Chapter Eighteen
AFTER THAT, AND all the next day, Ozias and I work on my shifts.
I get close, then feel like I don’t have enough to force it, and it fades.
Sometimes I will it, hard and fast, and I’ll shift for a few moments only to snap back into my human form, nauseating me.
I shift once more, the feel of transition closer to pulling teeth.
After, my limbs are sluggish, my mind hazy.
“Let’s pause here for now,” Ozias says. “I’m going to check on the borders to see if we can determine new openings for a supply run. Stay here to rest. Meditate if you can’t sleep.”
“Is everything all right?”
“You know how it went the other night,” he murmurs before making his leave.
A shiver rushes down my spine. The night Ozias and I used my energy to cause a distraction, and the attack that ensued, meant that those who were out to procure food didn’t have as much time as they needed for a completely successful run.
We didn’t account for Dyēus launching a full-on attack because of my burst of energy.
Despite where our conversation about seduction ended yesterday, I haven’t even dared bringing up to Ozias the prospect of finishing what he started that night for fear of what might happen as a result.
My mind whirls with worry, wondering what I can do to help the supply runs, knowing I’m just another mouth to feed that they didn’t account for.
I need to control my energy output, keep it smooth and even to create a true diversion for Ozias’s efforts elsewhere along the wall.
All the while learn to shift at will, explore my possible elahi, and figure out how to seduce Zhoric, especially since he still hasn’t shown his face to me in all these nights since the attack.
I try meditating again. I sit inside my mind with my dragon while she slumbers. Quietly, I attempt to shift, but nothing happens. When I try harder and still nothing happens, I grunt my frustration away as I sit up. I should probably be resting anyway.
I move inside Ozias’s suites but stop short by the large table, scattered with parchments. Over and over, the same words are written on different parchments, the same scrawl penning the words:
You are woman and you are power.
You have many gifts.
But something has been stolen from you.
Something you will reclaim.
It will shock you.
It may frighten you.
But you are stronger than you know.
You have more in you than you have ever been allowed to understand.
When the time comes, be ready.
You contain multitudes —
It’s time for you to live with them all.
I recall the smudge of black on the side of Ozias’s hand I saw yesterday. He must have spent hours writing all these.
His words don’t place blame on Dyēus or try to pit the Nevobans against them.
I scowl a little. With how fiercely Dyēus attacked the Realm days ago, I fear the Nevobans who would take up arms with them instead of with us.
Ozias and Atlanta haven’t hidden the fact that there will be some fallout after I take down the Sar Dyēus and it’s not an if, but an inevitability.
They want to keep their power and we want to strip them of it.
I wonder if Ozias should try to entreat the Nevobans to our side.
Instead, all he does with this missive is tell them of their worth and their right to it.
Then again, I know as well as anyone that ill words against the kingdom would ring deaf on the ears of people like my mother, proud of their carremai title and their own self-importance.
This missive would pique even my mother’s interest. My face softens as I realize what he’s doing.
He’s taking the risk of them siding with Dyēus in favor of ensuring their transition is smooth and welcome.
He’s not calling them to arms. He’s offering them freedom.
My fingers brush against my faded mark, hoping my people are ready for what’s to come. I hope this will be enough.
“Any luck?” Atlanta’s voice jars me from my thoughts. I turn to find her standing in the doorway. For a moment, I wonder if she means with Zhoric—that Ozias told her after all. “With shifting,” she clarifies at seeing my blank expression.
I huff, shaking my head as I turn away from the papers and lean back against the table. “No. I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Atlanta soothes as she comes in to stand by my side and scans the parchments on the table.
“Most of us not born inside the Realm who can shift during the day have spent years to get to this point. The fact that you have at all is an immense accomplishment you should be proud of.”
I slide my hands over my face. Impressive as it might be, it’s still not enough. “How are things progressing with getting notice to Nevoba?”
Her mouth twists as she takes one of the parchments in her hands and rolls it into a thin tube. “The farmhands are on edge. Word is, Dyēus is keeping a stricter eye on their movements.”
“Is that unusual?”
Atlanta shrugs, plucking a bit of twine from a pile and wrapping it around the parchment several times before tying it off. “They go through phases. Usually when there’s some shift in power among the elites.”
