Chapter Ten
THE SUN IS settling into late afternoon by the time Ozias leads me out of the Alcazar.
Most people we pass smile at him. Occasionally, they acknowledge him with a wave or a cursory bow, but most go on with their daily tasks.
No one pauses in what they’re doing to bow before his presence.
No one stops and remains silent as he passes.
He is no king here, but there is an admirable amount of respect.
The farther we walk from what appears to be the Realm’s main hub of activity, the thinner the trees and the fewer number of people there are.
The land begins to look more and more like the Sere I’m familiar with.
Scrubby trees replace the lush. Dry, cracked earth replaces the rich brown soil.
Eventually the rise of the mountains appear as we reach an open swath of ground.
A small gathering of people clusters around a group of children.
My steps falter at the vaporous cloud emanating from the center of the cluster; a succession of others follow.
“They’re…shifting,” I realize out loud.
Ozias smiles. “Come and see what’s possible.”
As we draw nearer, a familiar figure stands out from the crowd.
Her spine is as straight as her long auburn hair tied at the nape of her neck.
I’d know her anywhere. I wanted her to be here.
I thought she was here, but seeing her in the flesh makes everything that’s happened until now feel unreal; she is the only thing that makes sense.
The figure turns and my heart lurches as a half dozen small dragons lift into the air behind her.
“Ninon,” I whisper, taking a half step before dashing toward her.
Ninon meets me with sure, fast steps and she doesn’t stop until she has me in her arms. I pull her to me and grip her tight. Her hold is steady and familiar. I don’t stand a chance of holding it together. I crack, my face crumpling, an aching sob heaving out of my chest.
“You left me,” I wheeze, the words warbled and horrible. I want to take them back into me. I don’t want to blame her or make her feel like she’s done wrong.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, holding me tighter. “I had to.”
I’m nodding, over and over again. I know it as well as I know I couldn’t bear a child for Alixor, but there’s still so much I don’t understand.
Ninon pulls back and glances over my shoulder.
I follow her gaze to where Ozias is walking away.
A dragon flies low overhead, banks around him, then flies back to the center of the ring where they transform into small child, no older than seven years.
She shakes out her hair, spinning on her toes and smiling.
I suck in a breath. A girl. She bears no mark on her torso, though I suppose if she was born here, away from the Sar Dyēus, there’d be no reason why she would.
The other dragons transform back into their human forms, a mix of all ages and genders.
Ninon links her arm through mine and pulls me a little farther from where the people are gathered.
I turn my attention back to her and a sudden rush of anger heats my blood. Did she know this about the Realm? That the savagery was a lie? That children, young girls like we once were, could transform into these horrible, magnificent creatures. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“By the time I knew enough about this place and knew I would leave home, Kalixta was pregnant. I didn’t want to make you choose.” She pauses, her shoulders tensing beside mine. “I didn’t want you to try to make me stay.”
My anger spits hot like grease. I bite my tongue and hum my understanding. I fear what I’ll say if I open my mouth.
Ninon waits, watching as the girl speaks animatedly, arms and hands flying around. “This upsets you.”
“Of course it does,” I snap, but pin her arm against me to keep her from pulling away. “You didn’t give me the option to decide because you didn’t tell me.”
Ninon unwinds her arm to stand in front of me and places her forehead against mine.
“I know. I thought…I believed I was doing the right thing. But then you ended up here anyway, and Ozias told me what happened to you.” She leans back to look in my eyes, her hands gripping my upper arms. “I caused you more trouble in the end.”
Sighing, I bring my hands up to cup her elbows.
“You gave me what I needed to stop Alixor. You couldn’t have known it would have ended up like that, but I’m glad you thought it was a possibility.
” I heave another sigh, trying to diminish the fire raging inside, and pull her in for another embrace.
We stand there for a time, simply holding one another.
In many ways my life has been wrought with disappointment and change and choices that weren’t my own, and through it all, Ninon has remained my only constant.
Until now. It feels like something has cracked between us. Not unmendable, but certainly changed.
