by Haley Ryan
Her look was not encouraging, but it seemed she had weightier matters on her mind.
“Kira, I want you to know that I have no reservations about claiming you as my heir. No matter what the other factions might say or believe. Whatever you lack, you can learn in time. And I have no doubt that my sister would say the same if she were here.”
It was nice to hear her voice her support, but honestly, I still wasn’t sure I believed it was such a great idea myself. How could I lead dragons? And why would I want to? Surely there were others who would do a far better job than me.
“What about Skye?” I couldn’t help asking. I really liked her, but I’d only known her for two days.
Callum spoke up. “Skye has never expressed her feelings on the matter, but I believe she will abide by the queen’s decision.”
“Skye cannot possibly have expectations,” Lady Tairen said dismissively. “She does not technically share our blood, and even if she did, we do not act against our own families. Family is everything.”
That hadn’t really been what I meant.
“Okay, but what if she would do a better job than me? Let’s be honest, almost anyone could do a better job than me.”
“There is plenty of time for you to learn.” Now she sounded a little miffed.
“Yes, but I guess my point is, even if I lose, the dragons aren’t going to go down in flames, so to speak.” Callum rolled his eyes at my choice of words, so I shot him a wink. “There are others who can lead. ”
“Any transfer of power brings uncertainty,” Lady Tairen pointed out. “Which we cannot afford at this time.”
“But how is it uncertainty if you were to name Skye as your heir? She’s still your niece. And she’s lived here for almost as long as I’ve been alive.”
“Skye could not be my heir, even if she shared our blood,” Lady Tairen said heavily. “Not yet. As long as her mother is living and still in her prime, I would have to explain to the council why I did not choose Jaida. While she is my sister and I love her, she has always been far too inward-focused, too flighty and mercurial to be queen. And yet, how could I say so publicly?”
She appeared lost in thought for a moment, probably thinking of her sister. But eventually, she rallied and drew herself up.
“In any event, that hardly matters now that you’re here. Kira, this title, this position, is your birthright. And your duty. And, if you consider it carefully, the enclave is the safest place for you. Out there, in the world, you’ll be hunted. Never safe. Here you’ll be surrounded by dragons who will fight for you.”
“But what if that isn’t what I want?” I honestly didn’t know. There hadn’t even been time to consider it. The idea of a birthright and a duty to a people I’d only just met ought to be preposterous, but every dragon I’d encountered seemed to take it seriously. Seriously enough to challenge me to physical combat in order to remove me.
“So what do you want?” Lady Tairen’s eyebrow lifted imperiously. “Or should I say whom? Perhaps the half-fae assassin Dathair sends to do his dirty work?”
I knew I was blushing, but it wasn’t like I could control the blood in my face.
“I don’t know exactly what I want just yet,” I protested, “but I do know that I’m not willing to make these decisions lightly. I don’t believe in fate, or in being made queen of something just because I have the right DNA.”
“Kira, you’ve been living in the human world for too long,” the queen said, flexing her fingers in exasperation. “You act as though this is about choice, about our desired path in life, or about selecting the best person for the job. That is not the way dragons do things. You cannot change thousands of years of continuity and tradition over a foolish matter of feelings.”
Feelings were foolish? Surely she didn’t mean that. If she did, then how could she dissolve into tears when she talked about how long they’d searched for me? How could she speak of protecting her sister out of love? Which of those was the truth?
Which was the real Lady Tairen?
And what did this mean when it came to all her talk about the importance of family?
“Is that why you haven’t talked at all about my father? Because that was all about duty, and nothing to do with feelings?” I burst out.
I honestly hadn’t even realized how much that bothered me until I said it. But it did, especially after I’d spoken to Faris and thought of him, however briefly, as a father figure. Somewhere, I had a real father, but everyone seemed to be pretending he didn’t exist.
Callum looked startled, and Lady Tairen appeared taken aback by my vehemence.
“I suppose your brothers explained a little about our family history,” she said calmly. “But Kira, your father doesn’t live at the enclave. He never intended to be a part of your lives. That would have required he accept the position of consort, which he never wanted.”
I couldn’t tell how she felt about that. Couldn’t tell how she felt about anything right now. Maybe she really did think feelings were foolish, and that only human reasoning would question whether becoming her heir was the right decision. Or maybe everything she’d lost had caused her to bury her feelings so deeply, even she didn’t know what they were anymore.
Had that been what drove my father away? Or had he accepted her devotion to duty and tradition as a part of her, and left for his own reasons?
I supposed it didn’t matter. Whoever he was, I’d never expected to know him, so in the end, his reasons changed nothing.
And obviously, I wasn’t going to get anywhere explaining my own reasoning to Lady Tairen. It wasn’t like I could call her closed-minded, not when I was having as much difficulty understanding her point of view as she was mine.
I just wished I knew how to reconcile her contradictory statements. How to tell whether she truly loved me for myself, or whether I mattered because of what I represented. And when I thought back over what she’d said to me in the past—I still wasn’t sure.
