowed the guitar to serenade the dragon. When Marin came outside to find him after breakfast, he was perched on a stone wall, humming to himself as he tuned the strings. His crystal horns were glittering in the morning light, and she tried not to notice how achingly beautiful he was.
“Ready?” she asked. “It’s going to be a climb.”
He flashed her a grin. “I don’t think even Grandmaster Vorac has sung to a dragon before.”
She stared at his lips, wishing … She didn’t even know what she was wishing for. Everything to be different, she supposed.
His grin faded, and his expression grew more somber. “Marin, last night, I didn’t mean to push you. I know you’ve been hurt…”
“It’s not that.” She did not want to be talking about this. The way the light had faded in his eyes and the way he was looking at her now … it hurt to see. She’d never wanted to be the cause of his sadness. “It’s only that we have two very different lives. I still care about you.”
“I would hate to lose our friendship simply because I wanted more.”
She heard the past tense “wanted” and felt something inside twist. This is good, she told herself firmly. It meant they were moving past that awkwardness. “We’re friends. Whatever happened or didn’t happen—we’re still friends.”
“Good,” Dax said, and he smiled a real smile.
Marin felt a surge of relief as potent as a gulp of wine. At least I haven’t ruined anything.
Surot and Ree came outside, and Ree bounded over to Dax. “We’re going on an adventure!” the shrub caroled.
“We are indeed,” Dax said cheerfully.
Marin crossed to Surot. This morning, the headwoman was clothed in a beautiful jade wrap dress.
She still wore the same elaborate necklace and looked as regal as any queen.
In a low voice so Dax wouldn’t overhear, Marin said to her, “We need to make it clear that we’re offering music, not my musician, in exchange for the boat.
” Friend or not, she was absolutely not losing him to any boat-stealing oversize lizard.
“They’re as intelligent as your sea dragon,” Surot said. “Speak, and she’ll understand.”
Intelligent, sure, but would she be as friendly as Perri?
“Please tell me this isn’t a terrible idea,” Marin said, eyes still on Dax. A few feet away, Dax had hopped off the stone wall and was showing the guitar to Ree. It came with a strap for carrying it up mountains.
“I make no promises,” Surot said. “But our dragons are noble creatures. She will not harm your musician.”
Not harm was not the same as not keep, but Marin supposed it was the best she was going to get. It was either try this or give up on Silver, and she wasn’t willing to do that. “Then I guess we’d better start climbing.”
A guide had volunteered to lead them up the mountain.
Not Surot, who’d said her bones creaked too much to make the climb.
Their guide was a thirteen-year-old boy with green freckles named Ferix who had just gifted his first dragon with a catch of fresh fish, he’d told them.
He then proceeded to list out exactly what species of fish were in the catch, what the length and weight of each fish was, and in what order the dragon had consumed them.
Marin only half listened as they started up the path through the spruce and fir trees toward the mountain.
By the time they reached the base of the mountain beneath the boat, she was only a quarter listening.
Ree didn’t seem to mind maintaining the conversation with their guide, asking Ferix about the dragons, the mountains, the trees, the village, and anything else that popped into his mind.
Dax walked beside Marin. He had the guitar from the tavern strapped to his back and was wearing his own conservatory clothes, the ones he’d been wearing when the storm hit, freshly washed.
She was back in her own clothes too, including her boots, with the ruby and her emergency supplies secured in their original pockets.
“Have you ever met a dragon?” Marin asked him, keeping her voice low so it wouldn’t interfere with the steady stream of questions from Ree and endless answers from Ferix.
“Never,” Dax said.
“Do you…” She hesitated, not sure how to articulate her worry without making him think she doubted him. “Music isn’t a material item. Keva won’t be able to hoard it like a mound of gold.”
“It’s valuable. As essential to the human soul as air is to the lung. You think she won’t appreciate it because she isn’t human?”
“It’s a language that speaks to everyone,” Marin said, quoting him back to him. “It’s a language of the heart.”
He smiled.
“Besides, Ree loves your music, and he’s even less human than a dragon.”
Ree called back, “Hey, I heard that! And you are correct.”
