28. Distances
T wo weeks had passed since Aeden stood in the Memorial Garden, and to some extent, a huge weight had been lifted from his overburdened shoulders. At the same time, he had known things were only going to get harder from that point, a fact he soon found to be correct.
All combat training was now one-to-one with Master Storme, and Aeden hadn’t enjoyed it one bit. Master Storme normally remained silent during the sessions, refusing to divulge any further information around Aeden’s parents, despite him making his best efforts to press the brutal teacher for more.
“Your form is terrible,” Master Storme would remark snidely at him.
He frequently reminded Aeden how weak he was for a bonded rider and just how much stronger than him he was.
Aeden’s body had turned all shades of purple from the bruising he had sustained.
The only saving grace Aeden felt around this was that it kept him away from the others .
As per his request, he had been moved from the bunkhouse, something that Master Storme had actually been key in getting permission for. He argued that given Aeden’s increased strength thanks to his bond, if he were to get into an altercation with another student, he could seriously hurt them.
Although this helped Aeden keep his distance from his friends, it didn’t help with the rest of his cohort, many of whom now felt he was receiving preferential treatment since he had bonded with Nyra.
Rooms fell silent when he entered them. Students turned their backs on him when he walked past, and most looked at him with nothing but disdain.
Even Aeden had been surprised when he was offered his own quarters, although the director had made it explicitly clear this was only until the bonding ceremony had been completed, and then Aeden would return to his initial bunkhouse. Still, it provided him with the breathing space that he needed.
Keeping his head down had been difficult – just as hard as biting down the urge to confront Kael for what he and his goons had done to Harrison. But so far, Aeden had managed to do it.
He attended his classes as his schedule outlined.
All physical training and assessments were kept separate from the other members of his cohort, but he did attend educational sessions.
He often chose to sit at the rear of the classrooms to keep himself out of trouble but also to avoid any conversation with others.
He hadn’t been rude or impolite to them, but so far he had been that busy that if anyone tried to talk to him, he would make his excuses, explain that he needed to be somewhere else with either a one-to-one session or at the hatchery with Nyra and Lyric.
“Have I done something wrong?” Harrison asked one day as Aeden walked past him and the others in the dining hall. Aeden had mumbled his excuses and moved on.
For now, though, he would forget everything else that was going on. He could forget the drama from within the academy, the searing looks from other students and faculty members.
The hatchery was his favourite part of the day, a place where he could be forgiven for forgetting his true reason for being here.
Aeden was sure his parents would understand.
He spent as much time as he could at the hatchery with Nyra, studying her as if he was learning to breathe for the first time.
He watched her movements, how she responded to certain foods, how her personality continued to develop.
As he approached the hatchery, Aeden’s mood lifted.
Every day spent with Nyra was exciting. Her rest following the binding had been longer than Lyric had anticipated, and Nyra had slept for four days straight.
Thankfully, as time wore on, she was slowly getting used to the bindings around her wings.
When Aeden walked into the hatchery, Lyric couldn’t be seen. The furnace was on, and Aeden was taken aback by the heat that it was kicking out. It was just about bearable, but Aeden was thankful that he was only wearing his shirt and pants as his core temperature rose in an instant.
“ Aeden! ” Nyra chittered as she padded her feet into her bed of straw with excitement. She stretched out, and her scales darkened in patches on her sides as she did .
Aeden took a moment to savour the contentment that reached him through the Weave as he smiled at her. He was as happy to see her as she was him.
If the choice was left to him, he would skip his schedule and spend all of his time here with Nyra, where he felt most at ease, safe from judgement, where he could keep her shielded from prying eyes.
Nyra stretched out her neck and another wave of contentment washed over Aeden. She was stretching and from what he could tell, she really liked the feeling.
She had grown more in the first two weeks than Aeden had realised she would.
Her body was double the size of when she had first hatched.
Stretching out like this, she must have been over twelve feet tall.
Her features looked more defined, her face more angular, and Aeden could have sworn that her scales had gotten darker.
On top of this, Aeden had already needed to change Nyra’s bindings twice; Lyric was concerned that as her wings grew, they would become too tight and cause more pain than was necessary for Nyra to endure.