But I also decided I wasn’t willing to judge her too hastily. This had to be harder for her than for me—Lady Tairen was over three-hundred years old, and she’d lost everything she loved once. It was only reasonable to expect that she would try to hang on to whatever she could of her past. And it was even understandable that she might try to bury her pain by pretending that she felt nothing.
So I took the coward’s way out and changed the subject to something safe and non-confrontational. With her insistence on continuity and tradition, this was definitely not the time to discuss Draven.
“Callum, have you found anything out about that black dragon we saw?”
He shook his head. “I’ve sent messages to everyone we’re aware of who lives away from the enclave, but no know seems to have any knowledge of a black dragon who’s been missing for that long.”
“I’ve attempted to contact Jaida,” Lady Tairen said. “She travels widely and may have met this dragon at some point, or have heard something we might have missed.”
“Thank you.” I couldn’t explain it, but I felt a sort of urgency in the search for the dragon’s identity. She’d saved my life, after all, even after all those years of torture. And she’d known my name. I wanted to be able to remember her properly, maybe even thank her family, whoever they were.
Lady Tairen headed for the door—apparently declaring the meeting over—but she looked back over her shoulder before she left. “Know this, Kira. No matter what happens, Weldon will come to regret his cowardice. Even if he wins, I will not let this kind of behavior go unpunished.”
I remembered the broken table and shivered. My mother might be growing old, but she was still scary enough to make her council almost pee themselves. Even if Weldon won…
Yes, what if he won? He was obviously not willing to go up against Lady Tairen directly. He must believe someone was going to protect him from her wrath. But who? One of the other council members? Someone bold enough to attack her plane and hire mercenaries to kill me?
No, I had to le
ave this to Callum. I had my own battles to fight. And I had to start by going back out and letting Ryker smack me around some more.
Oh frabjous day.
Ryker flew me out to the training ground again that afternoon, but he wasn’t the one who began my workout.
That honor belonged to Draven. As soon as I’d shifted, he began patiently explaining some incredibly basic ideas, like weight, balance, and tripod theory. He pointed out weak spots—places where bones were close to the surface, where nerve clusters lurked, or where joints could easily be bent the wrong way.
And I tried to focus. Because even in my dragon form, having Draven that close—actually touching me as he demonstrated his points—was incredibly distracting.
Fortunately, he was a patient teacher, and with Ryker’s help, he showed me ways that even a small fighter could disable a larger one if they knew where and how to strike.
After a few hours of that, Ryker took over and explained the importance of protecting my wings. My speed was my greatest advantage, but if I lost the use of my wings, I would be completely vulnerable.
The same, of course, went for Weldon.
“You are allowed to target the wings in combat,” Ryker told me, “but only to the point of preventing flight. We can heal most injuries to our wings, but in a challenge, what we normally say is—loss of flight, loss of fight.
“Weldon will know this, and will instinctively protect his own wings, but his training will only be designed to counter attacks from opponents his own size. There will be openings you can exploit.”
So we drilled them. Over and over again, and every time, Ryker saw me coming and batted me away. I lost count of the number of times I flew through the air and smacked into the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of me. Twice I landed on my wings wrong and wrenched them painfully. By the time darkness began to fall, I was limping and groaning and generally sounding like the most pathetic possible version of myself.
And I was feeling a little discouraged. Yeah, I knew that there was no way I was going to magically become some incredibly competent fighter overnight, but it was still deeply demoralizing to spend hours being reminded of how inadequate I really was.
I think Ryker must have noticed me sagging in defeat—he finally called a halt and eyed me where I’d collapsed dramatically on the muddy ground.
“Okay, enough for today. Follow me.”
He launched into the sky, so I scraped myself up and followed, keeping low and weaving around the treetops while wincing occasionally when I used the wrong muscles. Draven flew behind me—as though silently keeping watch—until we reached a large lake that glittered faintly in the twilight.
“No humans around at this time of year,” Ryker said, and his mental voice was faintly amused, “so I can show you how dragons have fun.”
He flew up several hundred more feet before reversing direction into a perfect dive, folding his wings and extending his feet as he arrowed right into the lake with an icy splash.
After a few moments, he swam out, shook himself like a dog, and took to the air again to repeat the process.
I’d never tried to swim as a dragon, and I couldn’t actually swim as a human. I’d never been allowed to take lessons. The idea of plummeting into the water from that high up terrified me more than a little.
But then Draven flew up even higher than Ryker, tucked his own wings back and dove, so fast I caught my breath in admiration. He slipped into the lake with almost no splash at all, then swam underwater to the shore, emerging none the worse for the dizzying stunt.
Honestly, I wasn’t having much luck not staring at the water dripping from his slicked-back dark hair and running down the muscles of his chest. Draven was always hot, but right then, in a rare moment when he was doing something purely for the joy of it, I couldn’t bring myself to look away.
He was breathtaking, so when he looked right at me and beckoned for me to follow him, there was literally no way I could have said no.
