18. Alar
ALAR
I did not sleep that last night. Sleep was a thief, and I refused to let it steal a single moment from me.
—From the private journals of Prince Alaranthus Tekumuton the Fifth.
Iwasn't going to waste any of the time I had left.
After the others had drifted to their rooms and the apartment had gone quiet except for the muffled sounds of Codric and Shovia talking behind their closed door, sounds I was grateful for because it meant that Codric wasn't lying awake in misery, I pulled my pack from the bottom of the wardrobe and set it on the floor beside the bed.
Kailin had been sitting on the bed with her knees drawn to her chest, watching me with those eyes that held too many emotions to catalog.
"I'll help you," she said.
"Thank you."
She unfolded herself and knelt beside me on the floor, and together we began the task of reducing my life in Elucia to what could fit in a single military-issue rucksack.
There wasn't much. The Dragon Force didn't encourage personal accumulation.
A few changes of civilian clothes I'd brought from Catonia, and my dress uniform, which I wasn't sure I was allowed to take, but I wasn't going to ask permission and do it anyway.
The combat dagger Ravel had issued to the quintet after the assassination attempts. I put the sidearm on the desk.
"You should take it," Kailin said. "For the perilous journey back home. There is a reason your parents are sending an armored vehicle for you."
I nodded. "I'll use it as an excuse if I'm asked to leave the weapons behind."
I picked up the regulation manual that had been issued to every cadet. The thick book with its three categories of rules marked by crossed swords, balanced scales, and stars. I'd read it cover to cover twice and annotated the margins with questions and observations that now seemed hopelessly naive.
"Leave that," Kailin said. "You won't need it where you're going."
"I suppose I won't, but it carries sentimental value."
"I have something better." She took the manual from my hands and set it aside, then reached under the bed and pulled out her sketchbook.
The leather-bound journal was filled with drawings ranging from portraits of people and dragons to landscapes and architectural elements of the Citadel and the Circle of Fate temple.
"I want you to take this," she said.
"Kailin, I can't take your sketchbook."
I knew how much it meant to her.
"I can always draw more." She opened it. "I'm only going to keep pictures of you." She began carefully removing pages and setting them in a pile on the bed.
I caught glimpses of the drawings as she worked. Me, sleeping. Me, laughing at something. Me, in my dress uniform on the night of the bonding celebration. Me, looking out the window with that crease between my eyebrows that she was always teasing me about.
She carefully smoothed a drawing of my profile against the bedspread. "I'm going to put your portraits on the walls so it feels like you're still here."
My throat tightened.
She removed the last of my portraits and handed me the remaining sketchbook, which was still thick with drawings of dragons, mountain landscapes, Shovia in various poses of exasperation, Morek mid-gesture, Codric's theatrical expressions, and Morgateth's great head in careful detail.
"There's still plenty of room for new drawings," she said. "You can fill the rest with sketches of Catonia and send them to me in your letters. I want to see everything. The palace, the city, the markets. All of it."
I held the sketchbook against my chest. The leather was warm from her hands, softened by months of use, and it smelled faintly of the graphite pencils she favored.
"I don't have your talent for drawing, but I'll write every day," I said. "I will describe in minute detail every boring moment of palace life and the absurdity of political intrigue."
She smiled. "I'll read every word and cherish it, imagining you majestically navigating that intrigue. And I will write back in just as much detail."
I set the sketchbook in my pack. "I'll write you the truth, Kailin. All of it. No omissions, no diplomatic varnish. You'll know everything I know."
She chuckled. "You can't. Unless you write me in that cipher that you and Codric developed as kids and he translates it for me."
I had forgotten that all correspondence to and from the Citadel was scrutinized.
"That's an excellent idea. No one knows how to decipher that script."
Her eyes sparkled with mirth. "I'll ask Codric to translate what I write into the cipher. The sections about my training. About Morgateth and Saphir and whatever else happens here." She paused. "About the dreams, if they come."
"Especially the dreams."
She nodded, then looked down at the small pile of my portraits on the bed. She picked up the one of me sleeping and traced the line of my jaw with her fingertip.