“ Morning ,” Aeden said as he stood on the railings of her pen. Nyra shuffled forwards and bowed her head. Aeden rested his own against hers, and the two of them shared a tender moment.
No sooner did the two of them make contact than Aeden’s worries drifted away. In here, in the hatchery, they were free from it all.
“ How are those fresh bindings feeling? ” Aeden said. He leaned to the side to examine Nyra’s wings. They were ten times neater than the first set of bindings he had applied, and with this being the third set, it was getting easier, although it was taking longer given how fast Nyra was growing.
“ Better ,” Nyra said. She concentrated for a brief moment, then raised her bound wings slightly into the air, wincing from the pain.
“ Don’t push yourself too hard ,” he said. “If they feel too tight, remember to let me know straight away so I can check your bindings.”
“ You know I will, although I don’t think I’d be able to hide this from you. You seem good at picking up my feelings through our bond .”
Aeden looked around the hatchery and then again at the roaring furnace at the top of the room. A large fireplace was carved out of the wall, surrounded by darkened stone blocks and a large stone slab sitting above it.
The furnace itself was burning intense, white-hot flames that were licking up the sides of the fireplace, the sound just as fierce as the flames that danced around inside.
“ Where’s Lyric? ” Aeden asked, wondering if he should open the door to the hatchery and let some air in. “ It’s so hot in here .”
“ I think it’s lovely ,” Nyra said as she nestled down into her bed of straw once again. “ It’s a perfect temperature for me .” She yawned halfway through her sentence, and Aeden laughed.
“ Don’t tell me you’re tired already. You haven’t been up that long.”
“ I’m growing fast. Lyric says this is normal. With that fire on, though, it just makes me sleepy .” She let out another yawn, this time longer and more exaggerated .
“ Well, try and stay awake a bit longer, would you? I’ve only just got here .
” Aeden laughed again as he walked around the hatchery and settled at the window to see if he could spot Lyric outside.
The window itself stretched up vertically into a crescent at the top.
Metal bars buried into the stone at the base and above it, presumably to stop anyone getting in.
That said, the eggs that were inside the hatchery were now wider than the windows themselves.
Outside, Aeden couldn’t see anything other than Lyric’s hut. There was no sign of him inside or out, and Aeden wondered once again where he could be. He was always at the hatchery.
“ When did you last see him? ” Aeden asked.
“ I’m not sure. He wasn’t here when I woke up. Usually he has some food for me, maybe that’s what he’s doing .”
“ I’ll go see if I can find him .” Aeden gave Nyra a smile as he walked past her and to the hatchery entrance. “ Do me a favour and try to stay awake .”
“ I’m not promising anything ,” she said, yawning again and nestling even deeper into her bedding.
Aeden stepped back outside and looked around for Lyric, but there was still no sign of him anywhere.
“Hello!” he called out. “Lyric?”
Bemused, he took a right turn out the door and made his way to the opposite side of the hatchery grounds to where Lyric’s hut was.
He called out a number of times, but each time was in vain.
Perhaps he had left the hatchery in its entirety.
Aeden was just about to turn and leave when he noticed another building detached from the hatchery and twice the size of Lyric’s hut.
It was square in shape and built with what looked like the same stone as around the furnace.
A slightly angled slate roof sat on top, with one or two of the slates missing, leaving large black voids on the roof’s surface.
A wooden door that looked like it had seen better days hung slightly ajar.
As Aeden moved closer, he could hear mumbling, muttering, and the odd curse word thrown in for good measure.
When he reached the door, it was clear that he had found the missing master.
He pushed the door open to sneak a look at what he was doing and found Lyric standing at a workbench, a large leather harness hanging down in front of him.
He was doing something to it with his hands, but Aeden wasn’t entirely sure what.
What he did know was that it had Lyric’s concentration entirely.
“Lyric,” Aeden said, not wanting to startle him.
Lyric was concentrating that hard that he didn’t hear Aeden, so he took a step inside before saying his name again, this time slightly louder.
“Lyric.”