I watch her do another and by the third time watching, I select a parchment and roll one up. She holds out a hand and when I give it to her, she wraps and ties it off.
“Do you know what’s changed?”
“Alixor’s death, for one thing. But that’s the least of what we know. Selnor can’t have been happy and he holds a lot of sway among the elites. We assume they know about the dragonsbane by now. Our best guess is they think it came from the farmhands and are trying to determine who provided it.”
My hands stop mid roll. “Have they blamed anyone?”
Atlanta shakes her head, holding out her hand. I finish rolling and pass it on to her. “We’re not sure. We’re working on finding that out.”
The soft rasp of our work is too quiet for my ears right now. She doesn’t mention me in her ideas on what has changed with Dyēus, but she doesn’t need to. “Do you think they will?”
“I wouldn’t put it past them, but they need the farmhands to be cooperative. They won’t do anything without evidence.”
“Do they have anything that could put them at risk?”
“Plenty, but dragonsbane isn’t one of them. For everything else they have plans in place to keep anything damning hidden.”
I breathe a sigh of relief.
She stops my hand before I reach for another parchment. “Those need drying still. Do you need to rest?”
I shake my head. I couldn’t fall asleep even if I tried. “Can we check on Ninon?”
“Of course.” Atlanta finishes tying off the last of the dried missives and sets them in a basket she procures from under the table before leading us out.
As we walk, I’m buzzing with a need to pick her brain about mind walking.
I can only read so much before my mind goes off somewhere else.
Ninon hasn’t had much time to read, and I told her not to worry about it.
She needs all the rest she can get and I answered most of the questions I had with Atlanta’s book.
“How do you think Zhoric would feel about a bond if he knew of one out there? If he knew of me?”
Atlanta tips her head from side to side and eyes me as if she can glean my secrets. “I didn’t know Zhoric. I know stories, we’ve exchanged words, even, but I don’t know his heart. Though, I can imagine…I can imagine his loneliness. I think that alone would make him yearn for a bond.”
Her words make it sound like she’s speaking from experience. “I can’t imagine a man with so much power being lonely.”
“Loneliness is sometimes a choice.”
I decide to ask a question that I hope won’t haunt me later. “Did you write your text on mind walking at a time when you were lonely?”
“Ah. Found that, did you?” she says, swinging her arms in sync with one another for a moment.
I shrug and offer a modicum of the truth. “I was looking for information on bonding, to help prepare myself. Ozias says you’re sort of savant on the subject.”
She huffs out a laugh and rolls her eyes. “He amuses himself too much calling that.”
“But are you?” I ask, tilting my head in question.
Her shoulders inch up in a humble shrug. “More accomplished than most. I’ve taught myself how to mind walk toward any potential bond I have—here in the Realm or elsewhere.”
My eyes widen. “That seems…incredible.” I can’t leave Zhoric to get back to my own mind, let alone try and get to someone else’s.
She offers me a sad smile. “It was more out of necessity than desire. When I first came here, Ozias saved me. I told you before that tactics to get women pregnant were…different when I was in Nevoba. I was forced to do things I didn’t want to do.
I was tortured and abused and when all of that didn’t work, they tied me to the end of a rope and flew me near the Realm to threaten me into agreeing to breed.
Back then we didn’t even have the legends that you’d turn into a monster when you entered—it was known only as a place of certain, terrible death. ”
My mouth falls open, but I have to close it quickly when my stomach turns and threatens to upend the contents. I swallow hard. “That’s horrifying.”
She casts her eyes down to the ground. “By that point…I didn’t care.
I was ready to die. But they got too close and I went across the border.
Ozias grabbed me and took me in. He saved me that day, but I wasn’t…
I wasn’t myself anymore. I couldn’t touch anyone.
I didn’t speak. Making eye contact was painful. But I was lonely. So, so lonely.”
No wonder she can imagine Zhoric’s loneliness, I think.
“And so eventually my draconem mind led me to a close connection. Without my physical body present, I was able to start speaking again. Eventually, I sought out other connections and slowly I began to believe in myself again.”
“Have you bonded with any of these connections?”