Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
ARA
I’m furious and limping when I arrive at breakfast. It’s been a little over a week since we switched flights, and Tate seems determined to make my life hell.
Calix is already seated, and I slump down into the chair opposite him.My body aches all over, since Tate singles me out every damn time during training and lets me repeat movements over and over until they please his perfectionistic expectations.
If I make a mistake, I can be sure he’ll point it out, and if I’m ready to quit, he’ll provoke me until I go over every one of my limits to prove him wrong.
Only I always regret it the following morning, when I can barely roll out of bed.
So it’s safe to say, my mood is not up to my ordinarily cheery self.
I let my head fall into my hand, poking listlessly at my bowl of fruit, seeds, and oats.
“The first competition is going to be in a week’s time.” Calix destroys the pile of food he heaps on his plate every morning.
“I have no idea how you do that.” I look at him, shaking my head.
“What? Eating?” He raises his eyebrows, stuffing his mouth as soon as the question is out.
“That too. You are eating enough to sate a dragon, and in half the time I need for a fraction of it.” I grin at him, rolling my eyes. “No, I mean getting the info before anyone else does.”
“First of all, you should eat more…” He eyes my untouched food. “And second, I have my sources.” He waggles his eyebrows. “Miss Carter was very helpful.”
“You did not.” My mouth falls open. “She is like … ten years older than us?”
“And beautiful.” He smiles like the cat who caught a bird, or Janus’s personal secretary, for that matter.
“Gods, you’re impossible.” I laugh.
Mariel sits down next to me. “What’s going on?” She looks from Calix to me and back. “Or do I not want to know?”
I snort. “Probably not.”
“I’d rather live while I can.” Calix sounds defensive all of a sudden.
“You are right.” Mariel attacks the food on her plate like it offended her. “Better to keep the heart out of it anyway. You’ll only get hurt otherwise. If they aren’t emotionally unavailable, they die,” she grumbles.
“I don’t think—” Calix starts.
“Nah, don’t listen to me.” She waves him off. “I dreamed of Scott.”
Calix looks confused. So I whisper, “Her dead fiancé.” And sling an arm around Mariel in comfort. Calix’s eyes widen.
“If you want to talk—” I offer, but Mariel interrupts me.
“No. Let’s talk about something else, please.”
“Umm, since you mentioned dragons,” Calix obeys her request, addressing me. “Have you heard there is one in town at the moment?”
I perk up. Could it be that Lorcan is here to meet me?
The conversation stays light and helps pull Mariel out of her dark thoughts. By the time we head to class, her sorrow is nothing but a shadow in her blue eyes.
The announcement of a dragon in town has me on alert for the rest of the day. So when his unmistakable presence pops up at the border of the academy, it’s a relief.
I leave my friends in the common room under the pretense of checking on Solaris, and he takes me to a place outside the city walls, our agreed-upon meeting point.
“Your bird is too obvious,” Lorcan greets me.
“Well, then we have to meet somewhere else, because walking out here will take me forever,” I tell him. He stares at me, like he waits for something, but when I only stare back, he chuckles.
“Okay, let’s meet in the city next time. You know the fountain at the start of the merchant quarter?”
“The one with the siren?” I ask and he nods.
“It’s in the old part of Telos, plenty of small alleys to go unnoticed or lose a tail.” I agree on the new meeting point, and pull our patrol plan from my pocket.
“That’s all I have so far, since this is my flight from now on, I would appreciate them not running into Tynan’s men.”
“Beak flight, first squadron, southern division.” He grins.
“Seems like someone is keeping an eye on you for his brother, huh?” When I glare at him, his grin widens.
“I think I’ll stick around a while. You promise to be the most entertaining human I’ve met in years.
Actually, one of your distant ancestors holds that title so far.
” His voice becomes a little wistful at that. “Seems to run in the family.”
“Glad to be of use,” I deadpan, and he laughs. A vicious sound that should frighten me, but doesn’t.
“Okay, little warrior, until next month, then,” he purrs and starts walking away.
“Little warrior, really? I’m not that much smaller than you.”
He laughs. “Your life is a blink of an eye in the span of mine, and you are tiny.” With those words and in a ripple of light, he turns into a beast of a dragon. Proving that I’m indeed small compared to him.
He snorts at me when I refuse to step back, and my feet get coated in snot; a rasping sound follows, laughter.