Up this high, the wind barely smelled like the sea. Instead, it smelled sharp, like rust and pine. She noticed there were no birds on Ilreka, not even the gulls that loved every island in every weather. She wondered if the dragons scared them away or simply ate them.
“What kind of music do you think she’ll like?
” Dax asked anxiously and adorably. “I have ideas, but I don’t want to make a mistake.
There’s Stuben’s ‘Allegriti,’ which is not commonly done on a guitar but has a unique melodic run that revolutionized how we perceive progressions in a minor key.
Or I could go with Anciana’s famous opus.
Not melodic per se but utterly unique in how it continues the conversation with syncopated rhythms.”
Marin had zero idea what he was talking about, but it was sweet how enthusiastic he was.
Like Ree about sailing. She wondered if anyone in that great conservatory had ever compared him to a sentient shrub.
It was a high compliment, in her opinion.
More people should strive to be like passionate shrubbery.
“Play something you like,” she suggested.
“I can’t just chose what I like,” Dax said. “This is too important.”
“It is important, and that’s why you should choose what you like.
Is there a song or piece of music that made you fall in love with music?
” Marin thought of the first time she fell in love with the sea—the earliest sail she could remember, when her parents brought her on their boat and she felt the wind and sea spray in her face and saw only blue stretched before her.
That was all she remembered of that moment, but it was enough: the spray and the blue.
She chased that same feeling every time she sailed.
“I … don’t know. I’ve always loved music.
” He frowned, troubled, and then frowned harder as the path grew steeper.
They were walking up a narrow path that switched back and forth up the barefaced mountain.
The gravel crunched under their feet. “My first memory is of playing my dad’s flute for my parents.
They were so happy, so proud of me. They had me play for everyone who came by. ”
“What did you play?”
“That’s the thing,” Dax said. “I don’t remember. I think … I wasn’t in love with music then. I just loved that I could make them happy.” He fell silent.
And then they sent him away. Marin didn’t say that out loud.
She was certain Dax was thinking it. She wanted to take his hand, but after the awkward conversation in the hallway the day before …
“How about after that? At the conservatory? You fell in love with it at some point. I can see it in your eyes every time you play.”
Surprised, he glanced at her. “You can?”
It was so obviously true that she nearly rolled her eyes at him. He radiated joy when he played. “What do you think about when you play?”
“I don’t think. I just do. That’s when it’s the best, when I’m fully in the moment, in the music. I am the music, and the music is me.”
“Those are the best days on the sea too,” Marin said. “One with the wind and waves.”
He smiled. “You keep thinking we’re dissimilar, but we’re not.”
She didn’t reply to that. Iovar’s words echoed in her head again: You’ll give up dreams for her, and she won’t replace them.
Instead of returning Dax’s smile, she glanced out at the water—the blue ocean stretching out, calling to her.
There was so much variation in the blue of the sea from the white of the breaking waves and the pale blue as they pulled away from shore to the dark green that hid seaweed just below its surface to the blue that rivaled the sky and more.
It was a patchwork of beauty that she never got tired of, with moods and promises and dangers and invitations.
“Play the dragon something you love. Not something you think she’ll love.
Not something that’s important or influential or unique or whatever. Just something that makes you feel.”
He’d stopped walking.
She turned and looked at him, wondering if she’d overstepped.
He was the musician. It was his choice what to play.
She barely knew the difference between a guitar and a lute.
She opened her mouth to apologize, but something in his expression stopped her.
He was looking at her with a kind of wonderment, like she’d said something brilliant.
“I can do that,” Dax said at last, and he resumed climbing up the trail.
Overhead, several dragons were soaring around the mountaintops, but none were the golden dragon with red wings.
They walked in silence, both wrapped in their own thoughts.
Or not actual silence, since their guide hadn’t stopped chattering, but Marin wasn’t bothering to listen to him and he was talking to Ree anyway.
As they rounded a corner of the trail, Marin saw her: the queen. She might have been one of many queen dragons on Ilreka, but Marin didn’t care about the rest. Right now and probably always in her mind, this was the queen.