"I don't have anything of value to leave you," I said. "Everything I brought from Catonia was designed to support a cover story that no longer exists. Fake documents. A merchant's wardrobe. Nothing that carries any meaning."
"You're leaving me your dragon," she said quietly.
That stopped me.
"Veynathei is not mine to leave."
"She's yours in every way that matters, and when you go, she'll be here without her rider. Someone will need to look after her." Kailin set the drawing down. "I'll make sure she's okay. I can communicate with her through Morgateth, or directly if she's close enough. She won't be alone."
I hadn't thought of that. I'd been so consumed with my own grief at leaving that I hadn't considered who would watch over Veynathei in my absence.
The fact that Kailin had already thought about it and committed to caring for the dragon who was bonded to the man she was losing made my heart swell with love for her.
"I'll include something for you in every letter," I said. "Pressed precious flowers. Fabric swatches from my royal attire. Books. Terrible poetry, mine and that of others."
"You write terrible poetry?"
"The worst."
"I'll treasure every word." She reached for my hand. "Come to bed with me."
I went.
We didn't rush. There was no urgency in what followed, despite the hours counting down and the dawn approaching like an executioner. We undressed each other slowly, deliberately, committing the act of undressing to memory alongside everything else.
I kissed the hollow of her throat, the curve of her hip where my hand had rested so many nights while we slept. She traced the line of my shoulders, my jaw, the place behind my ear that made me shiver.
We moved together with the familiarity of lovers who knew each other's rhythms and the desperation of lovers who knew this might be the last time. Every touch was a goodbye. Every whispered word was both a declaration of our love and a farewell.
I tried to memorize everything. The way her golden hair spread across the pillow.
The small sounds she made when I touched her just right.
The way her fingers curled against my back when the pleasure built.
The look in her eyes at the moment she let go, that expression of complete trust and complete surrender that she showed to no one else but me.
I loved her. Completely. Irrevocably. In a way that distance and politics and prophetic dreams couldn't diminish.
But love, as one of my royal ancestors had written, did not grant dominion. It granted only the privilege of worrying, and I was about to worry about her from the other side of a mountain range.
Afterward, Kailin curled against me, her head on my chest, her breathing gradually slowing toward sleep despite her whispered insistence that she was going to stay up all night because she didn't want to waste even one moment of the time we had left together.
I held her, watching her beautiful face and committing every last freckle to memory, waiting for the last of her resistance to surrender to exhaustion.
"Don't let me sleep," she murmured, her words already thick and dissolving at the edges. "I want to stay awake with you."
"I'm right here," I said. "I'll be here when you wake up."
Her breathing deepened. Her body relaxed against mine, growing heavy with sleep, and within minutes, she was gone, one hand still resting on my chest as if even in sleep she needed to confirm that I was still there.
I lay in the dark, listened to her breathe, and tried not to count the minutes.
When the window shifted from auroral dark to the gray that preceded dawn, I carefully disentangled myself from Kailin and tucked the blanket around her shoulders. She murmured something unintelligible and burrowed deeper into the pillow.
I dressed in my civilian clothes, the ones I'd worn when I first entered Elucia posing as a merchant's son. They felt strange after months of military uniforms, the fabric softer and less purposeful. A merchant's wardrobe for a merchant's disguise.
Then I reached out through the bond.
"Veynathei."
The response came immediately, as if she'd been awake and waiting. "What's the matter?"
"Can you meet me on the landing platform outside the officers' quarters?"
"I'll be there before you are."
By the time I navigated the corridors and stepped onto the stone platform that jutted from the mountainside like an outstretched hand, she was already there, perched on the edge with her wings folded and her iridescent scales muted in the pre-dawn light.
She appeared almost silver, like a statue carved from moonlight.
Her amber eyes focused on mine as I approached, and despite the shields I was holding firm around my mind, she knew that something was wrong. She'd probably known for hours, feeling my anguish leaking through the bond despite my attempts to contain it.
"You're leaving," she said.
She'd either deduced it from my civilian clothes or felt it through the bond.
"Yes." I stopped an arm's length from her snout and looked into those amber eyes. "My family submitted a formal diplomatic demand for my return. Elucia has to comply."
"When?"
"Today. After breakfast."