“You are disgusting,” I tell him. Every one of his bronze-golden scales is bigger than my face, but I refuse to be afraid of him. He takes off, and the wind of his wings nearly throws me to the ground and shrouds me in clouds of dust that make me cough.
“Show-off,” I mutter, after I cough up a desert's worth of dirt and dust myself off. Another benefit of meeting in the city next time is that there won’t be enough room to repeat that little stunt.
“Your extra training starts today,” Galdur tells me when she stops me on my way out of the classroom.
“Be at the gate at the third strike.” That means it will cut into my time with Solaris.
I open my mouth to protest, but another rider asks her a question, and she turns away before I have the chance to object. Fucking perfect.
“You should work on getting better, then,” Solaris tells me.
“I’ll give my best.”
I make my way to the gate five minutes late and stop short when I see who is waiting for me.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mutter and make my way over to Tate.
“You are late,” he snaps.
“Sorry, I was busy polishing my attitude, but I shouldn’t have bothered you brought enough for both of us.”
“When I’m training you, I expect you to be on time.”
“Well then, it’s your lucky day. Find someone else. I’m not training with you.” I reply.
“Yes, you are,” he tells me.
“Why you? Why can’t someone else teach me?”
“Because anyone else would go too easy on you, and we don’t have time for that.”
I roll my eyes at him.
“Get moving, we’re wasting time.” He signs us out at the gate and starts down the street.
I follow reluctantly. The prospect of spending even more time with him, alone, makes my body buzz with nerves and my stomach flutter with trepidation.
I’m physically aware of the missing buffer our flight normally provides.
“I want rules,” I mutter after walking alongside him in silence for some time.
“Really? And here I thought you abhor rules, since you were ready to throw the towel after I requested nothing but punctuality.”
I ignore his barb. “No touching, no speaking, unless it’s about training.”
“That’s all?” He raises his eyebrows at me, an infuriating smile on his lips.
“Yes.”
“And by touching, you mean we keep our hands to ourselves?” he clarifies.
“That is what touching refers to, isn’t it?”
“Well, good to know you are not opposed to being kissed, licked, fucked, or bitten by me as long as I keep my hands off you,” he drawls, and heat zings through my body.
I hit his arm … hard. “You infuriating, smug bastard. You know quite well that is not what I meant.”
“Look at you already breaking all of your rules only seconds after you made them.” He mocks, shaking his head at me, and keeps walking while I seethe quietly, telling Solaris about all the ways I intend to make Tate Kyronos’s life hell.
We reach the arena in silence and enter through the main entrance only to veer from it just before reaching the ranks. Descending downward into the belly of the round building, we follow a tunnel that ultimately leads into the sand-covered heart of it.
Everything about the man next to me annoys me. How well he moves, the heat of his skin, when he gets too close, and especially his beautiful face. He is the perfect trap, too alluring, too dazzling to see the darkness beneath.
No, that’s not true. There is a vicious darkness to him, a coldness, only I had ignored it, because it was never visible when he was with me.
“You’re staring,” Tate says with an annoying smirk on his face.
“Only trying to figure you out,” I snap.
“I thought you had me already all figured out, down to my black soul. Scared yet?” he drawls.
I scoff. “I’m not scared of you.”
“Maybe you should be.” He sets up a target. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
I don’t have a problem calling on my fire this time. It jumps into my hand the minute I think about it. But that is about all that works. My fire is all over the place, and the more agitated I get, the more erratic it is. That Tate stands right behind me, witnessing my defeat, doesn’t help either.
I growl in frustration.
“Stop,” he orders.
“I can do it.” I try again.
“I said stop,” he snaps. “Your fire is linked to your emotions. It’s easy for you to call it when you are angry. What is holding you back when you aren’t?”
“Who said I have trouble calling it?” I retort.
“Galdur. Get your emotions in check, and let’s try again. We have to find the root problem so we can address it.”
“You are the problem.”
“So you’re thinking about me constantly?” He quirks one eyebrow.
“That is not what I said,” I seethe, and I swear his mouth twitches. “You enjoy this.”
“Irritating you?” He hums. “It’s my pleasure.”
I narrow my eyes.
“Take a deep breath,” Tate orders. “Hold it, release it. Let it take all your anger and tension.”
“I have better ideas on how to get rid of my anger and tension,” I grumble. His eyes jump to mine, and heat ripples through my gut. A slow throbbing joins when they trail over my body lazily.
The way my body reacts to his gaze is ridiculous. His mouth stretches into a knowing smirk, and I want to kill him.