We flew up to only about fifty feet above the lake. “I’ll dive with you if you want to try it,” he said, but there was no judgment at all as he waited. As if he knew I was scared and was giving me space to decide what I wanted.
I looked down at the water. “I can’t swim.”
“Dragons can, but I’ll be right there in case there’s a problem.”
I shivered.
“You don’t have to. But we won’t let you drown.”
What the heck. I’d done so many other unfathomable things lately, what was a little high dive into a freezing cold lake?
I shut my eyes and stopped hovering.
“Kira, tuck your wings!” I heard the warning almost too late as the wind rushed around me, and managed to pull them in only a fraction of a second before I crashed belly first into the water.
For one heart-stopping moment, I panicked. I couldn’t see. There was water in my nose. I didn’t know which way was up.
But then I felt a tug and opened my eyes. It was dark, but I could still see Draven hovering in the water just above me, pulling me upward.
Just as he’d promised, he would always find me.
It was weirdly instinctual to use both my legs and my wings to propel myself towards the surface, and as my head popped up, I could feel myself begin to grin like a crazy person.
“Let’s do that again,” I said.
So we did. Over and over, even after full dark fell, first simple dives, then more elaborate. Eventually, Ryker pretended to pounce on me as he dove, and the aerobatics commenced.
After a few wild aerial tussles, I realized that this was my brother’s devious way of continuing my training. I was learning to maneuver in midair, to correct course as I fell, and to sense his approach even when I couldn’t see him.
But it was so exhilarating, I didn’t even care. In fact, I was laughing so hard, I didn’t notice Draven preparing for a sneak attack just as I reached the peak of my latest climb.
He hit me out of nowhere, pinning my wings with his arms, making it impossible for me to maneuver. And somehow, I didn’t panic. I twisted in midair and grabbed his arm in my teeth, carefully, but letting him know I could have ripped it off if I chose. He laughed but didn’t let go, so I dropped my shoulder, and we plummeted into the lake with him beneath me.
And I was far gone enough that all I could think of as I hit the water was that I wished I weren’t in dragon form.
If this was “training,” I wished I’d thought of trying it sooner.
We worked hard every day for the next few weeks, while I did my best during my off-hours to gain an understanding of the people I was supposedly duty-bound to lead.
I asked my brothers to introduce me to their friends and tried to spend time making myself available for conversation with the council members. Mostly they seemed to want to talk about my life as a “human,” which some viewed with horrified fascination, some with genuine curiosity.
There was really no way to tell whether I was making any progress. Most conversations still stopped when they saw me coming, even at the grocery store or the coffee shop, and the only people who ever invited me anywhere were my brothers or Skye.
Skye was really my first experience with a close female friend, and it made me wish I had a sister. I was careful about what I shared, but it was unexpectedly fun to spend time talking about, well, girl stuff. She took me to her hairstylist, drove me into the nearby city of Bend to shop for clothes—though she grumbled about it the whole way— and even started teaching me how to drive for myself.
I’ll be honest—I’m a terrible driver, but it was fun to feel like a real adult for a change.
We brought up the challenge exactly once—Skye said she hoped I turned Weldon into a flying shish-kebab, which was weird but supportive. At least I hoped so.
My self-confidence sort of came in waves. There were days I felt like I got completely destroyed in all phases of our practice fights, and days where I felt like I was getting better.
But mostly I got destroyed. I was definitely getting stronger, though. And on the few occasions where Draven took me on, I could keep from being pinned for two to three minutes in a row.
He always came to my practices, and after the first week or so, Ryker was occasionally too busy, so he entrusted my training entirely to Draven, which were basically the best days ever.
Even when he made me run obstacles, he ran them with me. Whenever he wanted to make a point about body mechanics, we would practice grappling in human form, and—don’t judge—I totally feigned ignorance a few times just so we could “practice.”
When it was just us, it was almost as though I didn’t have to worry about scary realities like the challenge, or my store, or whether we would ever find Morghaine.
Draven seemed to relax and lose the icy barriers he put up between himself and the world—he smiled more, and even laughed a few times. And more than once I caught him watching me with a peculiar expression that seemed almost wistful.
I probably shouldn’t have, but I let myself dream. Let myself imagine that he helped me out of more than just friendship. Let myself believe that he felt the same wild surge of wanting that I did whenever we were close. That when he said I was hard to walk away from, maybe one day he would decide he didn’t want to. Ever.
All it took to send my blood racing was a single touch. A single glance. A single, rare smile of approval.
Yeah, I had it bad, and all I knew about his feelings was that he… liked me? Was “addictive” the same as likable?
Probably that was the kind of thing I would normally ask a girlfriend, but I was still too scared to bring him up with Skye. There was no way I wanted any news of my deepening relationship with the fae emissary to make it back to Lady Tairen. I had no doubt she would pack him off home as quickly as possible, and I didn’t know for sure if I could count on Skye to keep my confidences secret.
About two weeks before the challenge, Ryker decided we needed to begin simulating the actual event, so he took me out to the practice grounds and attacked me—no instructions, no holds barred.