Finally I release her and wipe my eyes and face with my palms. “How did you find out about all this?”
“I didn’t know everything. Not until I got here.
That was the other reasoning I gave myself when I decided not to pull you into this.
” Ninon nods and we walk closer to the group gathered to watch the children shift.
As first, it happens slowly. Not at all like the swift, rapid change I’m accustomed to seeing from the dragons of Dyēus.
As I watch, it appears as though they’re vibrating, like the beating of a bee’s wings, but their bodies remain absolutely still.
It reminds me of waiting in the Sere to be relieved by another hunting group, feeling the ground tremble under us, dust and pebbles dancing at their approach.
I feel an echo of that now beneath my own skin.
The air becomes thicker as a subtle glow emanates from their bodies, and what looks like steam rises from their skin before clouding their forms from view as their transition takes hold.
Over a dozen small dragons now stand where the children once were, craning their heads, stretching their wings, shaking their manes as if to say watch this, look what I can do.
I turn back to Ninon and find her staring at me, her gaze discerning.
What I’m witnessing is impossible in the face of everything I know. And completely incredible if I deny what I thought I knew for even a moment. “If you didn’t know for sure what you’d find, what was it that made you decide to come?”
She looks away from me towards the mountains. “You know of the passages in certain texts I have that seem to suggest we shouldn’t believe everything the sky kingdom tells us. And my mother’s notes in the margins of others.”
We pored over those lines together as children. It gave us the confidence to feel what we did when it came to Dyēus, even if we never spoke about it to anyone but each other.
“I’ve thought of those lines often, but it wasn’t until we started to look for a way to create the contraceptive that I learned more. Then, one of the first times I tried to retrieve the dracduat, I found a binding of parchment tucked into the crevice among the flowers.”
That was well over a year ago. “What was it?”
“A letter from the women here in the Realm, telling of our truth and encouraging us to claim it. Hundreds of names were signed.”
“How did you know to believe it?”
Ninon shakes her head, almost imperceptibly as she watches the dragons ground themselves and return to their human forms. “My aunt’s name was on it. It was enough for me.”
I straighten and just manage to keep from craning my neck around like a wild creature. “Is she here?”
“No.” Ninon smiles sadly. “She passed. Like my mother.”
My emotions feel as dark and tumultuous as a raging storm above the Rising Sea.
That’s two people close to Ninon who’ve now succumbed to the sudden deaths.
It’s beginning to feel less a question of if it will happen to her, and more like when.
Bile stings my throat with the urge to throw up what little liquid sloshes around my stomach. “Ninon…”
She shrugs, and turns back to me. “More than wanting to find her, I wanted to believe this place was real, that what I’d read was true.
Enough to find out for sure myself, but not enough that I wanted to put you at risk.
You had a life back at home. And I couldn’t continue being a huntress even if I’d stayed. ”
Ninon only became a huntress alongside me because we’d vowed in our youth to do everything together.
While I was content enough in that space, glad of the distractions from the farmhands when they came and the camaraderie of the other hunters, Ninon was always learning something new.
Trying something else, as if searching for her own place.
Once she’d learned that the women here weren’t entirely mindless monsters, there was absolutely no way she’d remain a huntress. None of us would.
“So, now what do we do?”
Ninon presses her shoulder against mine. “We watch. And we learn.”
So we do. For the next hour or so, we watch the children shift back and forth between their two forms. I can’t keep my eyes off the girls and the pure joy on their faces; how freely they slip from skin to scales.
“Only the children and some of the more powerful dragons can shift at will during the day,” Ninon explains.
“From my understanding, everyone, Ozias included, turns savage outside the borders of the Realm after nightfall. For us, I’m told we’ll feel savage for the first few nights as our dragons are released, but then we’ll settle into the change.
After that, we can try to shift back into our human forms at nightfall inside the Realm if we wish. ”
An odd sensation washes through me. Relief mingled with disappointment? “What do most people do?”
Ninon shrugs. “I’m not sure yet. I haven’t yet kept my mind from going savage. They tell me it can last a few days to a few weeks.”